Don’t Forget Rasool: In international reporting, local journalists often suffer
When two journalists from VICE, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, were arrested with Iraqi journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool on August 28, a familiar scenario unfolded. A week later, Hanrahan and Pendlebury were released following a media flurry and worldwide attention. Still behind bars is Rasool, an experienced journalist and translator who had worked extensively in…
CPJ Announces 2015 International Press Freedom Awards
Awardees from Ethiopia, Malaysia, Paraguay, and Syria New York, September 15, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists will honor journalists from Ethiopia, Malaysia, Paraguay, and Syria with the 2015 International Press Freedom Awards. The journalists have endured death threats, physical attacks, legal action, imprisonment, or exile in the course of their work.
CPJ International Press Freedom Awards 2015
CPJ’s annual International Press Freedom Awards and benefit dinner honored courageous journalists from around the world on November 24, 2015, in New York City. (Courtesy of CNN) Profile videos and speeches by the 2015 awardees are available: Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently: video profile and speech Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque (“Zunar”): video profile and speech Zone…
Kathy Gannon
Kathy Gannon is a special regional correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan for The Associated Press. She has covered the region for the AP as a correspondent and bureau chief since 1988, a period that spans the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Afghanistan, the assassination of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the Afghan civil war between…
Gunmen open fire on Geo TV broadcast van in Karachi, killing one
New York, September 8, 2015–A Geo TV technician was killed and a driver for the privately owned Pakistani station was injured today in a shooting in Karachi, according to media reports. Arshad Ali Jafri, the technician, was shot seven times in the attack, and the driver was shot twice in the shoulder but managed to…
Hasina government must do more to protect Bangladesh’s bloggers
Asif Mohiuddin’s stab wounds are still visible two years on. In January 2013, the outspoken Bangladeshi blogger narrowly escaped death after he was attacked near his office by knife-wielding assailants. His attackers stabbed him nine times on his neck, head, and back, narrowly missing his spine.
The murder of Mexican photographer Espinosa has touched a nerve
The July 31 murder of Mexican photographer Rubén Espinosa hit the press freedom community really hard. Espinosa, who was found in an apartment with four female victims–all of them shot in the head–had fled the state of Veracruz in June and sought refuge in Mexico City, where he thought he would be safe from threats…
In times of war, Pentagon reserves right to treat journalists like spies
The Pentagon has produced its first Department of Defense-wide Law of War Manual and the results are not encouraging for journalists who, the documents state, may be treated as “unprivileged belligerents.” But the manual’s justification for categorizing journalists this way is not based on any specific case, law or treaty. Instead, the relevant passages have…
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists, June 2015
Pushing for press freedom at European Games Azerbaijan, which ranks in fifth place on CPJ’s list of 10 Most Censored Countries, hosted the first-ever European Games in its capital, Baku, this month. One of the country’s most prominent journalists, Khadija Ismayilova, has been in jail there since December 2014 for reporting on sensitive issues, including…