Freelance, online reporting discouraged on nuclear threat
The Japanese government upped the danger rating for the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to its highest level, 7, on Tuesday, a month after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the country. It was not yet clear whether the administration or the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, withheld the extent…
Freelancer Hiro Ugaya on covering Japan’s crisis
Following up on our post about the difficulties of covering the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake from outside the mainstream media, CPJ spoke with intrepid freelancer Hiro Ugaya, whom we first interviewed in 2010. “From April 2 to 8, I was traveling in tsunami-destroyed area in Tohoku, northeastern Japan,” he told CPJ by email from…
For Zimbabwean journalist Saize, the absurd is routine
For 37-year-old Zimbabwean freelance journalist Sydney Saize, left, enduring arrest and assault has become absurdly routine–and the circumstances routinely absurd. Take his most recent detention, in February. Saize was reporting on a mundane criminal case in Mutare, capital of the diamond-rich Manicaland province, when the story suddenly turned dramatic.
Angolan journalist gets year in prison for defamation
New York, March 3, 2011–A court in Angola’s southwestern province of Namibe sent a journalist to prison today without due process over his coverage of a sexual harassment scandal that implicated the province’s top judicial official, according to local journalists and news reports.Judge Manuel Araujo sentenced Armando José Chicoca, a freelancer who reports for U.S. government-funded…
CPJ calls on Uganda to protect journalist shot by soldiers
New York, February 23, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the shooting of a freelance journalist by Ugandan soldiers on February 18, the day of parliamentary and presidential elections. Soldiers shot and injured freelance journalist Julius Odeke near Bugusege, eastern Uganda.
Kidnapped Japanese freelancer released in Afghanistan
New York, September 7, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the weekend release of Japanese freelance journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka, who spent more than five months in captivity in Afghanistan. Tsuneoka’s kidnappers released him to the Japanese Embassy on Saturday night and he returned to Japan on Monday, according to local and international news reports. He…
Attacks on the rise in India’s Orissa state
Everything, it seems, is growing in India. Bucking global trends, India’s media are expanding rapidly, reaching into the hinterlands following a wave of development and growing literacy. Industrial development is expanding, with explosive growth of mining and natural resource extraction. In Orissa state, historically poor and restive, these two trends are colliding, producing a spike in media…
Ugandan photographers take heat after fire at royal tombs
It seemed like déjà vu. Another major protest erupts in Uganda and journalists face the wrath of authorities and the public alike. Tensions between the government and the traditional kingdom of the Baganda, the largest ethnic group based in central Uganda, flared again Tuesday evening after a fire of unknown origin ravaged the tombs of…
African journalists face increasing risk for foreign outlets
“I didn’t wear the bulletproof jacket and helmet that Reuters gave me,” explained veteran Somali journalist Sahal Abdulle to a packed crowd at Nairobi’s Serena Hotel for CPJ’s launch of Attacks on the Press. “It didn’t seem right when my colleagues, local journalists, were risking their lives trying to cover the same event.” Abdulle, like…