CPJ Update
December 2006 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists |
CPJ honors four brave journalists on its 25th anniversary In a ceremony that marked 25 years of press freedom advocacy and highlighted the record number of attacks on journalists in Iraq, CPJ honored four journalists with 2006 International Press Freedom Awards on Tuesday, November 21 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. More than 850 people attended the benefit dinner which raised $1.3 million and was co-chaired by Robert A. Iger, president and chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company, and John S. Carroll, the Knight Visiting Lecturer at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University. Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s Chief International Correspondent and a CPJ board member, hosted the dinner that paid tribute to the organization’s many dedicated board members, former executive directors and former award winners who gathered onstage. Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute, announced a $1 million dollar gift to CPJ for the Michael Massing Emergency Response Fund, named for CPJ co-founder Michael Massing. Four international journalists received awards for their courage; Jesús Abad Colorado of Colombia, Jamal Amer of Yemen, and Madi Ceesay of the Gambia who have all risked their lives to report the news, enduring attacks, harassment, and imprisonment. CPJ also posthumously honored Atwar Bahjat, correspondent for Al-Arabiya satellite television and a former Al-Jazeera reporter who was gunned down while covering a bombing near Samarra, Iraq, in February. Hodding Carter III, the respected newspaper editor, television journalist, foundation executive, and professor, received CPJ’s Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for lifetime achievement. • Read the text of the speeches made by Colorado, Amer, Ceesay and Carter here: http://www.cpj.org/awards06/post_awards_release_06.html At its midtown Manhattan offices, UBS hosted a reception to welcome CPJ’s award winners, board members, and staff on the eve of the benefit dinner. The reception was attended by participants in the 2006 International Press Freedom Awards dinner including Christiane Amanpour, and former award winners Yevgeny Kiselyov of Russia, Geoff Nyarota of Zimbabwe, and Argentina’s Horacio Verbitsky. In his remarks, UBS-Americas Chairman and CEO Mark Sutton spoke about the importance of CPJ’s work to bolster transparency and the free flow of information. CPJ urges International Olympic Committee to raise press freedom concerns with Chinese government CPJ board member Jane Kramer, European correspondent for The New Yorker, and CPJ Senior Research Associate Kristin Jones traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland for a meeting with members of the International Olympic Committee to voice concerns about the erosion of press freedom in China during the run-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008. At the November 15 meeting, Kramer and Jones called attention to increasing restrictions on the press in China and urged the IOC to raise concerns with the Chinese government, noting that local journalists in particular will bear the brunt of official retribution after the games are over, and that people look to the IOC to take a position on the issue because of the principles of free, open exchange and transparency that the Olympics represent. Learn more about CPJ’s meeting with the IOC here: http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/asia/china15nov06na.html CPJ joins talks on code of conduct for Internet companies CPJ had pressed to join the forum which groups international communication and Internet companies, nongovernmental organizations, academics, and investors. The forum meets under strict non-disclosure rules. Neither the identity of the participants nor the content of their discussions can be revealed. The conduct of Internet companies has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of arrests in China of Internet writers such as Shi Tao. He received a 10-year jail sentence in 2005 after Yahoo! helped Chinese authorities trace his e-mail exchanges with a New York-based news Web site. CPJ honored Shi with a 2005 International Press Freedom award. For more information about Shi’s case, click here: http://www.cpj.org/awards05/shi_tao.html Upcoming: For more information: http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/911/prmID/172 • Imprisoned List to be released on December 7 • Russia and Venezuela Missions |