Senate resolution recognizes World Press Freedom Day
The resolution sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) drew the support of 10 other senators across both sides of the aisle, from elder statesmen like Sens. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to the freshman Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE). Representing constituents from the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic to the Okefenokee swamplands, they…
Chinese bloggers often go missing
CPJ’s ranking is helpful in that it makes the world pay attention to countries that censor the Internet. I do not know much about other countries, but I know about China. I believe that the outside world (as well as people within China) cannot actually know how many people are jailed because of Internet speech.…
Bloggers in Burma write at great risk
Blogging in Burma is nearly as dangerous as protesting on the streets against the country’s military-run government. So it will come as no surprise to those who closely monitor Burma’s heavily restricted media and censored Internet that CPJ has ranked the country as the worst place in the world to be a blogger.
NABJ honors persecuted Zimbabwean journalist
On Thursday, the U.S.-based National Association of Black Journalists announced the winner of its 2009 Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalists Award: Zimbabwean journalist Anderson Shadreck Manyere. Half a world away, however, Manyere, left, lingered in a hospital in the capital, Harare, traumatized by nearly four months of imprisonment, according to his lawyer.
Briefing: Pakistani journalists face Taliban, military threats
Journalists in Pakistan have come under rapidly escalating pressure as the military confronts Taliban militants in the northwest region of the country. Threats and attacks from both sides have made reporting from Taliban-controlled areas more dangerous.
Panamanian journalist sentenced to two years in prison
New York, April 30, 2009–A Panama City court has sentenced leading Panamanian journalist Jean Marcel Chéry to two years in prison on trespassing charges stemming from a years-long series of complaints filed by a Supreme Court justice. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Justice Winston Spadafora to end his politically motivated harassment.
A Cuban blogger confronts ‘silent repression’
Why write a blog? My reasons might not be convincing, but to me, they are enough. The most important paper in my country is Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party in Cuba. You open it, you read it, and you don’t see anything. Nothing about the day that we are living in the…
Armenian online editor beaten, hospitalized
New York, April 30, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Armenian authorities to apprehend three assailants who attacked Argishti Kivirian, editor of the independent news Web site Armenia Today. The unidentified men beat Kivirian early this morning, leaving him hospitalized in serious condition, Zhanna Alexanian, president of the Yerevan-based organization Journalists for Human Rights,…
Two indictments in Chauncey Bailey murder
Indictments came down on Wednesday in the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was shot on an Oakland, Calif., street in August 2007. An Alameda County grand jury indicted the leader of the now-closed Your Black Muslim Bakery, Yusuf Bey, on charges that he ordered Bailey killed.
Life and liberty: Press freedom’s fight on two fronts
The leading indicators of press freedom–journalists killed and journalists jailed for their work–have headed in the wrong direction for much of this decade, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said during a Capitol Hill conference on press security hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Center for International Media Assistance, and the Congressional Press Freedom…