false news

Long before one of their photographers was harassed on election night in Brazil, the editors at Fortaleza newspaper O Povo were meeting with their readers and staff to discuss the increasingly polarized environment and how to deal with it.

Bangkok, December 13, 2018–A Cambodian news fixer who helped to produce a documentary on sex trafficking for Russian government-funded international news network Russia Today, or RT, was deported yesterday from Thailand to Cambodia on accusations of abetting the production of false news, according to news reports.

Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon addressed a panel event at the 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 28, 2018. The event highlighted global press freedom violations and the jailing of journalists in countries around the world, with a specific focus on cases in Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh,…

Nairobi, September 26, 2018–Authorities in the Somali state of Galmudug should immediately release broadcast journalist Mohamed Abdiwali Tohow without charge, the Committee to Protect Journalist said today. Intelligence personnel detained the journalist on September 22 over a report broadcast the previous day for the Mogadishu-based Radio Kulmiye, according to the station’s director, Burhan Dini Farah,…

New York, August 21, 2018– Egyptian national security prosecutors ordered four more journalists to be detained as part of a case in which more than a dozen journalists, along with academics and activists, are charged with belonging to a banned group and with spreading false news. The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on authorities…

Washington, D.C., August 16, 2018–The Malaysian parliament today repealed a law imposing criminal penalties for “fake news” that had been enacted earlier this year by the previous government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to news reports.

Washington, D.C., July 26, 2018– Egyptian national security prosecutors in the past two weeks prolonged the detention of at least five journalists, according to Egypt’s Journalists’ Syndicate, the local press freedom group Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), and news reports. Authorities accuse the journalists, who had been arrested separately beginning in March, of…

Beirut’s Publication Court, headed by Judge Raffoul Bustani, on July 5, 2018, convicted and fined five Lebanese journalists for offenses including criminal defamation and spreading false news, according to news reports and the regional press freedom group Skeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom. The court, which deals with media regulation, issued the fines in…

Washington, D.C., July 10, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Egyptian authorities to drop the charges against a group of journalists held in pretrial detention for false news and release the journalists immediately.

Taipei, June 13, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Taiwan’s parliament, known as the Legislative Yuan, to reject a proposed amendment that would make spreading fake news punishable by imprisonment or a fine.