Yesterday, I posted two pieces that showed how China’s good intentions toward the media can go wrong, or never get under way in the first place. The first item described a Reuters report on new guidelines that had been handed down to the police about how to handle the media if an embarrassing demonstration should…
Visas into China have been hard to get since early this year, when new policies were instituted. The tighter restrictions had already hit me in late February, when I tried to get a tourist visa to visit my wife’s family in Beijing. I was in Hong Kong to launch the 2007 edition of CPJ’s annual…
The release of Mustafa Hormatallah, a Moroccan editor at the independent weekly Al-Watan Al An, prompted a memorable scene on July 25 as he exited Akacha Prison in Casablanca, Morocco’s most populous and business-oriented city. Scores of well-wishers including relatives, friends, and representatives of the of the National Syndicate of the Moroccan Press and human…
All the news is excellent in China today. The Web site of Xinhua News Agency today leads by telling its audience: “Olympic dream brightens the world.” At the provincial levels, the news is equally good, but with a local angle. The Web site of the Southern media group reports that cooperation between south China’s Guangdong province…
Reuters is reporting that an unnamed gunman fired on a Philippine radio broadcaster earlier today in Manila. The journalist, Dennis Cuesta, was not killed but is in critical condition in a local hospital. This continues an unfortunate trend in the Philippines, a country that we rank as the sixth most dangerous for journalists. The Sydney…
Police in Kashgar apparently didn’t get the message about new tactics for relating to the media. Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported that Masami Kawakita, a photographer from the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper’s Tokyo headquarters, and Shinji Katsuta, a reporter for Nippon Television Network’s China general bureau, were slightly injured when police in Kashgar dragged them from…
International advocacy may have had a role in prompting the reported new rules for police in dealing with journalists covering demonstrators during the Games, but the most likely cause was the damage to China’s international image from the widespread video of cops roughing up a few Hong Kong camera crews.
Foreign journalists have started making their way to Kashgar today after the official Xinhua News Agency reported that 16 police officers were killed when two terrorists drove a truck into an electricity pole and threw two home-made explosives sometime around 8 a.m. Monday. So far, the few foreigners who have made the double-hop plane connection…
CPJ has set up a press freedom hotline for journalists in China covering the Olympic Games. At +852 6717 0591, the CPJ hotline will take calls in English or Mandarin from journalists facing censorship, threats, attacks, or other press freedom abuses. CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz, who is reporting from Hong Kong during the…
Coverage of today’s attack on a police station in Kashgar will be important to watch. The coming hours will determine if the government’s more liberal rules on foreign reporters’ travel will be observed or ignored. The policy–which ostensibly allows foreign media to travel and interview people freely–was put into place in January 2007 as part…