Features & Analysis

The smears began the day Christian Ulate began representing jailed Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora: tweets accusing the lawyer of being a leftist or questioning his legal credentials. He began to fear he was being surveilled.  Ulate had taken over the case in August 2022 from two other lawyers, Romeo Montoya García and Mario Castañeda,…

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined six other press freedom groups on Friday in calling on Latvia’s government to reconsider their proposal to ban the broadcast of Russian language content on Latvian public service media, and to launch an open debate in the interests of safeguarding media freedom. The groups say they are “extremely concerned”…

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined seven other international press freedom organizations on Wednesday to call on Greek authorities to make a clear demonstration of political commitment to improve press freedom in the country and take specific measures in compliance with European standards to renew the trust of the media community. The groups’ press conference…

Cyberattackers used services of technology companies based in the U.S. and U.K. to target media sites from Somalia, Kosovo, and Turkmenistan, Qurium, a nonprofit hosting the sites, said Tuesday. Earlier this month, CPJ reported on how cyberattackers used a Nebraska company, RayoByte, in attempts to knock those same media sites offline, as well as at…

Saeede Fathabadi, who goes professionally by Saeede Fathi, was living in Vienna last year when she took a reporting trip to her native Iran to gather footage for a documentary about female athletes in the country. The topic is close to her heart; she used to be a professional basketball player but quit after she was unable…

When Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, died in custody last September after morality police detained her for alleged “improper” wearing of her headscarf, Iran’s already embattled press corps paid a heavy price for reporting on her death and the nationwide protests that followed. Scores of journalists were among those arrested as Iranian authorities cracked…

The cyberattack against the Somali Journalists Syndicate could not have come at a worse time. A distributed denial-of-service attack, known by its acronym DDoS, flooded the local press freedom group’s website with traffic in early August and knocked it offline. Days later, authorities arrested SJS staff member and Kaab TV editor Mohamed Ibrahim Osman Bulbul…

Manuel Calloquispe has had to face an angry mob laying siege to his house. He’s been called a traitor. He’s been punched and kicked by miners and had his equipment stolen. He once had to duck for cover when someone threw a machete at him. The reason: His decade reporting on the environmental havoc caused…

Bangladesh authorities are increasingly attempting to silence the media through arbitrary detention, legal harassment, and censorship, according to a joint submission to the United Nations by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and Asian Legal Resource Centre. The submission, sent for the 44th session of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group…

MARION, Kansas, August 17, 2023—At midday Wednesday, television crews were setting up for live broadcasts outside the Marion County Record; phones were ringing off the hook; and the paper’s owner, Eric Meyer was on a carousel of interviews about the police raid on their offices five days earlier. In the back room, surrounded by old…