Features & Analysis

  
The logo of Russia's state communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, is reflected in a laptop screen in February 2019. Research by Censored Planet shows how Russia has imposed its censorship model in the past seven years. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)

Laws, cheap web filters arm Russia to block news, says Censored Planet

When Daniil Kislov tried to view the website of Fergana from his computer in Moscow on November 1, his browser showed him the now-familiar notification that the independent news outlet he directs had been blocked by order of Roskomnadzor, the national agency that regulates the internet in Russia, he told CPJ. Fergana has been blocked…

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CPJ
Covers of CPJ's 'Attacks on the Press' books. Starting in 1987, the annual publication acted as a database of press freedom violations. (CPJ/Mustafa Hameed)

CPJ deepens database of attacks on the press

He couldn’t have known it at the time, but when a Moroccan court sentenced editor Mohammed al-Herd on August 4, 2003, to three years in prison, he was emblematic of a new trend, one that would accelerate and continue to the present day.

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A woman walks past Rapid Intervention Battalion members as they patrol in the city of Buea in October 2018. CPJ and others are calling on the ACHPR to address human rights violations in Cameroon's Anglophone regions. (Reuters/Zohra Bensemra)

African Union must act on Cameroon’s human rights violations

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 64 other civil society organizations in calling on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to address serious and systematic human rights violations in Cameroon, including the jailing of journalists.

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Maati Monjib, right, chats with Moroccan journalist Hicham Mansouri in Rabat, Morocco, January 17, 2016. Amnesty International reported this month that Monjib has been sent malicious messages in an attempt to install spyware on his phone. (AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar)

Q&A: Moroccan press freedom advocate and NSO Group spyware target Maati Monjib

Pegasus, the cellphone spyware tool sold by the Israeli firm NSO Group, is one of the most powerful surveillance systems governments can buy, experts say. Researchers who study it have detected “45 countries where Pegasus operators may be conducting surveillance operations,” and detailed its capabilities: whoever tricks the target into clicking on a link that…

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The Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, second right, known as Shawkan, poses for a selfie at his home in Cairo on March 4, 2019. As part of the restrictive terms of his release from prison, the journalist has to spend each night at a police station. (AFP/Khaled Desouki)

Restrictive terms of Shawkan’s release from Egyptian jail highlighted to UN

On October 10, Mahmoud Abu Zeid turned 33. It was the Egyptian photojournalist’s first birthday out of prison since his August 2013 arrest. But in spite of his celebrated freedom in March, the police monitoring conditions of his probation have, in effect, rendered his release obsolete.

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Indian paramilitary soldiers use their cellphones in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, on October 14, 2019 after the partial lifting of a communications lockdown in place since India's government downgraded the region's semi-autonomy in August. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

India uses opaque legal process to suppress Kashmiri journalism, commentary on Twitter

On August 10, 2018, the Indian government informed Twitter that an account belonging to Kashmir Narrator, a magazine based in Jammu and Kashmir, was breaking Indian law. The magazine had recently published a cover story on a Kashmiri militant who fought against Indian rule. By the end of the month, Indian police had arrested the…

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The Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, which hears cases from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, stands in lower Manhattan, New York City. Journalists in the U.S. and Canada say threats of lawsuits can affect every level of the reporting process. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)

Legal threats prompt journalists to take creative approaches to investigative stories

When BuzzFeed News reporters Jane Bradley and Katie J.M. Baker began investigating claims of sexual misconduct by self-help guru Tony Robbins in early 2018, they did what any journalist would do, and reached out to people who might know about the allegations.

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Hamza Idris (left), an editor with the Daily Trust newspaper, sits with colleague Hussaini Garba Mohammed in their office in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, in February 2019. The office was raided in January by the military, who seized 24 computers. (CPJ/Jonathan Rozen)

Nigerian military targeted journalists’ phones, computers with “forensic search” for sources

Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper’s central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him. Soldiers with AK47s walked between the newsroom desks repeating his name, he told CPJ. It was the second raid on the paper that day; the first hit the bureau based…

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People lay flowers and candles at a memorial during a vigil and protest on the first anniversary of the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia outside the Courts of Justice in Valletta, Malta, on October 16, 2018. On the second anniversary of her murder, CPJ joined a call to end impunity in her case. (Reuters/Darrin Zammit Lupi)

CPJ joins call to end impunity in killing of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

Two years after the assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and one year after CPJ joined five other organizations in an international press freedom mission to Malta, CPJ and nine other groups once again demanded an end to impunity for the heinous attack and renewed calls to ensure the independence of a public…

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Bolivian journalist Amalia Pando is seen in her makeshift office; she was formerly a ubiquitous presence on Bolivian radio and TV. (CPJ/John Otis)

Forced out of jobs and sidelined, Bolivia’s independent journalists see their audience slipping away

Amalia Pando was once a ubiquitous presence on Bolivian radio and TV, hosting some of the country’s most popular news and political commentary programs. At age 66, she’s still at it, but her audience is a sliver of what it once was.

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