CPJ Safety Advisory: Covering the 2022 World Cup
The 2022 FIFA World Cup takes place in Qatar from November 20 to December 18, the first World Cup to be held in the Arab world, and said to be the biggest sporting event held in the Middle East. Journalists working in the small nation bordering Saudi Arabia have faced digital security threats, legal issues,…
As World Cup nears, Qatar and FIFA face fresh scrutiny on press freedom commitments
Exactly one year before the scheduled start of the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar, plainclothes officers from the Gulf state’s Criminal Investigations Department arrested Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani, a sports reporter and cameraman respectively for Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, as they were leaving their hotel in the capital of Doha. The NRK journalists…
Qatar detains Kenyan labor rights blogger Malcolm Bidali without charge
New York, May 18, 2021 – Qatari authorities should immediately disclose any charges against blogger Malcolm Bidali or release him, and not try to silence critical reporting on the country’s labor rights record ahead of the 2022 World Cup, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In the night of May 4 to 5, Qatari…
Ten years after the Arab Spring, the region’s media faces grave threats. Here are the top press freedom trends
In early February 2011, Alaa Abdelfattah was in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, documenting and participating in the nascent pro-democracy uprising that would topple the government and transform the country and the region. Today, he is in prison on anti-state and false news charges, which his family believes are partly retaliatory for his work. Abdelfattah is one of…
Qatar changes penal code to include ‘false news’ law
New York, January 21, 2020—Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani amended Article 136 of the country’s penal code to make the publication or sharing of “false news” punishable by up to five years in prison or a 100,000 Qatari riyal fine (US$27,473), according to the Beirut-based Gulf Center for Human Rights. Details of the law,…
Saudi control of Arab media, lamented by Khashoggi, shapes coverage of his death
It is a cruel irony that Jamal Khashoggi’s last unpublished column for The Washington Post was a call for press freedom in the Arab world. His homeland, Saudi Arabia, has spent the last three decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that never happens.
YouTube labels on public broadcasters draw ire in US, Russia
With claims to more than one billion users consuming content in 76 languages, Google’s YouTube has become a core part of most media outlets’ dissemination strategy. And although there are 88 localized versions of the service, YouTube.com remains the largest and most influential platform for reaching a global audience. Which is why, when the site…
CPJ joins coalition to establish sports and human rights center
The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined a coalition of international sport organizations, civil society, and governments that are establishing an independent Centre for Sport and Human Rights. In a statement published today, the Mega-Sporting Events Platform for Human Rights, which CPJ is part of, outlined its commitment to establishing the center in 2018.
Calls to shutter Qatari media show contempt for press freedom
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt to drop demands that Qatari-funded media be closed as a condition for the lifting of the partial blockade they have imposed on Qatar.