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News :: Media

Committee To Protect Journalists Releases Report

The CMJ today released its annual survey of "Attacks on the Press," which details offensive acts propagated against the media, including censorship, harrassment, imprisonment, and murder.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is, according to its website, "a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to monitor abuses against the press and promote press freedom around the world." They have a full-time staff of 21, and their job is to chronicle and investigate attacks on the press anywhere in the world. They are explicit about not receiving government funding, though they do obtain some funds from corporations. Their Board of Directors includes a range of media figures from Time and CNN to The Nation and National Public Radio.

From the press release:
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Attacks on the Press in 2001 documents over 500 cases of media repression in 140 countries, including assassination, assault, imprisonment, censorship, and legal harassment. In documenting these attacks, CPJ's report notes several alarming trends.

  • A total of 37 journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2001, a sharp increase from 2000 when 24 were killed. The dramatic rise is mainly due to the war in Afghanistan, where eight journalists were killed in the line of duty covering the US-led military campaign. Most of the journalists killed, however, were not covering conflicts but were murdered in reprisal for their reporting on sensitive topics including official crime and corruption in countries such as Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Yugoslavia.
  • After four years of steady decline, the number of journalists in prison jumped nearly 50 percent - from 81 in 2000 to 118 in 2001. More than two-thirds of last year's increase came from little noticed crackdowns in Eritrea and Nepal, carried out after September 11. China, already the world's leading jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, arrested eight more ending the year with a total of 35 journalists behind bars.
  • Governments around the world invoked "national security" concerns while seeking new restrictions on the press or unleashing new intimidations in countries like Zimbabwe, where journalists were denounced as "terrorists." As justification, some cited U.S. actions after September 11, such as the State Department's attempt to censor a Voice of America interview with Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

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Also of note are the "10 worst enemies of the press," which names those leaders whose actions and regimes imposed the harshest conditions for the media.

A few facts about "Press Freedom" include

  • In 2001, the UNITED STATES jailed free-lance writer Vanessa Leggett on contempt-of-court charges, joining CUBA as the only other country in the Western Hemisphere to imprison journalists for their work. Leggett is believed to have been jailed longer than any other journalist in U.S. history.
  • A journalist with the state television network in RWANDA was suspended for two weeks for airing images of President Paul Kagame perspiring heavily.

No mention of FBI requests for IMC server logs. I guess we haven't made enough of an impact yet...

 
 
 

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