Africa’s journalists honor jailed editor Woubshet Taye
Journalists and media owners across Africa gave Ethiopian journalist Woubshet Taye a standing ovation in Cape Town on Saturday night at the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards 2013, but he wasn’t there to see it. Instead his wife and son accepted the Free Press Award on his behalf. Part of the citation for the award…
Solidarity in the face of surveillance
One way for journalists to build more secure newsrooms and safer networks would be for more of them to learn and practice digital hygiene and information security. But that’s not enough. We also need journalists to stand together across borders, not just as an industry, but as a community, against government surveillance. The Obama administration,…
CPJ report reflects seriousness of US press freedom gaps
On Thursday CPJ launched its first comprehensive examination of press freedom conditions in the United States. The report, “The Obama Administration and the Press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America,” highlights the growing threat to reporting on national security and similar sensitive government issues. It was written by Leonard Downie, Jr., the former executive…
Committee to Protect Journalists issues scathing report on Obama administration
Following CPJ’s release of its report on the state of press freedom in the United States, Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Guardian that the report “powerfully underscores just how extreme is the threat to press freedom posed by this administration.” Read the full story here.
Leak probes, surveillance constrict freedom of the press in U.S.
Washington, October 10, 2013–The Obama administration’s aggressive war on leaks and other efforts to control information are without precedent, according to 30 experienced Washington journalists interviewed for a new report released today by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The report found that despite President Barack Obama’s promise to head the most open government in American…
The US press is our press
The international media depend on the U.S. press to cover U.S. stories–and many of these, from the subprime mortgage crisis to NSA surveillance, are global stories because of their worldwide repercussions. But international journalists also rely on the U.S. press to report and comment on most world events. Therefore any restriction on U.S. journalists’ freedom…
Live stream: Obama and the press
The Committee to Protect Journalists today released its first comprehensive report on press freedom conditions in the United States. Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor and now the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is the author. Tune in here for a…
Uruguayan broadcast bill could be regional model
“Governments pass, but laws stay,” said Uruguayan President José Mujica. During a meeting with CPJ, and representatives from Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders at the president’s executive office in Montevideo, the political capital, the former member of the leftist guerrilla group Tupamaros reflected on the upcoming congressional debate over new broadcast legislation. “It…
France confirms two journalists missing in Syria
New York, October 9, 2013–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the abduction of two French journalists in Syria and calls on all sides of the conflict to stop targeting the press. Nicolas Hénin, who regularly reports for French news magazine Le Point and Franco-German TV channel Arte, and Pierre Torres, a photographer covering local elections,…
Westgate siege shows press’ lack of security training
Rumor had it that thieves and police had exchanged gunfire during the robbery of a bank at the Westgate Mall. That was the word that first reached some Nairobi newsrooms that Saturday about the gunshots many Kenyans heard coming from the luxurious shopping mall.