Social Media

New York, June 25, 2020 – Kyrgyzstan President Sooronbay Jeenbekov should reject recently proposed legislation that would mark a serious step toward curtailing press freedom in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Today, the country’s parliament held the second and third readings of proposed legislation called “On Manipulating Information” and passed it…

Abuja, June 18, 2020 — Authorities in Sierra Leone should release journalist Sylvia Olayinka Blyden immediately and drop the charges against her, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On May 1, police arrested Blyden, publisher of the Awareness Times newspaper, at her home in Freetown for alleged “cyber-related” offenses, according to Messeh Leone, a…

New York, June 8, 2020 — Brazil’s Senate should drop proposed legislation seeking to regulate online content and so-called “fake news,” or amend the bill to ensure that free speech is protected, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Bill 2630, titled the “Lei das Fake News,” was originally scheduled for a vote on June…

Can the key to ending news blackouts in isolated areas of Colombia come from inside a shipping container? The Bogotá-based Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) thinks so. In an experiment to turn community activists into reporters in regions that lack local news outlets, FLIP has converted a shipping container into a roving journalism classroom. For…

Local authorities across India filed legal notices against, questioned, or detained at least eight journalists between March 29, 2020, and May 17, 2020, amid the country’s lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, according to CPJ interviews with the journalists and media reports. According to Om Sharma, a journalist with Hindi daily Divya Himachal in…

Journalists reporting on misinformation, conspiracy theories, and/or false news are frequently left vulnerable to online attacks by those who originate or support these views, as well as by people with strong political leanings. People supporting the spread of this type of information online may organize coordinated attacks with the aim of forcing journalists offline and…

Over the course of Davey Alba’s career as a tech reporter, her beat has transformed from covering the latest gadgets and phones to investigating the creeping influence and massive power wielded by tech companies over peoples’ everyday lives. As the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the globe, Alba, who covers tech and disinformation at The…

Nairobi, May 20, 2020 — In response to Burundian authorities’ blocking of social media networks during today’s presidential elections, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement:

While digital communication enables the public to receive critical information about the COVID-19 pandemic in real time, the same tools are enabling an “infodemic” of misinformation that “can hamper an effective public health response and create confusion and distrust,” according to the United Nations.

Miguel Mora, director of the independent Nicaraguan news outlet 100% Noticias, oversaw its move online after its television broadcast license was revoked by the government in April 2018. He and his colleagues transferred their archives onto two YouTube accounts and used them to continue documenting the government’s repressive response to escalating protests in the months…