The press silenced, Nuevo Laredo tries to find voice
You don’t notice it at first. Not with the people seemingly moving as normal on the sidewalks and the happy recorded music blaring across the plaza in front of city hall to announce the annual cowboy parade. No, at first Nuevo Laredo looks like a regular border town, until the military armored car goes by…
Ríodoce attack shows need for denial-of-service defenses
A founder of Mexican news weekly Ríodoce, Javier Valdez Cárdenas, traveled to New York in November to receive CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award at our annual benefit dinner. No sooner had he returned to Mexico than Ríodoce’s website was thrown offline by a denial of service (DOS) attack, in which multiple computers are used to…
CPJ Impact
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists, November 2011 Honoring those who buck the system CPJ and about 900 supporters recently embarked on an emotional journey with four journalists from Bahrain, Belarus, Mexico, and Pakistan. At the 2011 International Press Freedom Awards in New York’s Waldorf Astoria on November 22, we celebrated their daring reporting…
Most countries fail AP’s test of right-to-know laws
The right to information is at the heart of CPJ’s advocacy for press freedom, so we naturally support legislation granting that right, whether it is to journalists or ordinary citizens (or those in the expanding area between). But laws purporting to uphold the people’s right to information are only as good as their implementation. Today,…
CPJ Impact
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists, October 2011 CPJ announces 2011 press freedom awards Four courageous journalists from Bahrain, Belarus, Mexico, and Pakistan will be honored with CPJ’s 2011 International Press Freedom Awards at an annual awards dinner in New York on November 22. Following his release after four years in prison, Azerbaijani editor…
Appeal against Risen keeps source protection in focus
A reporter’s right to protect confidential sources, a topic of debate both in the U.S. and internationally, will undergo another round of legal scrutiny after federal prosecutors formally appealed a decision shielding journalist James Risen’s sources in a CIA leak case.
Javier Valdez Cárdenas, Mexico
2011 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee In 2003, together with reporters from the daily Noroeste, Javier Valdez Cárdenas founded Ríodoce, a weekly publication covering crime and corruption in Sinaloa, one of Mexico’s most violent states. Valdez is known for his prolific coverage of drug trafficking and organized crime. Early one morning in September 2009, unidentified…