Features & Analysis

  
Riot police detain Emine Ocak, a member of Saturday Mothers group, during a demonstration on August 25, 2018, in Istanbul. Turkish police assaulted reporters at the August 25 protest. (AFP/Hayri Tunc)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of August 27, 2018

Police assault reporters in Istanbul Turkish police violently attacked several reporters trying to cover a weekly silent protest, known as the Saturday Mothers, in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square on August 25, the New York Times reported. The reporters, alongside activists participating in the protest, were attacked by the police during the 700th vigil for those who…

Read More ›

The Turkish flag hangs outside the Eyup Sultan mosque in Istanbul, Turkey on August 20, 2018. (Reuters/Murad Sezer)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of August 20, 2018

An Istanbul court on August 20 lifted the foreign travel ban on Meşale Tolu, a translator and editor for the leftist Etkin News Agency (ETHA), the daily Cumhuriyet reported.

Read More ›

Tanzanian police stand guard outside a vote counting center at a school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on October 28, 2015. On August 16, 2018, CPJ joined a call for the UN Human Rights Council to address a crackdown on free expression and other rights in Tanzania. (AP Photo/Khalfan Said)

CPJ joins call for UN Human Rights Council to address crackdown in Tanzania

The Committee to Protect Journalists and 29 other civil society groups yesterday wrote to the member and observer states of the United Nations Human Rights Council urging them to address the deteriorating situation for human rights, including freedom of the press, in Tanzania during the upcoming 39th session of the council in September.

Read More ›

Google's logo is seen outside its office in Beijing. If the company were to launch a censored news app in China, it would send a message to other companies and other countries that trading press freedom principles for access to lucrative markets is acceptable. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

Google complicity in Chinese censorship could endanger press freedom elsewhere

In 2010, after four years of offering Chinese users a heavily censored version of its search engine, Google decided it would no longer block search results at the request of the Chinese state. “Our objection is to those forces of totalitarianism,” Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, told The New York Times at the time, adding that…

Read More ›

A man shops at the gallery on August 16, 2018 near the Istiklal avenue, at Beyoglu district, in Istanbul. (AFP/Ozan Kose)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of August 13, 2018

Capital Markets Board issues warning on coverage of financial markets The Turkish Capital Markets Board (SPK) said in a statement that Article 107 of the Law no. 6362 on “market fraud” will be used against those who “spread fabricated, false and fallacious news about the economy,” independent news website Bianet reported on August 13. The…

Read More ›

An audience member protests the news media during a President Donald Trump campaign rally in Washington Township, Michigan, on April 28, 2018. (AP/Paul Sancya)

CPJ’s backgrounder on US press freedom

In recent weeks CPJ has noticed an uptick in interest from editorial boards of U.S. publications on issues related to press freedom in the United States. In light of this, the following data and reporting may be helpful. CPJ systematically tracks the killing and imprisonment of journalists around the world, and reports on threats and…

Read More ›

How Turkey silences journalists online, one removal request at a time

On June 19, Abdülhamit Bilici, the last editor-in-chief of the now-shuttered Turkish paper Zaman, tweeted about the decline of press freedom in his home country. If you can see his tweet, you are probably not in Turkey because it is among the over 1.5 million tweets belonging to journalists and media outlets censored there under…

Read More ›

People stroll by the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Turkey on April 20, 2018. Turkey's press crackdown continues, with more journalists arrested or charged for reporting critically.(Reuters/Murad Sezer)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of August 6, 2018

Journalist arrested Authorities in the southeastern city of Mardin on August 8 took Uğur Akgül, a former reporter for the shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA), into custody to serve his prison sentence of two years and six months after a court rejected his appeal, according to the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency. The journalist was…

Read More ›

President Yameen, center, surrounded by his body guards in the capital, Malé, in February 2018. The president was criticized today for comments he made about missing Maldives journalist Rilwan. (AP/Mohamed Sharuhaan/File)

Maldives president’s off-hand comment on missing journalist Rilwan highlights need for fresh investigation

Four years to the day that Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla was last seen by his family, President Abdulla Yameen Abdulla Gayoom declared the Maldives journalist dead.

Read More ›

At a national dialogue with President Daniel Ortega in May 2018, a woman holds up a newspaper showing images of people who died in protests in Nicaragua. More media outlets are providing hard-hitting news about the violent crackdown. (AP/Alfredo Zuniga)

In Nicaragua, Ortega’s control over the media slips even as a government crackdown intensifies

Nicaragua’s four-month-old popular uprising has not only weakened President Daniel Ortega’s grip on power: it has eroded his government’s control over the news.

Read More ›