New York, March 18, 2004—U.S. troops in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, today shot and killed a journalist from the United Arab Emiratesbased satellite news channel Al-Arabiyya and seriously wounded another. Cameraman Ali Abdel-Aziz was fatally shot at a checkpoint in Baghdad. The AP reported that Al-Arabiyya correspondent Ali al-Khatib was also wounded. In a separate incident…
By Ted KoppelThis is not a good day. As I write, pop star Michael Jackson has been arrested for allegedly engaging in sexual misconduct with a minor. His residence cum theme park, “Neverland,” has been invaded by police, sheriff’s deputies, and a team of forensic specialists. I am not empathizing with Michael Jackson, although this…
By Ann CooperIn real-time images, the war in Iraq splashed across television screens worldwide in March, with thousands of journalists covering the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein and his regime. The conflict and its aftermath had a far-reaching impact on the press and its ability to report the news, with the reverberations felt in some…
While violence and repression against the press continued unabated and even increased in some countries, public trust in journalists and the press suffered in much of the Americas, jeopardizing support for reforms of archaic press laws and opening the door for governments to take a more confrontational approach with the media.
The U.S.-led war in Iraq proved extremely dangerous for journalists. More than a dozen lost their lives reporting there in 2003, and many seasoned war correspondents have called the postwar environment the most risky assignment of their lives. With the demise of Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime, Iraqi media have flourished, but news organizations faced potentially…
The overwhelming issue facing the Philippine press in 2003 was the increasing number of journalists murdered with impunity. In the last year alone, at least five journalists were slain in the course of their work–a toll surpassed only by war-related killings of journalists in Iraq. But in the Philippines, this violence is not a temporary…
The U.S. media went to war in 2003, with both embedded and independent reporters pouring into Iraq to cover the U.S.-led invasion and its aftermath. U.S. officials called the invasion the best-covered conflict in history, but it was also one of the most deadly for journalists. All told, 19 reporters died while working in Iraq,…
There were 138 journalists in prison around the world at the end of 2003 who were jailed for practicing their profession. The number is the same as last year. An analysis of the reasons behind this is contained in the introduction on page 10. At the beginning of 2004, CPJ sent letters of inquiry to…
New York, February 2, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council’s (IGC) decision to bar the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera from covering official IGC activities in Iraq. Al-Jazeera’s Baghdad bureau chief, Majid Khader, told CPJ that he was informed on January 29 via e-mail that Al-Jazeera’s staff was barred from…