Documentary

CPJ launches US report

Following CPJ's release of its report on the state of press freedom in the United States, the organization is pursuing high-level meetings with the White House. CPJ had drafted six recommendations that were shared with President Obama, including calling for a guarantee that journalists would not be at legal risk or prosecuted for receiving confidential and/or classified information.

CPJ continues to work toward securing a meeting with the Obama administration in order to discuss the report's findings.

"Given our 32-year history fighting for press freedom around the world, we believe CPJ can make an important contribution to the press freedom concerns and debate in the United States," CPJ Chairman Sandy Rowe wrote in a blog published the day after the report.

New York, March 5, 2013--The Sri Lankan Defense Ministry says it wants to identify sources who provided information to the UK-based broadcaster Channel 4 for a new documentary alleging that government forces committed war crimes during the country's long civil conflict, The Divaina, a Sinhala-language daily, reported today. In response, the producer issued a statement saying that no "resident anywhere in Sri Lanka helped us with this film."

By Greg Fay/CPJ Executive Assistant and Board Liaison

"High Tech, Low Life," a new documentary about Chinese bloggers directed by Stephen Maing, debuted at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival in New York on April 19. It documents the lives of Zola (Zhou Shuguang) and Tiger Temple (Zhang Shihe), as they blur the lines of citizen journalism and activism though their reporting on evictions, pollution, and official cover-ups in China. Zola was in town for the premiere, and he and the director fielded questions from the audience after the film's showing.

By Frank Smyth/CPJ Washington Representative

A
filmmaker’s raw footage is much like a photographer’s unedited images or a
reporter’s notebooks—a private record of their reporting that is rarely
disclosed to others. On Thursday, a federal judge in New York ruled
that a private firm could subpoena the unedited footage used to make a news
documentary. The reason? To help the company defend itself against a lawsuit.

New York, April 8, 2010—Reports that freelance documentary filmmaker Asad Qureshi has gone missing on a reporting trip in a tribal area of Pakistan are deeply concerning, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.