Discredited, threatened, attacked: challenges of covering South Africa’s election in the digital age
In the lead up to South Africa’s elections in May, the Electoral Commission of South Africa accredited CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal as an international observer, monitoring press freedom. Quintal found that unlike 1994–when she covered the violence of the country’s first democratic elections–journalists in 2019 cited online harassment and threats as the biggest…
South African police repeatedly force journalists to delete photos
South Africa is synonymous with crime in the eyes of many–as evidenced by the recent mugging of a TV crew live on camera–but for the press, a more sinister threat to freedom lies in the growing number of cases where it is the police, in flagrant denial of their orders, who intimidate and threaten journalists,…