Journalism: a dangerous job, and oft well done (2022)

This is the latest iteration of a thread which began about three years ago. The OP posted, "Those of you who would like to report news of journalists being attacked throughout the world are welcome to do so under a thread that has not been given an ugly title." This was a welcome response to a previous abusive thread which indeed had an ugly title and which accused journalists of being stupid drunks who deserved to be physically assaulted, if I recall correctly. I would add that as well as reports of the dangers, difficulties and attacks faced by journalists throughout the world, this series of threads has also included inspiring stories of their courage, professionalism, achievements and outstanding contributions to society at large.

Sudanese security forces storm TV channels, beat journalists (Sudan Tribune)

Security forces in Sudan stormed the offices of Al-Arabiya – Al-Hadath – and Al-Sharq channels, and assaulted journalists and their employees. The security forces on Thursday carried out unprecedented assaults targeting journalists who covered the 30th December 30 protests in Khartoum in a bid to discourage them from covering the anti-coup protests. Dozens of members of the security forces stormed the office of Al-Arabiya – Al-Hadath television where they beat journalists, seized mobile phones destroyed equipment, and threw tear gas in the different offices. The director of the Al-Hadath TV office in Khartoum, Lina Yaqoub, after the assault, stated that a joint security force expressed anger over the channel coverage of the protests and accused her of taking the side of the street. “They further beat me when I intervened to protect a colleague they were beating,” she said adding that three of the staff members were at the hospital...

Hong Kong’s Citizen News to close citing fears for staff safety (Guardian)

The Hong Kong independent news outlet Citizen News has said it will cease operations from Tuesday in the face of what it described as a deteriorating media environment in the Chinese-ruled city and to ensure the safety of its staff. “Regrettably, the rapid changes in society and worsening environment for media make us unable to achieve our goal fearlessly. Amid this crisis, we have to first make sure everyone on the boat is safe,” Citizen News, which was established in 2017, said in a statement. At a press conference on Monday, Citizen News chief editor Daisy Li said the environment had changed, and she didn’t know what “safe” news was any more. “If I am no longer confident enough to guide and lead my reporters, I must be responsible,” she said...

Marcela Turati on the chilling implications of Mexico’s probe into her reporting (CPJ)

For more than a decade, Marcela Turati has painstakingly documented disappearances and mass graves in Mexico, cementing her reputation as one of the country’s foremost investigative reporters. But even with her knowledge of human rights abuses and corruption, she was shocked to learn that she has been under investigation by Mexican federal authorities for years. On November 23, the Fundación para la Justicia y el Estado Democrático de Derecho, a Mexico City-based legal nonprofit, revealed in the Washington Post that the Mexican federal attorney general’s office (FGR) had in 2016 opened an “organized crime” and “kidnapping” investigation into Turati, the nonprofit’s director Ana Lorena Delgadillo, and Argentine forensic anthropologist Mercedes Doretti...

Guardian wins investigation and journalist of the decade awards (Guardian)

Amelia Gentleman honoured for coverage of Windrush scandal and Guardian for Panama Papers investigation..

I had death threats for my reporting. Many journalists in the Pacific face huge dangers (Guardian)

Freedom of the press might be included in some constitutions of Pacific countries, but it often only works in theory...

Kazakhstan authorities block news sites, detain journalists during nationwide protests (CPJ)

Since January 4, authorities in the Central Asian nation detained at least eight journalists reporting on mass protests in several cities and blocked at least two news sites following their coverage of nationwide protests, according to multiple news reports. Journalists reported being shot at by unidentified individuals, chased by protesters, and struck by law enforcement officers while reporting on the events...

Two Haitian journalists killed in gang attack (BBC)

Two Haitian journalists have been shot and then burned alive on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to one of their employers. Wilguens Louissaint and Amady John Wesley had travelled to an area where rival gangs are fighting for control. Mr Wesley's employer, Écoute FM, said in a statement he was "savagely" killed while reporting on the area...

CPJ welcomes El Salvador’s acceptance of 2 journalists expelled from Cuba (CPJ)

At dawn on January 4, agents from the Cuban National Revolutionary Police and the Political Police took Valdés from his home in Havana, and took Rodríguez from the city’s Combinado del Este Prison, where he had been held since June 2021 for allegedly taking part in a protest, and brought both journalists to the José Martí International Airport, where they forced them to leave the country, according to a Facebook post by Valdés and multiple news reports. Rodríguez and Valdés, both contributors to the independent digital outlet ADNCuba, flew to El Salvador, where they planned to take a connecting flight to Nicaragua, a country that does not require visas from Cuban nationals; however, at about 9:30 p.m. on January 4, officials at San Salvador’s San Oscar Romero Airport informed the journalists that Nicaragua had denied their entry, according to those sources. The journalists remained at the airport until about 2 p.m. on January 5, when El Salvador authorities authorized them to enter the country, according to those sources and several tweets by the General Directorate of Migration and Foreigners of El Salvador. “We welcome the decision by Salvadoran authorities to admit Cuban journalists Esteban Rodríguez and Héctor Luis Valdés into their country, and provide them with support,” said CPJ Latin America and the Caribbean Senior Researcher Ana Cristina Núñez. “While Cuban authorities continue their vicious practice of forcing nationals into exile, including independent journalists, it is imperative for other nations to step up and offer safe harbor”...

‘We fought the good fight’: journalists in Hong Kong reel from assault on media (Guardian)

Newsroom closures and exodus from territory are result of ‘draconian’ national security law introduced in 2020...

Two Haitian journalists killed while reporting on gang violence in Port-au-Prince (CPJ)

Yesterday, suspected gang members shot Amady and Louis-Saint while they were reporting on the lack of security in Laboule 12, an area in the Port-au-Prince commune of Pétion-Ville...

Pegasus spyware used in ‘jaw-dropping’ phone hacks on El Salvador journalists (Guardian)

Dozens of journalists and human rights defenders in El Salvador have been subjected to “jaw-dropping” phone hacks using the Pegasus spyware allegedly deployed by governments around the world against dissidents, reporters, diplomats and members of the clergy, according to internet security researchers... Citizen Lab found that 35 journalists and civil society activists had been targeted over a 16-month period that coincided with their investigations into allegations that the government of President Nayib Bukele was negotiating a pact with El Salvador’s street gangs to reduce violence and win their electoral support...

Mexican photojournalist Margarito Martínez shot and killed in Tijuana (CPJ)

According to a statement published on its Facebook page by the Baja California state prosecutor’s office (FGE), Martínez was ambushed just after noon at his residence in Tijuana, a coastal city just across the border from San Diego in California. An unidentified gunman shot the reporter multiple times and fled the scene; Martínez died before he could be rushed to a hospital...

Mexican journalist José Luis Gamboa stabbed to death in Veracruz (CPJ)

On January 10, Gamboa’s body was found in the Floresta neighborhood of the eastern city of Veracruz with at least seven stab wounds...

Brazilian journalist Daniel Carniel punched, kicked in Adesso TV office entrance (CPJ)

t 12:47 p.m. on January 14, an unidentified man punched and kicked Carniel several times in his face and body at the entrance of privately owned broadcaster Adesso TV in the city of Garibaldi, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul... while hitting him, the man said, “This is so you learn not to denounce things, say bad things about others, or lie on television.” It is unclear what specific report, if any, prompted the attack...

Ugandan journalist suspended for 'embarassing' the PM (Star)

A journalist at Uganda's state broadcaster has been suspended for reportedly sharing a video of the prime minister almost falling off her chair, local media say. Ivan Kaahwa of UBC TV is accused of being the first to circulate the clip online, along with the caption "eby'okwokgera bimbuze" - meaning "I'm lost for words" in the Luganda language...

Attacks on the press: The deadliest countries in 2021 (CPJ)

At least 27 journalists were killed due to their work in 2021, with India and Mexico topping the list of countries with the most media worker deaths...

Peruvian court convicts author, publication director on defamation charges for book on politician (CPJ)

On January 10, a criminal court judge in Lima, Peru’s capital, found Acosta and Pimentel guilty of defaming César Acuña, a former mayor, governor, congressman, and two-time presidential candidate; sentenced both to two-year suspended prison terms; and ordered Acosta, Pimentel, and Penguin Random House Peru to pay Acuña a total of 400,000 sols (US$102,608) in damages...

‘The infections were constant:’ Julia Gavarrete among dozens of Salvadoran journalists targeted with Pegasus spyware (CPJ)

The day El Faro reporter Julia Gavarrete’s father passed away, her phone was infected with Pegasus spyware that could activate the microphone and camera, and read all her messages – one of multiple occasions her privacy was invaded with the tool over the course of several months. Gavarrete made this disturbing discovery while cooperating with a new investigation into the phone hacking of more than 30 journalists in El Salvador, she told CPJ...

Sudan withdraws licence of Al Jazeera Mubasher (Al Jazeera)

Sudanese authorities have withdrawn the broadcast licence of Al Jazeera Mubasher, the channel has said. In a statement on Sunday, the Qatar-based media network said authorities also revoked the accreditation of two of its journalists in the country...

Turkey: prominent journalist detained for insulting president Erdoğan (Guardian)

A prominent Turkish TV journalist has been detained and could face imprisonment after being charged with insulting the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Police detained Sedef Kabaş at her home at 2am on Saturday and took her to a police station, before she faced court and was jailed pending a trial. The alleged insult was a proverb that Kabaş expressed both on an opposition television channel and her Twitter account. The proverb translates to: “When the ox comes to the palace, he does not become a king. But the palace becomes a barn”...

Third Mexican journalist killed this year as press corps faces murder crisis (Guardian)

Lourdes Maldonado was shot in Tijuana, a week after another journalist was killed, and a third was fatally stabbed days earlier...

BBC to be taken to court to stop it from reporting on spy story (Guardian)

Attorney general is seeking an injunction gagging broadcaster, with hearing set for March...

Turkey: journalist ‘will not go unpunished’ for insult, says Erdoğan (Guardian)

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has promised that a well-known television journalist would not go “unpunished” after she was arrested for allegedly insulting him. Police detained Sedef Kabaş at her home at 2am on Saturday, just hours after she aired the comments and then posted them on Twitter to her 900,000 followers. The alleged insult was a proverb that translates as: “When the ox comes to the palace, he does not become a king. But the palace becomes a barn.” She was formally arrested after appearing in court...

Brazil mayor endangers journalist Giovani Grizotti by publicizing picture in video (CPJ)

On January 13, Bagé mayor Divaldo Lara and communications officer Roberta Mércio shared a photo they claimed is of investigative reporter Giovani Grizotti in a video posted on YouTube, according to a statement from the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji), a statement from the Rio Grande do Sul state Journalists’ Union and a news report from Revista Forum. The video was allegedly in retaliation to Grizotti’s report earlier this month on allegations of corruption involving the mayor, who tried to block the publication for several months, according to court documents reviewed by CPJ. Grizotti, a reporter at the privately owned RBS TV, an affiliate of the national Globo media group, reports on alleged corruption involving regional public officials and doesn’t allow himself to be photographed to protect himself. Grizotti’s Twitter bio describes him as a “faceless reporter”...

‘Watershed’ protests demand end to violence against journalists in Mexico (CPJ)

After reporter Maria Guadalupe Lourdes Maldonado López was shot and killed in her car outside her Tijuana home on Sunday, January 23, journalists in Mexico put out a call to action in group chats and across social media platforms. It was time to protest... On Tuesday, journalists in almost 40 locations around the country – including in cities where protesting could draw the ire of organized crime groups – took to the streets to try to end the killings. They called for the Mexican government, which offers protection mechanisms for journalists at the federal and state levels, to do more to ensure security for reporters under threat...

Foreign journalists in China subject to rising intimidation, survey finds (Guardian)

The Chinese government is finding new ways to intimidate foreign journalists, their Chinese colleagues and their sources, and harassment has reached such a high level that at least six have left the country, according to a key report. The methods include online trolling, physical assaults, hacking and visa denials, as well as what appears to be official encouragement of lawsuits or threats of legal action against journalists, “typically filed by sources long after they have explicitly agreed to be interviewed”...

‘Ongoing brutality’: Lourdes Maldonado third journalist killed in Mexico in less than a month (CPJ)

Maldonado was the second journalist in that city to be killed in less than a week and the third Mexican reporter killed this year. On January 17, another Tijuana journalist, Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel, was also shot dead and on January 10 the body of José Luis Gamboa was found in Veracruz...

‘We only have a pen’: fury as fourth journalist killed in Mexico this year (Guardian)

Journalists in Mexico have responded with fury and despair at the murder of a fourth reporter in the country this year, cementing its reputation as the world’s most murderous country for media workers. Roberto Toledo was shot dead by three gunmen on Monday afternoon in a carpark in the city of Zitácuaro... “Exposing corruption led to the death of one of our colleagues”...

Chris Mullin to resist police bid to identify IRA pub bombing sources (Guardian)

A journalist and former member of parliament who helped uncover one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history is to fight a police attempt to force him to reveal source material for his research into the Birmingham pub bombings. Chris Mullin, 74, said he will contest the police attempt to get a high court order served on him in relation to his investigation into the Birmingham Six, whose convictions were quashed in 1991. “If West Midlands police had carried out a proper investigation after the bombings, instead of framing the first half-dozen people unlucky enough to fall into their hands, they might have caught the real perpetrators in the first place. “It is beyond irony. They appear to have gone for the guy who blew the whistle,” he said...

‘We’ll keep reporting, whatever the risk from the junta,’ say Myanmar’s journalists (Guardian)

To avoid arrest, the staff of the 74 Media left their home city, only to face shellfire in their border refuge. The editor describes the risks faced by his media outlet...

Russia to expel German broadcaster after RT blocked in Germany (Guardian)

Russia is to expel the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) in retaliation for a German ban on broadcasts by Russia’s RT. The foreign ministry said the press credentials of DW’s correspondents would be revoked, its bureau in Russia closed, and its German-language broadcasts would be banned from Russian satellite television in the near future. It said this was the first stage of its “retaliatory measures”. The move marks an escalation in Russia’s media war with the west, in which there have already been expulsions of a BBC journalist and a Dutch reporter in the last year. It comes during a period of heightened geopolitical tensions as western governments have accused Russia of preparing to launch an attack on Ukraine and threatened crippling sanctions. On Wednesday German authorities banned broadcasts by RT DE, the broadcaster’s German-language channel, saying its Serbian licence was invalid in Germany. A Kremlin spokesperson called the decision political and said it was “nothing but an attack on freedom of expression”. Russia has said it will retaliate against journalists when foreign governments target RT, a state-funded news agency that western governments have accused of spreading propaganda...

Proposed penal code amendment could have ‘catastrophic effect’ on independent journalism in Cuba (CPJ)

On January 20, Cuba’s Supreme Tribunal proposed a bill amending the penal code to prohibit Cuban citizens from receiving foreign funding, a move that could be used to silence independent journalists and outlets who rely on this type of funding to operate...

Editor arrested in Kashmir as press crackdown escalates (Guardian)

A prominent journalist has been arrested under terrorism and sedition laws, as a crackdown on the press in Indian-administered Kashmir continues to escalate...

CPJ condemns cyberattack on News Corp media publications

The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday expressed grave concern about the cyberattack on News Corp that gave hackers access to journalists’ emails and other documents, and urged Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into who was behind the attack...

Attackers shoot at, firebomb offices of Haitian outlet Radio Télé Zenith

Around 2 a.m. on Monday, January 31, an unknown number of armed individuals riding in two vehicles fired several rounds and threw Molotov cocktails into the offices of private outlet Radio Télé Zenith, located in the Croix-des-Bouquets area of the capital Port-au-Prince... The bullets hit the entrance of the building and broke windows, and the explosions damaged some equipment and furniture... At the time of the attack, there were at least two staff members inside the offices broadcasting a news report, but no staff were harmed... The outlet and the Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH), a local trade group, believe gang members perpetrated the attack because of the outlet’s gang-related coverage and previous social media threats from gang members...

Independent Venezuelan news sites blocked by state-controlled and private service providers

Fresh blocks on a handful of Venezuela’s few remaining independent news websites are a troubling sign of escalating press censorship, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday. Journalists and experts say private internet service providers (ISPs) are censoring the sites for the first time, though they have been unavailable on state-run networks for years...

All from CPJ

Belarusian photojournalist Uladz Hrydzin sentenced to 13 days in jail

On Monday, February 7, the Frunze district court in the capital Minsk sentenced Hrydzin, a freelance photojournalist who formerly contributed to the Belarusian service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), to 13 days in prison on charges of “disobeying police”...

Brazilian news crews attacked while covering death in police clash with gang

At about 11 a.m. on February 1, two men fired warning shots at reporting teams from the local privately owned broadcasters TV Aratu and Band in the Bahia city of Salvador, and assaulted one of the crew members... The TV Aratu crew, comprising reporter Fabio Gomes and camera operator Carlinhos Silva, and the Band team of reporter Toni Júnior and camera operator Jefferson Alves, were in the area to report on a killing that occurred earlier that morning, when the men fired into the air, yelled at them to leave, and assaulted Alves...

Both from CPJ

‘Cypherpunks have rallied to Assange’: NFT auction raises $52m for WikiLeaks founder (Guardian)

An online auction of digital art raised more than $52m worth of cryptocurrency to help fund Julian Assange’s legal defense, the winning bid coming from a group of supporters who had pooled their money... Assange collaborated with a cryptocurrency artist known as Pak to sell a collection of NFTs called Censored in an online auction to raise funds to support his case...

Investigative reporter Elena Milashina flees Russia after threats from Chechen leader (CPJ)

Editors at independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta decided to send Milashina, an investigative reporter for the outletwho covers human rights abuses in Chechnya, abroad following threats Kadyrov made against her and a rise in political rhetoric in Chechnya denouncing independent outlets Novaya Gazeta and Dozhd TV...

Helmets and body armor: How Ukraine’s press corps is prepping for possible war (CPJ)

Ukrainian journalists are preparing to cover a conflict that could take a catastrophic toll on their country...

Turkish President Erdoğan sues recently arrested journalist Sedef Kabaş (CPJ)

Authorities arrested Kabaş, a freelance journalist, on January 22 and charged her with insulting the president over comments she made during a political debate aired on TELE1... On Tuesday, February 8, while Kabaş was in detention awaiting trial on that criminal insult charge, Erdoğan separately filed a civil suit seeking 250,000 liras (US$18,405) in damages from Kabaş and Sakar over Kabaş’ comments...

Nicaraguan journalist Miguel Mendoza convicted on conspiracy, false news charges (CPJ)

In a closed-door trial on Tuesday, February 8, Mendoza was convicted of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and disseminating false news...

Members of Turkish regulator say DW, VOA, Euronews face website blocks over licensing decision (CPJ)

On Wednesday, February 9, two members of the Radio and Television Supreme Council, the government telecommunications regulator known as RTÜK, announced that the France-based outlet Euronews, the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA), and German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) must apply for broadcast licenses or else authorities would block their websites...

New Azerbaijan media law increases restrictions on the press (CPJ)

On Tuesday, February 8, President Ilham Aliyev enacted the law “On Media,” which replaces existing laws governing media outlets... The legislation requires the owners of media outlets to be Azerbaijani citizens permanently residing in the country if their outlets primarily cater to an audience in Azerbaijan. It also requires outlets’ owners and directors to be Azerbaijani citizens with a higher education degree. If an outlet is found to accept foreign funding or employ a director who does not meet those requirements, it could be suspended for two months; if its owner does not meet the requirements, or if an outlet repeatedly violates other regulations, it can be shut down permanently. Those restrictions apply to print, online, and broadcast outlets, as well as any individual or group that mainly publishes “audiovisual material” online. As CPJ has documented, many independent Azeri journalists work from exile and publish their work on social media, actions that could now be targeted under the new law...

Taliban release British journalist Andrew North from detention in Kabul (Guardian)

The Taliban have released a British journalist and several other reporters they had been holding for several days, in an incident that deepened concerns about pressure on media inside Afghanistan. The group were on assignment for the UN refugee agency reporting on Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis. The same evening they were given their freedom, at least one Afghan female activist – from a group detained last month – was also released. The Taliban had come under heavy international pressure over the detentions of both women and journalists. Another British man, former cameraman Peter Jouvenal, was seized by Taliban authorities in Kabul at the end of last year and remains in custody... Though the Taliban have detained and beaten Afghan journalists regularly since sweeping to power in the summer, the arrests this week marked the first time they held foreign reporters for more than a few hours...

British journalists receive death threats from Russia over Valieva controversy (Guardian)

The journalists who broke the story of Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s positive drugs test on Wednesday say they have faced death threats, abuse, and warnings they should check their tea. A separate British newspaper journalist who asked Valieva whether she was a doper on Friday has also faced intense criticism from Russian members of parliament and online. Such was the anger in Russia when Duncan Mackay and Michael Pavitt of the Inside the Games website initially broke the story that both men were deluged with messages dismissing their reporting as lies – until the Independent Testing Agency confirmed it was true on Friday...

Hungarian government bypasses court order allowing journalists to report from public hospitals (CPJ)

On February 4, the Hungarian government’s executive branch issued a decree empowering the Operational Corps, the government pandemic management body, to adjudicate journalists’ requests to report from public hospitals and health facilities, according to news reports and a copy of that decree. Previously, on January 27, the Budapest-Capital Regional Court ruled that the Ministry of Human Resources, which oversees public hospitals, had illegally banned all journalists except those from state-run and state-funded outlets from accessing public hospitals during the pandemic, and ordered the government to allow hospital administrators to make access decisions on a case-by-case basis, those reports said. By empowering another government body with that decision-making power, the decree bypasses that court decision, according to those reports...

Threats, attacks, and insults: Canadian reporters on covering vaccine mandate protests (CPJ)

“Fake news.” “Go home.” “You’re the virus.” These are just a few of the insults that protesters have hurled at Evan Solomon, a reporter at national Canadian broadcaster CTV, and his colleagues as they have covered demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa... But as reporters seek to cover these developments, they are being threatened in the streets and online. The incidents mirror the experiences of journalists in the United States and Europe, who have been shouted at and even assaulted while reporting on anti-vaccine protests...

MPs must show ‘guts’ to save public interest journalism in England and Wales (Guardian)

A leading media defence lawyer has urged MPs to show “guts” and act to protect public interest journalism in England and Wales from the existential threat she says is posed by public figures and bodies attempting to shut down criticism...

Pirambu News founder Givanildo Oliveira shot dead in Brazil (CPJ)

On night of Monday, February 7, Oliveira, founder and journalist of news website Pirambu News, was shot and killed by an unidentified man in the Pirambu neighborhood in Fortaleza, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará, according to multiple news reports and a statement from the Ceará Journalists Union. Oliveira had been threatened and warned not to publish information about local criminals...

Sarah Palin’s defamation case against New York Times thrown out (Guardian)

Sarah Palin’s lawsuit accusing the New York Times of defaming her by incorrectly linking her to a mass murder was thrown out on Monday. US District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said he will order the dismissal of the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate’s lawsuit, but in an unusual twist, he will enter his order after the jury finishes its own deliberations. “I think this is an example of very unfortunate editorializing on the part of the Times but having said that, that’s not the issue before this court,” Rakoff said in court on Monday. “The law here sets a very high standard {for actual malice}. The court finds that that standard has not been met”...

Mexican journalist Heber López shot and killed in Oaxaca, suspects arrested (CPJ)

In the afternoon of Thursday, February 10, a group of at least two men shot and killed López as he was about to enter a home in the coastal city of Salina Cruz, in Oaxaca state, according to news reports and information provided to CPJ by César González, a spokesperson for the Oaxaca state prosecutor’s office. The men fled the scene, and municipal police officers chased and arrested the suspected shooters shortly after the attack, González told CPJ. Oaxaca State Prosecutor Arturo Peimbert told the La Jornada newspaper that he could not provide details on a possible motive in the killing, but did not rule out López’s journalism...

PJ O’Rourke, writer and humorist, dies aged 74 (Guardian)

O’Rourke held a variety of roles, including editor-in-chief of National Lampoon and Rolling Stone’s foreign affairs desk chief... Though O’Rourke often reserved his sharpest barbs for the left and Democrats, he admitted that in 2016’s election he would be supporting Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters,” he said...

Azerbaijani journalists detained, beaten for covering protest (CPJ)

This morning, police in the capital Baku detained Fatima Mövlamli, a reporter for independent news site Azadliq, Sevinj Sadygova, a reporter at independent news website Azel.tv, and Teymur Karimov, chief editor at the independent YouTube-based outlet Kanal1, according to news reports and the journalists, who spoke to CPJ by telephone and messaging app. The three journalists were filming a demonstration when police forcefully tried to stop them before detaining them...

British police are hounding a journalist for his sources – it’s vital he resists (Guardian)

Chris Mullin’s exposure of the Birmingham Six’s wrongful conviction was only possible because he was able to protect his sources...

Russian court in Crimea sentences RFE/RL journalist Vladislav Yesypenko to 6 years in prison (CPJ)

On Wednesday, February 16, a court in Simferopol, the capital of Russian-occupied Crimea, convicted Yesypenko, a correspondent with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, on charges of possessing and transporting explosives, and sentenced him to six years in prison, according to media reports and a report by his employer. Yesypenko maintained his innocence throughout the closed-door trial, and testified on Tuesday that authorities “want to discredit the work of freelance journalists who really want to show the things that really happen in Crimea”...

Ukrainian journalist Yaroslav Bondarenko threatened by businessman’s bodyguards, footage deleted (CPJ)

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 13, a group of five men approached Bondarenko, a camera operator for the independent newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, at an airport in the eastern city of Dnipro, forced him at knifepoint to unlock his phone, and deleted months’ worth of photos and videos from his device, according to Ukrainska Pravda reporter Mykhailo Tkach, who was at the scene and wrote about the encounter on Facebook and posted video of it to YouTube, and Sevgil Musaeva, the newspaper’s chief editor, who spoke with CPJ in a phone interview. The men did not identify themselves at the time, but Musaeva told CPJ that Ukrainska Pravda was able to confirm that they were bodyguards escorting Alexander Petrovsky, a well-known local businessman. She added that police officers nearby witnessed the attack but did not detain the men or react to what was happening...

Chadian journalist Evariste Djailoramdji killed while covering community violence (CPJ)

On February 9, unidentified people in the southern village of Sandana shot and killed Djailoramdji, a reporter working for the local broadcaster Lotiko Radio,while he covered a conflict in the area, according to local media reports and Arnaud Djimounoum, a manager at Lotiko Radio, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Violence broke out that day in Sandana due to a dispute between herders and farmers, according to media reports. Djimounoum told CPJ that Djailoramdji was among at least 11 people killed that day. In the afternoon of February 9, Djailoramdji transmitted a report to his colleagues that “people draw arms everywhere in the village and the population flees to take refuge in the bush,” Djimounoum said. He told CPJ that the station lost contact with Djailoramdji about half an hour later. Local media and the Union of Chadian Journalists (UJT), a local trade group, reported that the journalist had been shot and killed...

CPJ condemns ‘harsh’ 9-year sentence for Nicaraguan journalist Miguel Mendoza (CPJ)

On Wednesday, February 16, in a closed door hearing in the Ninth Criminal District Court of Managua, a judge sentenced Mendoza to nine years in prison along with a ban on holding political office during that time, according to news reports. Last week, the court convicted the journalist of conspiracy to undermine national integrity and disseminating false news, as CPJ documented at the time...

Mild in larger scheme of things, but this was Canada and it's a slippery slope, eh?
Establishment / mainstream media is the enemy on streets of Ottawa and in FB posts of a Cdn anti-vaxxer I follow...

Glen McGregor (CTV News) @glen_mcgregor | 11:16 PM · Feb 18, 2022
Disgusting. Every news crew has been harassed repeatedly trying to work.
This is the first actual on-camera assault of a journalist I’ve seen.

Quote Tweet
Mylène Crête (La Presse Ottawa) @MyleneCrete | 10:19 PM · Feb 18, 2022:
Voici la vidéo :
0:15 ( https://twitter.com/MyleneCrete/status/1494874304814751744 )

The fight over the narrative (Ottawa protesters v press):

Fact check: Posts mislead about crowd size, peacefulness at Canada ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest
McKenzie Sadeghi | Feb 16 2022. Updated Feb 17.

