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,…
New York, May 5, 2000 —When Iran’s top cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, launched a scathing tirade against the country’s pro-reform newspapers on April 20, journalists braced for the inevitable showdown. On previous occasions when the supreme leader had excoriated the press, the conservative-dominated judiciary responded with remarkable swiftness, shutting down newspapers and hauling journalists to…
In what may be part of a systematic effort by Israeli internal security forces to use journalism as a cover for intelligence-gathering, agents from Israel’s General Security Services, also known as the Shin Bet, impersonated a veteran Israeli television news correspondent. The impersonated journalist, Yoram Cohen, who works for Channel 1TV covering the West Bank…
When the Turkish government in March announced a plan to coordinate the release from prison of some of the many journalists who have been convicted under the country’s infamous anti-terror law, Turkish journalists greeted the announcement with skepticism. Given Turkey’s dismal press freedom record under the government of Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, and that of…