PREFACE by Peter Arnett INTRODUCTION by Ann Cooper REGIONAL ANALYSES: Africa | Americas | Asia | Europe and Central Asia | Middle East and North Africa AFRICA country summaries Angola | Benin | Burkina Faso | Burundi | Cameroon | Chad | Democratic Republic of Congo | Eritrea | Ethiopia | Gambia | Ghana |…
By Peter ArnettSHE STOOD DEFIANTLY IN THE CRAMPED QUARTERS OF ISTANBUL’S BEYOGLU CRIMINAL COURT at high noon of a hot midsummer day. The slight, dark-haired Nadire Mater had a message for the court and for the two dozen Turkish reporters and photographers who had gathered to hear her. “The truth is plain to see. Banning…
By Ann CooperIN THE COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE CHRONICLED the past decade’s worst wars, the news last May was devastating. Two of the world’s most dedicated war correspondents, Kurt Schork of Reuters and Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora of The Associated Press, were killed in a rebel ambush in Sierra Leone, a country where…
ALTHOUGH RIGHTS TO FREE EXPRESSION AND PRESS FREEDOM are enshrined in national constitutions from Algeria to Yemen, governments found many practical ways to restrict these freedoms. State ownership of the media, censorship, legal harassment, intimidation, and imprisonment of journalists were again among the favored tools of repression and control. In Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria,…
PRESS COVERAGE OF ARMED CONFLICTS CONTINUED TO STIR THE HOSTILITY of governments and rebel factions alike and claim reporters’ lives, but the prominent role of the press in the often-volatile process of democratization also brought unprecedented challenges to journalists working in Africa. CPJ confirmed that in 2000, five journalists were killed specifically because of their…
BY EXPOSING CORRUPTION, POLITICAL INTRIGUE, and massive abuse of power, journalists in Peru helped bring down the regime of President Alberto K. Fujimori last year. Fujimori’s dramatic fall demonstrated that the Latin American press remains a key bulwark against leaders who continue to use subtle and not-so subtle means to control the flow of information.…
DESPITE PRESS FREEDOM ADVANCES ACROSS ASIA IN RECENT YEARS, totalitarian regimes in Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos maintained their stranglehold on the media. Even democratic Asian governments sometimes used authoritarian tactics to control the press, particularly when faced with internal conflict. Sri Lanka, for instance, imposed harsh censorship regulations during the year in…
POLITICAL REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, along with the advent of democratic governments in Croatia and Serbia, brightened the security prospects for journalists in Central Europe and the Balkans. In contrast, Russian’s new government imposed press restrictions, and authoritarian regimes entrenched themselves in other countries of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, further threatening…
In North Korea, listening to a foreign broadcast is a crime punishable by death. In Colombia, right-wing paramilitary forces are suspected in the murders of three journalists in 2000. Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño was formally charged with the 1999 murder of political satirist Jaime Garzón.
AFTER 21 YEARS OF WAR, AFGHANISTAN IS ONE OF THE POOREST COUNTRIES in the world. Its people are starved for food, but also for information. The local media are dominated by the country’s ruling Taliban militia, which, though it produced increasingly sophisticated propaganda, propagated religious pronouncements and official edicts rather than news. As a result,…