...While it's true there haven't been widespread reports of injuries, the posts exaggerate the demonstration’s size and overstate the peacefulness associated with it. The exact number of attendees is unclear, but estimates are nowhere near 100,000. And there have been numerous reports of property damage and other potential crimes related to the protest...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/16/fact-check-canada-freed...
___________________________________________

Posts falsely claim half of Ottawa police resigned during protest
AFP Canada | 16 February 2022

Social media posts claim that half of the Ottawa police force resigned during the anti-vaccine mandate protest in Canada's capital city. But both the Ottawa Police Service and the association representing its officers dismissed the claim...

https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.322A3D6
___________________________________________

Glen McGregor (CTV National News) @glen_mcgregor | 4:22 PM · Feb 19, 2022:
I was doing a live hit with @MSNBC this afternoon when our crew was mobbed.
One guy actually spit at us, others called us Nazis. MSNBC had to cut it off almost after it began.
Then they chased us down the street to our bureau.
0:45 ( https://twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/status/1495146891646013443 )
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In BC, even...

Kamil Karamali (Global News anchor) @KamilKaramali | 5:10 PM · Feb 19, 2022

⚠️WARNING: Profane language.
My camera operator and I get swarmed by protesters and followed — after an interview with police media relations.
Officers escort us to our vehicle after we receive verbal threats.

1:06 ( https://twitter.com/KamilKaramali/status/1495158893349007361 )

Journalists’ group ‘dismayed’ by treatment at Beijing Winter Olympics (Guardian)

Reporting conditions for journalists covering the Beijing Winter Olympics fell short of international standards despite assurances from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCCC) of China has said. The club said it was “dismayed” that at a time when global attention was trained on China more than ever the government and Olympic officials still failed to uphold their own rules on accredited foreign media. Instead “government interference occurred regularly during the Games”, both inside and outside venues, when journalists tried to interview athletes and local residents. The FCCC also highlighted significant online trolling and abuse of journalists who had covered Olympic events and related stories. “In some cases these attacks were fuelled by Chinese state media accounts and Chinese diplomats,” it said, describing an observed aspect of state-backed online harassment and propaganda campaigns. The FCCC statement listed a number of claims of intimidation, obstruction and harassment, including some that the IOC – widely criticised for granting the Games to a government accused of crimes against humanity – had dismissed as “isolated incidents”...

Turkish journalist Güngör Arslan killed (CPJ)

On Saturday, Turkish journalist Güngör Arslan, publisher and news editor of local news site Ses Kocaeli, died in a hospital in the western province of Kocaeli after he was shot by an assailant in the chest and right leg outside of his office in the city of Izmit, according to news reports. In a statement the Kocaeli governor’s office said that Turkish authorities arrested a suspect, which they identified by the initials R.Ö., apprehended a gun, and are investigating the killing...

Labour party calls for ban on Russian broadcaster RT (Guardian)

Labour has called for a ban on the Russian state-backed broadcaster RT, accusing the channel of pumping out pro-Vladimir Putin “propaganda”. Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, told MPs that the Russian president’s “campaign of misinformation should be tackled”, starting with moves to prevent RT from “broadcasting its propaganda around the world”. The English-language channel is regulated by Ofcom, which said on Monday it would prioritise any complaints about any broadcast coverage of Ukraine “given the seriousness of the crisis”. “All licensees must observe Ofcom’s rules, including due accuracy and due impartiality,” an Ofcom spokesperson said. “If broadcasters break those rules, we will not hesitate to step in”...

Police move to ban reporters from Birmingham Six journalist hearing (Guardian)

West Midlands police have asked a judge to exclude reporters from a hearing in which they will attempt to force a journalist and former MP who exposed the Birmingham Six’s wrongful conviction to reveal his source material. The force have applied for an order under the Terrorism Act 2000 compelling Chris Mullin to hand over material, including notebooks, from his 1985-86 investigation into the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, which killed 21 people and injured more than 200. The Birmingham Six were jailed for life in 1975 but their convictions were quashed in 1991, five years after the publication of Mullin’s book Error of Judgement: the Truth About the Birmingham Bombings. In 2018, West Midlands police announced a decision to reinvestigate the case. Officers believe Mullin has interviews that could confirm the identity of a surviving member of the IRA gang now thought to be behind the pub bombings. Relatives of victims of the bombings have criticised the former MP for refusing to disclose the names of living suspects. Journalists are professionally bound to maintain the confidentiality of sources and Mullin is refusing to disclose the requested material on the basis that it would represent a fundamental breach of this principle. The National Union of Journalists is supporting his case...

Spanish court orders investigation of 4 journalists over testimony in police abuse case (CPJ)

Spanish authorities should drop their criminal investigations into four journalists over their coverage of alleged police abuses, and should ensure that members of the press do not face criminal charges over their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday. On February 16, the Provincial Court of Madrid acquitted a police officer on charges of attacking freelance photojournalist Guillermo Martínez during a demonstration in 2021, and ruled that prosecutors should open a criminal investigation into Martínez and three other journalists for alleged false testimony... The three others—freelance photographers Fermín Grodira and Juan Carlos Mohr, and a journalist from the news website Público whose name was not disclosed—all acted as witnesses supporting Martínez during the trial... If charged and convicted of giving false testimony, they could each face a fine and up to two years in prison, according to the Spanish criminal code...

Ronson Chan: the former Hong Kong editor who is now a delivery driver (Guardian)

Three months ago Ronson Chan was working as deputy assignment editor at Stand News, one of Hong Kong’s independent and pro-democracy news sites. His job involved assigning news stories to the team of reporters, helping set the editorial agenda and running the outlet’s social media posts. As head of the Hong Kong Journalism Association he had seen up close the fallout from the Beijing media crackdown – closures, arrests, the offshoring of international bureaus. Then the knock on his door came and his own career was dramatically paused. On the same day, 29 December, his colleagues – including the paper’s editor-in-chief and some board members – were arrested in an early morning national security operation which also saw hundreds of officers raid the newsroom. Today Chan works as a delivery driver and is among scores of reporters and editors in Hong Kong whose lives are in limbo. To make ends meet he spent the lunar new year driving his car around Hong Kong, making deliveries for a friend’s online retail business. According to the International Federation of Journalists, about 20 journalists and press defenders have been arrested or detained by law enforcement so far under Hong Kong’s media crackdown...

Journalist refuses to disclose source material in 1974 Birmingham pub bombings (Guardian)

Chris Mullin is challenging action by West Midlands police at Old Bailey to make him reveal source’s identity...

Birmingham pub bombings: Fight over 'confession' to Chris Mullin (BBC)

Police want to force a journalist to reveal the source who made a "full confession to murder" over the Birmingham pub bombings, the Old Bailey heard. The West Midlands force maintains information in Chris Mullin's notes could solve the 1974 atrocities. But former MP Mr Mullin, 74, is challenging the police application to require him to disclose the material. His team cites the journalistic principle of source protection...

Haitian police kill 1 journalist, injure 2 at protest (CPJ)

At about 11 a.m. on Wednesday, February 23, Haitian National Police officers opened fire on a protest by textile workers demanding a higher minimum wage in Port-au-Prince, the capital, killing Lazard and injuring the other two journalists... Lazard was covering the demonstration for the YouTube and Facebook-based broadcaster Roi des Infos, and a photo posted to Facebook by his employer shows that he was wearing his press credential at the time of the attack. He died at a local hospital shortly after being shot, according to those reports and Dimanche. Laurore, a reporter for online broadcaster Laurore News TV, and Moïse, a reporter for the online radio station Radio RCH 2000, also sustained gunshot wounds...

Across Russia, journalists detained, threatened over coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (CPJ)

At least five journalists are facing charges and dozens more were detained across Russia following their coverage of anti-war protests, which have sprung up across the country since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Separately, on February 26, Russia’s state internet regulator Roskomnadzor said media organizations can only publish official government reports about the conflict in Ukraine. If outlets fail to comply, Roskomnadzor has threatened to block their websites. In the same statement, Roskomnadzor announced an administrative investigation into at least 10 independent media outlets for their alleged mischaracterization of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine...

Thousands donate to campaign to save Ukrainian media (Guardian)

A campaign to save independent Ukrainian media from being obliterated by war is gathering pace, with thousands donating cash to support news outlets reporting on the conflict... Funds are being earmarked to help journalists relocate operations from Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in peril to Warsaw, Vilnius and other neighbouring capitals, said Jakub Parusinski, chief financial officer at the Kyiv Independent and the campaign’s organiser. Separate initiatives are also under way to help secure funds for urgent immediate needs such as equipment, insurance and engineering support for websites, he said. “What we really need right now is for the world to have trusted, verified information from across the country, so that people in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus know exactly what is going on,” said Parusinski. “However important foreign correspondents from overseas news organisations are, you need local media to tell the local story”...

CPJ ‘deeply disturbed’ by Russian shelling of Ukraine television tower

“We are deeply disturbed by the Russian military’s attack on television infrastructure in Kyiv, which threatens to deprive Ukrainians of information at a time when it is desperately needed,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said. “Russian authorities must refrain from reckless attacks that could easily kill journalists and other civilians.” The attack killed at least five people, knocked some television broadcasts off the air, and damaged the tower’s control room and an electrical substation...

Russia blocks Echo of Moscow and Dozhd TV, restricts social media access

Since last week, Russian authorities have slowed and restricted access to Facebook and Twitter throughout the country, according to the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and statements by those companies. On Tuesday, March 1, the Russian prosecutor general’s office ordered Roskomnadzor to take independent broadcasters Echo of Moscow and Dozhd TV off the air and block access to their websites, according to news reports and reports by both outlets. The outlets’ websites were inaccessible in Russia shortly after that order was announced, those reports said...

Both from CPJ

Ukraine: Watching the war on Russian TV - a whole different story (BBC)

Never was there a better illustration of the alternative reality presented by Russian state media than at 17:00 GMT on Tuesday. As BBC World TV opened its bulletin with reports of a Russian attack on a TV tower in the capital Kyiv, Russian TV was announcing that Ukraine was responsible for strikes on its own cities. So what are Russian TV viewers seeing of the war? What messages are they hearing over the airwaves? Below is a snapshot of what ordinary Russians would have picked up, on Tuesday 1 March, while channel-hopping across the country's key TV stations, which are controlled by the Kremlin and its corporate allies...

Armed men attack car, bodyguard of Colombian journalist Julián Martínez (CPJ)

At about 11 p.m. on February 22, two men with pistols approached the journalist’s vehicle, which was parked on the street in front of a Bogotá apartment where Martínez was conducting an interview, according to news reports and a CPJ messaging app interview with Martínez. Martínez said the gunmen tried to force open the locked vehicle and pointed their pistols at his bodyguard, who was in the driver’s seat. The bodyguard fired several pistol shots at the men, who were unhurt and escaped in a waiting taxi. Martínez, an award-winning reporter for the independent Bogotá-based La Nueva Prensa news website, frequently investigates allegations of government corruption and illegal spying. Due to numerous threats against him, the Colombian government’s National Protection Unit has provided Martínez with an armored vehicle, protective vest, and armed escorts since April 2021...

Ukrainian camera operator Yevhenii Sakun killed in Russian shelling of Kyiv TV tower (CPJ)

Sakun, 49, was a camera operator for the Ukrainian television station LIVE, which had covered the Russian invasion, according to a post on Twitter by his former colleague, EFE Noticias reporter Olga Tokariuk, and a post on Facebook by Sergiy Tomilenko, the head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local professional union. Tomilenko told CPJ via email that Sakun was working along with his colleagues at the time of the attack, and his body was identified by his press card. Tomilenko told CPJ and wrote on Facebook that the Ukrainian National Police had confirmed Sakun’s death to the journalist’s union. Four other people were killed in that attack, according to reports. Russian forces also shelled TV towers in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Lisichansk on Wednesday...

Bid by Kazakh mining company to sue journalist is dismissed by judge (Guardian)

An attempt by a Kazakh mining giant to sue a British journalist for allegedly claiming it ordered the murders of three men has been thrown out by a judge. HarperCollins, the publisher of Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World, welcomed the victory over what it described as an “egregious case of lawfare” of the type used by wealthy interests to silence journalism...

Under attack, Ukraine's musicians become war reporters and army fundraisers (BBC)

Faced with war, Ukraine's vibrant and flourishing music scene has become a sort of unofficial news outlet, documenting the conflict for an audience that might not be tuned in to traditional news channels...

Proposed Russian legislation threatens 15 years in prison for ‘fake’ information about Ukraine invasion (CPJ)

The State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, is scheduled to consider legislation on Friday that would impose prison terms of up to 15 years for those convicted of disseminating “fakes,” or information that authorities deem to be false, about the actions of Russia’s armed forces...

Polish 'ultra' fans intimidate BBC Africa reporters (BBC)

My BBC Africa colleagues and I have been intimidated by "ultra" football fans in Przemyśl, a city in southern Poland where we have been reporting on those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine. "Ultras" are hardcore supporters known for their racist and far-right leanings...

‘Not just statistics’: Ukrayinska Pravda editor Sevgil Musaieva on the risks and challenges of covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (CPJ)

Twice a day, Sevgil Musaieva, chief editor at Kyiv-based independent news site Ukrayinska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth), checks in with her staff, now scattered around the country for security reasons as they report amid Russian missile and rocket attacks. Musaieva knows the high stakes involved in reporting the truth. Two of the outlet’s journalists were killed in retaliation for their reporting on corruption: founder Georgy Gongadze in 2000 and columnist Pavel Sheremet, a recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, in 2016. Covering war poses a different kind of risk, which Musaieva and her team have been preparing for since well before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, February 24. Musaieva spoke to CPJ about her experiences in the first week of the conflict and how the Ukrayinska Pravda, which has an audience of up to eight million visitors a day, is confronting the challenges of disinformation and internet outages...

War in Ukraine: Russia restricts access to BBC in media crackdown (BBC)

Access to the BBC's Russian language services has been restricted in Russia. Other news outlets, including Deutsche Welle, Meduza and Radio Liberty, have also had access to their services limited, Russia's state-owned news agency RIA says. Russia's parliament has passed a law making it an offence to spread "fake" information about the armed forces. The Kremlin objects to the conflict being called a war, instead calling it a "special military operation". A BBC spokesperson said: "Access to accurate, independent information is a fundamental human right which should not be denied to the people of Russia, millions of whom rely on BBC News"...

BBC website ‘blocked’ in Russia as shortwave radio brought back to cover Ukraine war (Guardian)

Website reportedly available at only 17% of normal levels in Russia, hours after broadcaster revives radio technology to reach Ukraine and parts of Russia...

Russian TV staff walk off set after final broadcast (BBC)

One of Russia’s last independent news outlets TV Rain has stopped broadcasting indefinitely after coming under pressure for its coverage of Ukraine. The channel, also know as Dozhd, ended its final broadcast by showing staff walking off set on Thursday. Russia's telecommunications regulator accused the channel of "inciting extremism, abusing Russian citizens, causing mass disruption of public calm and safety, and encouraging protests"...

Edited to add:

Dozhd TV editor Tikhon Dzyadko on why he fled Russia and shut his broadcaster down (CPJ)

Russian independent broadcaster Dozhd TV announced during a live broadcast on Thursday that it would suspend its operations after Russia’s media regulator blocked its website for spreading “deliberately false information about the actions of Russian military personnel.” Dozhd TV had drawn the ire of Russian authorities because of it used the word “invasion” to report on Russia’s war in Ukraine instead of the Russian government’s official phrasing of a “special military operation.” Last year Dozhd TV was labeled a “foreign agent.” As Russia is set to consider legislation Friday that would impose prison terms on those convicted of disseminating “fakes,” several of Dozhd TV’s staff members decided to leave the country. CPJ’s Gulnoza Said spoke briefly to Tikhon Dzyadko, Dozhd TV’s editor-in-chief, about the dire circumstances for the Russian press as it tries to cover the conflict. Dzyadko has left Russia but did not disclose his location for safety reasons...

Poland charges Spanish freelance reporter with spying for Russia (CPJ)

In response to multiple reports that Polish authorities charged Spanish freelance reporter Pablo González with spying for Russia on Tuesday, March 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement expressing concern: “We are concerned by Poland’s indictment of Spanish freelance reporter Pablo González on charges of spying for Russia,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Polish authorities must guarantee that González has access to proper legal representation and a fair and transparent legal procedure, and ensure he is not sanctioned for his journalistic activities. Reporting is not a crime”... González’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, told CPJ via messaging app that the reporter has been questioned without the presence of a lawyer and has not had contact with anyone from abroad during the last four days. “Until now, neither his family or I have been able to speak with him and we are waiting for the Spanish consulate to arrange a permit for me to visit him in prison,” Boye said.

Russia further blocks media outlets, social media (CPJ)

Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor on Friday, March 4, blocked access to several news websites, including those of BBC Russian, German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Latvia-based independent news site Meduza, the Russian-language service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA), and several services of the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), according to news reports. Also Friday, the Russian legislature adopted amendments to the criminal code introducing higher penalties, such as fines, criminal liabilities, and imposing prison terms of up to 15 years for those convicted of disseminating “fakes,” or information that authorities deem to be false, about military operations, or discrediting Russian Armed Forces...

‘There will be more repression’: Exiled Russian journalist Irina Borogan on Moscow’s censorship of Ukraine invasion (CPJ)

As the Russian military continues its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is also fighting a different kind of battle at home in its attempts to quash independent news coverage and dissenting narratives about the attack it launched on February 24. Across Russia, journalists have been detained and their outlets investigated, blocked, and restricted from using social media. On Friday, March 4, Russia’s State Duma approved a criminal code amendment making “false” reporting on the war punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Some journalists have closed their outlets and fled...

Sky News journalists evacuated after being shot at by Russian ‘death squad’ (Guardian)

A Sky News crew has been evacuated back to the UK from Ukraine after journalists were shot during an ambush by a suspected Russian “death squad” on Monday. The team of five were attacked while out in a car, after unsuccessfully trying to visit the town of Bucha near Kyiv. Chief correspondent with Sky News, Stuart Ramsay, along with camera operator Richie Mockler were shot – Ramsay in the lower back while Mockler took two rounds in his body armour... The crackle of gunfire can be heard and the flash of bullets flying past their car can be seen, as the attack was captured on camera... Eventually the group, including producers Martin Vowles and Dominique Van Heerden, as well as local producer Andrii Lytvynenko managed to escape from the car and jump down an embankment at the side of the road. They eventually found refuge in a nearby garage, and were rescued under the cover of darkness hours later by Ukrainian police. The journalists were later told that the gunmen were a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad. “It was professional, the rounds kept smashing into the car - they didn’t miss,” Ramsay said...

BBC, CNN and other global news outlets suspend reporting in Russia (Guardian)

Global news media said they were temporarily suspending reporting in Russia to protect their journalists after a new law cracking down on foreign news outlets was passed that threatened jail terms of up to 15 years for spreading “fake news”...

Boris Johnson praises ‘astonishing’ courage of UK journalists shot by Russian hit squad (Guardian)

Boris Johnson has praised British journalists who were hit by bullets in Ukraine and said press reporting on the conflict “will not be intimidated or cowed”. The prime minister commended the “astonishing” courage of the Sky News journalists, who he said were “putting themselves in terrifying and dangerous situations”...

‘Putin has plunged Russia into an information dark age’ (CPJ)

“President Vladimir Putin has plunged Russia into an information dark age by criminalizing independent reporting of his war in Ukraine,” said CPJ Executive Director Robert Mahoney. “Mention of the word ‘invasion’ in a report could now get a journalist sent to jail for years. Journalists everywhere must stand in solidarity with their Russian colleagues and foreign correspondents based in Russia in rejecting this barbarous censorship. For his last two decades in power Putin tolerated a handful of critical news outlets that provided a trickle of truth in a sea of state propaganda. But this legislation and website blocking have effectively dried up the free flow of information"...

What are Slapps and how are they connected to Russian oligarchs? (Guardian)

As the UK government seeks ways to take on Russian oligarchs with links to Vladimir Putin’s regime, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has asked government lawyers to “find literally any way” to crack down on “Slapps” – or strategic lawsuits against public participation – where the wealthy exploit lengthy and expensive legal procedures to silence journalists, critics and watchdogs. While Slapps generally arise out of defamation lawsuits and ostensibly have the same purpose – of protecting the claimant’s reputation – they are seen as an attempt to shut down public criticism, with the claimant often indifferent about whether they actually win the case. The fear is that they discourage investigative reporting into rich and powerful people because of the potential costs of defending a claim, even if it has little or no merit...

War in Ukraine: Taking cover in a town under attack (BBC)

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen spent the day in the town, as residents attempt to flee...

Acclaimed foreign correspondent Hugh O’Shaughnessy dies aged 87 (Guardian)

Former Observer journalist was perhaps best known for his courageous coverage of Pinochet’s brutal coup in Chile in 1973...

CPJ calls on Ukraine to exempt journalists from compulsory military service (CPJ)

“Ukrainian authorities must allow the country’s journalists to continue covering the war and defending the truth, and exempt them from compulsory military service... Ukrainian authorities know very well that the information war is no less important than the war in trenches”...

Dizzee Rascal smashes photographer’s camera after court’s guilty verdict (Guardian)

Musician Dizzee Rascal, whose real name is Dylan Mills, smashed a photographer’s camera outside court on Monday after he was found guilty of assaulting his ex-fiancee. Mills hurled the camera across the road outside Wimbledon magistrates court, just moments after a verdict of guilty was returned for a charge of assault against Cassandra Jones, the mother of his two children... After leaving the building moments after the verdict, Mills took a camera from PA news agency photographer James Manning – responsible for the image at the top of this article – and threw it into a road, smashing it...

Peruvian journalist Gastón Medina receives death threat note, bullet at his outlet (CPJ)

On February 23, Medina, the owner and news director of the independent Cadena Sur television station in the southern city of Ica, arrived at the station and found on the doorstep a plastic bag full of trash and excrement and a floral arrangement with an envelope containing a .38-caliber bullet, according to news reports and a CPJ interview via messaging app with the journalist. Medina told CPJ that inside the envelope was a hand-written note that said: “Gastón Medina, you will die.” The death threat came just days after the morning news program Medina hosts on Cadena Sur reported on allegations of cost overruns in the purchase of tomography equipment for a state-run hospital in Ica, he told CPJ. “I think the death threat is related to our reporting,” Medina said...

Turkish court sentences 4 former Taraf journalists to prison for exposing state secrets (CPJ)

On Friday, March 4, the 13th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes convicted four former Taraf employees on national security charges, according to news reports. Chief editor Ahmet Altan and editors Yasemin Çongar and Yıldıray Oğur were each convicted of illegally acquiring state secrets and were sentenced to three years and four months each in prison, those reports said, adding that they can remain free while their appeals are pending. Baransu, a reporter and columnist, was sentenced 13 years in prison: six years for acquiring secret information and seven for “exposing secret information,” those reports said. Baransu has been held at Silivri Prison in Istanbul since 2015 as part of this case, according to CPJ research...

‘Courage and defiance’: female Guardian reporters on the women who inspired them (Guardian)

From an abortion rights campaigner in Poland to a protester in Myanmar, our correspondents choose some of the women they most admire to mark International Women’s Day...

After a year of reporting on Myanmar’s military coup, I knew my luck would eventually run out (Guardian)

As the last western media journalist covering Myanmar I knew danger lurked – and there would be no James Bond to get me out...

BBC to resume English language reporting in Russia (Guardian)

Broadcaster had paused its reporting in country after passing of law that could impose jail terms over ‘fake’ news...

Ukraine war: BBC News journalists resume broadcasts from Russia (BBC)

BBC News journalists in Russia have resumed their broadcasts, days after putting their work on hold after the introduction of a strict new media law... The BBC has decided to resume work after "careful deliberation", it said...

As a Russian news anchor, I was there when the free press ended in my country (Guardian)

At Dozhd we broadcast the truth about the war in Ukraine for as long as we dared. But for now, media freedom is over...

Reporters shot, shelled, robbed while covering Russian invasion of Ukraine (CPJ)

Since late February, Russian troops have injured at least three journalists from international outlets, and at least one reporter for a Ukrainian outlet has been attacked for their reporting...

Anonymous TV* 🇺🇦 @YourAnonTV | 10:25 AM · Mar 10, 2022
JUST IN: #Anonymous has successfully breached and leaked the database of Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring #Russian mass media, releasing to the public over 360K files.

Release: Roskomnadzor (820 GB)
In the Cyberwar category, we are listing 364,000 files from the Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal agency responsible for censorship of Russian media, specifically from the republic of Bashkortostan.
Lorax B. Horne and Emma Best | March 10, 2022
https://ddosecrets.substack.com/p/release-roskomnadzor-820-gb?s=r

* Anonymous TV 🇺🇦 @YourAnonTV
We are #Anonymous, internet-based, international team from literally all around the world |
Latest Anonymous news regarding #OpRussia campaign. #FreeUkraine

Belarus authorities sentence journalist Aleh Hruzdzilovich to prison; label more media ‘extremist’ (CPJ)

On March 3, the Savetski District Court in Minsk sentenced Hruzdzilovich to a year and a half in prison for alleged participation in three protests in 2020, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an independent trade and advocacy group, and a report by Radio Svaboda. Hruzdzilovich denied the charges, saying he was working as an accredited correspondent with Radio Svaboda and wearing a press jacket during the first protest, according to those reports. After authorities revoked the accreditation of Radio Svaboda journalists in August 2020, he covered the other two protests for independent newspaper Narodnaya Volya, as the newspaper’s chief editor testified in court...

Putin propagandist news host has British home and citizenship (Guardian)

One of Russia’s most popular television news presenters, who has been accused of being a propagandist for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has British citizenship and a family flat in west London. Sergei Brilev has been reporting on the war in Ukraine on the state-controlled Rossiya 1, which tightly follows the Kremlin’s messaging. The channel describes the war as a “special military operation” launched to protect Ukrainian citizens from “abuse and genocide”. British government ministers are coming under pressure to impose sanctions on Brilev...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brent-renaud-ukraine-russia-american-journalist-kil...

American journalist Brent Renaud shot and killed by Russian forces in Ukraine

.....Brent Renaud, a 50-year-old filmmaker, was killed when Russian troops opened fire, according to Andriy Nebytov, the head of Kyiv's regional police force. Nebytov posted a graphic photo purportedly of Renaud's body on Facebook, as well as pictures of his American passport and media credentials issued by The New York Times.....

In addition to>54 Molly3028: Brent Renaud: US journalist and filmmaker killed in Ukraine

A US journalist working in Ukraine has been shot dead in the town of Irpin, outside Kyiv, police say. Brent Renaud, 50, was a journalist and filmmaker who was working in the region for Time. Kyiv's police chief Andriy Nebytov said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital. It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine. One of the injured journalists, Juan Arredondo, told an Italian reporter he had been with Renaud when they came under fire...

Plus Media body orders probe into abduction of S. Sudanese scribe (Sudan Tribune)

South Sudanese authorities should conduct a swift and credible investigation into the recent abduction of journalist Emmanuel Woja and ensure those responsible are held to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Friday On March 2, Woja, a news editor with Eye Radio, was reportedly abducted by unknown men who accused him of supporting a rebel group operating in the southern Equatoria region and supporting a coalition of activists who have called for the resignation of South Sudan’s President, Salva Kiir. That night, the men drove Woja to a forested area in the outskirts of Juba, where he said he believed they planned to kill him, but a gunfight erupted between his captors and unidentified attackers, and he escaped on foot. “South Sudanese journalist Emmanuel Woja is lucky to have survived a traumatic kidnapping which seems to have been retaliation for his work and critical opinions,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo...

Julian Assange denied permission to appeal against US extradition (Guardian)

WikiLeaks founder’s application ‘didn’t raise an arguable point of law’, UK supreme court says...

Julian Assange set to marry in Belmarsh prison (Guardian)

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will get married in Belmarsh prison on 23 March, with just four guests allowed to attend. Vivienne Westwood is designing a wedding dress for the 50-year-old’s fiancee, the lawyer Stella Moris, and a kilt for Assange, whose parents have links to Scotland. The designer has been a staunch supporter of Assange. Moris, who met Assange when he was living in London’s Ecuadorian embassy seeking political asylum, will marry the WikiLeaks founder in the high-security jail nearly three years after his arrest. The couple have two children...

