Features & Analysis

Last May, VICE video journalist Dave Mayers went to Minneapolis to cover protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in police custody. A day later, he was arrested with his entire crew for violating a curfew order that specifically exempted reporters.  All over the United States, journalists like Mayers were impeded from doing their…

The U.K. government emphasized press freedom this month when it published the draft online safety bill for social media companies, pledging that the bill would protect both “citizen journalism” and “recognized news publishers” from censorship. Vocal segments of the media not only welcomed the legislation, but actively campaigned for it. When Oliver Dowden, secretary of…

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined more than 50 organizations and individuals in co-signing a letter calling on the government of Mauritius to retract proposed changes to the country’s Information and Communication Technologies Act, known as the ICT Act. The letter, addressed to the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, expressed concern that the amendments’…

The murder of Spanish reporters David Beriain and Roberto Fraile by unidentified attackers last week in eastern Burkina Faso was a tragic example of the dangerous working conditions for  journalists in the country, where the government has struggled to contain a rise in militant activity in recent years.   Beriain and Fraile were kidnapped along with Rory Young, an Irish conservation worker, from an anti-poaching convoy…

Yesterday, at a hearing on Democracy and Human Rights in Belarus before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said gave testimony on the threats to press freedom and safety of journalists in Belarus.  Said spoke on the sharp increase in press freedom violations and journalists’ detentions since the…

The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and IFEX-ALC–which includes 24 member organizations across Latin America–yesterday sent a letter to Colombian President Iván Duque and three other high-ranking Colombian officials urging them to investigate press freedom violations committed by state security forces responding to protests and guarantee Colombians’ rights to access information and…

Telegram was meant to be blocked in Russia in April 2020 when Aleksandr Pichugin published a satirical article about the spread of COVID-19 on his channel Sorokin Khvost – an allusion to a Russian version of the saying, “A little bird told me.” Four days later, uniformed officers came to the journalist’s home and pushed…

Oratile Dikologang was naked when police officers pulled black plastic over his head during his detention in April 2020. It was difficult to breathe, but the interrogation continued, he told CPJ in a recent phone interview. “What are your sources, where do you get information,” he recalled them asking repeatedly. “It was the most painful…

In the photograph published in The Washington Post, a woman kneels on the ground, her hands in her lap, her body bathed in red neon light. She is mourning outside of the Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta, Georgia, one scene of a mass shooting in March 2021 that killed eight people.  Behind every photograph and news report of a…

By CPJ Africa and Asia Program Staff Even a brief shutdown of the internet impedes the press from doing its job. But some disruptions last for months, severely undermining safety and access to information, CPJ has found. Recently, authorities have imposed such measures in Myanmar and Ethiopia amid serious crises. India leads the world in internet…