Journalist Reem Abdellatif on the risks facing female reporters who cover the Gulf
The trolling started after Reem Abdellatif, a prominent Egyptian-American journalist now based in The Netherlands, published her first column in December for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. Titled “How I escaped Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom that terrorizes women,” it described the challenges she faced as a female journalist who had previously worked in Saudi Arabia and denounced Saudi…
Three takeaways from the US intelligence report blaming Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman for Khashoggi’s murder
On Friday, the United States laid the blame for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi squarely at the feet of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a long-awaited report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The release of the report, which is just three pages long, signaled a change from the previous…
CPJ calls on US and allies to sanction Saudi crown prince in wake of Khashoggi report
New York, February 25, 2021 – In response to today’s release of a declassified U.S. intelligence report alleging that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Committee to Protect Journalists released the following statement: “By releasing this intelligence report, President Joe Biden’s administration has reinforced what we…
Al-Jazeera’s Ghada Oueiss on hacking, harassment, and Jamal Khashoggi
In a mid-2020 Washington Post opinion piece, Lebanese Al-Jazeera broadcast journalist Ghada Oueiss described hackers stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online. The leak resulted in a sharp escalation of online attacks, Oueiss told CPJ in a January 2021 call. Since the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi…
Ten years after the Arab Spring, the region’s media faces grave threats. Here are the top press freedom trends
In early February 2011, Alaa Abdelfattah was in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, documenting and participating in the nascent pro-democracy uprising that would topple the government and transform the country and the region. Today, he is in prison on anti-state and false news charges, which his family believes are partly retaliatory for his work. Abdelfattah is one of…
Dozens of journalists newly identified as NSO Group spyware targets
New York, December 21, 2020 – NSO Group’s advanced Pegasus spyware was identified on phones of at least 36 journalists and media executives in July and August 2020, according to the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab, which said the surveillance product was installed via a vulnerability in the iPhone messaging application. Most targets were affiliated…
Record number of journalists jailed worldwide
Editor’s note: In 2019, CPJ published a new database of attacks on the press. Numbers for each subsequent prison census are liable to adjust yearly as CPJ learns of arrests, releases, or deaths in prison. For the most recent data, see cpj.org/data/imprisoned/. The number of journalists jailed globally because of their work hit a new high in 2020…
Saudi court sentences 2 journalists to prison following 2017 arrests
New York, September 4, 2020 – A Saudi specialized criminal court yesterday sentenced journalists Ahmed al-Suwian and Fahd al-Sunaidi to three and three and a half years in prison, respectively, following their arrests in 2017, according to news reports and Josh Cooper, deputy director at Al-Qst, a London-based human rights organization, who communicated with CPJ…
Amicus briefs support CPJ’s appeal in Khashoggi lawsuit
Nearly three dozen media and press freedom organizations, as well as 10 major human rights organizations and experts, have signed on to amicus briefs in support of CPJ’s appeal in its lawsuit seeking documents on whether U.S. intelligence agencies knew of threats to Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi before his murder by the Saudi government….
US intelligence community should explain document denial in Khashoggi case, CPJ lawsuit argues
The U.S. intelligence community should confirm or deny the existence of documents that may provide information on its awareness of threats to the life of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Committee to Protect Journalists argued in a brief submitted yesterday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Khashoggi, a Saudi…