By Ann CooperAs a foreign correspondent covering the Soviet Union a decade ago, I was an eyewitness to a dramatic example of the press’ critical role in building democracy. Granted a bit of freedom by Mikhail Gorbachev’s mid-1980s glasnost policy, long-suppressed Soviet journalists set their own daring agenda: they probed forbidden history, investigated contemporary corruption,…
By Joel CampagnaRoyal succession and rubber-stamp elections set the tone for a year in which Middle Eastern and North African governments continued to restrict press freedoms through a combination of censorship, intimidation, and media monopoly. Ballots in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen produced few surprises as longtime rulers stayed in power and maintained formidable obstacles…
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
[Click here for full list of documented cases] At its most fundamental level, the job of a journalist is to bear witness. In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels’ atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. In…
Since his controversial, unopposed April 15 election, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has raised public hopes of ending the brutal civil strife that has plagued this North African nation for eight years. Buoyed by the president’s efforts to promote national reconciliation, Algerians eagerly sought to resume their normal lives after years of bloodshed. For the country’s press,…
Over the past two decades, journalism has made tremendous strides in the oil-rich monarchies of the Arabian peninsula. Benefiting from generous budgets and advanced technology, private newspapers have flourished. Some are now counted among the most influential papers in the Arab world. But for the most part, journalism in the member states of the Gulf…
For the second consecutive year, President Hosni Mubarak’s government ignored vocal protests against the state’s use of criminal and libel laws to muzzle journalists. At least 11 reporters and editors were investigated or tried for libel and other alleged publications offenses. According to Egyptian human-rights organizations, dozens of criminal cases were pending against members of…
The Iranian press was again the main battleground in a bitter power struggle between reformist president Muhammad Khatami and Iran’s conservative clerical establishment, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. With crucial parliamentary elections slated for February 2000, the conservative-controlled judiciary pressed ahead with a steady campaign of repression against reformist…
In the ninth year of crippling UN economic sanctions and after last year’s frequent U.S. and British air strikes, President Saddam Hussein showed little sign of loosening his iron grip on Iraqi society. All media remained at the government’s disposal, functioning as instruments of propaganda for Hussein’s brutal Baath regime. In his 1999 report about…
Since Israel began turning over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) six years ago, its repression of the local press has noticeably declined. The censorship, intimidation, and arbitrary arrests of Palestinian journalists that marked full-fledged Israeli occupation are now practiced by Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and…