The Torch

CPJ joined about 100 other human rights and press freedom organizations Tuesday in a joint statement calling on the Rwandan government to ensure an “independent, impartial, and effective investigation” into the death of journalist John Williams Ntwali. Authorities said that Ntwali died on January 18 in a traffic accident in the capital city of Kigali….

The year 2022 was a deadly one for members of the press. At least 67 journalists and media workers were killed, the highest number since 2018 and a nearly 50% increase from 2021, CPJ found in its annual report on killed journalists, released Tuesday. More than half of the killings occurred in just three countries—Ukraine…

This week marked the fourth anniversary of the murder of  Ghanaian journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, who was gunned down by unidentified men months after threats by a local politician. Despite Ghanaian leaders’ promises of justice, a 2019 framework for improved relations and the safety of journalists, police assurances of progress, and two arrests, nobody has…

In Peru, more than 70 journalists have been harassed and attacked since anti-government protests broke out in December, following the impeachment and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo. In one incident on January 7, police officers threatened to kill Aldair Mejía, a photographer for the Spanish news agency EFE who was covering anti-government demonstrations in…

On December 30, exiled Turkish journalist Can Dündar revealed that he had been added to the so-called terrorist “gray list,” a database published by the Turkish Interior Ministry that identifies alleged terrorists and offers rewards for their capture. Dündar, who reported on alleged weapon smuggling from Turkey to Syria in 2014, received CPJ’s 2016 International…

In 2022, press freedom was under near constant attack. CPJ recorded the highest number of journalists imprisoned globally for their work in 30 years, with 363 imprisoned as of December 1, 2022. Iranian authorities’ arrests of dozens of journalists amid a brutal crackdown on anti-state protests made it the world’s worst jailer of the press….

In a new feature published this week, CPJ’s Consultant Technology Editor Madeline Earp explains how forensic tools open a new front for using phone data to prosecute journalists. A law enforcement agent scrolling through a journalist’s unlocked phone is already a problematic scenario for press freedom. This risk is supercharged by technology that can copy…

The number of journalists jailed around the world set yet another record this year, with 363 imprisoned as of December 1, 2022, according to CPJ’s 2022 prison census. This is the highest number CPJ has recorded in the 30-year history of the census, overtaking last year’s record by 20%. The notable increase, led by a…

Today, CPJ and 20 other human rights organizations sent a letter to the Biden administration to call for the U.S. Department of Justice to drop its criminal and extradition proceedings against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, under the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. CPJ has been urging the U.S. not to…

Foreign journalists have been detained and beaten while covering demonstrations in China against the government’s stringent COVID-19 policies, which have been blamed for interfering with firefighters’ efforts to rescue victims of a deadly apartment building fire. On November 27, Shanghai police assaulted Edward Lawrence, a journalist for British public broadcaster BBC, while he was covering…