Ukraine war: Editor interrupts Russian TV news show (BBC)

A woman holding an anti-war sign ran onto the set of a Russian evening news programme on the state-controlled Channel 1 on Monday evening. The sign, clearly visible behind the presenter, read "no war, stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here". The woman has been named as Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at the channel. Russian TV news is tightly controlled by the Kremlin and only reflects the Russian version of events in Ukraine. Ms Ovsyannikova is believed to be in police custody...

Russia-Ukraine war: British Fox News journalist injured (BBC)

A British journalist working for the Fox News Channel in the US has been injured while reporting on the war in Ukraine, the network says. Fox confirmed on air that Benjamin Hall - listed as its US state department correspondent - is in hospital after an incident outside of the capital Kyiv...

Peru legislators propose law criminalizing reporting based on leaked information (CPJ)

a bill that would criminalize reporting based on leaked information from informants cooperating in criminal investigations, as it would negatively impact journalists’ ability to operate...

Fox News cameraman and producer killed in Ukraine (Guardian)

Two Fox News journalists – producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova and cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski – were killed in the attack outside Kyiv which injured correspondent Benjamin Hall, the US network and its journalists confirmed on Tuesday...

Marina Ovsyannikova: Russian journalist fined after live broadcast protest (Guardian)

A Russian court has fined Marina Ovsyannikova 30,000 roubles (£215) for violating protest laws after she broke onto a live news broadcast on Channel One in an extraordinary demonstration against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The fine was a relatively light sentence for an act of protest that shocked Russian television viewers and earned plaudits from western leaders...

Marina Ovsyannikova: Russian journalist tells of 14-hour interrogation (BBC)

A Russian journalist has been fined and released after she protested against the war in Ukraine on a live TV news programme and made an anti-war video. Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at state-controlled Channel 1, was detained after she ran on to the set on Monday holding a sign saying "no war". She said she had been questioned for 14 hours and not slept for two days, and was not given access to legal help...

Eighth Mexican journalist to be killed in 2022 is shot outside his home (Guardian)

The murder crisis gripping Mexican journalism has claimed another life after a journalist was gunned down in the conflict-stricken state of Michoacán just six weeks after he announced the murder of a colleague. Armando Linares López, the director of a news website called Michoacán Monitor, was reportedly shot at least eight times on Tuesday afternoon outside his home in the city of Zitácuro. He is the eighth Mexican journalist to be killed in 2022, compared with nine in the whole of last year...

Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchina missing since March 11 (CPJ)

“Viktoria Roshchina is now the second journalist reported missing since the beginning of the Russian invasion,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. ”Journalists who shed light on the situation in Ukraine should not be targets. We are deeply worried about her disappearance and call on anyone with information on her whereabouts to come forward at once”...

Russia threatens further crackdown on British media after Ofcom bans RT (Guardian)

Russia has promised further crackdowns on British media outlets operating in the country, after UK media regulator Ofcom banned the Kremlin-backed television channel RT. The Russian embassy in the UK said it was considering how to respond to the decision to remove RT’s broadcast licence: “The Russian side therefore reserves itself the right, as per normal international practice, to respond respectively with regard to the activity of British media in Russia.” The BBC has been concerned that its operations in Russia could be severely curtailed as part of a tit-for-tat retribution move by the Russian state. The corporation has curtailed its Russian-language reporting from within the country but continues with English-language reporting...

Brazilian journalists injured by explosive devices at police protest (CPJ)

On March 9, during a protest held by striking Minas Gerais police officers in Belo Horizonte, the state capital, unidentified members of that protest threw explosive devices at journalists... The unidentified explosives inflicted temporary hearing damage to Band Minas journalists Laura França and Caio Tárcia, who were covering the protest... Protesting officers also yelled insults at Tárcia and forced him to leave the area...

Exiled Turkish journalist Ahmet Dönmez attacked in Sweden (CPJ)

On Saturday, March 19, in Stockholm, unidentified people hit Dönmez’s car from behind and, when he got out of his vehicle, proceeded to beat him up, according to news reports and tweets by the journalist. Dönmez was driving his six-year-old daughter home from school at the time of the attack, according to those reports, which said he sustained head trauma and was hospitalized in stable condition. Dönmez publishes reporting on Turkish politics and alleged corruption, as well as political commentary...

Ukrainian journalist Oleh Baturyn released 8 days after going missing (CPJ)

Baturyn was missing for eight days after he went to meet an unidentified person at the bus station near his home in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Kakhovka...

20 days in Mariupol: The team that documented city's agony
MSTYSLAV CHERNOV | 3/22/2022

...armored cars whisked us to a darkened basement. Only then did we learn from a policeman why the Ukrainians had risked the lives of soldiers to extract us from the hospital.

“If they catch you, they will get you on camera and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie,” he said. “All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain.”...

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-edf7240a9d990e7e3e32f82ca351ded...

A number of reports in the same post from CPJ here

Ukrainian journalist Maks Levin missing since March 13; Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchina released after 10 days; at least 4 other journalists briefly detained; Russian government expands law banning ‘fakes’; Russian journalist Andrei Novashov detained, charged with spreading ‘fake’ information; Putin tolerated some critical voices in his 22-year assault on Russian media. His war in Ukraine ends even that...

Russian reporter killed in Kyiv shelling is fourth journalist to die in conflict (Guardian)

Oksana Baulina was killed with another civilian while reporting for the independent Russian news website the Insider...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

Russian journalist Oksana Baulina killed amid Russian attack on Kyiv; Russian newspaper Pskovskaya Guberniya searched; journalists flee amid home raids...

Ukraine war: BBC World Service granted emergency funding (BBC)

The BBC World Service will receive more than £4m in emergency funding from the UK government to help counter disinformation about the Ukraine war. The BBC made the request for the funding, which will also be used by the Ukrainian and Russian language services to cover urgent and unexpected costs. It welcomed the announcement and said the money would help relocate staff and operations to safe locations. The two language services have had record audiences since the invasion...

I had to keep my sources secret, or the Birmingham Six might still be in jail (Guardian)

My investigation was overwhelmingly in the public interest. I have no difficulty in justifying my actions...

Fed Up With Deadly Propaganda, Some Russian Journalists Quit
Anton Troianovski | March 24, 2022

At least four state television employees have publicly resigned, citing regret for their roles in promoting false narratives about Ukraine...

...(Dmitri Likin) says neither he nor his friends ever watched the news. “In Russia, television is made for people who for one reason or another are too lazy to use alternative sources of information...These are simply people who lack education, or who lack the habit of analysis.” (margd: or lack time and money?) (About two-thirds of Russians relied on state television last year to get their news, down from 90 percent in 2014, according to surveys by the Levada Center, an independent Moscow pollster.)

...Marina Ovsyannikova, the Channel 1 staff member who interrupted a live news broadcast last week to unfurl an antiwar poster that said, “They’re lying to you here”

...(Zhanna Agalakova, a Channel 1 correspondent) ... “People are just depressed — clinically depressed...Many thinking people are sensing their own guilt. And there is no exit, you understand? Simply asking for forgiveness is not enough...A lot of people don’t work for an idea...People have a family, have loans and have some kind of need to survive.”

...Liliya Gildeyeva, an anchor who quit the state-run channel NTV,... could not judge her colleagues who had stayed behind — and acknowledged that she herself had made compromise after compromise, realizing only when the war started how far she had gone.

...Those who quit state television jobs, and especially those who speak out, face an uncertain future.

...On Tuesday, Russian authorities announced that a popular journalist, Aleksandr G. Nevzorov, was under criminal investigation for posting about the Russian bombing of Mariupol on his Instagram page...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/world/europe/russian-journalists-quit-propaga...

Supporters of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo assault 5 journalists covering protests

During a March 8 vote by Peru’s legislature to approve Castillo’s new cabinet, supporters of the president hit and shoved the five journalists and damaged some of their equipment, according to news reports and Peru’s National Association of Journalists (ANP). The journalists were reporting on pro- and anti-government demonstrations, as a large group of protesters assembled outside the Congress building in the capital Lima. The journalists attacked were Carlos Huamán, a camera operator for the Latina Noticias television station; Gian Masko, a freelance photographer; John Reyes, a photographer for La República newspaper; Rina Solórzano, a photographer for the Lima-based news magazine Caretas; and Diego Vertiz, a photographer for the newspaper Diario Uno. None of the journalists were seriously hurt...

Formula TV, Mtavari Arkhi crews attacked in Georgia

At around 7 p.m. on March 17, Formula TV reporter Nano Chakvetadze, camera operator Archil Nikolaishvili, and camera assistant Giga Tskhovrebashvili were attempting to conduct an interview at a bar in the capital Tbilisi, when they were assaulted by a customer after he heard the journalists worked for the outlet, according to news reports and Chakvetadze, who spoke to CPJ by messaging app. In the early hours of March 18, a group of 8 to 10 unidentified men in the western city of Zugdidi beat Mtavari Arkhi camera operator Zviad Ablotia, broke his camera, and threatened the outlet’s correspondent Ema Gogokhia while they were filming outside the local office of the far-right political party Conservative Movement...

Iceland police investigate 4 journalists for alleged privacy breach in Samherji fishing company reporting

In November 2019, Iceland’s public broadcaster Ríkisútvarpið (RÚV), the privately owned news website Stundin, and Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera published joint reporting on alleged corruption involving Samherji and government officials in Namibia. In May 2021, Stundin and the news website Kjarninn both reported on efforts by Samherji to discredit the journalists involved in that reporting; CPJ also documented the company’s efforts to harass the reporters who covered those corruption allegations. Following that May 2021 reporting, a Samherji employee filed a criminal complaint alleging that reporters had illegally accessed their cellphone, and police opened a criminal investigation into Stundin reporter Aðalsteinn Kjartansson, Kjarninn reporter Arnar Þór Ingólfsson, Kjarninn editor Þórður Snær Júlíusson, and Þóra Arnórsdóttir, who edits the RÚV’s investigative program “Kveikur,” for alleged violation of privacy, according to news reports and Kjartansson, who communicated with CPJ via email. On March 16, 2022, the Court of Appeals in Northeast Iceland refused Kjartansson’s appeal to drop the investigation, according to the journalist and statements by the police and the court. “Iceland police must ensure that criminal complaints are not used to stifle journalists’ work or to retaliate against their coverage”...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates

Russian authorities harass, detain journalists with independent news outlet Sota.Vision... ‘We expect anything’: A Russian union leader vows to keep helping journalists facing state repression... Map: Journalists killed in Russia-Ukraine war...

Political reporter Altan Sancar threatened at gunpoint in Turkey

On Wednesday around 12:30 a.m., Sancar, a reporter for independent news website Diken and independent online radio Özgürüz Radyo, was driving alone in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on the road to the Eğil district to visit family, when he stopped because another car was blocking the road, according to news reports and Sancar, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app. Two unidentified men got out of the car and one approached Sancar, who remained in his vehicle, and showed the journalist the handle of a gun tucked in his pants by lifting his jacket up, according to those sources. The man implied Sancar was in dangerous territory and said the journalist should be “smart,” before he and the other man returned to car and drove away...

All the above from CPJ, plus:

Uproar over attack on journalists at ODM headquarters (Nation)

There was public outrage over the brutal attack of two journalists at the ODM headquarters as they were covering a press conference presided over by party leader Raila Odinga Thursday. The industry regulator, journalism unions and political figures forged a unity of purpose and expressed their shock at the incident, with many condemning the manner in which ODM handled it. The Media Council of Kenya called on the police to arrest the suspects who attacked Mr Moses Nyamori of The Standard and Mr Luke Awich of The Star while covering an event at Orange House. They were singled out after stories published under their bylines on March 17 attracted verbal attacks and threats from party officials... “Profiling of journalists by leaders and supporters of political parties goes against Article 34 and 35 of the Constitution on the freedom of media and access to information”...

https://www.mediaite.com/print/chris-wallace-says-working-at-fox-news-was-unsust...

Chris Wallace Says Working at Fox News Was ‘Unsustainable’ After 2020 Election: I ‘No Longer Felt Comfortable’ With Fox News Programming

.....“I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” he continued, “but when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was January 6 an insurrection? I found that unsustainable. I spent a lot of 2021 looking to see if there was a different place for me to do my job.”.....

***
Chris prefers to continue using the moral compass he has been using throughout his professional life. Murdoch's promised millions did not lead Chris to cross-pollinate fact and fiction.

Sudan Elects First Preparatory Committee for Journalists Syndicate in Three Decades (Asharq al-Awsat)

Sudanese journalists elected on Saturday the first Preparatory Committee in three decades to pave the way for the establishment of the Journalists Syndicate. The last legitimate syndicate in the country was dissolved after ousted President Omar al-Bashir seized power in a military coup in June 1989. More than 600 journalists working in newspapers, international and local television channels and radio stations, as well as official agencies and photographers took part in the meeting held by the constituent General Assembly. The elected committee consists of 15 members, who managed to win the majority of votes in a smooth electoral process, which was monitored by union experts and representatives from the preliminary committees of doctors, lawyers and engineers syndicates. Following the December 2019 revolution, the media was divided into three bodies before journalists presented an initiative to unify the press entities by establishing an assembly that allows the participation of all Sudanese journalists in the country and abroad. Male and female journalists, representing different generations and ages in all visual, audio and print media, participated in the general assembly to establish their professional union, including members of the former syndicate...

Guatemalan journalist Orlando Villanueva shot dead in Puerto Barrios

On the afternoon of March 8, an unknown number of unidentified individuals shot and killed Villanueva in a public sports facility in Puerto Barrios, the capital of the Izabal department in eastern Guatemala, according to independent news website Soy502. Villanueva was the owner of and a reporter for Noticias del Puerto, a website and Facebook page that reports on local news and politics in Puerto Barrios, according to independent news website Prensa Comunitaria. Journalists in Izabal have faced harassment from security forces and been criminally prosecuted in connection to their reporting on demonstrations and environmental issues...

British journalist Martin Banks detained and questioned by UK border police, equipment confiscated

On February 26, U.K. border police at the Eurotunnel train terminal in Calais, France, detained Banks for about six hours as he tried to enter the U.K. with his family, confiscated his reporting equipment, and questioned him about his work, according to news reports first published last week and the journalist, who communicated with CPJ via email. The officers asked Banks, a U.K. citizen and senior reporter for Parliament Magazine, a monthly that covers the European Union, whether he had covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and also asked about articles he published in 2021 that were critical of EU, U.K., and Belgian authorities’ COVID-19 vaccination policies, he told CPJ, saying they also asked how he thought his reporting might influence policymakers. The police then seized Banks’ U.K. and Belgian phones, his computer, five DVDs containing family photos, and a camera memory card, and forced him to turn over passwords for his devices, according to the journalist and a complaint he filed with British authorities, which CPJ reviewed. The officers told Banks that they were authorized to detain him under Schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, but did not give any exact reason for the stop...

The UK police detain a well known British journalist under terrorism legislation? Appalling.

Nicaraguan publisher Juan Lorenzo Holmann convicted on money laundering charges

On Wednesday, March 23, at the end of a three-day closed-door trial, a judge in a Managua court found Holmann, the publisher of Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, guilty of money laundering, according to La Prensa and other news reports. Holmann maintained his innocence throughout the trial...

Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta suspends publication following official warning

In response to an announcement Monday that the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta would suspend publication after receiving a warning from the country’s media regulator, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement of concern: “In their attempt to quash all independent coverage of the war in Ukraine, Russian authorities have closed down or otherwise silenced independent media outlets, and have forced journalists to flee from prosecution. Novaya Gazeta has been one of the last bastions of Russia’s free press”...

All the above from CPJ, plus two from the Guardian below:

Will Zelenskiy’s interview with Russian media make a difference in war?

Volodymyr Zelenskiy gave an interview to five prominent Russian journalists in which the Ukrainian president discussed the Russian invasion and Kyiv’s conditions for a peace deal. The Russian journalists mostly came from media outlets openly critical of the war: Novaya Gazeta’s Dmitry Muratov, TV Rain’s Tikhon Dzyadko, the author Mikhail Zygar, Meduza’s Ivan Kolpakov and Kommersant’s Vladimir Solovyov. Not all of them could publish the remarks. Both Novaya Gazeta and Kommersant complied with the Russian censor’s ban on publishing the remarks, while most of the other outlets have been banned in Russia. The easiest way for Russians to see what Zelenskiy said is on social media. More than 112,000 people have watched the interview in Russian on Zygar’s YouTube page and some quotes have been shared on Telegram. Russians need a VPN to read websites like TV Rain or Meduza...

Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta to close until end of Ukraine war

Independent newspaper says it is halting operations after it receives second warning from state censor...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

At least 2 Ukrainian journalists injured by Russian shelling; 1 journalist held in Donetsk; Russian journalist Gleb Sokolov briefly detained while covering 1-man protest in Moscow; Serbian journalist Miljko Stojanovic threatened over interview with Ukrainian refugee

Tributes paid at funeral to ‘inspirational’ Irish journalist killed in Ukraine (Guardian)

An Irish journalist killed alongside a Ukrainian colleague when their Fox News team came under fire near Kyiv paid “a terrible price” for his love of “truth telling”, the congregation at his funeral mass has heard. Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, a cameraman and Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, 24, died in gunfire earlier this month in Horenka, on the north-west outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. The British correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured in the attack...

Still struggling with that high horse...

YouTube Deletes Entire Archive of Chris Hedges’s RT Show “On Contact”

YouTube has deleted the entire archive of “On Contact,” an Emmy-nominated television show hosted by Chris Hedges. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist hosted the show for six years on RT America, a news channel funded by the Russian government that recently closed down. In a new article, Hedges writes, “If this happens to me, it can happen to you, to any critic anywhere who challenges the dominant narrative.”

ETA: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/29/digitally-disappeared-youtube-has-...

Indian journalist prevented from flying to Europe to speak about intimidation (Guardian)

A prominent Indian journalist has been prevented from flying to Europe to speak about intimidation of journalists and rights in the world’s largest democracy. Rana Ayyub, an outspoken critic of the government of Narendra Modi and columnist for the Washington Post, was not allowed to board a flight at Mumbai airport on Tuesday. She had been due to travel to London to address a conference at the International Centre for Journalists...

Media in Russia: How do Russians get news about the war in Ukraine? (BBC)

The situation in Russia's media is unprecedented. Restrictions on reporting are increasingly severe, and access to almost all independent outlets is blocked or limited - or they censor themselves. Despite this, it is still possible to obtain uncensored information in Russia...

Russian journalist Rodion Severyanov shot and wounded in Ukraine (CPJ)

On Tuesday, March 29, Rodion Severyanov, a war correspondent for the Russian broadcaster Izvestiya TV, was shot in the leg and wounded in the southeast Ukrainian city of Mariupol... Severyanov was covering activity by Russian forces and their pro-Russian allies in Ukraine when one of those soldiers was injured; he was shot when he paused reporting to help that soldier...

CPJ joins statement welcoming Council of Europe action against abusive lawsuits (CPJ)

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined other civil society groups and press freedom organizations in a joint statement on Wednesday welcoming recent steps by the Council of Europe to limit abusive lawsuits aimed at restricting public speech. A Committee of Experts with legal and media freedom backgrounds is set to draft a Recommendation for the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to address strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs...

Ukrainian journalist Konstantin Ryzhenko missing in Kherson (CPJ)

On Wednesday, March 30, Russian soldiers searched in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson for Ryzhenko, and his family lost contact with him that day...

Turkish lawmakers propose up to 3 years in prison for ‘hurting the reputation’ of a private company (CPJ)

On March 26, members of parliament with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) proposed a number of amendments to the country’s real estate, finance, and tax laws; one of those amendments would impose prison terms of up to three years for the publication of “false news” that intentionally harms a private company’s income or reputation, according to reports. Those convicted could face one to three years in prison along with fines to be set by a judge, according to those reports. As of Thursday, members of parliament were continuing to debate the amendments, according to the legislature’s website. “Turkish authorities should ensure that steps taken to make the country more attractive for foreign investment do not come at the expense of journalists’ freedom to report on economic issues”...

Ukrainian photographer Maksim Levin killed while covering war (Guardian)

Maksim Levin, a photographer and videographer who was working for a Ukrainian news website and who was a longtime contributor to Reuters, has been killed while covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He leaves behind his wife and four children. His body was found in a village north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on 1 April, the news website LB.ua, where he worked, said on Saturday... The prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine said Levin was “killed by servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces with two shots from small arms”. This could not be independently verified...

Hungary: where editors tell reporters to disregard facts before their eyes (Guardian)

With elections imminent, some say independent media is in a weaker state than in communist 1980s...

‘They said they’d mutilate and kill me,’ says kidnapped Ukrainian journalist (Guardian)

Russian soldiers tortured Oleh Baturin and threatened to harm his family. Now released, he talks about his terrifying eight-day ordeal...

Guatemalan journalist Carlos Choc faces criminal charges after covering protest (CPJ)

On January 14, a criminal court judge in Puerto Barrios, in the eastern Guatemalan department of Izabal, issued an arrest warrant for Choc based on a complaint from 13 police officers who accused the journalist of “instigation to commit a crime” after he reported on an October 2021 demonstration against mining activities in El Estor, Izabal...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

CPJ ‘deeply saddened’ by death of Ukrainian photojournalist Maks Levin; Lithuanian documentarian Mantas Kvedaravičius killed in Ukraine; Russian soldiers detain journalist Oleksandr Gunko in southeastern Ukraine

Hungarian journalists fear Orbán will use election win to tighten grip on independent media (CPJ)

As Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán celebrated his landslide election win on Sunday with jubilant jibes at the European Union’s “bureaucrats in Brussels” and international media, the country’s independent journalists braced themselves for an even harsher media climate during his Fidesz party’s unprecedented fourth consecutive term in office. Orbán has systematically eroded Hungary’s independent media space since taking office...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khilyuk held by Russian forces since early March; Russian prosecutor requests harsh sentences for editors of student-run magazine DOXA

UK’s freedom of information laws are being undermined, warn journalists (Guardian)

More than 100 journalists, politicians and campaigners have signed an open letter warning that the UK’s freedom of information (FoI) laws are being undermined by a lack of resources and government departments obstructing lawful requests...

El Salvador press cries censorship as anti-gang law targets media (Guardian)

El Salvador’s congress has authorised prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from gangs, prompting accusations of censorship from press freedom groups...

Sudan’s Media Under Fire Over Coup Coverage (VOA)

When Sudan’s military ousted the country’s civilian government in October it quickly set its sights on the media. Authorities shuttered at least 36 radio stations in the first two weeks following the coup over their reporting on protests against the Sudanese junta... But months of protest and unrest were marked by an uptick in media harassment and attacks. Between October 2021 and March 2022, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented 55 violations against media. The Geneva-based rights group recorded arbitrary detention, harassment, raids and shutdowns of media organizations, and physical and psychological assaults...

Julia Ioffe (Puck News) @juliaioffe | 1:32 PM · Apr 7, 2022
The scene of the train car where Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dmitry Muratov, editor of Novaya Gazeta, was apparently attacked with red paint (apparently laced w acetone) in Russia. Apparently, his eye sight may have been damaged.

Quote Tweet
Kirill Martynov kmartynov · 29m
Editor-in-chief Novaya Gazeta Europe / co-founder in Free Moscow
Photo of paint-splashed train car ( https://twitter.com/kmartynov/status/1512119796455911426/photo/1 )

Michelle Celarier (journalist) @mcelarier | 1:43 PM · Apr 7, 2022
Six journalists that worked for him have been murdered.
____________________________________________

What did Dmitry Muratov (Peace Prize winner 2021) do?

Dmitry Muratov started out as a journalist for Soviet newspapers. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, he and other journalists co-founded the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which soon became a leading advocate for democracy and freedom of expression in Russia.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/muratov/facts/

Meanwhile on French state TV:

Georgia convicts 26 people over 2021 attack on journalists by anti-LGBT protesters (CPJ)

On July 5, 2021, hundreds of anti-LGBT protesters attacked more than 50 journalists covering a pride march in Tbilisi, the capital, as CPJ documented. On Monday, April 4, the Tbilisi City Court convicted six people on charges including violent interference in journalistic activities and participating in organized group violence that caused harm over their attacks on TV Pirveli camera operator Aleksandre Lashkarava and his colleague Miranda Baghaturia...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov attacked with paint; Russian forces release Ukrainian journalist Oleksandr Gunko

Turkey to send case against Khashoggi’s alleged killers to Saudi Arabia (Guardian)

A Turkish court has confirmed a request from prosecutors to transfer the case against the alleged assassins of Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, shutting down a trial that had been a centrepiece of attempts to cast light on the plot and expose the hit squad’s ultimate leader. The move ends any meaningful hope of securing justice and paves the way for a political reset between the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler whose security aides were on trial in Istanbul and who is widely believed to have ordered the murder...

Khashoggi: Anger as Turkish court halts murder trial (BBC)

The trial in Turkey of 26 Saudi nationals accused over the notorious murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018 has been halted. A judge said the case would now be handed over to Saudi Arabia, which had refused to extradite the suspects. Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said she would fight on. The Washington Post journalist was killed inside the Saudi consulate after being lured there. His murder by Saudi agents sparked worldwide outrage...

Romanian investigative journalist Emilia Șercan targeted by smear campaign

Since January 18, when Șercan published an article alleging that Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă plagiarized his doctoral dissertation, she has been the target of harassment and smears campaign, according to Șercan, who spoke with CPJ by phone and email, a detailed account written by Șercan for her outlet, independent news website PressOne; and local reports. Șercan received a series of threatening email and social media messages and several intimate photos of her were shared on various adult and news websites. Șercan believes the actions are part of a broader campaign in retaliation for her reporting...

Belarusian journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva facing up to 15 years in prison on treason charges

On Wednesday, April 7, Andreyeva’s husband Ihar Ilyash announced on Facebook that his wife, a correspondent with Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV, had been charged with state treason following an investigation “conducted in complete secrecy.” That charge was also reported by the banned Belarusian human rights group Viasna. Ilyash wrote that authorities had not disclosed any information about the charge, and said a trial would likely begin in May behind closed doors. If convicted under Part 1, Article 356 of the Belarusian Criminal Code, Andreyeva could face up to 15 years in prison. Authorities have held Andreyeva since November 2020, when she was detained along with her colleague, camera operator Daria Chultsova, while covering a rally calling for President Aleksandr Lukashenko to resign; in February 2021 she was sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly organizing an illegal protest. She is being held in Jail No. 3 in the southeastern city of Homel...

Guatemalan journalist Juan Luis Font leaves the country after former official accuses him of ‘unlawful association’

In late March 2022, the country’s former communications minister Alejandro Sinibaldi brought a criminal case against Font, director of the news radio show Con Criterio, alleging that Font had unlawfully associated with former anti-corruption judge Erika Aifán and Font’s lawyer Carlos Paz, the journalist told CPJ via phone. If convicted, he faces between six and eight years in prison, according to the law...

All the above from CPJ.

Russian Nobel-winning editor says he was attacked with red paint (Guardian)

The Nobel peace prize-winning editor of the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta has said he was attacked on a train in Russia over Moscow’s war in Ukraine by an assailant who poured red paint on him. Dmitry Muratov said in a post to Telegram the incident happened on Thursday on a train heading from Moscow south-east to the city of Samara when the assailant shouted: “Muratov, here’s one for our boys.” He said his eyes were “burning terribly” after the assault and posted a selfie from the train toilet. Novaya Gazeta was one of the last major independent media outlets critical of Vladimir Putin’s government after others either shut or had their websites blocked following the invasion of Ukraine, but announced on 28 March it was suspending operations for the duration of the war after it received a second warning from the state censor, Roskomnadzor...

Prominent Hong Kong journalist Allan Au reportedly held on sedition charge (Guardian)

A veteran Hong Kong journalist has been arrested by national security police for allegedly conspiring to publish “seditious materials”, a police source and local media said, in the latest blow against press freedom. Allan Au, a 54-year-old reporter and journalism lecturer, was arrested in a dawn raid on Monday by Hong Kong’s national security police unit, multiple local media outlets reported. A senior police source confirmed Au’s arrest on a charge of “conspiracy to publish seditious materials”. Police have yet to release an official statement...

Russian journalists labeled as ‘foreign agents,’ detained, and attacked while reporting

On Friday, April 8, the Russian Ministry of Justice labeled three journalists—independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta correspondent Iryna Borukhovich; Ekaterina Mayakovskaya, a reporter for the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russia project Idel.Realii; and Andrei Filimonov, a contributor to another of RFE/RL’s Russia projects, Sibir.Realii—as “media foreign agents”...

