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.
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.
Media caught in the middle of Thai conflict
The media have become part and parcel of Thailand’s intensifying political conflict: Two privately held satellite television news stations are openly aligned with competing political street movements, and state-controlled outlets are under opposition fire for allegedly misrepresenting recent crucial news events.
Documentary captures a fixer’s harsh reality
In New York, the Tribeca Film Festival showed a strong documentary, The Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, on Sunday. After the screening, I moderated a panel that featured director Ian Olds and Naqeeb Sherzad, a close friend of Ajmal, shown at left. The panel also included U.S. journalists Christian Parenti, who helped produce the…
Truth beyond bars: Jiang Weiping on being jailed for work
Jiang Weiping, a 2001 CPJ Press Feedom Award winner, spoke on Tuesday on a panel organized by the Ford Foundation in Washington, along with CPJ board member Clarence Page and Executive Director Joel Simon. The panel addressed the concerning number of journalists jailed worldwide–125, according to CPJ’s 2008 census–and discussed how advocacy by CPJ and other…
CPJ testimony: Access denied in Sri Lankan conflict
On Tuesday, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission convened a hearing on Sri Lanka. The impetus was the disintegrating human rights situation in the northeastern “no fire zone.” CPJ was invited to testify about attacks on Sri Lankan journalists and the fact that both sides to the Tamil secessionist war–the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the government–do…
CNN.com highlights high number of journalist arrests
CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon spoke extensively to CNN.com’s Tom Watkins about the huge number of journalists imprisoned for their work around the globe. The piece comes at a time when two high profile cases–that of Roxana Saberi in Iran, and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea–have put the spotlight on jailed journalists. Read…