Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war
Since the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, journalists and media across the region have faced a hostile environment that has made reporting on the war exceptionally challenging. In addition to documenting the growing tally of journalists killed and injured, CPJ’s research has found multiple kinds of incidents of journalists being targeted while carrying…
Arrests of Palestinian journalists since start of Israel-Gaza war
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers have been arrested — often without charge — in what they and their attorneys say is retaliation for their journalism and commentary. As of January 9, 2025, CPJ has documented a total of 75 arrests of journalists in the Palestinian…
VPNs, training, and mental health workshops: How CPJ helped journalist safety in 2024
Haitian journalist Jean Marc Jean was covering an anti-government protest in Port-au-Prince in February 2023 when he was struck in the face by a gas canister fired by police into the crowd. One of at least five journalists injured while covering civil unrest in the country that month, Jean arrived at the hospital with a…
CPJ, partners call on Angola to commit to press freedom during UN human rights review
The Committee to Protect Journalists and two Angola-based media rights organizations have made a joint submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling on authorities in the southern African nation to improve its record on ensuring journalists’ safety and press freedom. The submission, dated July 16, 2024, was made ahead of Angola’s January 2025…
Bypassing the ‘Taliban firewall’: How an exile newsroom reports on Afghan women
Faisal Karimi and Wahab Siddiqi, respectively founder and editor-in-chief of the Afghanistan Women’s News Agency, were among the first journalists to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control of the country in August 2021. After escaping the country undetected with nearly two dozen newsroom colleagues and family members a week after the fall of Kabul,…
‘I will always keep fighting,’ José Rubén Zamora tells CPJ before court orders him back to jail
Less than a month after being moved to house arrest, a Guatemalan appeals court ordered journalist José Rubén Zamora back to jail on November 15, 2024. Zamora remains in house arrest while his lawyers and the Attorney General’s Office have appealed the motion, his son told CPJ. The decision is a new blow to press freedom in Guatemala. Zamora,…
Jimmy Lai’s Hong Kong jail is ‘breaking his body,’ says his son
In his tireless global campaign to save 77-year-old media publisher Jimmy Lai from life imprisonment in Hong Kong, Sebastien Lai has not seen his father for more than four years. Sebastien, who leads the #FreeJimmyLai campaign, last saw his father in August 2020 — weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law that led to…
‘Catastrophic’: Journalists say ethnic cleansing taking place in a news void in northern Gaza
On Wednesday, November 6, an Israeli strike killed at least 15 people in a house in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. But communications difficulties meant that the Gaza health ministry struggled to determine the death toll. This is just one example among countless others where local reporters were able to help verify information about potential atrocities…
Ahead of the US election, we delivered safety training to over 700 journalists. Here’s what the press must know to keep safe.
The November 2024 U.S. presidential election will take place after years of an increasingly polarized political climate in the country. This election comes after two previous contentious presidential election cycles, amid high levels of distrust in the media and a recent history of journalists being arrested, assaulted, and attacked in-person and online, including at protests….
‘If you scream no one will hear you’: Pakistani journalists report in fear amid spike in media killings
Hope for justice in journalist murders is dim across the world, but especially in Pakistan, which has appeared on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index every year since the list’s inception in 2008. This year, the South Asian country ranks twelfth out of the 13 worst offenders. CPJ’s impunity index lists countries where perpetrators who kill journalists…