Features & Analysis

  
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 ›

A man reads a newspaper while walking through a market in Hong Kong in May 2018. The Hong Kong Journalists Association says press freedom in the administrative region is in decline. (AFP/Anthony Wallace)

Hong Kong Journalists Association finds press freedom further restricted by ‘one country’ principle

In its annual report, released July 29, the Hong Kong Journalists Association found that press freedom has gone backward as the administrative region seeks to implement legislation to criminalize critical opinions toward China’s “one country” policy and Beijing.

Read More ›

Turkish aircraft fly over a parade in the Turkish Cypriot northern part of the divided city of Nicosia, Cyprus on July 20, 2018. The parade marked the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. (Reuters/Yiannis Kourtoglou)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of July 30, 2018

Journalist threatened Hale Gönültaş, a reporter for the news website Gazete Duvar, received a death threat on July 30, three days after the publication of her feature on the Islamic State militant group selling Yezidi women as slaves, her employer reported. Gönültaş’s report stated that at least one Yezidi woman was sold in Ankara, Turkey’s…

Read More ›

People on a ferry travel across the Bosphorus as the sun sets over the old city in Istanbul, Turkey on July 14, 2018. The Turkish government continues to crackdown on the press over two years after a failed coup attempt, according to reports. (Reuters/Murad Sezer)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of July 23, 2018

Journalist arraigned An Istanbul court on July 19 arraigned Mustafa Gökkılıç, a former reporter for the now-closed liberal daily Radikal, on charges of having ties to the Gülen movement, which the government considers a terrorist organization, according to the state news agency Anatolia.

Read More ›