South African journalist Sam Sole on landmark court victory: “2008 surveillance was the tip of the iceberg”
South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, handed down a landmark judgment on February 4 that not only protects journalists and their sources from surveillance abuse, but also upheld a lower court’s ruling that the insidious practice of the bulk interception of ordinary citizens’ data and communication is illegal. The ruling, documented by CPJ, was…
CPJ joins call for accountability in attacks on journalists in Sri Lanka
The Committee to Protect Journalists joins the Center for Justice and Accountability in calling on the United Nations Human Rights Council to take action against impunity in attacks on journalists in Sri Lanka. In a report released today, the Center for Justice and Accountability, with support from CPJ, outlined the Sri Lankan government’s systematic and…
How Vietnam-based hacking operation OceanLotus targets journalists
In early 2020, Vietnamese writer Bui Thanh Hieu told Marina Mai, a freelancer based in Berlin, that he was closing his blog to protect his family. In 2009, Hieu was detained for a week for his critical writing on Vietnam’s territorial disputes with China, as CPJ documented. In 2013, he fled to Germany, but continued writing…
To police, ‘the camera is like a red cloth to a bull’: four journalists on covering Russia’s pro-Navalny protests
On January 23, Russia erupted in nationwide demonstrations against the January 17 arrest of Alexei Navalny. The opposition leader was taken into custody at a Moscow airport when he flew home after five months in Berlin, where he was undergoing medical treatment after having been poisoned. (He alleges the Russian government is responsible; Russian president…
Trump lit the fuse, but anti-media sentiment among his supporters may outlast him
Joe Biden’s subdued — if heavily guarded — inauguration at the U.S. Capitol was a marked contrast to the events there two weeks prior, when journalists were assaulted, harassed, and had their equipment destroyed by protesters who sought to overturn the election in favor of Donald Trump. Yet with Trump now out of the White House —…
Ten years after the Arab Spring, the region’s media faces grave threats. Here are the top press freedom trends
In early February 2011, Alaa Abdelfattah was in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, documenting and participating in the nascent pro-democracy uprising that would topple the government and transform the country and the region. Today, he is in prison on anti-state and false news charges, which his family believes are partly retaliatory for his work. Abdelfattah is one of…
CPJ urges US court to reverse Khashoggi ruling, order US intelligence community to disclose information on documents related to duty to warn
The U.S. intelligence community should confirm or deny the existence of documents that may provide information on its duty to warn Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi of threats to his life before his murder, or provide more detailed explanations of their refusal to do so, CPJ argued today at the U.S. Court of Appeals for…
CPJ joins call for Uganda to maintain internet access during election
The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined 54 other organizations in a letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni calling on him to ensure open and unrestricted internet access during and after the country’s presidential election, scheduled for January 14. The letter notes that disruptions to internet access would undermine journalists’ ability to report on the…
Section 230 reform could have unintended consequences for the press
Twitter’s permanent suspension of President Donald Trump’s account is reinvigorating debate about the law that protects social media platforms – specifically, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The statute shields tech companies and news websites from liability for making decisions about what people can say on their platforms, whether they take it down, or…
A positive step for Julian Assange but a blow to press freedom
A London court’s decision this week not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States imperils press freedom even as it benefits Assange. In her January 4 decision, Judge Vanessa Baraister ruled that Assange would be at risk of suicide should he be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution, including on espionage…