Dozens raid Turkish TV broadcaster Deniz Postası, beat journalist Azim Deniz

On Saturday, April 9, a group of about 50 people raided the office and studio of the privately owned TV broadcaster Deniz Postası in the central city of Kayseri, and attacked Deniz, a host at the station, according to news reports and Deniz, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. The attackers locked the door to the outlet’s newsroom, trapping journalists inside, and proceeded to the station’s studio where they punched and beat local businessman and politician Sedat Kılınç, Deniz’s guest on his show, according to those sources. Deniz said he tried to intervene and protect his guest, and the people then punched him in his face and on his head...

Cuban independent journalist Alberto Corzo assaulted after encounter with state security agents

On April 1, at approximately 10 a.m., two agents from the Department of State Security, commonly referred to as the political police, stopped Corzo in the street in the Colón municipality in the western Matanzas province, and demanded to know where he was headed and what he was doing, Corzo said in a video statement published by the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and of the Press (ICLEP), a press freedom organization which also publishes and distributes seven community newspapers in Cuba. Corzo is ICLEP’s executive director and was on his way to a reporting assignment, according to Normando Hernández, ICLEP’s general manager, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Corzo refused to answer the agents’ questions and got into a taxi and drove away, when he noticed that two men on motorcycles were following him. As soon as Corzo got out of the car, the two unidentified men dressed as civilians approached Corzo, repeatedly punched and kicked him, and left him lying on the ground, according to an ICLEP report and news reports. The men did not exchange any words with Corzo, nor take any of his possessions, according to the same sources...

All the above from CPJ, plus:

Burhan sacks Sudan’s Radio-TV Corporation director (Sudan Tribune)

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan head of the Sovereign Council on Sunday fired the Director of Sudan Radio and TV Corporation Lugman Mohamed Ahmed. Al-Burhan also reappointed Ibrahim Mohammed Ibrahim al-Burai to his position. After the coup d’état and the dissolution of the government, the commander in chief of the Sudanese army removed Mohamed Ahmed, who had been appointed by Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok. After, Hamdok’s reinstation, Ahmed regained his position again last December. Informed Sources told Sudan Tribune that the removal might be triggered by the invitation of some representatives of the Resistance Committees in a talk show he presents personally. In addition, he rejected an attempt by the Military Media Department to intervene in the management of the corporation and its programmes...

Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis targeted by Predator spyware (CPJ)

From July 12 to September 24, 2021, Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor for local and international outlets including The Financial Times and CNBC, had his cellphone surveilled by Predator, according to news reports and Koukakis, who disclosed the hacking on Monday, April 11, and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Koukakis, who covers financial news, said he was notified about the surveillance by the digital rights group Citizen Lab in late March. Around the time of the surveillance, he covered topics including alleged money laundering and corruption...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

Russian court sentences 4 student journalists to 2 years of correctional labor, Russian forces release Ukrainian journalist Iryna Dubchenko

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

After Russian withdrawal, Ukrainian journalists found killed in Bucha and Yahidne; Tech companies must ‘wake up’ to their role in Ukraine war disinformation

Russian student journalists sentenced to labour over freedom of assembly video (Guardian)

In ‘absurd, made-up case’, four ex-Doxa journalists handed two-year sentences over video defending right of students to demonstrate...

Siberian news outlets, management charged for disseminating ‘fakes’ about Russian army (CPJ)

On Wednesday, April 13, law enforcement in Gorno-Altaysk, the capital of Altai republic in southern Siberia, searched the editorial office of Listok, an independent local newspaper, as well as the homes of an unknown number of its employees, and seized their phones and other technical equipment, according to media reports. On the same day, police detained the outlet’s publisher, Sergey Mikhaylov, in Lyubertsy, a city in the Moscow region, for allegedly spreading “fakes” about the Russian military, and forcibly transported him by plane to Gorno-Altaysk...

Russia: journalist arrested for ‘fake news’ about armed forces (Guardian)

Criminal case opened against website editor who alleged that 11 riot police had refused deployment to Ukraine...

Hot mic catches Sudan lawyer’s racist tirade against director on trial (Radio Dabanga)

Two defence lawyers were caught on a hot mic saying racist comments against the recently dismissed Director General of the Public Authority for Radio and Television, Luqman Ahmed, during a live broadcast of his trial on Sudan’s official news agency (SUNA), who later took down the video. The hot mic caught the two defence lawyers during an intermission in the trail, describing the former director as a ‘slave’ and having ‘a big nose’... The head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, dismissed the director from his post on 10 April. According to El Burhan’s media advisor, the director was dismissed due to his decision to show coverage of the anti-coup protests and “ignoring Burhan’s news”...

Belarusian journalist Aksana Kolb arrested, no charges disclosed (CPJ)

On Wednesday, April 20, law enforcement officers arrested {Aksana} Kolb, editor of the independent weekly Novy Chas, in Minsk, the capital, and ordered her to be held for up to 10 days... Kolb’s employer believes she is being held at the Akrestsin Detention Center in Minsk but had not received any official notice, and authorities have not disclosed any reason for her arrest...

Turkish journalist İbrahim Haskoloğlu arrested over coverage of alleged hacking (CPJ)

On the night of Monday, April 18, police in Istanbul arrested Haskoloğlu, a freelance journalist, for allegedly “illegally obtaining and spreading personal information,” according to multiple news reports. Authorities placed Haskoloğlu in pretrial detention on Tuesday, according to those reports, which said a court date had not been set for his case. The journalist was detained in response to a complaint filed by the Turkish Interior Ministry over a Twitter thread he published on April 12 in which he claimed to be in touch with hackers who had allegedly accessed government documents connected to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Intelligence Chief Hakan Fidan, and other Turkish citizens. “Turkish authorities should be more concerned with the alleged hacking of government databases than the journalists who are covering it”...

UK court approves extradition of Julian Assange to US (Guardian)

A court has formally approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the US on espionage charges, in what will ultimately be a decision for the UK home secretary, Priti Patel...

Kyrgyzstan authorities file new charges against journalist Bolot Temirov (CPJ)

On Tuesday, April 19, police investigators in Bishkek, the capital, summoned Temirov and charged him with allegedly forging documents and illegally crossing the country’s border, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Temirov, founder of the YouTube-based investigative outlet Temirov Live, told CPJ that he denied the charges, and said he believed they were retaliation for a video he published on April 18 about corruption allegations involving the family of the head of Kyrgyzstan’s security services. Previously, in January, police charged Temirov with drug possession after a raid on his office, as CPJ documented at the time. The journalist told CPJ that the police had planted drugs on him during that raid...

Ukraine war: How Russia replaces Ukrainian media with its own (BBC)

Serhiy Starushko and his journalist colleagues had just finished their morning editorial meeting in early March when Russian military vehicles drew up outside. Within minutes, soldiers stormed through the front doors of the three-storey building, home to a local news station in the occupied Ukrainian port city of Berdyansk. About 50 employees were held hostage for five hours. They had become victims of the real-world fight to control the flow of information. Russian forces are occupying towns, threatening journalists and demanding they spread pro-Kremlin views. Those who refuse are forced to close down their operations. The strategy to replace Ukrainian media with pro-Kremlin press coverage includes capturing transmitter towers and switching off access to national Ukrainian news programmes in areas controlled by Russian forces. Instead, signals for pro-Russian broadcasts are switched on...

Serbian broadcaster N1TV and newspaper Danas receive death threats (CPJ)

On April 18, the independent broadcaster N1TV received an anonymous email threatening that the outlet’s employees would be “slaughtered,” according to news reports, a report by the outlet, and N1TV news director Igor Božić, who communicated with CPJ via email. Separately, on April 22, employees of the independent daily Danas received a number of death threats via email, messaging app, and comments on their social media pages from both anonymous and named accounts, according to news reports and Bojan Cvejić, editor-in-chief of the outlet’s website, who communicated with CPJ via email. Both outlets filed complaints to authorities, according to Božić and Cvejić, who said that as of Monday, the Belgrade prosecutor’s office confirmed that it had opened an investigation into the message sent to N1TV...

Free media in Hong Kong almost completely dismantled – report (Guardian)

Free media in Hong Kong has been almost completely dismantled by the government crackdown, clearing the market for an expanded pro-Beijing and state-owned media sector, a new report has said... The working environment for local and foreign journalists in Hong Kong has become increasingly difficult, the report said, detailing the widespread use of “lawfare” against journalists – including with the national security law – acts of intimidation and police violence, mass sackings, and government intervention or censorship of outlets. It noted the redefinition by police of who constituted a journalist, the pending introduction of a fake news law, and the criminalising of traditional research methods...

Kara-Murza, Post contributor, charged in Russia for ‘false’ information
The dissident writer, who called Putin’s government “a regime of murderers,” faces (up to 15 yrs) prison under a Russian law that attempts to control speech
Paul Farhi | April 22, 2022

...Kara-Murza was arrested last week after giving an interview to CNN in which he predicted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to Putin’s downfall. “It’s not just corrupt, it’s not just kleptocratic, it’s not just authoritarian,” he said of the Putin government. “It is a regime of murderers. It is important to say it out loud.”

Kara-Murza is a prominent opposition leader and Russian intellectual who has written dozens of columns for The Post critical of Putin’s regime. He has been poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017, in incidents he has characterized as attempts to silence him for urging Western countries to impose sanctions against Russian officials suspected of human-rights violations.

He has maintained his defiance even while in jail. In a column published by The Post last week during his 15-day sentence, he wrote, “There will be a dawn” in Russia. “Russia will be free. I’ve never been so sure of it as I am today.”

...In a statement on Friday, Post publisher Fred Ryan said Kara-Murza has “repeatedly risked his safety to tell the truth about Vladimir Putin’s heinous violations of human rights” and said the charges against him were for a “sham offense.”

He added, “Americans should be infuriated by Putin’s escalating campaign to silence Kara-Murza. … And everyone who values press freedom and human rights should be enraged by this injustice and join in demanding Kara-Murza’s immediate release.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/04/22/kara-murza-charged-russia-speech...

Before the Moskva, there was the Kursk: The sunken submarine that helped Putin consolidate power over Russia
Alexander Nazaryan | April 26, 2022

...On August 10 (2000), the Russian navy commenced exercises in the Barents Sea, a body of water south of the Arctic Ocean. The exercises, called Summer-X, involved more than 30 craft, including four submarines and the flagship of the storied Northern Fleet, Pyotr Velkhi (Peter the Great). Western intelligence services watched Summer-X with “high anticipation,” journalist Ramsey Flynn wrote, as “a key test of an emerging do-more-with-less defense philosophy of Russia’s little-known new leader.”

The Kursk went down shortly before noon on Aug. 12, likely because of a hydrogen peroxide leak during the launch of a test torpedo that caused a pair of explosions. After the second, much larger explosion, it came to rest in about 350 feet of water.

Western intelligence services had picked up strange seismic activity that they realized was something gone wrong in the Summer-X exercises. They quickly reached out to their Russian counterparts, only to be rebuffed. The Northern Fleet’s confidence was deeply misguided. “The Russians did not have the ability to reach the sub to conduct any type of rescue/extraction operations,” a subsequent U.S. intelligence report concluded. That same report said it took the Northern Fleet three-and-a-half hours to realize that something had happened to the Kursk.

...It would take days for Russian authorities to admit that the submarine had sunk, and that virtually nothing was known about any survivors, in large part because initial Russian rescue attempts had been so hapless.

... grief and rage scored Russian media.

...Putin recognized that more than military incompetence or public anger, it was negative coverage that could doom his young presidency. “President Putin learned to appreciate the media’s power to shape public opinion and that the stinging criticism he received could only be checked by controlling the press,” military scholar Zoltan Barany has written.

By the time Putin arrived at the Kursk base on the remote Kola Peninsula, on August 20, it had already been more than a week since the Kursk sank. He didn’t have any new explanations, but he did have a new story — and new scapegoats.

“One witness at the closed meeting said Mr. Putin referred three times to the media’s treatment of the crisis, and raged at tycoons who had allegedly robbed the nation and were now manipulating public opinion,” went one report from the town hall, which was closed to the press but made the newspapers anyway.

“The government had not been guilty of deceit and incompetence during the crisis, Mr. Putin told the families. The media had created such an impression.”

Later, Putin preposterously fumed that the grieving mothers he encountered were actually local prostitutes hired by the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who had been close to Yeltsin and who ran the immensely influential ORT television network. Berezovsky was one of the two oligarchs Putin blamed for how the Kursk was covered. The other was Vladimir Gusinsky, who ran the Media-Most empire.

“They stole money, they bought the media and they’re manipulating public opinion,” Putin said of the two oligarchs, in a message intended less for the grieving families than for the power elites hundreds of miles away in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Many of the other oligarchs were also Jews; they had suddenly come to power in a country with a long history of antisemitism.

Some had an obvious interest in politics, like industrialist Mikhail Khodorkovsky; others only in media or industry. Their backgrounds or ambitions notwithstanding, they represented the excesses and possibilities of the Yeltsin era. That era was now coming to an end.

Probably the single most arresting episode from the entire Kursk crisis was that of a grieving mother shouting at officials who kept offering explanations, apologies and assurances, each more obfuscatory than the next. “This is a disgrace!” the mother can be seen and heard shouting in surreptitiously recorded video, her cries overflowing with pain. As she continues to berate the Moscow minister before her, a woman approaches from behind, plunging a syringe full of sedatives into the mother’s back.

“The incident was broadcast extensively yesterday, to the acute embarrassment of President Vladimir Putin's government,” a Guardian report noted.

...Putin moved quickly to reverse the freedoms of the Yeltsin years, which threatened to topple his embattled administration. Accountability and frankness could only take him so far.

“A recurrence of self-censorship among Russian journalists is proving to be perhaps the most destructive consequence of the events of the past 12 months, and one that will be extremely difficult to overcome,” warned two Russia observers in a New York Times op-ed in January 2002.

Two years later, the assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya marked a dangerous new era for anyone in Russia who sought to expose the truth...

Khodorkovsky, the outspoken oligarch, went to prison in 2005 on fabricated charges of financial malfeasance. Trying to expose the Kremlin’s own corruption, the tax attorney Sergei Magnitsky died after being abused in prison, where he’d be sent on charges as fictitious as those that had been used to convict Khodorkovsky.

By the time Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, his control of the media was almost complete, feeding the Kremlin’s grievances and illusions to millions. And as Russia amassed troops on the Ukrainian border in 2021, Admiral Popov, now retired, resurfaced to claim that the Kursk had in fact been sunk by a NATO craft.

That wasn’t true, and Russian authorities had always known as much. In fact, back in 2001, they had been frank — however fleetingly — in their assessment of their own official incompetence. But in 2022, things were different: There was no one around to correct the lie...

https://news.yahoo.com/before-the-moskva-there-was-the-kursk-the-sunken-submarin...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates

Russia charges journalists with disseminating ‘fakes’ about the military; reporter Maria Ponomarenko detained...

Protesters repeatedly surround home of Peruvian journalist Ketty Vela, throw rocks and shout insults over coverage (CPJ)

On April 21 and 23, groups of about 50 people surrounded the journalist’s home in the northern town of Tocache, shouted insults at Vela, who hosts and produces news programs on the local independent broadcasters Radio San Juan and TV Cable, and threw rocks at her house, according to Vela, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and a report by the Lima-based press group IPYS. The protesters called Vela a “sellout” over her interviews with supporters of a local water use project, as well as her on-air comments urging protesters against that project to refrain from violence after some had damaged storefronts in Tocache, she told CPJ...

Francis Scarr (BBC Monitoring) @francis_scarr | 9:57 AM · Apr 27, 2022:
CNN's @clarissaward must be doing something right in Ukraine if Russian state TV is doing hatchet jobs on her (with subs)
0:51 ( https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1519314700688834562 )

Russian strike on Kyiv kills reporter Vira Hyrych (BBC)

A journalist working for Radio Liberty in Ukraine was killed in Russian rocket strikes on Kyiv on Thursday evening, the station has confirmed. Vira Hyrych was at home when a rocket hit the residential building where she lived in the capital, it says. Her body was pulled from the wreckage on Friday...

Trevor Noah gets serious at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, remarking on what a ‘blessing’ it is in the U.S. to be able to ‘seek the truth and speak the truth’

1:46 ( https://twitter.com/birbigs/status/1520626883616030720 )

Pope pays tribute to killed journalists, defends freedom of press
Philip Pullella | May 1, 2022

...Speaking to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly address and blessing, Francis noted that May 3 will be the United Nations World Press Freedom Day.

“I render homage to journalists who pay in person for this right,” he said, citing statistics that 47 journalists were killed and more than 350 jailed last year..."A special thanks to those who, with courage, keep us informed about humanity’s wounds,” the pope said.

Last month Francis honoured journalists killed covering the Russia-Ukraine war, saying he hoped God would reward them for serving the common good. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says it has confirmed that at least seven journalists have died while covering the war in Ukraine and is investigating whether others were killed because of their work. Reporters Without Borders, which is based in Paris, says it has documented a number of attacks directly targeting journalists wearing “Press” arm bands in Ukraine.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8801099/pope-vatican-freedom-of-press-journalists/

Lyra McKee’s sister says Sinn Féin letter leak exploits her murder for politics (Guardian)

The sister of Lyra McKee has called the timing of a leaked letter, reportedly from Sinn Féin, to a group accused of having links to the dissident republican group allegedly behind the journalist’s murder, “exploitative of the tragedy for political purposes”. The two-year-old letter, from Sinn Féin’s Declan Kearney, reportedly referenced a potential “cooperation agreement” between Saoradh and Sinn Féin over achieving a border poll. It was an attempt to “work towards unity and changing the constitutional position, but only by consent, only by the public working together” according to Sinn Féin’s vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, as she confirmed Kearney had written a letter to Saoradh...

Biden will meet with parents of US journalist abducted in Syria 10 years ago (Guardian)

Joe Biden said he was meeting Monday with the parents of American journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted in Syria 10 years ago. The meeting with Marc and Debra Tice was expected to take place at the White House. Debra Tice was introduced in front of all those gathered last Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner, in Washington DC, where she was in attendance and where the US president paid tribute in his remarks to journalists who are missing or detained, as well as those killed covering conflict...

Serbian journalist Dinko Gruhonjić receives death threats online (CPJ)

On April 25, a Facebook user named “Ante Pavlovic” sent a number of threatening messages to Gruhonjić, deputy editor-in-chief of the Autonomija news website and a freelance contributor to other regional outlets, according to news reports and the journalist, who communicated with CPJ via email and shared screenshots of the threats. In the messages, Pavlovic called Gruhonjić a “traitor” and threatened to kill and sexually assault the journalist, his wife, and his children. Pavlovic also repeatedly called Gruhonjić, but the journalist said he did not answer...

Journalist Iryna Danilovich missing in Crimea, unidentified men search family’s home (CPJ)

On the morning of April 29, Danilovich failed to return home from her work at a medical center in the village of Vladyslavivka, in Russian-occupied Crimea, according to her father, Bronislav Danilovich, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview, and a report by the Ukrainian human rights organization Zmina. At about 10 a.m., six men arrived at the home Danilovich shares with her parents in Vladyslavivka, searched it and confiscated the family’s laptops and phones, and told her parents that she had been placed under detention for 10 days for allegedly sending information to a foreign country, according to those sources...

Ninth journalist killed in Mexico this year as violence against media soars (Guardian)

Murder of veteran Luis Enrique Ramírez – found in bag beside road – brings estimated death toll of journalists in president’s term to 34...

Armenian law enforcement obstruct journalists covering protest in Yerevan (CPJ)

On Monday, May 2, at a protest in the capital, Yerevan, against the country’s policy concerning the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, security officers punched David Fidanyan, a reporter with the news website AntiFake, in the shoulder and tried to push him away as he covered police arresting and beating protesters, according to news reports, a statement by several local media groups, and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Fidanyan said that police officers in black masks repeatedly shoved him while he covered the protests, although he clearly displayed his press card. He said they also shoved AntiFake camera operator Ishkhan Khosrovyan and attempted to detain him, but agreed not to arrest him when other journalists intervened. Also at that protest, Nare Gevorgyan, a reporter with the local news website MediaHub, approached Sargis Hovhannisyan, head of the country’s State Protection Service security agency, and asked about the police crackdown, according to those news reports, Gevorgyan, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and video of the incident published by MediaHub. Hovhannisyan knocked Gevorgyan’s microphone away, and a State Protection Service officer obstructed MediaHub camera operator Arman Gharajyan, demanded he turn over his camera, and then hit the device; the pair refused, and Hovhannisyan kicked Gharajyan in the leg, according to those sources...

Reporting Under Attack in South Sudan, Sudan (Voice of America)

Journalists in both Sudan and South Sudan say threats, intimidation and arbitrary arrests are part of everyday life, limiting their ability to inform the public. South Sudan ranks 128th and Sudan ranks 151st out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ annual World Press Freedom Index, released Tuesday to coincide with the United Nations’ annual recognition of World Press Freedom Day. The bigger the number, the worse the environment for news media. Irene Ayaa of the Association for Media Development in South Sudan says government censorship in her country is widespread...

Gunfire at Chilean workers’ demonstration injures 3 journalists; 1 in critical condition (CPJ)

On Sunday, May 1, gunmen opened fire during a Workers’ Day demonstration in the Barrio Meiggs area of Santiago, the capital, as well as during looting that followed the demonstration, injuring at least three members of the press, according to news reports and a statement by the Chilean Journalists Union, an independent professional association of journalists. Francisca Sandoval, who was covering the demonstration for the local community broadcaster Canal Señal 3 La Victoria, was shot in the face and remains in critical condition at the Posta Central hospital in Santiago, according to those sources. Fabiola Moreno, a reporter for Radio 7, was shot in the shoulder, and Roberto Caro, a reporter with the community news outlet Prensa Piensa, was shot in the leg...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates

Russian police investigate journalist Ilya Ber over fact-check on Ukraine deaths; Belarusian journalist Denis Staji found severely beaten in Ukraine...

Serbian journalists charged over coverage of environmental protest (CPJ)

On April 12, authorities charged Mikić and Majstorov, reporters with the local news website Soinfo in Sombor, northern Serbia, with organizing an illegal December 2021 protest and blocking roads, according to news reports, their employer, and both journalists, who communicated with CPJ via email. Mikić and Majstorov told CPJ that they worked as journalists covering preparations for a protest against new laws encouraging lithium mining in the area, but did not organize or join the demonstration...

Belarusian journalist Yury Hantsarevich detained for 10 days, charged with extremism

On May 5, the pro-government Telegram channel Obratnaya Storona published a video in which Hantsarevich, a correspondent for the independent news website Intex-Press, is seen confessing to sending materials to extremist media outlets; CPJ was unable to immediately determine the circumstances under which that video was recorded...

Pulitzer prize for Ukraine journalists rewards courageous, truthful reporting (Guardian)

Special citation comes as at least seven journalists have died since Russian invasion...

‘Paranoid dictator’: Russian journalists fill pro-Kremlin site with anti-war articles (Guardian)

Two Russian journalists working for a popular pro-Kremlin website filled it with anti-war articles on Monday morning in a rare act of dissent as the country celebrated the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. The articles on Lenta.ru called President Vladimir Putin a “pitiful paranoid dictator” and accused him of waging “the bloodiest war of the 21st century”. “We had to do it today. We wanted to remind everyone what our grandfathers really fought for on this beautiful Victory Day – for peace,” said 30-year-old Egor Polyakov, one of the two journalists... “This is not what Victory Day is about,” Polyakov told the Guardian in an interview... The articles have since been taken down, but can be accessed through a web archive tool... Pointing to recent laws introduced by Russia aimed at stifling anti-war dissent, Polyakov said he was now “worried” for his safety. Russia has passed a number of laws making the spread of “fake” information about the Russian army an offence punishable with fines or jail terms of up to 15 years. Russian authorities have already charged 46 people under such laws, with 14 of them now behind bars. “Of course I am afraid,” Polyakov said. “I am not ashamed to admit that. But I knew what I was doing, what the consequences could be”...

Suriname journalist detained, investigated on defamation charges after reporting on police (CPJ)

On May 3, journalist Mones Nazarali turned himself in at the police headquarters in the city of Nieuw Nickerie, in Suriname’s Nickerie district, after being summoned by the police following a criminal complaint, according to news reports and Vishmohanie Thomas, president of the Association of Surinamese Journalists, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app and email. Police arrested Nazarali, who was taken before a public prosecutor and charged with several crimes, including defamation, slander, disturbing the public order, and insulting the police, which all carry prison sentences under the criminal code, according to the same sources. The charges stem from a complaint filed by two high-ranking police officers, including the regional commander, after Nazarali broadcast a report for Actionnieuws Suriname, a news outlet that publishes on Facebook, from outside police headquarters alleging corruption and incompetence in the Nickerie police force, according to the sources...

Ukrainian photojournalist Ihor Hudenko missing in Kharkiv since February (CPJ)

Anyone with information concerning the whereabouts of Ukrainian photojournalist and blogger Ihor Hudenko should come forward immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday. Hudenko lost contact with his friends and family while in the northeastern city of Kharkiv on February 26, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local advocacy and trade group, news reports, and Kharkiv-based journalist Oleg Peregon, who worked with Hudenko and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Kharkiv and the surrounding region have been the site of intense fighting since late February, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, according to news reports...

‘I almost got hit’: the Ukrainian journalists turned war correspondents overnight (Guardian)

Initially writing stories and making television reports was secondary for the journalists as many focused on survival...

Section 40: government to repeal controversial media law (Guardian)

A controversial law that could force publishers to pay the costs of the people who sue them, even if they win, is to be repealed, the government has announced. Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which was drawn up following the Leveson inquiry, poses “a threat to the freedom and sustainability of the press”, the government said on Monday... The Guardian previously joined all other national newspaper groups in objecting to section 40, arguing it was not fit for purpose and would hurt the sort of investigative journalism that produced its own reporting on the Panama papers, as well that which uncovered the phone-hacking scandal that prompted the Leveson inquiry...

Whoops

Journalists detained, homes searched amid Victory Day celebrations in Russia (CPJ)

Between May 7 and May 9, amid Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, at least seven journalists were targeted by Russian authorities with home visits and searches, and detentions, according to news reports and editors at independent news website Sota.Vision and Skat Media, which is affiliated with the political movement Vesna. One of those journalists remained in detention as of Wednesday, May 11...

Azerbaijan journalist Aytan Mammadova threatened at knifepoint

Around midnight on May 8, an unidentified man grabbed Mammadova in the elevator of her apartment building in the Binagadi district in the capital Baku, held a knife against her throat, and threatened her and her young daughter, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ by phone. Mammadova, a freelance journalist who frequently covers prominent criminal cases, told CPJ that although the man did not give a reason for the attack, she believes it relates to her coverage of a high-profile murder trial in which she has reported on evidence of alleged police malpractice...

Al Jazeera reporter killed during Israeli raid in West Bank (BBC)

A veteran Palestinian-American correspondent for Al Jazeera has been killed while covering a raid by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. The Qatar-based network said Shireen Abu Aqla was shot "deliberately" and "in cold blood" by Israeli troops in Jenin. Her producer was also wounded. Israel's prime minister said it was "likely" they were shot by Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire. But his military chief said it was not yet able to determine what happened. The Palestinian president said he held the Israeli government fully responsible for what he described as a "crime of execution"...

Fergal Keane: How I found a way to live with PTSD (BBC)

The horrific scenes of war emerging from Ukraine have raised fresh concerns about the trauma experienced by those who witness extreme violence. PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - affects millions worldwide. The BBC's Fergal Keane, who was diagnosed in 2008, explores its effects and the potential for healing...

Mexican journalist Luis Enrique Ramírez found killed in Culiacán (CPJ)

On the morning of May 5, Ramírez’s body was found near a dirt road in the northwestern city of Culiacán, wrapped in black plastic and with severe head wounds, according to news reports, a statement by the Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the case, and prosecutor Sara Bruna Quiñónez Estrada, from that office, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Ramírez, 59, was a political columnist for the Culiacán newspaper El Debate, a co-founder of the news website Fuentes Fidedignas, and a contributor to national outlets including La Jornada and El Financiero, according to an obituary published by Fuentes Fidedignas...

