Special Reports & Publications / Middle East & North Africa

In our special report “Middle East Bloggers: The Street Leads Online,” CPJ’s Mohamed Abdel Dayem says blogging has become a crucial front in the region’s struggle for freedom of expression. Here, Abdel Dayem describes how two regional trends–booming Internet audiences and repression of traditional media–have made blogging a vibrant news alternative. Listen to the mp3…

More than 80 journalists flee their home countries in the last year. Iraq and Somalia are the hardest hit. By Elisbeth Witchel and Karen Phillips

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…

See also: Journalists killed   |   Journalists abducted   |   Media workers killed SPECIAL REPORTS: Heading into Danger An Iraqi reporter must hide his profession even as he is compelled to follow its demands. By Bassam Sebti From Dangerous Assignments, Spring/Summer 2006 A Hostage’s OrdealMicah Garen thought his Iraqi captors would behead him….

By Ivan KarakashianA Yemeni editor’s decision to reprint cartoons of Muhammad sparks government reprisals. Other cases abound.

Read first-hand accounts by journalists covering the war in Afghanistan. • December 21, 2001—The New York Times reported that on December 20, Afghan tribal fighters detained three photojournalists working for U.S. news organizations. The journalists were detained for more than one hour, apparently at the behest of U.S. Special Operations forces in the Tora Bora area….

Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite channel faces conflicting expectations

Syria’s press showed signs of life after Bashar al-Assad succeeded his iron-fisted father last year, but the thaw proved fleeting.

Palestinian journalists have been dodging Israeli bullets and Arafat’s censors for years. Lately, the stakes have grown higher.