Mexico murder may be social media watershed
María Elizabeth Macías Castro’s killers made sure their actions were understood. In a macabre, carefully orchestrated mise-en-scene, they placed her body in front of a poster with the ominous note. Nearby they left a computer keyboard, with a pair of headphones on her decapitated head.
Fighting abusive litigation against journalists
CPJ and others who defend the rights of journalists are rightly alarmed when public officials and other powerful figures instigate baseless criminal prosecutions that can send journalists to prison and force them to pay heavy fines. A case pending in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Fontevecchia & D’Amico vs. Argentina, shows how abusive civil litigation…
When a bug fix can save a journalist’s life
One of the most exciting aspects of working on Internet technologies is how quickly the tools you build can spread to millions of users worldwide. It’s a heady experience, one that has occurred time and again here in Silicon Valley. But there’s also responsibility that attaches to that excitement. For every hundred thousand cases in…
UNESCO must reject Obiang prize bid
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined with eight other human rights organizations today in opposing the bid for a UNESCO life sciences prize named after Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. CPJ and other groups have consistently voiced their opposition to this prize, saying that Equatorial Guinea’s human rights record undercuts the UNESCO mission.…
Correa lambastes press in Columbia speech
“Sir, you are lying and a liar.” With these words, uttered before an audience of around 150 people, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa dispelled any doubt as to whether he might cool his explosive rhetoric in the face of criticism. His harsh words came in response to a critical question posed by CPJ’s senior coordinator for…
Eritrea: Let’s lift the shroud of 10 years of misery
Since Zaid Tewelde’s husband, an Eritrean freedom fighter turned playwright and journalist, was arrested in September 2001, she has spent each passing day coping with the burning questions of her two young sons, age 9 and 10, “Where is my dad? When are we going to see him?” And she is not alone. Like Zaid, the…
State secrets claim withdrawn in UK hacking probe
London’s Metropolitan Police this week dropped their attempt to leverage the Official Secrets Act to force The Guardian to reveal confidential sources for stories about the phone-hacking scandal that has gripped the UK’s political and media world. The Met’s reversal is welcome, but its unprecedented attempt to invoke espionage laws to force a newspaper to…
Gambia VP touts tourism, downplays human rights issues
The Gambia has an image problem: Dubbed the “Smiling Coast of Africa,” it is a tourist destination, but its government has one of the region’s worst records of human rights abuses. On Tuesday, at an African tourism promotion event in New York City, Gambian Vice-President Isatou Njie-Saidy headed a delegation working toward improving the negative…