Major setback for press freedom in Canada

Canada’s Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling that Vice Media reporter Ben Makuch should hand over his communications with a source. CPJ joins eight other organizations in condemning the lack of justice in the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, one year after three arrests were made in connection with the case. CPJ participates in the “Journalism Under Fire” conference organized by the Santa Fe Council on International Relations in New Mexico.

Global press freedom updates

• Nicaraguan police raid independent Radio Darío
• Mexican journalist shot dead in Nayarit
• CPJ’s Emergencies Response Team releases a safety advisory for journalists covering civil unrest in France and Belgium
• Read the latest Turkey Crackdown Chronicle, CPJ’s weekly round-up of press freedom violations in the country

Spotlight

With the upcoming release of CPJ’s annual prison census, let’s not forget the people behind the figures. CPJ’s 2018 #FreeThePress campaign highlighted the cases of five journalists imprisoned around the world. Four of them remain behind bars. Show your solidarity by sending a message of support to an imprisoned journalist — raise your voice, and help CPJ to #FreeThePress!

What we are reading

• Canada isn’t the leader on press freedoms that we think it is — CPJ North America Program Coordinator Alexandra Ellerbeck, The Globe and Mail
• Killings of Journalists Show the Bloody Fingerprints of Organized Crime — Liam Stack, The New York Times
• ‘Killed for speaking the truth’: tributes to nine journalists murdered in 2018 — Aamna Mohdin and Bibi van der Zee, The Guardian
• The Elephant in the Newsroom — Asrida Elisabeth and Febriana Firdaus, New Naratif
• 2018 has been a dangerous and deadly year for journalists — Emily Rauhala, The Washington Post
• Over-estimating Technological Solutions and Underestimating the Political Moment? — Guy Berger, director for freedom of expression and media development at UNESCO, The GNI Blog
• Total centralization and the illiberal takeover — Edit Zgut, Visegrad Insight
• A World of Khashoggis — Daoud Kuttab, Project Syndicate