ATR

New York, May 7, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the Yemeni government’s decision to ban at least eight newspapers that have covered unrest in the southern part of the country. 

Dear Prime Minister Barzani: The Committee to Protect Journalists would like to bring to your attention the deterioration of press freedom in Kurdistan. There has been an alarming wave of politically motivated criminal lawsuits filed against mostly independent journalists as well as blatant violations of the region’s new press law. The law has no provisions for jail terms for journalists, but journalists are still being imprisoned.

The resolution sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) drew the support of 10 other senators across both sides of the aisle, from elder statesmen like Sens. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to the freshman Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE). Representing constituents from the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic to the Okefenokee swamplands, they…

CPJ names the worst online oppressors. Booming online cultures in many Asian and Middle Eastern nations have led to aggressive government repression. Burma leads the dishonor roll.

The media have become part and parcel of Thailand’s intensifying political conflict: Two privately held satellite television news stations are openly aligned with competing political street movements, and state-controlled outlets are under opposition fire for allegedly misrepresenting recent crucial news events. 

Jiang Weiping, a 2001 CPJ Press Feedom Award winner, spoke on Tuesday on a panel organized by the Ford Foundation in Washington, along with CPJ board member Clarence Page and Executive Director Joel Simon. The panel addressed the concerning number of journalists jailed worldwide–125, according to CPJ’s 2008 census–and discussed how advocacy by CPJ and other…

A high court judge in Singapore ruled on March 19, 2009, that Melanie Kirkpatrick, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, was in contempt of court for two articles and a letter to the editor published by the Dow Jones-owned Wall Street Journal Asia last year, according to international news reports. Kirkpatrick was…

Bruno Jacquet Ossébi, a Franco-Congolese journalist known for outspoken coverage of government corruption in the Republic of Congo, dies after a mysterious fire burns down his house. By Mohamed Keita with reporting by Sarah Turbeaux

The murderers of journalists around the globe presume they won’t get caught. Unfortunately, they’re often right: Only one case in 10 results in any convictions; just one in 20 results in convictions of those who ordered the murder. For more than a year it seemed like the August 2007 slaying of U.S. journalist Chauncey Bailey,…

On March 2, 2006, Kenyan state agents conducted a commando-style midnight raid on the Standard Group, owner of an independent daily and KTN Television in the capital, Nairobi. The agents seized computers and tapes, vandalized a printing press, and burned roughly 20,000 copies of The Standard, Chief Executive Officer Tom Mshindi told me recently in…