Chilean journalist Francisca Sandoval dies after shooting at May 1 protest (CPJ)

On May 1, gunmen opened fire during a Workers’ Day demonstration in the Barrio Meiggs area of Santiago, the capital, as well as during looting that followed the demonstration, injuring at least three members of the press, including Sandoval, as CPJ documented at the time. Sandoval, 29, who was covering the demonstration for the local broadcaster Canal Señal 3 La Victoria, was shot in the face and remained in critical condition at the Posta Central hospital in Santiago until her death on Thursday, May 12, according to those reports, which said that her suspected shooter is in police custody...

Chilean journalist dies after being shot while covering Workers’ Day marches (Guardian)

Francisca Sandoval, 29, is the first journalist to be killed in the line of duty in Chile since the Pinochet dictatorship...

Turkmenistan journalist Nurgeldi Halykov facing retaliation in prison following coverage of his case (CPJ)

Authorities first arrested Halykov in July 2020 and sentenced him to four years in prison that September. During his imprisonment, authorities have placed Halykov, a correspondent for the Netherlands-based independent news website Turkmen.news, in a so-called punishment cell three times, with each instance corresponding to his employer’s coverage of his case, according to Turkmen.news director Ruslan Myatiev, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Prisoners held in punishment cells are not allowed to leave the cell to circulate with other prisoners, are deprived of reading material or other entertainment, and otherwise face worse conditions than regular prisoners, Myatiev said...

Sudanese Military Rule Locks Up Protestors, Journalists As It Puts Off Elections (Organisation for World Peace)

According to the African Union Peace and Security Council, there is also a strong push for investigations into the military’s human rights violations. The Sudanese Armed Forces arrested opposition leaders and used militant force at anti-coup protests. Security officers with the Sudanese Security Force additionally assaulted and arrested journalists throughout 2021, and suspended publications under the guise that they violated the criminal code by inciting violence or committing “crimes against the state.” Other journalists were arrested on charges of defaming public officials. The council accused the newspapers of inciting violence or war. In withholding the rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, the military leadership has derailed civilian efforts to engage in political dialogue...

US secretly issued subpoena to access Guardian reporter’s phone records (Guardian)

The US justice department secretly issued a subpoena to gain access to details of the phone account of a Guardian reporter as part of an aggressive leak investigation into media stories about an official inquiry into the Trump administration’s child separation policy at the southern border. Leak investigators issued the subpoena to obtain the phone number of Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the Guardian’s investigations correspondent in Washington. The move was carried out without notifying the newspaper or its reporter, as part of an attempt to ferret out the source of media articles about a review into family separation conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz. It is highly unusual for US government officials to obtain a journalist’s phone details in this way, especially when no national security or classified information is involved. The move was all the more surprising in that it came from the DoJ’s inspector general’s office – the watchdog responsible for ethical oversight and whistleblower protections...

Shireen Abu Aqleh: thousands attend state memorial in West Bank (Guardian)

Palestinians line streets in Ramallah as journalist’s coffin travels through, after shooting in Jenin on Wednesday...

Credible Journalism Can Still Make You Money, Catholic Archbishop in Kenya Tells Media (ACI Africa)

The Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Nyeri in Kenya has told media houses in the East African nation to practice credible journalism, noting that the media houses will still make money if they serve people with truth...

Video of Israeli police attacking pallbearers is jaw-dropping (0:49):
https://twitter.com/EmirNader/status/1525071210589077504
Emir Nader: From what I can tell following the live feed the security forces didn’t want her procession to leave on foot from the French Hospital and become a walking demonstration, with a hearse subsequently coming to take her body

Pallbearers are forced to nearly drop Shireen Abu Akleh’s coffin.
May 13, 2022

Israeli police officers on Friday assaulted mourners at the funeral procession of a prominent Palestinian American journalist killed this week in the occupied West Bank, forcing pallbearers to nearly drop the coffin.

Video showed police officers in Jerusalem beating and kicking pallbearers carrying the coffin that contained the body of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, striking other mourners with batons, and forcing one man to the ground. During the commotion, the pallbearers were pushed backward, causing them to briefly lose control of one end of the coffin.

The episode occurred outside a hospital in East Jerusalem, where mourners had gathered to take the coffin of Ms. Abu Akleh, who was a Christian, to a nearby church for her funeral.

In a statement, the Israeli police said they “took enforcement action” after some mourners began chanting “nationalist incitement” and after officers had given the crowd a warning. As the coffin was carried out of the hospital, police said, they were “forced to act” because “rioters began throwing stones toward the policemen.”

The police later distributed video showing an empty plastic bottle and two other bottle-shaped objects being thrown in the direction of the officers in the moments before they advanced on the pallbearers, and a separate undated video showing several stones on the ground. There was no clear indication of when or how the stones had reached that spot...

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/13/world/shireen-abu-akleh-funeral-israel#i...

>109 margd: Two more stories from the Guardian:

US condemns Israel’s attack on Shireen Abu Aqleh’s funeral

Antony Blinken says US ‘deeply troubled’ after police stormed procession for Palestinian American journalist...

As we grieved for Shireen Abu Aqleh, Israeli police attacked us. They have no shame

I am writing these words having just returned from the funeral of Shireen Abu Aqleh in Jerusalem. It is hard to describe the exact emotions which every Palestinian is feeling. One thing is certain: this has been the most incredible outpouring of emotion I’ve seen in Palestine. Shireen was known to every Palestinian household. During the second intifada – a formative experience for many Palestinians – she was the face that delivered us the news. The TV screen became a window to everything going on: the F16 strikes, the Apache helicopter strikes, the tanks on the streets. And Shireen was out there, bringing the news to our homes. We grew up watching her and she became an icon, inspiring a generation of Palestinian journalists. This is why Shireen’s killing during an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in Jenin shook all Palestinians to the core. We feel like we have lost a mother; I personally have lost a major inspiration in my journalistic life. On the day she died, every Palestinian was heartbroken...

Shireen Abu Aqleh: UN security council condemns killing of journalist (Guardian)

The UN security council has unanimously condemned the killing of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh while she was covering an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank, diplomats said. In a rare unanimous statement, the security council also called for “an immediate, thorough, transparent and impartial investigation into her killing”...

Shireen Abu Aqla: NI journalists condemn killing (BBC)

A vigil has been held in Belfast to protest against the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla in the West Bank. Abu Aqla, 51, was shot dead while reporting on an Israeli military raid in Jenin on Wednesday... The National Union of Journalists said the whole world had been shocked by the killing... He said Abu Aqla was "just going about her business in the occupied territory engaging in what journalists should do which is fair and accurate reporting". "Our heart goes out to the family of the murdered journalist but also we're very conscious that there are many other journalists who have been threatened, who have been injured, who have been killed, of course including in Northern Ireland with Martin O'Hagan and Lyra McKee," he said...

Biden administration issued subpoena for details of Guardian reporter’s phone (Guardian)

It was previously unclear if the order came from the Trump White House as the inquiry had spanned both presidents’ terms...

Pinned down by Russian fire in key frontline village (BBC)

Includes video of BBC journalist Quentin Sommerville under fire with Ukrainian troops.

Journalist Iryna Danilovich charged, detained by Russian authorities in Crimea (CPJ)

On May 11, Danilovich, a Crimea-based journalist who went missing on April 29, was found by her lawyer in a pre-detention center in Simferopol, the capital of Russian-occupied Crimea, according to media reports and a report by the Ukrainian human rights organization Zmina. She had been charged with illegally handling explosives under Article 222.1.1 of the Russian criminal code by the Crimean branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), according to those sources; if found guilty, she faces up to eight years in prison and a fine of up to 100,000 rubles (US$1,560). Danilovich, who denied the charges, alleged that she was fed once a day and kept in the basement of the FSB headquarters in Simferopol for eight days, from April 29 until she was taken to court on May 7...

Senior Catholic in Israel condemns police actions at Shireen Abu Aqleh funeral (Guardian)

The top Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land has condemned the Israeli police beating of mourners carrying the casket of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, accusing the authorities of violating human rights and disrespecting the Catholic church. Latin patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa told reporters that Friday’s incident, broadcast around the world, was a “disproportionate use of force” against a large crowd of people waving Palestinian flags as they proceeded from the hospital to a nearby Catholic church in Jerusalem’s Old City. The attack drew worldwide condemnation and added to the shock and outrage over the death of Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) operation in the occupied West Bank...

Ukraine Eurovision win: Presenter hosting from bunker jumps for joy (BBC)

A Ukrainian Eurovision commentator had to cover the contest from a bunker in Kyiv, as there were fears the broadcast could be interrupted...

To know why the killing of Shireen Abu Aqleh was so devastating, you have to know what it is like to be Palestinian (Guardian)

The Al Jazeera journalist was a courageous voice and a symbol of Palestine at a time when many question our right to exist...

Mexican journalists Yessenia Mollinedo and Johana García shot dead in Veracruz (CPJ)

The journalists were getting into their car in the parking lot of a convenience store in Cosoleacaque, a town in the eastern state of Veracruz, when an unknown number of assailants approached and shot them at 4 p.m. on Monday, May 9, according to news reports, which cited eyewitnesses. Mollinedo was the founder and editor of El Veraz, a news outlet that covers southern Veracruz, where García was recently hired as a camera operator...

Some Ukrainian journalists are leaving the media for the military in the name of patriotism (CPJ)

Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its third month, has already claimed an alarming number of journalists’ lives: at least seven killed in crossfire while reporting and at least six more who died in circumstances that CPJ continues to investigate. There are at least 10 more names that do not appear on CPJ’s list of journalists killed in the conflict. All are Ukrainian, and all have worked in journalism – until Russia’s February invasion, when they left to join the war effort and died as combatants...

China's silenced feminist: How Sophia Huang Xueqin went missing (BBC)

BBC Eye investigates the disappearance of Sophia Huang Xueqin, a high-profile feminist journalist who kick-started China’s #MeToo movement...

Crisis Group Partners with the Bayeux Award to Support War Correspondents (International Crisis Group)

Journalists working in today’s conflict zones face increasing dangers in their efforts to provide the public with information. They are paying a heavy price. Not even halfway through 2022, seventeen journalists have already lost their lives in the line of duty, many of them in Ukraine. Reflecting our deep admiration for what journalists do, and their bravery in doing it, the International Crisis Group is proud to become a partner of the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents and a sponsor of the Grand format Television Prize...

Proposed Russian legislation threatens to shut down all independent media (CPJ)

The State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, is set to consider legislation that would allow authorities to invalidate the registration and accreditation of media outlets without a court order and hold newsrooms accountable for information they republish... On March 4, President Vladimir Putin enacted amendments to the Russian criminal code imposing prison terms for spreading “fake” information about the country’s military. On March 25, Russian legislators expanded the law and introduced punishment for “false” coverage about the country’s government agencies abroad...

DeSantis’ Office Pushed for a Bill to Weaken Media’s Protections Against Defamation Suits by Public Figures
Sarah Rumpf | May 18th, 2022

...DeSantis’ legislative affairs director, Stephanie Kopelousos, emailed staffers for several legislators, including State Sen. President Wilton Simpson (R) and State Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R), to promote a draft bill that would “challenge decades-old First Amendment protections for the news media and make it easier for high-profile people to win defamation lawsuits” ...

No bill was ever actually filed, but the correspondence does shed light into both the mindset of the governor’s office and what agenda items he may support if he is elected to a second term in November.

The issue centers around a legal standard established in the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, in which the court ruled that a plaintiff who is a public figure must prove not only the standard elements of a defamation case (publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party) but also prove “that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’ – that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”...

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/desantis-office-pushed-for-a-bill-to-weaken-me...

Russia-Ukraine war press freedom updates (CPJ)

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, Ukrainian journalists get help from Polish colleagues... Belarusian journalist detained for 2 months, charged over reporting...

Taliban orders female Afghan TV presenters to cover faces on air (Guardian)

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have ordered all female TV presenters to cover their faces on air, the country’s biggest media outlet has said. The order came in a statement from the Taliban’s virtue and vice ministry, tasked with enforcing the group’s rulings, as well as from the information and culture ministry, the Tolo news channel tweeted on Thursday. The statement called the order “final and non-negotiable”, the channel said...

Extraditing Julian Assange would be a gift to secretive, oppressive regimes (Guardian)

Handing over the WikiLeaks founder to the US will benefit those around the world who want to evade scrutiny... The impact on British journalism will also be profound. It will become lethally dangerous to handle, let alone publish, documents from US government sources. Reporters who do so, and their editors, will risk the same fate as Assange and become subject to extradition followed by lifelong incarceration...

Georgian pro-opposition journalist Nika Gvaramia sentenced to 3.5 years in prison (CPJ)

On Monday, May 16, the City Court in the Georgian capital Tbilisi convicted Gvaramia, a TV presenter and general director at pro-opposition broadcaster Mtavari Arkhi (Main Channel), on charges of abuse of power and embezzlement while serving as director of another broadcaster, sentenced him to three and a half years in prison, and fined him 50,000 Lari (US$16,670)... Gvaramia’s colleagues and local and international NGOs have denounced the ruling as a politically motivated attempt to silence one of the country’s leading opposition-leaning broadcasters. In a statement released Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Georgia said the decision “calls into question Georgia’s commitment to rule of law”...

Ironic to hear the USA defending press freedom in the case of Gvaramia while trampling all over it in the case of Assange.

Guatemalan official files criminal suit against 3 journalists under violence against women law

On May 13, Judge Anaelsee Ramírez formally notified elPeriódico publisher José Rubén Zamora, editor Gerson Ortiz, and reporter Cristian Velix of a restraining order in connection with a criminal lawsuit filed by Dina Bosch Ochoa, a Guatemalan official and the daughter of Dina Ochoa, the president of Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, according to Guatemalan news website Agencia Ocote. Zamora told CPJ via phone that Bosch Ochoa accused them of “violence against women in the public sphere” after the outlet reported in April that the Guatemalan Electoral Authority renewed her contract for an unspecified position within the agency and covered her alleged links to a corruption case...

Ukrainian photojournalist Ihor Hudenko died in February

Ukrainian photojournalist and blogger Ihor Hudenko, who lost contact with his friends and family while in the northeastern city of Kharkiv on February 26, died that day, according to his colleague, journalist Oleg Peregon, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app after learning of Hudenko’s death Friday. Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne also reported on the death, citing a Facebook post by Svetlana Shkurat who identified herself as Hudenko’s friend...

Tajikistan outlet threatened with closure; 4 journalists attacked during unrest coverage

On Tuesday, May 17, Asia Plus announced that it was ceasing coverage of ongoing protests in Tajikistan’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (Badakhshan/GBAR) after receiving an official warning from the country’s prosecutor general threatening to shutter the outlet unless it modified its coverage of the events, according to news reports and a statement published on the Asia Plus website. Separately on May 17, journalist Mullorajab Yusufzoda, known as Yusufi, and video journalist Barotali Nazarov, pen name Barot Yusufi, who both work for U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Tajik service, known locally as Radio Ozodi, were leaving an interview with an activist when two unidentified men approached them, beat them, and stole their equipment, according to reports by RFE/RL and Radio Ozodi, and Yusufzoda. The latter spoke to CPJ by telephone. Later, three unidentified individuals stole the equipment of reporter Anushervon Orifov and camera operator Nasim Isamov with Current Time TV, a Russian-language outlet run by RFE/RL, according to those sources and Orifov, who spoke to CPJ by phone. Orifov and Isamov were also leaving an interview with the same activist, who Tajik authorities have accused of organizing the Badakhshan/GBAR protests, leading the journalists to believe it was a coordinated attack...

All from CPJ

‘Disastrous for press freedom’: What Russia’s goal of an isolated internet means for journalists

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a danger not only for reporters operating in the war zone. The campaign could also pose a broader threat to press freedoms and other civil liberties if it brings the Kremlin closer to its dream of creating a domestically controlled internet. Russia’s internet regulator, Rozkomnadzor, has long been able to compel internet service providers to block content or reroute traffic. In 2019, the “sovereign internet” bill took state control a step further by empowering authorities to sever Russian internet infrastructure from the global internet during an emergency or security threat...

Brazilian journalist says city councilor attacked him with rocks in Minas Gerais state

In the early afternoon of May 16, journalist Alexandre Megale said he was assaulted and hit with rocks by Paulo Luiz de Cantuária, a council member for the city of Ouro Fino in the southeast Brazilian state of Minas Gerais... Megale, who founded the YouTube news channel Canal Sul das Gerais in April 2020, told CPJ he believes Cantuária assaulted him in retaliation for the journalist mentioning the council member’s 16-year jail sentence for child rape during a broadcast report about another rape case. Megale had previously reported the court’s decision on Cantuária’s case on September 8, 2021...

Both from CPJ

Bosnian columnist Srđan Puhalo receives death threats (CPJ)

On May 6, Puhalo, a regular columnist for news website Frontal, received numerous online insults, threats of physical violence, and death threats following an opinion piece he published on media trade website Analiziraj... Puhalo’s opinion piece, in which he discussed the controversy over official estimates of the number of children killed in the siege of Sarajevo during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, provoked a strong reaction on social media, with Puhalo receiving dozens of insults and threats in comments and direct messages, according to these reports. According to Puhalo and CPJ’s review of screenshots of the Facebook messages, there were threats of physical violence, including of being “tortured” and “beaten,” and death threats...

Two exiled Russian journalists charged for disseminating ‘fake’ news on war in Ukraine (CPJ)

On Wednesday, May 18, the Basmanny Court in Moscow ordered the arrest in absentia of Leviev, founder of the Russian independent investigative project Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), on the charge of violating Russia’s March law outlawing the distribution of “fake” information about the military, according to news reports. Six days later, on Tuesday, May 24, the same court issued the same arrest order for video blogger Nacke, who had featured Leviev’s journalism on his YouTube channel, on the same charge...

Male Afghan TV presenters mask up to support female colleagues after Taliban decree (Guardian)

Male TV presenters in Afghanistan are wearing face masks on screen to show solidarity after the Taliban issued an order that all women on news channels must cover their faces. In a protest dubbed #FreeHerFace on social media, men on Tolo News wore masks to mimic the effect of the face veil their female colleagues have been forced to wear after a Taliban crackdown...

Israeli forces deliberately shot Shireen Abu Aqleh, Palestinian probe finds (Guardian)

A Palestinian investigation into the shooting of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh has concluded that she was deliberately killed by Israeli forces as she tried to flee, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced. The conclusion echoed the results of a preliminary investigation announced nearly two weeks ago and was widely expected. Israel rejected the findings...

Exiled Belarusian journalists face terrorism charges; former journalist detained (CPJ)

On Thursday, May 26, law enforcement officers in the western Belarusian village of Krivichy detained Aliaksandr Lyubyanchuk, a former journalist with independent Poland-based online television station Belsat, and took him to a pre-trial detention center in Minsk... Separately, Belarusian authorities charged exiled journalists Stsypan Putsila and Yan Rudzik, the co-founder and a former administrator of the popular Telegram channel NEXTA-Live respectively, with running a terrorist group...

Shireen Abu Aqleh: killing of reporter referred to international criminal court (Guardian)

The family of the killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh has allowed her death to be added to a legal complaint being taken to the international criminal court, arguing that Israeli security forces have been systematically targeting Palestinian journalists in violation of international humanitarian law. The case originally submitted in April by Bindmans had focused on four Palestinian journalists wearing press helmets and vests, two of whom were maimed and two shot dead. It also covers alleged attacks on Gaza media infrastructure in May 2021. Lawyers from Bindmans and Doughty Street Chambers announced the addition of the death on 11 May of Abu Aqleh to the existing claim at a press conference in London...

Revealed: Afghan journalists facing death threats and beatings, despite UK pledge to save them (Guardian)

A group of Afghan journalists who worked closely with the UK media for years have revealed how they face beatings, death threats and months in hiding, and accuse the government of reneging on a pledge to bring them to Britain. Having fought in vain for clearance to come to the UK since the return of Taliban rule last summer, the eight journalists are now taking legal action against the government. They have applied for a judicial review after waiting months for their applications to relocate to the UK to be processed...

French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff killed in Ukraine (CPJ)

Leclerc-Imhoff, a reporter for French broadcast BFMTV, was reported killed on Monday, May 30, after an armored evacuation vehicle came under “enemy fire” as Russian troops entered the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, according to statements by BFMTV and Luhansk regional governor, Serhiy Gaidai. France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said Leclerc-Imhoff was killed by a Russian attack “while he was carrying out his duty to inform”...

French journalist killed by shrapnel from Russian shell in eastern Ukraine (Guardian)

A French journalist has been killed after an armoured evacuation vehicle in which he was travelling was hit by shrapnel from a Russian shell in the city of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian and French authorities have said...

How India’s first all-women newsroom is creating a media revolution (BBC)

Khabar Lahariya or Waves of News is an all-women newsroom in northern India. Its co-founder, Kavita Bundelkhandi, learned to write when she was 12. Many of her staff are from marginalised backgrounds and include survivors of domestic abuse and violence. Her team has faced discrimination and death threats, but have gone on to produce award-winning stories about illegal mining, jungle bandits and the daily lives of rural communities...

Russian SOTA journalist Pyotr Ivanov assaulted in retaliation for reporting

On Monday evening, two unidentified men attacked Ivanov, a reporter with the independent news outlet SOTA, near his apartment in the northwestern Russian city of St. Petersburg, according to his outlet and SOTA editor Aleksei Obukhov, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. The two men were waiting by the entrance to Ivanov’s apartment building when he came home, according to those sources and Ivanov, who spoke to his outlet in a video. The men grabbed Ivanov, beat him with their fists and kicked him after the journalist fell to the ground, took a picture, asked, “Are you going to do any more f—– up s—?” and then ran away. Obukhov told CPJ that Ivanov was well-known in St. Petersburg as a SOTA journalist and that he strongly believed the beating was linked to his journalistic activities...

Armenia parliament passes bill allowing state bodies to revoke journalist accreditation

On May 25, Armenia’s parliament approved the amendments to the country’s mass media law, according to news reports and an entry on the parliamentary website. Previously, only media outlets could revoke their journalists’ accreditation with state agencies, although amendments last December allowed agencies to deny accreditation. According to media reports, local press freedom advocates fear that authorities could use the amendments to bar critical journalists from covering parliamentary sessions and other government events...

Turkish legislators introduce disinformation bill, seek more online control (CPJ)

On May 27, lawmakers from Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and their ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), introduced the draft law, which would amend the penal code and press and internet laws, according to multiple news reports. The bill would add an article to the penal code that would sentence those found guilty of publicly spreading misleading information to between one and three years in prison and would increase the penalty for offenders who hide their identity or act on behalf of a criminal group, according to CPJ’s review of the bill. However, the bill did not define what constituted misleading information or say who would make that determination...

Istanbul police beat, tear gas, detain journalists while breaking up public protest (CPJ)

On Tuesday evening, at least six journalists were detained by Istanbul police while covering a public gathering commemorating the 2013 Gezi Park protests near Taksim Square in the Beyoğlu district, according to multiple news reports, tweets from news outlets, and journalists at the scene. The police detained the journalists and others in attendance while attempting to break up the gathering. The six were released from police custody on Wednesday morning, according to those sources. Those journalists, along with at least five others covering the gathering, were also pushed, beaten, or teargassed by police at the event...

Ukrainian journalist Mykola Pastukh seriously injured by shelling in eastern Ukraine (CPJ)

On May 28, Russian forces shelled the eastern city of Lysychansk, in the Luhansk region, amid a push to take control of territory in the Donbas still held by Ukrainian forces, as the Luhansk regional governor and media reported. Pastukh was traveling with Hong Kong-based freelance photojournalist Alex Chan Tsz Yuk and London-based freelance journalist Kaoru Ng from Lysychansk to the nearby city of Sievierodonetsk. They were going to cross the city’s last functional bridge when they observed a burning vehicle in the way, so they hid their car and approached to take photos, Chan Tsz Yuk told CPJ in a phone interview. As they got closer, two Ukrainian soldiers crossing the bridge told the journalists that it was a dangerous area and that they needed to return to their vehicle, Chan Tsz Yuk told CPJ. As the journalists turned back, a shell exploded a few meters from them, injuring Pastukh, according to Chan Tsz Yuk, who captured the incident on video; news reports that cited Pastukh; and Ng, who spoke to CPJ via social media...

Two Reuters journalists injured, driver killed in Ukraine (CPJ)

the Friday incident that killed a driver and injured two Reuters correspondents after the vehicle they were traveling in came under fire near the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk... Reuters reported that it could not immediately establish the identity of the driver, who was assigned to the reporters by Russian-backed separatists. The two Reuters correspondents sitting in the back seat were named as photographer Aleksandr Ermochenko and cameraman Pavel Klimov. The three were travelling in a car provided by Russia-backed forces on the Russian-held part of the road between Sievierodonetsk and the town of Rubizhne, 10 km (6 miles) to the north...

Camera operator and TV host Ricardo Ávila shot, killed in southwest Honduras

Around 5 a.m. on May 26, an unidentified person shot Ávila in the head while the journalist rode his motorcycle in Santa Cruz village near the department capital Choluteca...

British journalist Dom Phillips missing in Brazil

Phillips, a freelance British reporter, was on a reporting trip in the Indigenous territory of the Javari Valley with Indigenous issues expert Bruno Pereira and the pair were due to arrive at the town of Atalaia do Norte, in Amazonas state, on the morning of Sunday, June 5, according to multiple news reports and a joint statement from two Indigenous rights groups. Phillips and Pereira failed to arrive at Atalaia do Norte that morning, prompting members of the Javari Valley Indigenous Organizations Union (UNIVAJA) to search for them, according to those sources. That joint statement, signed by UNIVAJA and the Isolated Indigenous People’s Rights Observatory, said that the pair had not been located as of Monday morning...

Both from CPJ

‘Every second counts’: wife of British journalist missing in Amazon urges action (Guardian)

The wife of a British journalist who has gone missing in a remote corner of the Brazilian Amazon notorious for illegal mining and drug trafficking has urged authorities to intensify their search efforts. Dom Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, vanished on Sunday morning while journeying by boat through the Javari region of Amazonas state where he was reporting for a book he is writing about conservation...

Russian authorities fine Vecherniye Vedomosti newspaper, threaten 60.ru news website over Ukraine war coverage (CPJ)

On June 3, the Kirovsky District Court in the central city of Yekaterinburg fined the independent Vecherniye Vedomosti newspaper 150,000 rubles (US$2,415) for “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces” in its reporting on Telegram, according to the outlet, media reports, and Vecherniye Vedomosti director Guzela Aitkulova, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Separately, on June 5, the Svetlogorsk City Court in the western Kaliningrad region ruled that a list of soldiers killed in Ukraine, published by the privately-owned Pskov-based news website 60.ru, constituted “classified information,” leading the website to take the list down to avoid facing criminal charges...

At least 9 journalists detained in Turkish city of Diyarbakır (CPJ)

Police in Diyarbakır raided the newsroom of the pro-Kurdish website Jin News, confiscated computer hard drives, and also detained Jin News manager Safiye Alagaş and editor Gülşen Koçuk after raiding their homes and confiscating their phones and other equipment, according to those reports, which said authorities did not provide information to the journalists’ lawyers about the operations or the investigation. Diyarbakır police also detained pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency editors Aziz Oruç and Mehmet Ali Ertaş, former Mezopotamya editor Ömer Çelik, freelance journalists Lezgin Akdeniz, Kadir Bayram, and Serdar Altan, and Mehmet Şahin, a columnist with the Kurdish-language weekly Xwebûn, those reports said...

São Paulo residents threaten photojournalist Caio Castor, try to enter residence (CPJ)

Around 6:30 p.m. on May 28, a group of about 15 people gathered in front of the building where Castor lives with his family in the city of São Paulo, attempted to enter the building, and threatened to “break everything” in his apartment, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview. Castor told CPJ that, earlier that afternoon, he had filmed three municipal guards hitting a woman and spraying her with what appeared to be pepper spray during a security operation targeting drug users on Helvetia street in downtown São Paulo...

Italian police search newsroom and journalist’s home, surveil news crew in leak investigation (CPJ)

On May 24, agents of the Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (Direzione Investigativa Antimafia) raided and searched the newsroom of public broadcaster RAI3’s investigative program “Report,” and the home of its reporter, Paolo Mondani, in Rome, according to a report in daily newspaper La Repubblica and the journalist, who corresponded with CPJ via email. The public prosecutor’s office in Caltanissetta, a town on the island of Sicily, issued a search warrant on May 20, as part of a leak investigation in relation to a report by Modani, which aired on RAI3 on May 23, about alleged links between organized crime groups and Italy’s far right, according to these sources...

