Journalists at the Beijing Winter Olympics may test China’s tolerance for critical coverage
Can China and the International Olympic Committee maintain a “bubble” of total press freedom inside China’s vast sea of repression? That’s the question facing thousands of journalists as they arrive in the coming weeks to cover the Beijing Winter Olympics, which kick off on February 4. (CPJ’s safety advisory for those attending addresses coronavirus restrictions…
China’s Olympic press freedom pledges: Worthless in 2008, absent in 2022
Prospects for free-wheeling media coverage of the February Beijing Winter Olympics seem increasingly dim, not least because of the attitude of the International Olympic Committee. On October 13, John Coates, vice president of the International Olympic Committee, dismissed out of hand calls from CPJ, human rights groups, and US lawmakers to pressure Beijing over its…
CPJ welcomes IOC’s press freedom complaints mechanism
New York, August 3, 2016 — The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the creation of a press freedom complaints mechanism by the International Olympic Committee that will enable journalists covering the organization and staging of the Olympic Games to report a violation of their press freedom. Thousands of journalists are converging on Rio de Janeiro…
CPJ calls on IOC to ensure press freedom at 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing
New York, July 31, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the decision to award the 2022 Winter Olympic Games to Beijing and calls on the International Olympic Committee to ensure that journalists are able to freely cover all aspects of the Games, including sensitive issues such as construction of the venues, possible protests,…
Jailed journalist Gao Yu saw what was coming. So should the IOC
Gao Yu was right, I was wrong. Gao, who was handed a seven-year prison sentence in a Beijing court on Friday, and I met at a conference organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in Paris in April 2008, a few months before the Beijing Olympic Games were to get underway. CPJ…