Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of November 8, 2018
Court sentences former Zaman journalist A court in Uşak on November 14 convicted Ali Ünal, a former columnist for the shuttered daily Zaman, of “founding and leading an armed terrorist organization” and sentenced him to 19 years and six months in prison, the news website Diken reported. The court acquitted the journalist of coup-related charges,…
Turkey convicts Wall Street Journal reporter of terrorism
New York, October 10, 2017–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the conviction today of Wall Street Journal reporter Ayla Albayrak, and called on Turkish authorities to stop their relentless crackdown on the press. As the Journal reported, a court in the southeastern city of Cizre convicted Albayrak in absentia of terrorism and sentenced her to…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of January 8
Erdoğan praises Trump for ‘beating down’ CNN reporter Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan praised U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for “beating down” (“benzetmek”) CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Costa in a January 11 press conference, according to media reports and video widely distributed on the internet. Trump refused to take a question from CNN at…
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of January 1
Jailed investigative journalist held in isolation Investigative journalist Ahmet Şık has been kept in isolation in prison and denied basic rights since his arrest last week, according to reports that cited his lawyer. Sık, who was detained December 29 on allegations of spreading terrorist propaganda, was kept at Metris Prison in Istanbul for three days…
Amid financial scandal, Malaysia increases pressure on media
A financial scandal involving a state investment fund created and overseen by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, exposed in turns by investigative journalists, has put a parallel spotlight on the country’s deteriorating press freedom situation. A suggestion by the government’s top lawyer to strengthen the 1972 Official Secrets Act to penalize journalists who decline to…
In Iran, journalists accused of espionage, sentenced to prison
Iranian government-run media outlets in mid-August 2015 accused Farnaz Fassihi, a New York-based senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal, of being a liaison between the U.S. government and the opposition. After Kayhan, a newspaper closely associated with the Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, accused Fassihi of conspiring against the Iranian government, the Supreme Leader-affiliated…
Dogged by fraud allegations, Malaysia targets media
Investigative reporting on alleged mismanagement of a Malaysian state investment fund has triggered a backlash against muckraking media. On Friday, the Home Ministry ordered the suspension of two local news publications, The Edge Weekly and The Edge Financial Daily, for three months on the grounds that their reporting on the fund, known as 1Malaysia Development…
Blogger in Singapore faces financial ruin following defamation suit
“If we want our freedom, we have to fight for it,” wrote blogger Roy Ngerng last year after he was sued for defamation by Singapore’s prime minister. The case was sparked by a blog post in which Ngerng allegedly suggested Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had misappropriated funds in a state pension system. In November,…
Broadcasting murder: Militants use media for deadly purpose
News of the August 19, 2014, murder of journalist James Foley broke not in the media but instead on Twitter. News organizations faced the agonizing questions of how to report on the killing and what portions of the video to show. If a group or individual commits an act of violence, and then films it,…
Indian businesses exert financial muscle to control press
In the late summer of 2014, Indian freelance journalist Keya Acharya found herself embroiled in her own version of the War of the Roses. That August, Acharya was forced to respond to a nine-page legal notice demanding that she pay a staggering 1 billion rupees ($16.3 million) to a company whose owner was upset about…