Bolsonaro says ‘something wicked’ done to Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira (Guardian)

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said he believes “something wicked” was done to the missing British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, amid unconfirmed claims their bodies had been found in the Amazon...

Reporters cover Uvalde shooting amid police obstruction (CPJ)

False narratives, threats of arrest, and a biker group blocking access. These are just a few of the challenges journalists have faced while covering the aftermath of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Threats to press freedom are hardly the main story in Uvalde, where police failed to stop the 18-year-old gunman from killing 19 students and two teachers. But efforts by the authorities to impede the free flow of information about the tragedy ultimately do a disservice to the local community in its search for answers...

Photographer capturing migrant camp fined €1,000 under Spain’s ‘gag law’ (Guardian)

A Pulitzer prize-winning photographer in Spain has been fined nearly €1,000 under the country’s “gag law” for an incident in which police blocked his attempts to take pictures of refugees. Javier Bauluz said he received news of the €960 fine this week, more than a year after a confrontation with police while he was documenting the arrival of thousands of migrants and refugees in the Canary Islands. At the time, police warned Bauluz he would be fined for “disrespecting an agent” and “refusing to identify himself”, despite the photographer’s insistence that he had handed over his identification...

Journalist conviction in Zimbabwe a ‘travesty of justice’, say campaigners (Guardian)

Media freedom campaigners have criticised the conviction of a journalist in Zimbabwe for allegedly breaking immigration laws, describing the decision as “a monumental travesty of justice” that raises concerns for the press in the lead-up to elections next year. Jeffrey Moyo, a freelance correspondent for the New York Times, was given a suspended prison sentence of five years and fined $615 by a court in Bulawayo after being found guilty on Tuesday of helping to obtain press accreditation needed by two reporters from his news organisation to enter Zimbabwe...

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: police in Brazil arrest second man for ‘alleged murder’ (Guardian)

Police in Brazil say they have arrested a second man in connection with “the alleged murder” of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous defender Bruno Pereira...

Russia-Ukraine war: Some of UK's top journalists barred from Russia (BBC)

Russia has barred top UK-based journalists and defence figures as part of sanctions, in response to UK measures on Russian public figures. The BBC's Clive Myrie, Orla Guerin, Nick Robinson and Nick Beake, who have reported from Ukraine, and Director General Tim Davie are on the list. The BBC "will continue to report independently and fairly", a spokesperson said. Sky TV, Times, Guardian, Channel 4 and ITV journalists are also barred. Russia has already banned hundreds of elected British MPs...

A dangerous job and oft DONE WELL:

Nobel sold for Ukrainian kids shatters record at $103.5M
BOBBY CAINA CALVAN | 21 June 2022

The Nobel Peace Prize auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees sold Monday night for $103.5 million, shattering the old record for a Nobel.

...It was Muratov’s idea to auction off his prize, having already announced he was donating the accompanying $500,000 cash award to charity.

Muratov has said the proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine. Just minutes after bidding ended, UNICEF told the auction house it had already received the funds.

Online bids had begun June 1 to coincide with the International Children’s Day observance...( the nearly 3-week auction ended on World Refugee Day. )

Muratov shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year with journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines...each received their own medals, were honored for their battles to preserve free speech in their respective countries, despite coming under attack by harassment, their governments and even death threats.

....Muratov has been highly critical of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war launched in February that has caused nearly 5 million Ukrainians to flee to other countries for safety, creating the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II.

...Muratov, who was awarded the gold medal in October 2021, helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March amid the Kremlin’s clampdown on journalists and public dissent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Independent journalists in Russia have come under scrutiny by the Kremlin, if not outright targets of the government. Since Putin came into power more than two decades ago, nearly two dozen journalists have been killed, including at least four who had worked for Muratov’s newspaper.

In April, Muratov said he was attacked with red paint while aboard a Russian train...

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-dmitry-muratov-journalists-9a6bb6e6135...

A fairly random collection of relevant news stories which have popped up while I've been away from my computer for a couple of weeks.

BBC journalist Olga Malchevska returns to bombed Kyiv home (BBC)

BBC’S Olga Malchevska was live on air on the BBC World Service when she saw the first images of her childhood home in the aftermath of a Russian attack...

Shireen Abu Aqleh killed by ‘seemingly well-aimed’ Israeli bullet, UN says (Guardian)

Review finds Al Jazeera journalist was not hit by firing from Palestinians, as was initially claimed by Israel...

UN: Israelis fired shots that killed journalist Shireen Abu Akleh (Al Jazeera)

The United Nations has said that information it had gathered showed that the bullets that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11 were fired by Israeli forces. “All information we have gathered … is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli security forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians,” UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva on Friday...

‘My career is finished, my friends are in prison and I’m an alien in my city’: life after Hong Kong’s Apple Daily (Guardian)

Ten weeks after the sudden end to my career as a journalist, I found myself standing behind a cash register in McDonald’s. My days as a newspaper editor at Apple Daily, which was forced to close in June 2021, were busy. Now, I take order after order for fast food...

Brazilian police investigate potential ordered killing of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira (Guardian)

Police investigating the murders of journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira said they have opened a new line of inquiry examining whether the deaths were the result of an ordered killing...

Tajikistan authorities arrest 2 journalists over critical reporting (CPJ)

On June 15, police arrested Imomali in Tajikistan’s northern Ayni district, and arrested Ghurbatov in Dushanbe, the capital...

Russian draft legislation threatens to further silence independent media (CPJ)

On June 14, the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, passed a bill amending the country’s criminal code to impose prison terms for vague actions against state security or for communications with foreign groups, according to the State Duma’s official website, which includes a draft of the legislation, and news reports... “The proposed amendments to Russia’s criminal code would give authorities yet another tool to go after the few independent media outlets remaining in the country”...

Bosnian journalist Nataša Miljanović-Zubac’s car destroyed, authorities investigate on suspicion of arson (CPJ)

In the early hours of June 15, Miljanović-Zubac’s car was destroyed in a fire while parked at her home in the southern town of Trebinje, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via email, and Safejournalists.net, a news website tracking violence against journalists in the region. The Trebinje prosecutor’s office is investigating the fire on suspicion of arson...

Ukrainian photographer and friend were ‘executed in cold blood’ – report (Guardian)

Having gathered evidence on deaths of Maksim Levin and Oleksiy Chernyshov in March, Reporters Without Borders says evidence against Russia is ‘overwhelming’...

Two journalists detained, 1 beaten at Uzbekistan soccer stadium (CPJ)

According to a report by Zamon, which was subsequently deleted and then reposted to Facebook by Uzbek journalist Jasurbek Abdurakhmonov, and a post on Telegram by Olimjon O’sarov, head of Uzbekistan’s Creative Union of Journalists, a nominally independent trade group, on the evening of June 11, police and National Guard officers detained two journalists with the program, and beat one of them, after they attempted to enter the Pakhtakor soccer stadium in Tashkent, the capital...

Bulgarian TV crew attacked with stones while investigating pollution at Serbian mine (CPJ)

On June 14, a group of six or seven men in the Serbian village of Karamanica, near the Bulgarian border, threw stones at the crew as they were documenting pollution allegedly caused by a mining company for the BNT investigative program “Traces Remain,” according to news reports, a report by BNT, and Bogdana Lazarova, the head of the news crew, who communicated with CPJ via email. Those reports identified Lazarova’s team members as camera operators Dimitar Slavov and Nikolai Andreev and technician Robert Vecov, and said they were accompanied by Serbian and Bulgarian environmental activists. Lazarova told CPJ that she identified one of the attackers as the director of the mine. She said they threw stones at the journalists for several minutes, “even when we were shouting to them that we were journalists, that we had all the necessary shooting permissions”...

Why a Rwandan sports reporter fled his home (BBC)

Covering sports in Rwanda, which is hosting the Commonwealth heads of state gathering this week, is normally considered one of the safest beats for journalists, but for Prudence Nsengumukiza the constant fear of displeasing someone in power became too much...

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were shot with hunting ammunition, say police (BBC)

British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were shot dead with hunting ammunition, Brazilian police have said. A day after police identified Mr Phillips' remains, the second set of remains were confirmed as those of Mr Pereira on Saturday...

Russian journalist Insa Lander stranded at Georgia border after fleeing house arrest (CPJ)

Lander, whose legal name is Insa Oguz, had been held under house arrest in the Russian town of Baksan, near the Georgian border, since December 2021, after authorities arrested her and charged her with assisting terrorist activities, according to the journalist...

15 journalists, media worker jailed under pre-trial arrest in Turkey (CPJ)

15 journalists and one media worker still being held after last week’s mass detention of 19 journalists, two media workers, and one source for allegedly being members of a terrorist organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. A Turkish court in the southeastern Diyarbakır city ordered the arrests of the 16 on Wednesday, June 15, according to news reports. The specifics of the charges are unclear after another court issued a gag order on the investigation, but all 21 detained journalists and media workers were questioned about their journalistic activities...

British Home Secretary approves Assange extradition to the United States (CPJ)

“The extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face trial on charges under the century-old Espionage Act is a blow to press freedom with implications for journalists everywhere,” said CPJ Executive Director Robert Mahoney. “We urge the Biden Administration to live up to its stated commitment to a free press by dropping all charges against the Wikileaks founder”...

Belarusian journalists Yauhen Yerchak and Dzmitry Suslau sentenced to 15 days each in detention (CPJ)

On June 3, police in the eastern city of Babruysk detained Suslau, a reporter for the local weekly Kommercheskiy Kurier, and sent him to a pretrial detention center, where he was tried on June 6 and ordered to be held for 15 days after being convicted of “distributing extremist materials,” according to multiple media reports. Separately, on June 13, officers with the Ministry of Interior’s Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption detained Yerchak, a freelance photographer, in Minsk, the capital, according to a post by the pro-government Telegram channel Center E and multiple news reports. On June 15, the Minsk Savetski District Court convicted Yerchak on charges of disobeying police officers and sentenced him to 15 days of detention...

India journalist Mohammed Zubair arrested for 2018 Twitter post (Al Jazeera)

Police in New Delhi arrest the Muslim co-founder of a leading fact-checking website, accusing him of hurting religious sentiments of Hindus...

Proposed Russian legislation expands ‘foreign agent’ regulations (CPJ)

The country’s current foreign agent legislation requires the Ministry of Justice to prove that a person or organization has received foreign funding before it can include them on one of four lists. A new bill under consideration in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, would consolidate those lists into one registry and remove the burden of proof from the ministry, according to the text of the bill, published on the Duma’s website, and news reports. The proposed law says anyone who “has received support and/or is otherwise under foreign influence” and whose work is widely disseminated or involves politics or the military would be labeled as a foreign agent... “Russia’s foreign agent law is already one of the government’s favored tools to harass and restrict the press; instead of passing new bills that make it easier to label a journalist as a foreign agent, authorities should pare back the existing law to ensure that the media can work freely"...

BBC journalist tells court how he was chased by mob of anti-vaxxers (Guardian)

A BBC journalist said he felt “very scared” and “shaken” as he was chased by a mob of anti-vaxxers in London last year. Anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protesters, who had been attending at rally in central London, called Nick Watt a “traitor” and shouted in his face, Westminster magistrates court heard on Wednesday. Newsnight’s political editor said he felt like a “prey” as he was confronted by the group in Whitehall in June 2021...

Tajikistan authorities detain, question relatives of exiled journalist Anora Sarkorova

On the morning of Monday, June 27, officers from the Tajik Interior Ministry’s Department for Combatting Organized Crime detained Sarkorova’s mother and brother at their home in the capital, Dushanbe, according to news reports and Sarkorova, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app and wrote about the incident on Facebook. Officers brought the journalist’s relatives to the department’s headquarters, where they questioned them about Sarkorova’s sources for her reporting and also asked Sarkorova’s mother to tell the journalist that they knew about her two children, which Sarkorova told CPJ she believed was a veiled threat. The officers released her relatives without charge after about four hours... Several days earlier, authorities in the eastern Badakhshan region also questioned Sarkorova’s uncle, aunt, and cousin about her work...

Turkish photojournalist Abdurrahman Gök found guilty on terrorism charge

On Thursday, June 30, the Fifth Court of Serious Crimes in Diyarbakır found Gök guilty of making propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party and sentenced him to 18 months and 22 days in prison... The case stemmed from Gök’s work as an editor of the now shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency in 2017, when he photographed police officers shooting and killing a young man...

Ukrainian journalists Sevgil Musaieva and Sonia Lukashova receive death threats

Musaieva said that after the report was published, she and Lukashova started receiving threats posted publicly online and through personal messages to their phones and social media accounts. One message she received on Facebook said, “Sevgil, I have a feeling that your throat is going to be cut. I don’t know who and when – but run.” She told CPJ that most of the threats were sent anonymously, but added that some of the accounts had user’s names. She added, “My work is to tell the truth no matter what that truth is, I don’t choose sides.” Musaieva and Lukashova’s names are both listed in a database run by the Ukrainian nationalist website Myrotvorets, which published their personal information and accused them of using “so-called journalistic activity” to support Russia...

Turkey blocks websites of Voice of America and Deutsche Welle

In February, the Radio and Television Supreme Council, the Turkish government telecommunications regulator known as RTÜK, ordered VOA, DW, and the privately owned France-based outlet Euronews to apply for licenses as broadcasters, as CPJ documented at the time, noting that it was the first time the regulator had issued such a demand. Euronews removed content from its website and changed its format to avoid the licensing requirement, news reports said. VOA and DW did not comply, and several websites affiliated with the broadcasters’ various languages were made inaccessible in Turkey on the evening of Thursday, June 30...

Frontline diary: A day in the life of a Ukraine war correspondent

Ruslan Smieshchuk, a reporter for privately owned Ukrainian TV channel Inter, had long dreamed of being a war correspondent when he covered his first conflict, the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, for local Odessa TV channel ATV. Now he hopes that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war will be his last battlefield assignment. “War is a lot of pain and grief,” he told CPJ...

All the above from CPJ

Julian Assange submits High Court appeal to fight extradition (BBC)

Julian Assange is seeking permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the United States. Last month, the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the Wikileaks founder's extradition to the US. The High Court in London confirmed to the BBC an application by Mr Assange has been submitted...

Shireen Abu Aqleh: bullet that killed journalist given to US forensic experts (Guardian)

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday said it has given the bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh to American forensic experts, taking a step toward resolving a standoff with Israel over the investigation into her death...

India bars Pulitzer-winning Kashmiri photojournalist from flying to France (Guardian)

Indian authorities have blocked a Pulitzer prize-winning Kashmiri photojournalist from taking a flight to Paris where she was to take part in a book launch and photography exhibition displaying her photos from Kashmir. Sanna Irshad Mattoo, who works with Reuters as a multimedia journalist from Indian-administered Kashmir, was stopped at the Delhi airport by immigration officials on Saturday, despite holding a valid French visa...

Ukraine: Cardiff photojournalist shares photos of war (BBC)

A Cardiff-based photojournalist has shared some of the photos she has taken while covering the war in Ukraine. Jess Daly spent three weeks around the city of Dnipro in June, where she was embedded with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion...

Cuban journalist Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca faces 6-year prison sentence for ‘sharing enemy propaganda’ (CPJ)

In a closed-door hearing at the Marianao Municipal Tribunal in Havana on June 28, prosecutors requested a six-year prison sentence for the crimes of contempt and sharing enemy propaganda... “After more than a year in pretrial detention, Cuban journalist Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca is being forced through a sham trial that could condemn him to years in prison simply for reporting”...

I'm struck that "being forced through a sham trial that could condemn him to years in prison simply for reporting” could also describe what the USA is doing to Julian Assange.

Daphne Caruana Galizia: suspect confesses to killing Maltese journalist (Guardian)

George Degiorgio says he would have asked for bigger payment for murder had he known more about victim...

Mexican journalist Antonio de la Cruz shot dead in Ciudad Victoria (CPJ)

At about 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday, June 29, unidentified attackers shot and killed de la Cruz near his home in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, according to news reports and a statement and press conference by the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office. In that press conference, prosecutor Irving Barrios said that de la Cruz, a reporter for the newspaper Expreso, was shot multiple times while in a car with his daughter. De la Cruz died at the scene and his daughter, who was hit with at least one bullet, underwent emergency surgery, Barrios said. The attackers fled the scene leaving behind at least four .40 caliber bullet casings, Barrios said; he did not provide any information about the suspected identities of the attackers...

Imprisoned Belarus journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva begins new trial on treason charges (CPJ)

On July 4, Andreyeva’s trial on treason charges started behind closed doors in the southeastern city of Homel, according to a Facebook post by her husband, Ihar Ilyash, and report by the Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV, where she works as a correspondent. “Trying an already-jailed journalist on trumped-up retaliatory charges only shows the vindictive nature of the Belarusian government under President Aleksandr Lukashenko. It’s clear that nothing will stop authorities from trying to silence those who covered the 2020 protests demanding Lukashenko’s resignation,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must immediately stop this sham trial and release Katsiaryna Andreyeva and all other imprisoned journalists.” Andreyeva was detained alongside camera operator Daria Chultsova in November 2020 while livestreaming protests against Lukashenko’s continued rule. She was already serving a two-year prison sentence when authorities brought new charges against her in April, as CPJ documented at the time. “She is facing from seven to 15 years in jail only for being a journalist”...

In Uzbekistan, Karakalpak journalist Lolagul Kallykhanova disappears after covering protests (CPJ)

On July 1, Kallykhanova, who runs the independent Makan.uz news website and accompanying Telegram channel, posted a video on her channel, which CPJ reviewed, concerning Karakalpakstan’s status amid proposed constitutional changes that would bar the region from holding an independence referendum. That video has since been removed from her Telegram channel, which has about 85,000 followers. Kallykhanova’s whereabouts have been unknown since she posted that video, according to the independent regional news website Eurasianet, which said that security forces had detained the journalist. Kallykhanova’s sister told the outlet on July 2 that she had lost touch with her, Eurasianet reported...

Russian journalist Andrei Alekseyev injured by shrapnel in Donetsk

On Monday, July 4, Andrei Alekseyev, an assistant camera operator with the Russian public broadcaster TV Centre, was hit by shrapnel in his head and chest while reporting near a train station in the Russia-backed separatist-controlled city of Donetsk...

Kazakhstan journalist Makhambet Abzhan detained for alleged extortion

On the morning of Sunday, July 3, officers from the official Anticorruption Agency in the capital, Nur-Sultan, detained Abzhan, an independent journalist and founder of the Telegram-based news outlet Abzhan News, according to news reports, statements by the Anticorruption Agency and local free speech organization Adil Soz, and the journalist’s lawyer Bauyrzhan Azanov, who spoke to CPJ by phone. The Anticorruption Agency statement said officers had caught Abzhan “red-handed” receiving 50 million tenge (US$108,000) in cash from a businessman in return for not publishing compromising material about him. Officers also searched the journalist’s home and the home of his mother, confiscating cell phones and papers, Azanov said. Abzhan denies the accusations...

Both from CPJ

Arizona to ban people filming police officers within 8 feet (BBC)

the National Press Photographers Association - an industry group that includes still and TV news photographers - filed an objection to the law in February, arguing that it "runs counter to the clearly established right to photograph and record police officers performing their official duties in a public place"...

Russian authorities move to shutter journalist union JMWU over Ukraine war content

In response to news reports that the Moscow prosecutor’s office has requested the closure of the independent Russian Journalists’ and Media Workers’ Union (JMWU) trade group, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement calling for authorities to cease harassing the union and to let it work freely: “Russian authorities’ shameless attempt to shutter the JMWU threatens to silence an organization whose fight for journalists’ rights and press freedom in Russia has been a thorn in authorities’ side,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately lift their suspension of the union’s activities, drop all the charges against it, and stop stifling critical voices in the country”...

At least 5 journalists face court hearings over reporting in Belarus

This week, at least four members of the press are scheduled to appear in court because of their work, and another was recently charged but no court date was set. If convicted, they face heavy fines and prison terms, according to news reports and reports by the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), a local advocacy and trade group...

Mexican journalist Susana Carreño severely wounded in Puerto Vallarta knife attack

On July 1, near the coastal resort city of Puerto Vallarta, in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, unidentified drivers in a gray Jeep Grand Cherokee crashed into Carreño’s vehicle; two men then approached the scene on a motorcycle, forced Carreño at gunpoint to lay down, and stabbed her repeatedly, according to news reports. Carreño, a reporter for Radio UDG, a broadcaster affiliated with the University of Guadalajara, underwent emergency surgery for injuries to her chest and neck, and was in stable condition as of Wednesday but was not allowed to speak due to her injuries...

All from CPJ

Belarusian journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva convicted of treason, sentenced to additional 8 years imprisonment (CPJ)

During a closed hearing on Wednesday, July 13, a court in the southeastern city of Homel convicted Andreyeva, a correspondent with the Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV, of “giving away state secrets,” a form of treason, and sentenced her to eight years in prison, according to media reports and Viasna, a banned Belarusian human rights group...

Tajikistan authorities arrest 2 journalists who criticized other journalists’ detentions

journalist Zavqibek Saidamini and blogger Abdusattor Pirmuhammadzoda... On the evening of July 8, plainclothes law enforcement officers in the capital, Dushanbe, detained Saidamini, according to multiple reports by U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster RFE/RL’s Tajik service, Radio Ozodi. The officers took Saidamini to the Interior Ministry’s Department for Combatting Organized Crime (DCOC) in the nearby town of Vahdat, and the journalist has not been seen or heard from since, those reports said. On July 9, DCOC officers in Vahdat summoned Pirmuhammadzoda in a follow-up from a previous session of questioning; he responded to their summons and also has not been seen since, according to reports by Radio Ozodi and the journalist’s brother, Abdukarim Pirmuhammadzoda, who spoke to CPJ by messaging app. A DCOC officer told Pirmuhammadzoda’s family that he was placed under arrest for 10 days without telling them why, the journalist’s brother said, adding that the Dushanbe police denied that the journalist had been arrested...

Italian police seize and search journalist Francesco Pesante’s phone in leak investigation

On June 21, police in the southern town of Foggia summoned Pesante, managing director of the news website L’Immediato, to appear for questioning the following day, according to reports by L’Immediato and the media watchdog website Ossigeno, as well as Pesante, who communicated with CPJ via email. During questioning on June 22, police told Pesante that he was a suspect in a leak investigation over a May 18 L’Immediato article based on security footage from cameras at a Foggia prison, the journalist said. Officers questioned Pesante about his sources and how L’Immediato acquired that footage, and Pesante told CPJ he refused to answer, citing journalistic privacy. Officers released Pesante without charge, but confiscated his cellphone at the request of the local prosecutor’s office, the journalist said. His lawyer, Michele Vaira, was quoted in news reports saying that authorities searched messages stored on the phone related to that security footage...

Belarusian journalist Yury Hantsarevich sentenced to 2.5 years on extremism charges

Hantsarevich, a correspondent for the independent news website Intex-Press, was convicted of facilitating extremist activities for sending photos of military aircraft at a Belarusian airbase to Radio Svaboda, the Belarusian service of U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, according to news reports and Viasna, a banned Belarusian human rights group...

Journalist Slava Radulov ejected from parliamentary session in Moldova

On July 5, Dmitry Konstantinov, chair of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia in the southern Moldovan autonomous region of Gagauzia, directed men to expel Radulov, a reporter at the regional independent news portal nokta.md, from a public meeting... The incident began when parliamentary deputy Grigoriy Dülger and several other members of the assembly said that Radulov was not allowed to remain in their meeting room and told him to leave, according to those sources. At Konstantinov’s orders, two men confronted Radulov, and one grabbed him by the arm and shoved him out of the room, as seen in that video...

All from CPJ

George Monbiot wins Orwell prize for journalism (Guardian)

The “elegant, urgent writing” of George Monbiot has seen the author, environmentalist and Guardian columnist win the prestigious Orwell prize for journalism. The prize is awarded for commentary or reporting that comes closest to meeting the ambition of George Orwell, the novelist, essayist, journalist and critic, to “make political writing into an art”. Monbiot won the prize for his almost four-decade-long fight to raise the profiles of a wide range of neglected environmental issues, most recently leading the calls to rewild our desertified and sheep-scraped landscape...

Saudi Arabia: Biden raised Khashoggi murder with crown prince (BBC)

US President Joe Biden says he raised the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman...

Russian journalist who staged TV protest over Ukraine invasion briefly detained (Guardian)

Russian police detained and later released the journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who in March interrupted a live television broadcast to denounce the military action in Ukraine, posts on her social media channels showed. Her detention on Sunday came a few days after 44-year-old Ovsyannikova demonstrated alone near the Kremlin holding a placard criticising Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and president Vladimir Putin...

Nicaraguan police raid La Prensa journalists’ homes, detain 2 media workers

On July 6, police in Managua, the capital, detained two drivers working for the independent newspaper La Prensa, and also raided the homes of a reporter and a photojournalist working for the outlet...

Biden’s failure to address press freedom issues on Mideast tour leaves journalists more vulnerable

The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed dismay Monday that President Joe Biden failed to meaningfully address press freedom and journalists’ rights during his Middle East tour last week. “The U.S. effectively shrugged its shoulders over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, did not push for the release of journalists jailed in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and did not commit to an FBI-led investigation into the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh”...

Above from CPJ, below from Guardian.

White House seeks to delay decision on Prince Mohammed immunity over Khashoggi murder

Request comes after Biden returns from Saudi trip in which he claims to have raised journalist’s murder with crown prince...

English courts get new powers to dismiss Slapp cases against reporters (Guardian)

Courts in England and Wales are to be granted new powers to dismiss lawsuits employed by wealthy claimants to stifle free speech, the government has said. The justice secretary, Dominic Raab, announced proposals on Wednesday for a three-stage test to tackle at an early stage intimidatory legal actions against reporters and publishers, known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps. Slapps have come under the spotlight with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and allegations that oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin are using expensive litigation in UK courts to shut down criticism and deter investigations into their affairs. The government said the proposed test would first assess if the case is against journalistic activity that is in the public interest, such as investigating financial misconduct by a company or individual. It would then examine if there is evidence of abuse of process, such as whether the claimant has sent a barrage of highly aggressive letters on a trivial matter. Third, it would consider whether the case has a realistic prospect of success. Anyone subject to a suspected Slapp would be able to apply the court to have it considered for early dismissal...

Lynne O'Donnell: Taliban detained, abused and threatened me (BBC)

A female journalist says she was forced to publicly retract some of her reports about Afghanistan after being threatened with prison by the Taliban. Lynne O'Donnell, an Australian columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, alleges that she was detained, abused and forced to post a series of tweets stating her articles were false...

And from CPJ:

Greek broadcaster Real FM office targeted in arson attack

In the early hours of July 13, two unidentified people attempted to enter the broadcaster’s headquarters in Athens, the capital, as seen on security footage captured by the outlet, according to news reports, reports by Real FM’s affiliated news website Real News, and the station’s director, Giorgos Choudalakis, who communicated with CPJ by email. When those people were unable to enter the station’s office because its elevator was not operational, they placed three gas canisters on an external staircase and lit them on fire, according to those sources, which said the canisters exploded and resulted in a fire that damaged Real News’ office on the first floor, Real FM’s newsroom on the second, and a shipping company owned by the outlets’ parent company on the third floor. One Real FM engineer was treated at a local hospital for smoke inhalation and was released within a day; no one else was injured...

Tajikistan authorities announce further extremism investigations into 3 detained journalists

Tajikistan authorities should drop criminal extremism and all other investigations into journalists Avazmad Ghurbatov, Zavqibek Saidamini, and Abdusattor Pirmuhammadzoda and release them and journalist Daler Imomali immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. “The ongoing detentions and extremism investigations into four journalists known for their coverage of social injustices and their sharp criticism of authorities are dubious, to say the least, and raise fears of a new wave of repression against Tajikistan’s embattled press”...

Kazakhstan journalist Olesya Vertinskaya threatened, beaten (CPJ)

On the morning of Tuesday, July 19, an unidentified man attacked Vertinskaya, a correspondent for the independent news website and advocacy group Dorozhniy Kontrol, outside her home in the western city of Atyrau, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview and shared security footage of the attack, and a report by independent local free speech organization Adil Soz. The man approached Vertinskaya and asked for help with a problem that he said “only {she} could solve,” and then punched her in the face, kicked her in the face as she fell to the ground, and then fled when a passerby approached, Vertinskaya told CPJ, saying her nose was broken in the attack. Three days before she was beaten, Vertinskaya received a threatening text message from an unknown phone number that referenced her recent reporting on a local company selling fish in the area and told her to “be careful,” she said; immediately after the attack, the same number texted her again and said the company’s owner “will not leave it at that”...

