Africa

From Cape Town to Lilongwe, four photographers on routine news assignments in major southern Africa cities were assaulted by security officials in the past two weeks. The details differ, but the heavy-handed actions in each case reflect a belief among those responsible for security that they are above the law and not publicly accountable. These…

After high school, Bhekitemba Makhubu’s father wanted him to study for a law degree. He refused, insisting on following in his father’s footsteps as a journalist. Now, aged 43, he doesn’t regret his choice, but besides his job as editor of the privately owned monthly magazine, The Nation, he is also studying for a law…

The Pan African Parliament’s (PAP) launch of a media freedom campaign through a “Dialogue on Media Freedom in Africa” in mid-May marks an important and welcome starting point. For too long, media freedom has been divorced from the debate around development and democratization when it has an integral role to play in promoting transparency, underpinning…

One day, every journalism school in the United States and beyond will offer a full three-credit, 15-week course in digital safety, along with more advanced classes. But that day has not yet come. Only a year ago, Alysia Santo reported in the Columbia Journalism Review that no American journalism school offered formal digital safety training.…

With more than a billion users, Facebook is not only the biggest global social network but also an increasingly important forum for journalists. In some repressive countries it has even served as a publishing platform for journalists whose newspapers or news websites have been closed down. That is why journalists and bloggers should note today’s…

Police arbitrarily arrested Michael Koma, the managing editor of South Sudan’s daily Juba Monitor, on May 2 and detained him for four days following the publication of an article critical of the deputy security minister. A veteran journalist, Koma has experienced firsthand the poor state of press freedom within Africa’s newest country. CPJ spoke with…

While Uganda’s politicians and social media are abuzz over a sensational letter reportedly written by a top security official about a high-level assassination plot, police have dutifully harassed the mainstream press in a bid to suppress the chatter.

Most governments, even repressive ones, at least give lip service to supporting freedom of the press–especially on World Press Freedom Day, May 3. But in Liberia this month, Othello Daniel Warrick, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s chief security aide, shocked local journalists by threatening them and calling them “terrorists” at a public event to mark the…

Nigeria’s press freedom record is on the decline. For the first time since 2008, when CPJ began publishing its annual Impunity Index, Nigeria has made the list of the “worst nations in the world for deadly, unpunished violence against the press.”