Sami al-Haj has now returned to Al Jazeera, an organization he previously worked for a decade ago as a cameraman covering the then nascent war in Afghanistan. While on assignment in December 2001 he was delayed by a passport problem during a routine over land crossing into the country from Pakistan. Quickly named an ‘enemy combatant’ by the U.S.…
In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ data shows nearly half of the 179 held in jail in 2011 worked primarily online. Al Jazeera highlights some of the challenges facing online journalism in the Middle East and around the world in 2011.Click here for the full story.
After airing a piece critical of the Pakistani military, senior journalists Najam Sethi and Hamid Mir received serious threats from what they described as “both non-state and state actors.” Pakistan was the most dangerous country for journalists in 2011 and the CPJ is working to keep these journalists safe by publishing these threats, bringing them…
In 2008 Namal Perera was dragged from a car and savagely beaten with metal rods by paramilitary forces in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The attack was so severe that he was forced to flee the country for fear of his life. With few options available to him, he CPJ helped to secure a special rescue fellowship to…
Nigerian journalist and ex-pat Omoyele Sowore is the focus of this New York Times Piece on exiled journalists in New York City. Since 2001 CPJ cites 649 journalists who have been driven into exile, 592 or which still have not returned to their home country. Despite some being thousands of miles from home, the rapid…
Following the collapse of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Bassem Youssef rose to stardom with a satirical television show similar to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. Now as the new government is beginning to look more like the old, he expresses his frustration over the ruling military council’s actions to restrict the press in what…
The Iron Curtain may have fallen, but the state of press freedom in Russia remains bleak. In what is a post-Cold War first, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Luke Harding was expelled from Russia earlier this year. The Telegraph describes what happened to him, and why deportation might have saved him from a worse fate. Click…
Brand TV, a CNN affiliate, cameraman Gelson Domingos da Silva, succumbed to gunshot wounds sustained while covering an anti-drug militia police raid in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Da Silva is the fourth journalist to be killed this year in Brazil, a nation that has seen a rise in violence against the media and currently…
Ongoing strife in Syria continues to take a toll on journalists as more reporters and bloggers have gone missing in recent days. CPJ reports that 3 individuals have vanished in the past week, adding to the growing list of disappeared media workers this year. Democracy Now! as well as the Beirut based NowLebanon.com covered the…