Mexican journalist Rubén Haro survives shooting attempt in Ciudad Obregón

At about 2 a.m. on Sunday, July 17, unidentified attackers shot at Haro, founder and editor of the Facebook-based news outlet Las Noticias de la Red, in Ciudad Obregón, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora...

Russian shelling damages office of Zorya newspaper in Ukraine

On July 15, Russian forces shelled the editorial office of Zorya, a newspaper in the eastern village of Zolochiv, in the Kharkiv region...

Both from CPJ

Car used by Italian journalist Francesco Digiorgio damaged in arson attack (CPJ)

At around 2:30 a.m. on July 18, unidentified individuals set fire to a car registered under the name of Digiorgio’s partner in Altipiani di Arcinazzo, a town 55 miles east of Rome...

Sudan: Steps Taken Towards a New, More Independent Sudanese Journalist Syndicate (Radio Dabanga)

Sudanese journalists are working on a new, more independent Journalists Syndicate. On Saturday they elected the members of the committee that will oversee the elections for the syndicate's Executive Committee. During a well-attended meeting of the General Assembly of Sudanese Journalists in El Amarat in Khartoum on Saturday, the journalists took significant steps towards the establishment of a new independent Journalist Syndicate... The step was hailed on social media as an important democratic achievement...

‘Covering a lawless land’: Brazilian journalists on reporting in the Amazon after Dom Phillips’ and Bruno Pereira’s killings (CPJ)

The June murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous issues expert Bruno Pereira, whom police suspect were killed by people with ties to illegal fishing in the Amazon, amounted to a “nightmare” come true, Brazilian journalist Daniel Camargos, who often covers the Amazon, told CPJ in a phone interview. Camargos, an investigative reporter for news website Repórter Brasil, is one of the country’s journalists deeply familiar with the risks facing people who shine a light on environmental crimes in Brazil. According to environmental group Global Witness, 20 environmental activists were killed in the country in 2020. The Amazon’s Javari Valley, where Phillips and Bruno were killed, is known as a drug trafficking route where illegal activities like logging, fishing, and mining thrive, posing a threat to local Indigenous communities. President Jair Bolsonaro’s cuts to environmental and Indigenous protection funds have only encouraged the lawlessness, reporters told CPJ. Globally, the environment is a dangerous topic to cover. Between 2009 and 2019, at least 13 journalists who covered the topic were killed for their work around the world...

Bosnia and Herzegovina news website eTrafika threatened with ‘bloodshed’ over reporting

Starting in May, Siniša Golub, a man who was previously the subject of eTrafika’s reporting, sent threats of death and physical violence to journalists at the outlet... In 2018, eTrafika published an article alleging that Golub had operated on a dog in an illegal clinic without proper veterinarian credentials. From May 4 to July 13, Golub sent seven messages to eTrafika’s official Facebook page, requesting the outlet take that article down, warning its journalists that he knew the location of eTrafika’s headquarters, and saying there would be “bloodshed”...

CPJ calls for Ukraine to revise draft media law

Ukrainian legislators should revise a draft media law that threatens to restrict press freedom in the country and would move it away from European Union standards, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. On July 1, Olga Gerasimyuk, the head of Ukraine’s National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting, the state broadcasting regulator, announced that media legislation first proposed in 2019 could be voted on by the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, “in the summer, before Independence Day {August 24}.” If passed, the legislation would expand the regulator’s power, allowing it to invalidate online news outlets’ registrations, issue fines against them, and shut them down pursuant to court rulings, according to media reports and the text of the bill, which CPJ reviewed. Ukraine is a candidate to join the European Union, and to begin negotiations for membership it is required to reform its media laws, many of which were implemented in the 1990s, according to media reports and a statement by the European Commission. “A revision of Ukraine’s outdated media legislation is necessary if the country wants to meet European Union standards, but legislators must not use such reforms as a pretext to expand government control over information,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in Madrid. “Legislators should draft a media bill in line with EU directives, and which includes strong safeguards for press freedom”...

Both the above from CPJ

Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta to be stripped of licence under court order

Russia’s media watchdog demands registration be declared invalid as independent newspaper vows legal fight...

Russian TV journalist fined for ‘discrediting army’ over Ukraine

The Russian former state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova has been fined 50,000 roubles (£681) after being found guilty of discrediting the country’s armed forces in social media posts condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine... Ovsyannikova rejected the proceedings against her as “absurd”...

Both from the Guardian

Six convicted of abusing BBC Newsnight journalist during protest

Five men and a woman who verbally abused a BBC journalist at a protest have been convicted of a public order offence, according to police. A court previously heard how members of the group intimidated Newsnight’s political editor Nicholas Watt during the politically charged incident in Whitehall on 14 June 2021... “Members of the public, of any profession, have the right to go about their day without being subjected to verbal harassment or actions that put them in fear for their safety.”

Assassin with loaded AK47’ faces federal charges for surveilling home of Iranian-American journalist

A man who had a high-powered rifle outside the home of an Iranian-American journalist and activist targeted by an Iranian kidnapping plot last year is now facing federal charges, according to authorities. The arrest of Khalid Mehdiyev on Thursday marks the second time since last summer that the FBI has intervened in a case involving Brooklyn-based writer Masih Alinejad, who among other things has campaigned against the compulsory use of hijab head coverings for Iranian women...

Female journalist told skirt too short when reporting on Alabama execution

Alabama appears to specialize in its extraordinary sense of the ordinary, particularly when it comes to the death penalty. It has now emerged that, during that execution, prison officials subjected female reporters who came as witnesses to the proceeding to a clothing inspection, attempting to bar one woman from the death chamber on grounds that her skirt was too short. Ivana Hrynkiw, a journalist for Alabama’s pre-eminent news outlet AL.com, recounted how she was pulled aside by a prison official and told that her skirt was too diminutive to meet regulations. “I tried to pull my skirt to my hips to make the skirt longer, but was told it was still not appropriate,” she recounted on Twitter. The paradox that the state went to such lengths to uphold what it regards as propriety in clothing even as it prepared to kill a man appears to have been lost on the department of corrections. Officials also subjected an Associated Press reporter, Kim Chandler, to a full-body inspection, making her stand to have the length of her clothing checked. Chandler said that such an indignity had never happened to her before in the many times she had covered executions since 2002...

All from the Guardian.

Belarusian journalist Iryna Slaunikava sentenced to 5 years in prison

During a closed hearing on Wednesday, August 3, a court in the southeastern city of Homel convicted Slaunikava, a correspondent with the Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV, of “organizing or participating in gross violations of public order” and “creating an extremist group,” according to media reports and Viasna, a banned Belarusian human rights group. Prosecutors accused Slaunikava of participating in a 2020 protest calling for the resignation of President Aleksandr Lukashenko, and of creating and managing a group that shared “extremist materials” in Polish media, according to those sources. Slaunikava denied the charges, according to reports. The journalist’s husband, Aliaksandr Loika, told CPJ via messaging app that the prosecution requested six years in prison just before the trial ended on Tuesday. He said the journalist plans to appeal her conviction...

Honduran journalist Sonia Pérez criminally charged over reporting on Indigenous evictions

On May 22, Juan Argueta, a landowner in the municipality of San Jose, filed a criminal complaint against Pérez, a correspondent for the local broadcaster Radio Progreso, accusing her of trespassing and damage to private property, according to news reports, a report by Radio Progreso, and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via phone. In the complaint, which CPJ reviewed, Argueta alleged that Pérez had trespassed on his property while covering the eviction of dozens of Indigenous people from the area on May 18, according to those sources. A criminal court in the municipality of Marcala, in the western department of La Paz, held an initial hearing in the case on June 19, Pérez said. In a subsequent hearing on Thursday, July 28, prosecutors asked for the case against Pérez and her co-defendants to be dropped, citing a lack of evidence, according to Radio Progreso, which said a court decision was expected on Friday...

From CPJ

Cuban journalist Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca sentenced to 5 years in prison (CPJ)

A judge at the People’s Provincial Court in Havana sentenced Valle to five years in prison for contempt and sharing enemy propaganda...

Authorities fine, ban Moldovan journalist Val Butnaru from media work (CPJ)

On July 26, the Buiucani Court in the capital city of Chisinau found Butnaru, founder of independent broadcaster Jurnal TV and host of its “Vânturile, Valurile” culture program, guilty of slander, fined him 4,500 Moldovan lei (US$233), and banned him from holding TV and radio leadership posts for six months, according to media reports. The ruling stemmed from a July 2021 Jurnal TV investigation—based on leaked police and prosecutor files—which alleged that the former head of the Dubăsari Police Inspectorate was involved in cigarette smuggling along with two other police officers...

Journalist Isabella Yevloyeva faces 3rd criminal case for ‘fake’ reporting about Russian army (CPJ)

On July 27, authorities opened a criminal case for disseminating “fake” information about the Russian military against Yevloyeva, chief editor of independent news website Fortanga... Yevloyeva, who is currently located outside Russia, was put on the country’s wanted list...

South Sudan journalist Diing Magot arrested while covering protest for Voice of America (CPJ)

On Sunday, August 7, South Sudanese authorities arrested Magot, a freelance reporter on assignment for the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America, while she covered a protest over inflation and other economic issues in Juba, the capital... Police detained Magot, who was reporting for VOA’s South Sudan in Focus program, alongside several protesters; she was held at the Malakia Police Station and then transferred to Juba Central Prison... Daniel Justin Boulo Achor, a spokesperson for South Sudan’s national police, told CPJ by phone on Tuesday evening that Magot had “not yet” been charged and that she remained under investigation. He said the country’s attorney general had granted police permission to hold Magot for an additional three days, beyond the initial 24 hours afforded under the law...

Biden: US knows ‘with certainty’ Syria holding missing journalist Austin Tice (Guardian)

Joe Biden has said that the US knows “with certainty” that the Syrian government is holding Austin Tice – an American journalist who has been missing for a decade – and called on Damascus to release him. Ten years after the freelance reporter disappeared while reporting on the Syrian war, Biden said the US government knows “that {Tice} has been held by the Syrian regime”. Noting that the US has “repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us”, Biden said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “calling on Syria to end this and help us bring him home”. Tice is believed to be the longest-held American journalist in history. No group has claimed responsibility for Tice’s abduction, and the Syrian government denies involvement...

Afghanistan press freedom is in crisis as local journalists fight for survival (CPJ)

One year after the Taliban’s return to power, Afghan news outlets are struggling to survive amid an increasingly restrictive censorship regime targeting independent journalists, the flight of many Afghan media workers, and the country’s declining economy, finds a new special report released Thursday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The assessment, “Afghanistan’s Media Crisis,” finds a deterioration in press freedom over the last year, marked by censorship, arrests, assaults, and restrictions on women journalists. At the same time, the report showcases the tenacity and vital reporting by those journalists who remain and the valuable work of Afghan journalists working in exile. “The Taliban’s moves to repress the media are having a devastating impact. The particularly restrictive measures targeting female journalists amount to an attempt to erase women from public life,” said CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg. “Afghanistan’s remaining journalists are determined to continue reporting but they, and the vast community of media workers now in exile, cannot be left to surmount the obstacles on their own. The Taliban must face significant international pressure to reverse course and cease their assault on a free press”...

Tajikistan authorities detain Pamiri journalists Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva and Khushruz Jumayev for more than 2 months

On May 18, officers with the State Committee of National Security (SCNS) arrested Mamadshoeva, a freelance journalist and human rights activist, from her home in the capital, Dushanbe, according to news reports. The following day, officers with the Interior Ministry’s Department for Combatting Organized Crime (DCOC) in Dushanbe arrested Jumayev, an independent journalist and blogger who runs the culture and current affairs website Pomere.info and uses the pen name Khushom Gulyam, according to news reports. On July 15, a representative of the prosecutor general of Tajikistan stated at a press conference that a case had been opened against Mamadshoeva for leading “part of a criminal group” in the eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, an offense subject to between 15 and 20 years in prison under Article 187 Part 1 of the criminal code of Tajikistan, but said investigations into the journalist’s actions continue. Their arrests came as Tajikistan authorities launched an “anti-terrorism operation” to quell protests in the ethnically and religiously distinct Gorno-Badakhshan, home to many members of the Pamiri minority to which both journalists belong, according to news reports. Authorities have sought to suppress independent reporting on the protests and the government operation...

Kyrgyz authorities block news website Res Publica under controversial false news law

On July 21, Res Publica editor-in-chief Zamira Sydykova announced on the outlet’s website and on her Facebook page that Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport and Youth Policy ordered internet service providers to block access to its website after the outlet failed to comply with the ministry’s earlier demand to remove two investigative articles. The block is to last two months, but can be renewed if the outlet fails to remove the articles, according to Akmat Alagushev, media representative for local advocacy group Media Policy Institute, which is advising the owner of the domain name for Res Publica’s website, Yaroslav Tartykov, on the case and who spoke to CPJ by telephone. This is the first useof the controversial law “On Protection from Inaccurate (False) Information” against a media outlet, according to Alagushev and news reports...

Both from CPJ

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora charged with financial crimes, remains in detention (CPJ)

A judge in a Guatemala City court on Tuesday ordered Guatemalan journalist and president of the elPeriódico newspaper José Rubén Zamora to remain in pre-trial detention while prosecutors move forward with a criminal investigation on charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling. Zamora has been held since he was arrested at his home on July 29. The initial charging hearing, originally scheduled for August 1, was postponed multiple times before beginning on Monday, August 8. In his decision, Judge Freddy Orellana said there was “reasonable suspicion” that Zamora had been involved in the alleged crimes, and ordered him to remain in detention for the remainder of the investigation...

Julian Assange lawyers sue CIA over alleged spying (Guardian)

Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are suing the US Central Intelligence Agency and its former director Mike Pompeo in a suit filed in a New York district court on Monday, alleging the agency recorded their conversations and copied data from their phones and computers. The attorneys, along with two journalists joining the suit, are Americans and allege that the CIA violated their US constitutional protections for confidential discussions with Assange, who is Australian. The suit alleges that the CIA worked with a security firm contracted by the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange was living at the time, to spy on the WikiLeaks founder, his lawyers, journalists and others he met...

Journalist found dead in northern Mexico in bloody year for media (Guardian)

Body of Juan Arjón López, 14th journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2022, identified by tattoos in border city of San Luis Río Colorado...

Syria denies holding missing US journalist Austin Tice (Guardian)

Damascus says it is not holding any American citizens after Biden claim that US knows ‘with certainty’ Tice is government captive...

Stalked TV presenter Isla Traquair condemns handling of offence (Guardian)

The television news presenter Isla Traquair has called for the way the justice system handles stalking cases to be overhauled after a neighbour’s harassment forced her to fear for her safety and flee her country home... “I have been riddled with anxiety. I have been to some of the most dangerous places in the world, confronting murderers ... but I have never felt as scared as I did in a remote home in rural Wiltshire. I didn’t feel safe to leave my house or walk my dog. I didn’t feel safe to wear certain clothes and didn’t even feel safe inside my own home”...

Ecuadorian journalist Gerardo Delgado Olmedo shot and killed in Manta (CPJ)

On August 10, two gunmen shot and killed Delgado while he was in his car stopped at a traffic light on the outskirts of the Pacific coast city of Manta, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. Shortly before the shooting, Delgado had received a call informing him of a possible suicide—a report that turned out to be false—and was on his way to investigate, according to news reports. Ricardo Lucas, fire chief of nearby Montecristi, told reporters that Delgado’s 19-year-old daughter was also in the car, but was unhurt in the shooting. Police later that night detained two suspected gunmen, one of whom said that he was to have been paid $2,000 for killing Delgado...

>169 John5918: Julian Assange lawyers sue CIA over alleged spying (Guardian)

Now that's rich!
(How could he have imagined that he was exempt, having dumped their stuff for all those years?)

>174 margd:

Not sure whether your remark is tongue in cheek or not, but intelligence agencies need to be called to account for harassing investigative journalists, even if it is a sport they frequently indulge in.

Journalists at rightwing Daily Express set to strike over pay (Guardian)

Staff from newspaper that rails against ‘militant trade unions’ will join sister outlets in striking on Friday...

Darya Dugina: Daughter of Putin ally killed in Moscow blast (BBC)

The daughter of a close ally of Russia's President Vladimir Putin has been killed in a suspected car bombing. Darya Dugina, 29, died after an explosion on a road outside Moscow, Russia's investigative committee said. Darya Dugina was herself a prominent journalist...

>175 John5918:

Assange "investigates". CIA "harasses".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julian_Assange

>177 margd: Assange "investigates". CIA "harasses"

Yes, precisely.

Turkish court rejects request to release 15 journalists from pretrial detention (CPJ)

Authorities in Diyarbakır have detained at least 21 journalists and media workers who work for pro-Kurdish outlets since early June, as CPJ has documented. The pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency and other sources reported that, on August 16, the Fifth Diyarbakır Court of First Instance rejected an appeal from the journalists’ lawyers for their release, ruling that the arrests were “just” and “lawful”...

Mexico: journalist in Guerrero becomes 15th media worker killed in 2022 (Guardian)

Fredid Román, who ran an online outlet focused on state-level politics, gunned down in his car in state capital...

Russian authorities detain journalists, media workers on extortion, fraud charges (CPJ)

Between August 1, and August 16, Russian authorities raided the homes of and detained at least eight journalists and media workers in connection with alleged extortion and fraud, according to news reports. At least seven journalists and Telegram media workers remained in detention as of Tuesday, August 23...

Guatemalan police detain elPeriódico financial manager for alleged money laundering (CPJ)

On August 19, Guatemalan police arrested Silva after a raid on her home, according to a statement by the public prosecutor’s office and news reports. Later that day, Silva was transferred to the San Juan de Dios General Hospital due to high blood pressure, according to Ramón Zamora, the outlet’s marketing manager, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app. Silva was arrested in connection with a criminal investigation into the outlet’s president, José Rubén Zamora, who has been detained since July 29 for alleged money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling, according to those sources. She remained in custody at the hospital until the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23, when she was transferred to the Mariscal Zavala prison...

Solomon Islands to ban foreign journalists who are not ‘respectful’ – report (Guardian)

The Solomon Islands government has reportedly threatened to ban foreign journalists from entering the Pacific nation if they are not “respectful” or if they engage in “racial profiling” in stories about the country’s ties with China. The office of the prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, issued a statement on Wednesday saying that overseas journalists needed to understand they could not operate in the Pacific the same way they did in other countries, the ABC has reported. “The Pacific is not the same as Australia or United States. When you chose to come to our Pacific Islands, be respectful, be courteous and accord the appropriate protocols,” the statement read. The statement said journalists who did not appreciate the differences would “not be allowed to enter Solomon Islands and other Pacific Islands nations”. The statement was particularly critical of the ABC’s reporting of China’s growing presence in Solomon Islands, accusing the Four Corners programme of engaging in racial stereotyping and the “intentional use of misinformation”...

Press freedom groups call for Brazilian presidential candidates to ensure safety of journalists covering elections (CPJ)

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 10 other civil society groups and press freedom organizations this week in a letter to all Brazilian presidential candidates, urging them, their political parties, and parties’ coalitions to commit to ensuring that journalists can report safely and freely during upcoming elections in Brazil...

Russian authorities in Crimea order journalist Vilen Temeryanov held for 2 months on terror charges (CPJ)

On August 11, officers with the Russian FSB security agency in the village of Vilne, in Russian-occupied Crimea, searched the home of Temeryanov, a correspondent for the human rights group Crimean Solidarity and the independent news website Grani, and ordered him to be detained on charges of organizing and participating in the activities of a terrorist organization...

Julian Assange files appeal against US extradition (Guardian)

Lawyers for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange have filed an appeal against his extradition to the US, as the United Nations human rights chief lends support to the Australian’s cause. Assange, 51, has been indicted on 17 espionage charges in the US and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of military and diplomatic documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison...

Backsliding on freedom of expression around the world needs to end (The New Humanitarian)

Internet blackouts. Strategic lawsuits against journalists. Regulations restricting the activities of NGOs. The weaponisation of health and security policies. These are all strategies that governments around the world are increasingly using to curtail the right to dissent, protest, and even just access information...

Sudan journalists vote for new syndicate after boycotting union for more than 3 decades (Anadolu)

Hundreds of Sudanese journalists voted Saturday for a new Journalists Syndicate after boycotting the Sudanese Journalists Union for 33 years. They accused the union of belonging to the regime of former President Omer Al-Bashir. The election committee that supervised the election said voting has ended and counting has begun... The Sudanese Council for Press and Publication rejected the vote, describing it as illegal, while journalists groups said they will continue the process to form the syndicate. The government dissolved the Journalists Syndicate in June 1989 after a military coup brought Bashir to power...

Labour pledges to strengthen the BBC’s independence and protect funding (Guardian)

Labour has pledged to strengthen the BBC’s political independence and retain it as a publicly-owned, public service broadcaster at the heart of British life, amid signs that a Tory government led by Liz Truss would wage war on the corporation. Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, told the Observer she is examining a series of reforms to insulate the BBC from political pressures, including ending “revolving door” appointments of people in politics to top posts in the corporation, and extending the charter renewal period from 10 to 15 or 20 years to reduce pressures on BBC leaders to toe the government line. The move by Labour follows explosive claims last week by the former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis that a Tory “agent” was “acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality” from his seat on the corporation’s board. Although she did not name him, Maitlis was referring to Theresa May’s former director of communications, Robbie Gibb, who has since denied the claims...

Edited to add:Sudan: Journalists form first democratically elected union in decades (Middle East Eye)

Vote for syndicate leadership went ahead with 'high turnout and excitement' despite attempts by Bashir-era journalists to halt election...

Russian authorities in Kazan question, search homes of 7 RFE/RL freelance journalists and contributors (CPJ)

On August 17, police in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan republic, searched the homes of Nelya Biktimirova, Aysilu Kadyrova, Alsu Kiyamova, and Aliya Sabirova—four freelance journalists who contribute to RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir service—seized their phones, computers, and passports, and took them for questioning... three others affiliated with RFE/RL—Elza Nabiullina, a teacher and contributor to the RFE/RL’s educational Tatar language project; Iskander Yasaveyev, a sociologist and a RFE/RL columnist; and Marina Yudkevich, a retired journalist and a RFE/RL columnist—had their homes searched and were taken for questioning on August 17. All seven were released “after hours of interrogation” at the Investigative Committee for the Republic of Tatarstan and the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Center for Combating Extremism... “The main purpose of these mass detentions and searches in Kazan is to intimidate independent journalists and stifle critical voices in Russia’s Tatarstan republic,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Russian authorities must stop harassing independent journalists by ensnaring them in legal cases and allow them to work freely”...

Greek journalist Evangelos Areteos denied entry to Turkey (CPJ)

On Thursday, August 25, authorities at the Sabiha Gökçen Airport in Istanbul detained Areteos, a reporter for the Greek newspaper Real and author of two books on Turkish politics, after he arrived in the country from Brussels... Authorities held Areteos for about seven hours and gave him a document saying he was barred from entering Turkey “for reasons of public order,” but did not give a specific reason for the denial, according to those sources. The journalist wrote in his statement that he had reported on Turkey for 23 years and was accredited to work as a foreign correspondent in Turkey, and that he believed the denial was retaliation for his work. Areteos said in that interview that he was put back on a plane to Brussels; he said his denial was not an official ruling that could be appealed...

Russian prosecutor requests 24 years in prison for journalist Ivan Safronov (CPJ)

Safronov, a former military correspondent for the Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers, has been jailed since July 2020 on treason charges, after authorities accused him of spying for a foreign country. The BBC’s Russian service has reported that he is being prosecuted in retaliation for his 2019 reporting for Kommersant on Russia’s sale of fighter jets to Egypt...

Uzbekistan denies entry to CPJ’s Gulnoza Said, forces her to return to US (CPJ)

On Tuesday morning, Uzbek immigration authorities denied entry to CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said, stating that the immigration system showed that she was not allowed to enter the country. Said, a U.S. citizen, is currently in the Islam Karimov Tashkent International Airport, where authorities said she must remain until she takes a flight to New York scheduled for September 1, Said told CPJ. Said was making a family visit to Uzbekistan after traveling to Georgia and Latvia on a CPJ mission...

Sudan journalists defy military rule by forming first union in 30 years (Guardian)

‘Historic’ move sees media professionals claim rights after years of persecution under Omar al-Bashir and crackdown after 2021 coup...

Russian journalist facing 24-year jail term for treason refuses to sign ‘confession’ (Guardian)

Ivan Safronov could be handed record sentence after being tried on secret evidence behind closed doors...

Investigative reporter Jeff German stabbed to death in Las Vegas (Guardian)

Police were looking for a suspect on Sunday after a Las Vegas investigative reporter was stabbed to death outside his home, authorities said...

CPJ dismayed by 22-year sentence for Russian journalist Ivan Safronov (CPJ)

“The 22-year prison sentence for Ivan Safronov, guilty of no other crime than doing his job as a journalist, is simply unacceptable and utterly shocking..."

Shireen Abu Aqla: Israel says 'high probability' soldier killed reporter (BBC)

The Israeli military has concluded there is a "high probability" that one of its soldiers killed the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqla. The veteran Al Jazeera correspondent was shot in the head while covering a raid in the occupied West Bank in May. It is the closest the military has come to admitting responsibility. The military's top legal officer has also ruled out a criminal investigation of the soldiers involved, effectively ending the probe into the case. Abu Aqla's family said they were "not surprised" that the IDF was trying to obscure the truth and avoid responsibility for her killing...

Russian authorities suspend Novaya Gazeta’s print license (CPJ)

On Monday, September 5, a Moscow court granted a request by Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor to revoke the newspaper’s print license, according to media reports and a statement by Novaya Gazeta. In its statement, the newspaper said it would appeal the decision. The following day, the same court annulled the registration of the outlet’s affiliated magazine Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, news reports said. Novaya Gazeta stopped printing in Russia when it suspended operations in the country on March 28, after receiving official warnings for allegedly failing to mark materials produced by so-called “foreign agents.” Monday’s ruling would bar the newspaper from being able to resume printing in the future, those reports said. Without being registered as a media outlet, Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, which printed its first edition in July, will not be covered by Russia’s media legislation, which regulate how outlets can apply for accreditations, request information from the government, and perform other tasks...

Far-right supporters harass French reporter Toufik-de-Planoise

On August 22, a group of four men confronted de-Planoise, a reporter for privately owned local news website Kawa TV, as he was leaving a courthouse in the eastern French city of Besançon, according to a Libération newspaper report, video of the incident taken by de-Planoise, who gave the footage to journalist Emma Audrey, who then posted it on Twitter, and the journalist, who communicated with CPJ via email and shared with CPJ a copy of a criminal complaint about the incident that he shared with authorities. (De-Planoise is the journalist’s pseudonym, he told CPJ, saying he uses it for security reasons.) According to those sources, two men of the group insulted and shouted at de-Planoise, telling him that they knew who he was, and that they were waiting for him. The pair then approached the journalist; one asked him to stop filming them and the other hit him on the wrist, knocking his camera to the ground. De-Planoise told CPJ that he was not injured but his camera screen was cracked. He then left the scene. De-Planoise identified the men as supporters of local far-right activists whom the journalist knows from his previous news coverage...

Greek prosecutors summon journalist Petros Kousoulos in leak probe

On August 30, prosecutors with the Greek Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Petros Kousoulos, a reporter and publisher of the privately owned weekly newspaper Bam sto Reportaz, and police searched for him at the newspaper’s Athens newsroom, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ by phone. Kousoulos told CPJ that he was not in the newsroom that day and was not taken into custody. On August 31, Kousoulos voluntarily presented himself with his lawyer at the office of Supreme Court prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos for an informal conversation that was not considered the journalist’s official testimony, he said. Dogiakos told the journalist that he was not charged with any crime, and the arrest warrant sought to question him in a wider investigation into alleged leaks of confidential documents from Greece’s National Intelligence Service, known as the EYP. Dogiakos gave Kousoulos a summons to appear at the prosecutor’s office on Friday, September 9, as a witness, the journalist told CPJ, adding that he planned to send his lawyer in his place. Kousoulos added that he would resist any attempt to force him to disclose his anonymous sources...

