Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest the wounding of journalist Layla Odeh by IDF gunfire last Friday in the Gaza Strip. At about 1 p.m. on April 20, Odeh, a correspondent for the United Arab Emirates-based Abu Dhabi TV, was shot by Israeli troops while she and two colleagues were on assignment in the town of Rafah. At the time of the shooting, the journalists told CPJ, they were interviewing and filming local residents whose homes had been destroyed by Israeli forces.
New York, March 23, 2001 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat permitted the West Bank bureau of the Qatar-based satellite news channel Al-Jazeera to reopen on Friday after a three-day closure, according to press reports and CPJ sources at the station. Acting on orders from Arafat’s office, Palestinian National Authority (PNA) security personnel closed the station’s…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wishes to protest the Palestinian National Authority’s recent closure of the Ramallah bureau of the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera reported today that PNA security authorities, acting on orders from Your Excellency’s office, closed the station’s Ramallah bureau yesterday and barred its staff from entering the premises. The move apparently resulted from a current Al-Jazeera promotional trailer that advertised a forthcoming episode in a documentary series about the Lebanese civil war. PNA officials apparently felt that the trailer was insulting to Your Excellency.
ALTHOUGH RIGHTS TO FREE EXPRESSION AND PRESS FREEDOM are enshrined in national constitutions from Algeria to Yemen, governments found many practical ways to restrict these freedoms. State ownership of the media, censorship, legal harassment, intimidation, and imprisonment of journalists were again among the favored tools of repression and control. In Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria,…
Click here to view the CASES Click here to read the special report on Palestinian journalists, “Bloodied and Beleaguered.” New York, November 9, 2000 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented more than two dozen cases of journalists injured or harassed while covering political violence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in ISRAEL New York, October 5, 2000 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has confirmed that at least five journalists have been wounded covering violent clashes in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Three of the five cases involve journalists wounded by live…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its deep concern about the recent death of Abed Takkoush, a driver for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Takkoush was killed by Israeli shellfire in southern Lebanon on May 23 during Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory.