On World Press Freedom Day and journalists’ safety
Last week, I met a Cameroonian journalist who worked in the Congo until he fled following a series of threats and an attack on his home by armed men who assaulted his sister. Elie Smith, a TV host who documented alleged abuses by police and was outspoken in his criticism of the government, said he…
CPJ, HRW call on president of European Olympic Committees to engage with Azerbaijan on press freedom, human rights
A delegation of representatives from CPJ and Human Rights Watch met yesterday with Patrick Hickey, president of the European Olympic Committees, at the Dublin headquarters of the Olympic Council of Ireland. The delegation discussed the dismal state of press freedom and human rights in Azerbaijan, the host of the first-ever European Games in June and…
CPJ calls on European Olympic Committees to engage with Azerbaijan on press freedom
Dear President Patrick Hickey: I am writing on behalf of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent international press freedom organization, to call your attention to the dismal climate for press freedom in Azerbaijan, which is scheduled to host the first-ever European Games on June 12.
Conflating terrorism and journalism in Ethiopia
At the Lideta courthouse in Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa, stands a statue of a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales in her outstretched hand–a universal symbol of justice, here cast in metal of pinkish gold and wearing thick braids in her hair.
Treating the Internet as the enemy in the Middle East
The snow and freezing temperatures that struck Saudi Arabia unexpectedly in December 2013 were newsworthy in a desert kingdom better known for its extreme heat. But the fact that the ensuing power outages at a regional prison left prisoners without power or heat for nearly a week was apparently off-limits to reporters.
Outdated secrecy laws stifle the press in South Africa
Nelson Mandela regularly harangued the media once he’d been freed after 27 years of imprisonment by South Africa’s apartheid government. He would call individual journalists when he liked or disliked something they had written or when he wanted to advance a political lobby.
Journalists overcome obstacles through crowdfunding and determination
During South Africa’s Boer War, at the turn of the 20th century, a determined news organization relocated reporters, copy editors, and printing presses to the front line to ensure accurate reporting. In the Warsaw Ghetto, during World War II, a literal underground press, established to counter Nazi propaganda, required the nightly movement of cumbersome printing…