2008

Iraqi Kurdish political leaders have cultivated an image of freedom and tolerance, but that increasingly clashes with reality. As the independent press has grown more assertive, attacks and arrests have increased.

Joel Campagna: The backstory of this report

Journalists from Sierra Leone, Russia, and the Philippines describe the failure of justice and the effect on their work.

CPJ’s Impunity Index ranks countries where killers of journalists go free New York, April 30, 2008 — Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists’ killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists…

See also: Journalists killed   |   Media workers killed   |   Background reports Here is a statistical look at journalists abducted by armed groups in Iraq and held for periods ranging from several hours to many weeks. The analysis, covering the period 2003-09, is followed by capsule reports detailing each abduction. 

Five years after the Castro government cracked down on the independent press, more than 20 journalists remain behind bars for the crime of free expression.

Interviews by Borja Bergareche

Bobby Ghosh, Time magazine, world editor On Iraqi staff The journalists arriving in Iraq after that period–let’s say between the spring of 2006 and today–only get to see little slivers of the country, you can see the Green Zone which is not really Iraq, its this sort of strange artificial construct, and you can maybe…

Jehad Nga, freelance photographer On arriving at the beginning of the war When we arrived in Baghdad, as you can imagine, Baghdad was basically ablaze. The Americans had created a safety zone around the Palestine Hotel; otherwise the city was in a state of anarchy. As you can imagine, every journalist on the face of…

Three reporters tell CPJ about the dangers of reporting from Iraq.