Syria tops survey of journalists fleeing into exile
CPJ releases annual report on exiled journalists to commemorate World Refugee Day New York, June 17, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists has helped more journalists fleeing into exile from Syria than any other country in the past five years, according to a report released today. Over that period, Syria and Ethiopia surpassed Iran as the…
UN report promotes encryption as fundamental and protected right
On Wednesday, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye will present his report on international legal protection for encryption and anonymity to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The report is an important contribution to the security conversation at a time when some Western leaders are calling for ill-informed and impossible loopholes…
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists, May 2015
US cites CPJ in remarks on World Press Freedom Day Each year, World Press Freedom Day provides an opportunity for press freedom organizations to put anti-press violations on the map. This year, CPJ did just that. In U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement commemorating World Press Freedom Day, he cited CPJ research: “This is…
Veracruz journalist shot dead after reporting on oil theft
Mexico City, May 6, 2015–The body of Veracruz radio journalist Armando Saldaña Morales was found on Monday in the neighboring Mexican state of Oaxaca, according to the Oaxaca state attorney general’s office and news reports. The journalist had been shot dead, the reports said. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder and calls on…
Attacks on the Press
Highly publicized murders of journalists heighten awareness of the grave dangers that reporters and photographers face around the world. Less widely known are the myriad other risks to journalists, including imprisonment, cyberattacks, harassment, frivolous lawsuits, and censorship. These threats exist to varying degrees in war zones, politically volatile regions, and even stable countries, and they…
Broadcasting murder: Militants use media for deadly purpose
News of the August 19, 2014, murder of journalist James Foley broke not in the media but instead on Twitter. News organizations faced the agonizing questions of how to report on the killing and what portions of the video to show. If a group or individual commits an act of violence, and then films it,…
Attacks on the Press: Journalists caught between terrorists and governments
CPJ releases annual assessment of press freedom worldwide New York, April 27, 2015–Terrorist groups and the governments who purport to fight them have made recent years the most dangerous period to be a journalist, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in its annual global assessment of press freedom, Attacks on the Press, released today. Some…
Five-day ban for Al-Jazeera in India, one year after map error
On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera was forced off the air in India after the government demanded the Qatar-based news broadcaster be suspended for five days for broadcasting images of maps between 2013 and 2014 that did not display Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as separate territory.
One year later: Hamid Mir on the attempt to kill him and what came next
Hamid Mir and I last saw each other in Islamabad in late January at a meeting of the Pakistan Coalition on Media Safety. Mir, a senior anchor for Geo News, seemed as if he was on the road to recovery, but he was obviously still in pain from injuries he sustained during an assassination attempt…