Both from CPJ

Russian authorities search homes of 5 journalists as witnesses in investigation into ‘fake’ information about the army

On Thursday, September 8, authorities searched the homes of at least five journalists in cities across Russia over their alleged connection to Ilya Ponomarev, a former Duma member charged with spreading false information about the army, according to multiple news reports...

Italian journalist Mattia Sorbi injured, driver killed in Ukraine’s Kherson region

In response to news reports that Italian freelance journalist Mattia Sorbi was injured and his unnamed driver was killed when the two reportedly drove over a mine in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement: “CPJ is saddened by the death of a driver and wishes Mattia Sorbi a speedy recovery,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “We call on Russian and Ukrainian authorities to investigate this tragic incident. Journalists are civilians under international humanitarian law and should be protected as such.” CPJ was unable to determine when the explosion, which was first reported on Thursday, September 8, occurred. The Russian defense ministry said the incident took place on August 29, Russian state-owned news agency Interfax reported, but freelance journalist Arndt Ginzel wrote on Facebook on September 6 that he had last been in touch with Sorbi on August 31. Media reported that Sorbi was working in Ukraine as a war correspondent for Italian public broadcaster RAI...

Spain is set to reform ‘gag law,’ but press freedom groups are skeptical

Introduced in 2015 by Spain’s conservative government, which at the time was beset with anti-austerity protests, the law gives extensive powers to police to ensure public order. Critics, including human rights groups, dubbed it the “ley mordaza” or “gag law,” claiming it would be abused by authorities to muzzle protests and sanction dissent. Plataforma por la Libertad de Información (PLI), a local independent press freedom organization, has called it a tool for “camouflaged censorship” to intimidate or retaliate against journalists reporting on police actions by fining them. Spain’s current government is led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, which criticized the law when it was in opposition. In April, the party announced that it would amend the law. However, journalists and press freedom advocates who spoke with CPJ ahead of the current parliamentary session, which began September 6, remained skeptical whether the clauses most criticized by journalists, including those on disobeying, disrespecting, or resisting authority, would be removed. Parliament has not yet set a date for discussion of these reforms...

Paraguayan journalist Humberto Coronel shot and killed

On Tuesday, September 6, an unidentified man on a motorcycle shot and killed Coronel as he left the office of his employer, Radio Amambay, in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero near Paraguay’s border with Brazil, according to multiple reports by the local newspaper ABC Color. According to those reports, which include a video of the attack, Coronel was shot eight times as he left the privately owned broadcaster’s office. Coronel hosted a daily news and music program on Radio Amambay, where he sometimes denounced political corruption and the police force’s alleged inability to solve crimes, according to Gustavo Báez, a journalist who also works at the radio station, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. According to Báez and ABC Color, an unidentified person left a written death threat at Báez’s home in June, which said in Portuguese that he and Coronel “knew too much.” The journalists reported the threat to local authorities, but Coronel refused offers of police protection because he did not trust the police...

All from CPJ

Jailed Indian journalist gets bail almost two years after arrest (Guardian)

A journalist who has been in jail for nearly two years for trying to meet the family of a young Dalit woman allegedly gang-raped in Hathras in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has been granted bail. The supreme court of India issued the bail order to Siddique Kappan, 43, a Delhi-based Muslim freelance journalist, on Friday...

Dutch intelligence revealed to have surveilled investigative reporter Stella Braam for decades (CPJ)

On August 28, Braam, a reporter with The Investigative Desk cooperative of specialized investigative journalists, disclosed that the Dutch intelligence services had surveilled her from 1986 to 2017... On June 2, the General Intelligence and Security Service, or AIVD, complied with Braam’s request to view her own personal file and gave her a 300-page, mostly redacted document concerning surveillance by AIVD and its predecessor organization, the BVD, according to the journalist and those reports. Braam told CPJ that she resigned from her post at The Investigative Desk after receiving the file out of concern for the confidentiality of her sources. During those years, Braam told CPJ that she reported extensively on the activities in the Netherlands of the Turkish ultranationalist group the Grey Wolves, and Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party. Intelligence authorities said in the file that Braam was of interest due to her contacts in Turkish immigrant circles, according to those reports...

I'm travelling in Uganda with poor internet access much of the time, but I don't want the travails of journalists to go unnoticed, so I'm posting a few headlines.

‘Dagger at the heart of free press’: colleagues of slain Las Vegas journalist continue his work

Attendees attack, insult 2 German reporters covering public political discussion about energy prices

Lyra McKee: man jailed for possessing gun used to kill journalist

Russian Journalists’ and Media Workers’ Union shuttered by Moscow court order

CPJ condemns 13-year sentence for Belarusian journalist Dzianis Ivashyn

Turkish authorities arrest journalist Sinan Aygül for refusing to pay fine

Two Haitian journalists killed while reporting in slum controlled by gangs

CPJ calls on Ukrainian lawmakers to drop media bill

Russian journalist Badma Byurchiyev assaulted in Elista

Azerbaijani journalist Avaz Zeynalli, lawyer Elchin Sadygov remanded for 4 months on bribery charges

Explosive detonated outside office of Peruvian TV station Cadena Sur (CPJ)

Journalists suffer injuries while covering the war in Ukraine (CPJ)

Cycling journalist believes governing body blocked him from world championships for critical reporting (Guardian)

Protesters attack freelance video journalist Lorena Sopena in Barcelona (CPJ)

Kyrgyzstan TV director Taalaibek Duishenbiev convicted of incitement (CPJ)

Turkish journalist Hatice Şahin sentenced to more than 6 years in prison on terrorism charge (CPJ)

Russia to block, fine news outlets for ‘false’ reports on military call-up (CPJ)

Gunmen threaten Mexican reporter Rodrigo Bustillos in Tehuacán (CPJ)

Hong Kong journalist charged days before leaving for Oxford fellowship (Guardian)

Russian journalists arrested, detained, charged, summonsed during anti-mobilization protests (CPJ)

CPJ condemns 8-year jail sentence for Belarusian journalist Ksenia Lutskina (CPJ)

Iran puts pressure on celebrities and journalists over Mahsa Amini protests (Guardian)

Hundreds of jobs to go as BBC announces World Service cutbacks (Guardian)

Sudanese Authorities Launch Cases Against Newspaper, Bar Association (VOA)

The exiled Russian journalists challenging Kremlin censorship (BBC)
CPJ condemns Belarus ‘witch hunt’ after three BelaPAN journalists sentenced to lengthy prison terms (CPJ)
Turkish parliament to vote on criminalizing the spread of ‘false information’ (CPJ)
At least 2 Mexican journalists targeted by Pegasus spyware since López Obrador took office (CPJ)
The cartel, the journalist and the gangland killings that rocked the Netherlands (Guardian)
Russian anti-war journalist confirms she has fled house arrest (Guardian)
Photojournalist ‘manhandled’ out of Tory party conference (Guardian)
Mexican journalist Roberto Flores missing in Comitán (CPJ)
Outrage after Philippine journalist Percival Mabasa shot dead in Manila (Guardian)
Tajikistan journalist Abdullo Ghurbati sentenced to 7.5 years in prison (CPJ)

Kazakh outlet Orda, staff subjected to months of threats, online harassment, cyberattacks
Belarusian journalists detained, forced to make ‘confession’ videos
‘To persecute any critical voice’: Jailed Guatemalan journalist Zamora’s son on his father’s arrest

All from CPJ

Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews | 10:47 PM · Oct 14, 2022:
Columnist @TheDailyBeast, creator of the Russian Media Monitor, sanctioned by Russia, member of @TheEmmys. I watch Russian state TV, so you don't have to.

When Russian military correspondents were stomping for the regime, I bet they never imagined it would turn on them. Head of RT Margarita Simonyan was swearing up and down that "according to her sources" this wasn't happening. Apparently, it is. ⤵️
Text ( https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1581114404544086018/photo/1 )

>201 margd: Not so?

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 15
Oct 15, 2022 - Press ISW

...Prominent Russian milbloggers (military bloggers) who yesterday announced the existence of “hit lists” reportedly originating with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and targeting milbloggers for their coverage of operations in Ukraine walked back their claim on October 15...

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessm...

Julian Assange: Australian government urged to show ‘courage’ against US over charges (Guardian)
Four staff members of Nicaragua's La Prensa charged with conspiracy, two in detention (CPJ)
CPJ condemns 10-year prison sentence for Tajik journalist Daler Imomali (CPJ)
SOTA, one of the last independent news outlets in Russia, doubles down on coverage (CPJ)
‘I write what they tell me to’: Iran’s crackdown on journalists intensifies (Guardian)
Sierra Leone's civil war: 'I was shot by rebels' - the dangers of reporting (BBC)
Daphne Caruana Galizia: Two brothers guilty of killing Maltese journalist (BBC)

Journalist and Biden critic James Gordon Meek disappears without a trace after FBI raid :

https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-news-reporter-james-gordon-meek-resigned-very-...
https://insidethemagic.net/2022/10/james-gordon-meek-abc-disappears-fbi-raid-jc1...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/producer-james-gordon-meek-disappeared-after-fbi-r...

Proposed amendments to Georgia’s broadcasting law raise censorship fears
Rafael Emiro Moreno, Colombian journalist under government protection, killed in Córdoba

Both from CPJ

In this horrifying clip, Donald Trump proposes throwing reporters in jail, where they'll be raped until they give up their sources.
His crowd laughed.

1:07 (https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1584278253287575552)
From Acyn

- Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew | 4:19 PM · Oct 23, 2022
CREW uses high-impact legal actions to target government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests.

Arshad Sharif killing: Prominent Pakistani journalist shot dead in Kenya (BBC)
CPJ welcomes final sentencing over Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack (CPJ)

>206 margd: This is absolutely outrageous, not only that a public figure would make such a comment but that an audience would laugh at the prospect of someone being raped.

In Greece, reporters’ killings unsolved, critical journalists complain of growing threats (CPJ)

Russian journalist and Putin’s rumoured goddaughter flees to Lithuania (Guardian)

Belarusian journalist Aliaksandr Lyubyanchuk sentenced to 3 years in prison (CPJ)

Kyrgyzstan’s block of RFE/RL website ‘a flagrant act of censorship’ (CPJ)

Honduran journalist Edwin Josué Andino shot, killed in Comayagüela (CPJ)

Iran accuses journalists who reported Mahsa Amini’s death of spying for CIA (Guardian)

Belarus court sentences journalist Siarhei Satsuk to 8 years in prison

Jailed Tajik journalist Abdusattor Pirmuhammadzoda describes severe physical abuse, forced confession in letter

CPJ welcomes new US Justice Department guidelines protecting journalists’ sources

Brazilian state assembly investigates journalists, outlets reporting on abortion case

Pro-government Turkish daily Sabah publishes locations of exiled journalists

All from CPJ

Masked men attack freelance journalist Zoran Bozinovski in North Macedonia

Haitian journalist Roberson Alphonse survives shooting attack in Port-au-Prince, missing radio host found dead in Les Cayes

From CPJ

‘It’s better to go down fighting’: the extraordinary life of murdered journalist Lyra McKee (Guardian)

Italian authorities demand prison sentence for three journalists in defamation lawsuit (CPJ)

Journalist Baktursun Jorobekov beaten unconscious in Kyrgyzstan (CPJ)

Ukrainian law enforcement beat, damage equipment of journalists covering protest (CPJ)

Tajik journalist Zavqibek Saidamini sentenced to 7 years in prison (CPJ)

U.S “strongly” condemns South Sudan minister over slain journalist (Sudan Tribune)

Majority of female journalists have been target of online violence (Guardian)

Chilling report highlights the link between gender-based digital threats and offline attacks...

Kyrgyzstan freezes Radio Azattyk bank account under money laundering laws (CPJ)

Four Greek investigative journalists say intelligence authorities followed them, tracked their phones (CPJ)

>211 John5918: Wonder if new US DOJ guidelines protecting journalists' sources was in reaction to Trump's suggestion to throw journalists in jail until they reveal their sources? (>206 margd:) or v.v.? DOJ guidelines and Trump's speech occurred same time or at least within days of each other.

(October 2022) "...decision codifies Garland’s policy change to extend the protections in July 2021..."

Philippines prison chief behind journalist killing, say police (BBC)

CPJ alarmed by wiretapping charges against Ohio newspaper editor (CPJ)

BBC News: Iran International: TV channel says Iran threatened UK-based journalists

Turkish president asked Sweden to deport exiled journalist Bülent Keneş (CPJ)

Just Stop Oil: Reporter speaks about her arrest at M25 protest (BBC)

Staff of Serbian newspaper Danas gets email threatening Charlie Hebdo attack (CPJ)

‘White rebel’ label for journalist killed in South Sudan angers US (The EastAfrica)

The United States embassy in Juba has condemned the recent statement by South Sudan’s Information minister describing its journalist killed in war front years ago as a ‘white rebel’. Christopher Allen, a US-British journalist, was killed in a crossfire in Kaya Central Equatoria State in August 2017 during clashes between South Sudan’s Defence Forces and Sudan People Liberation Army-In Opposition... His comment comes after the US Embassy issued repeated calls to the coalition government to investigate and hold to account Allen's killers...

Israel will not cooperate with FBI inquiry into killing of Palestinian American journalist (Guardian)

Israel has said it will not cooperate with an FBI investigation into the killing of the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli army... an outright failure to cooperate would complicate relations with Washington and reinforce claims of an Israeli cover-up of Abu Akleh’s death as she reported on a military raid on the West Bank city of Jenin in May...

Investigative journalist barred from entering Sudan (Radio Dabanga)

The authorities at Khartoum International Airport allegedly prevented film director Philip Cox from entering Khartoum from Turkey on Saturday morning. Sudanese online news outlet Medameek reported later that day that the authorities sent Cox back to Turkey on the aeroplane he arrived on, refusing to allow him to enter the country. Cox’s ban from entering Sudan comes as part of a widespread crackdown on journalists by Sudan’s security and military forces. Last month, in a statement on the occasion of the first anniversary of a coup that derailed Sudan's transition to civilian rule, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate said that the press and media in Sudan have been facing “a terrible regression in terms of press freedom”...

Yes, footballers give you glimpses of greatness. But for true magic you can’t beat the broadcasters (Guardian)

With so much happening on the pitch, and so many cameras tracking the action, it takes real talent to show the viewers precisely what they need to see. Mistakes will not be forgiven...

Qatar World Cup: TV 2 Denmark reporter forced off air (BBC)

security staff in Qatar were seen trying to stop a Danish TV reporter during a live broadcast. TV 2 Denmark's Rasmus Tantholdt was reporting on the World Cup when he was approached. The journalist said security threatened to break his camera. TV 2 Denmark said it had acquired the correct accreditations to film and was reporting from a public place. Qatar's Supreme Committee later said it had apologised following the incident.

Baby elephant interrupts Kenyan TV report (BBC)

Kenyan journalist Alvin Kaunda was filming a piece to camera from a baby elephant orphanage in the capital Nairobi when he felt an inquisitive tap on his shoulder...

Armed police guard Iranian TV studios in London after Tehran threats (Guardian)

Persian language channel said threats to journalists had escalated in response to coverage of protests...

Biden should hold joint press conferences with other world leaders:

The message in Justin Trudeau’s retort to Xi Jinping: Welcome to the free world
Leaders like Xi and Putin are starting to realize their limits, along with the liabilities that come with surrounding themselves with sycophants.
Brett Bruen | 19 Nov 2022

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/china-canada-clash-xi-trudeau-reminds-auto...

As detestable as these peoples' pronouncements are, proving murderous intent to incite with lies, plus link to Kremlin would be tough? Esp when we tolerate likes of Tucker Carlson... :(

Christian Palme @ChPalme | 1:33 PM · Aug 25, 2022
Former Balkan Correspondent of the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and former head of communications in the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC. {Prague}

The Polish Union of Journalists is calling for an indictment for war crimes for the leading Russian media propagandists Margarita Simonyan, Vladimir Solovyov, Dmitry Kiselev, and Olga Skabeeva. 1/5
Image ( https://twitter.com/ChPalme/status/1562855626715213825/photo/1 )

This is a very reasonable demand. In the four categories of crime in international criminal law, the crime of aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, there are also rules criminalising propaganda and incitement to commit crimes. 2/5

The UN war crimes tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR, 1994-2016) prosecuted a number of journalists and leaders for the station "Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines" for inciting crimes against humanity and genocide during the Rwanda genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Colline... 3/5

Margarita Simonyan, Vladimir Solovyov, Dmitry Kiselev, and Olga Skabeeva have all called repeatedly for war against Ukraine and have defended the ongoing Russian genocidal war. They should be obvious targets to include in an indictment for the crime of aggression in Ukraine. 5/5
---------------------------------------------------

Faces of Kremlin Propaganda: Margarita Simonyan
US State Dept | August 31, 2022
https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/faces-of-kremlin-propaganda-marga...

Headquarters of news website Rondoniaovivo shot multiple times in northern Brazil (CPJ)

Around 3:40 a.m. on Saturday, November 12, an unidentified man shot multiple times at the headquarters of privately owned news website Rondoniaovivo in the city of Porto Velho, Rondônia’s capital...

John Cantlie: Ten years since IS kidnap of British journalist in Syria (BBC)

Today marks 10 years since British photojournalist John Cantlie was kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Syria. He is thought to be the only foreign hostage held by them who was neither released nor murdered on camera. Mr Cantlie outlived other UK hostages and appeared in the group's propaganda videos, though his fate is unknown. He is presumed dead but his body has never been found, and his family recently held a funeral for him...

Kyrgyz authorities deport investigative journalist Bolot Temirov to Russia (CPJ)

Senior officers ordered ‘unlawful’ arrests of journalists at Just Stop Oil protests (Guardian)

Senior {UK} police officers ordered the potentially unlawful arrests of four journalists detained while covering climate protests on the M25, a review has found. The review makes clear that the arrests of the LBC reporter Charlotte Lynch, the press photographer Tom Bowles, the film-maker Rich Felgate and one other person who has not been named were not simply an overreaction or a mistake by police officers on the ground. Their arrests were instead directed by more senior officers at Hertfordshire constabulary, who had formulated a policing plan that failed to take into account the likelihood that journalists may be on the scene...

Iran arrests British-Iranian citizen for ‘communicating’ with foreign news channels (Guardian)

Person arrested in Isfahan province accused of sharing information with BBC and Iran International, says state media...

Journalist under strict bail terms in Somalia after arrest in crackdown (Guardian)

Authorities in Somalia have imposed strict bail conditions on a respected journalist and media rights campaigner that will prevent him from seeking medical attention for a suspected kidney condition aggravated by poor conditions during his detention by intelligence services and police earlier this year. Abdalle Mumin, a co-founder of the Somali Journalists Syndicate and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, was arrested in October after press organisations protested that directives issued by the information ministry on coverage of an offensive against Islamic militants in the unstable east African state put them at risk...

BBC says Chinese police assaulted and detained its reporter at Shanghai protest (Guardian)

Journalist Ed Lawrence was beaten after being arrested at a protest against China’s strict Covid restrictions, broadcaster says...

Senior media figures call for law to stop oligarchs silencing UK journalists (Guardian)

A coalition of senior journalists and editors from across the political spectrum are calling on the justice secretary, Dominic Raab, to back a proposed law to tackle the global super-rich’s use of “abusive legal tactics to shut down investigations”. More than 70 newspaper editors, publishers and media lawyers wrote to Raab on Tuesday demanding that the government take urgent action to stop oligarchs and kleptocrats from using their fortunes to exploit British courts, intimidating and silencing investigative journalists with strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps)...

‘Publishing is not a crime’: media groups urge US to drop Julian Assange charges (Guardian)

The US government must drop its prosecution of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange because it is undermining press freedom, according to the media organisations that first helped him publish leaked diplomatic cables. Twelve years ago today, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País collaborated to release excerpts from 250,000 documents obtained by Assange in the “Cablegate” leak. The material, leaked to WikiLeaks by the then American soldier Chelsea Manning, exposed the inner workings of US diplomacy around the world. The editors and publishers of the media organisations that first published those revelations have come together to publicly oppose plans to charge Assange under a law designed to prosecute first world war spies...

Belarusian journalist Dzmitry Luksha sentenced to 4 years in prison (CPJ)

A court in Minsk, the capital, convicted Luksha, a freelance journalist with the Kazakh state-funded television station Khabar 24 and former reporter with Belarusian state broadcaster Belteleradio, of “discrediting Belarus” and “organizing or participating in gross violations of public order”...

Latvian regulator cancels broadcasting permit for exiled Russian broadcaster Dozhd TV (CPJ)

On Tuesday, December 6, the Latvian National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP), the country’s media regulator, canceled the outlet’s broadcasting authorization “due to a threat to national security and public order” and accused the broadcaster of violating the country’s media law...

Russian TV station in Latvia loses licence over Ukraine war coverage (Guardian)

TV Rain had relocated from Russia soon after invasion but on-air remarks by presenter were deemed to take Moscow’s side...

New York Times journalists in mass strike for first time in 40 years (Guardian)

Members of NewsGuild of New York say they are stopping work in protest at management’s failure to reach deal on new contract...

Journalist Wilder Alfredo Córdoba shot and killed in southern Colombia (CPJ)

On Monday, November 28, two unidentified men on a motorcycle shot and killed Córdoba while he was on a reporting trip in the village of El Salado, in the southern Colombian department of Nariño... Córdoba, director of the independent online news outlet Unión Televisión in the town of La Unión, was shot three times, according to those reports, which said that police had ruled out robbery as a motive for the attack because none of the journalist’s belongings had been taken...

Former Belsat TV contributor Larysa Shchyrakova detained in Belarus on undisclosed charges (CPJ)

On Tuesday, December 6, authorities in the southeastern city of Homel detained Shchyrakova, a former journalist with the banned Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV, after searching her home... Authorities did not disclose the reason for Shchyrakova’s detention...

Pakistani journalist’s killing in Kenya ‘a pre-meditated murder’ (Guardian)

A team set up by the Pakistani government to investigate the killing of a well-known Pakistani journalist in Nairobi said it found several contradictions in the version given by Kenyan authorities, and believes it was a case of pre-meditated murder. The TV journalist Arshad Sharif, who had fled Pakistan citing threats to his life, was shot dead in Nairobi in October. Kenyan officials said it was a case of mistaken identity and that police hunting car thieves opened fire on his vehicle as it drove through a roadblock without stopping. A two-member fact-finding team from Pakistan that travelled to Kenya and conducted a number of interviews, examined and reconstructed the crime scene and trawled the deceased’s phones and computers, said in a 600-page report that Sharif’s killing was a pre-planned murder...

Bangladesh accused of violent crackdown on free speech (BBC)

"I was treated like an animal in a zoo. I was permanently blindfolded - the only time they removed my handcuffs from behind my back was to eat." Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol, known as Kajol, says he was held in an underground cell for 53 days, where he alleges he was tortured. "Sometimes they would beat me before they took me for an interrogation. I can't put into words how painful it was. They'd asked me about the stories I had written. I had to face a lot of torture. I still struggle to speak about it"...

Hong Kong media owner Jimmy Lai jailed for fraud (Guardian)

Hong Kong pro-democracy media owner Jimmy Lai received a fresh jail sentence of five years and nine months on Saturday after being found guilty of fraud in a contractual dispute. Lai, the 75-year-old founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, had recently completed a 20-month jail term resulting from multiple convictions for his part in protests and unauthorised assemblies. He also faces a possible life sentence at his coming trial on national security charges...

French intelligence agency summons 3 journalists for questioning (CPJ)

On December 7, the agency issued summonses for Collombat, an investigative reporter for French public broadcaster Radio France; Monin, head of investigations at Radio France; and Livolsi, a reporter at the investigative news website Disclose, to appear for questioning on Wednesday, December 14, according to their employers, news reports, and Monin and Livolsi, who communicated with CPJ via email. The summonses stem from an investigation, opened in 2021, over the leak of military information relating to 2018 reporting by Disclose and Radio France about a criminal investigation into alleged influence peddling and favoritism in the French military, according to those reports...

‘No one will protect us’: how Haiti has become deadly for journalists (Guardian)

Since its president was assassinated in July 2021, the island nation has spiralled into violence with journalists in the firing line...

New Files Reveal How Execs Concocted Excuses To Ban Trump | Fox News |

Media Blackout: CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC Skip Coverage of Twitter Files | Fox News |

Funny how up in arms you all are (rightfully so) but censoring goes on right here by LT group admins who want to silence opposing view points....JMJ....

Russian journalist Valery Badmayev charged with ‘discrediting’ the army (CPJ)

On December 9, officials with the Russian Investigative Committee detained Badmayev, editor-in-chief of the Sovremennaya Kalmykia newspaper in Elista, the capital of the southern Republic of Kalmykia, after searching his home, according to multiple media reports, which said that authorities seized Badmayev’s phone, laptop, router, and passport during the search. On December 10, media reported that Badmayev was charged with “discrediting” the Russian army and then released pending investigation. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison...

Tajikistan authorities sentence 2 journalists to lengthy prison terms (CPJ)

The Tajikistan Supreme Court recently convicted Jumayev, a journalist and blogger who works under the name Khushom Gulyam, of membership in a criminal group, and sentenced him to eight years in prison, according to a report by the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Ozodi and a person familiar with his case, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. The court also convicted Mamadshoeva, a journalist and human rights activist, according to Radio Ozodi and a second person who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, and who was familiar with her case. Radio Ozodi reported that Mamadshoeva was sentenced to 21 years in prison...

Twitter suspends accounts of several journalists who had reported on Elon Musk (Guardian)

Many at CNN, Washington Post and the New York Times who had written critically of the new owner found their handles suspended...

Ministers accused of unlawfully denying Afghan journalists UK visas (Guardian)

Ministers have unlawfully “turned their back” on former BBC journalists whose lives are at risk from the Taliban by refusing to relocate them from Afghanistan to the UK, the high court has heard. Eight Afghan journalists, who worked in high-profile roles for the BBC and other media agencies in the country from which British troops withdrew last year, are challenging the decision to deny them UK visas...

Turkish journalist Sinan Aygül arrested under new ‘disinformation’ law (CPJ)

On Wednesday, December 14, authorities in the eastern province of Bitlis arrested Aygül, chief editor of the privately owned local news website Bitlis News and chair of the Bitlis Journalists Society, for allegedly spreading false information online...

Belarusian authorities revoke registration of Belarusy y Rynok newspaper (CPJ)

On December 1, the Belarusian Ministry of Information ordered Belarusy y Rynok’s registration to be annulled, according to a December 12 statement by the outlet, media reports, and a copy of the decision, which CPJ reviewed. Authorities accuse Belarusy y Rynok of violating a section of the country’s media law barring outlets from being more than 20 percent owned by non-Belarusians or by foreign entities...

After 20 years in prison, Turkish journalist Hatice Duman says she has no hope of release (CPJ)

Hatice Duman is Turkey’s longest-serving jailed journalist. Now 50, she has been behind bars since April 9, 2003, 20 years into a life sentence on charges including propaganda and being a member of the banned Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLKP). Duman, a former editor for the socialist Turkish weekly Atılım, has denied the charges and the Committee to Protect Journalists, which reviewed the available court records of her trial, believes them to be unsubstantiated. Turkey’s Constitutional Court found that her right to a fair trial had been violated and twice ordered a retrial. Duman, meanwhile, remains at the Bakırköy Women’s Prison in Istanbul and holds out little hope that the retrial – already several hearings in – will bring her freedom...

Number of jailed journalists spikes to new global record (CPJ)

t’s been another record-breaking year for the number of journalists jailed for practicing their profession. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual prison census has found that 363 reporters were deprived of their freedom as of December 1, 2022 – a new global high that overtakes last year’s record by 20% and marks another grim milestone in a deteriorating media landscape. This year’s top five jailers of journalists are Iran, China, Myanmar, Turkey, and Belarus, respectively. A key driver behind authoritarian governments’ increasingly oppressive efforts to stifle the media: trying to keep the lid on broiling discontent in a world disrupted by COVID-19 and the economic fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine...

Twitter’s suspension of journalists sets ‘dangerous precedent’, UN warns (Guardian)

The United Nations is “very disturbed” by Twitter’s abrupt suspension of a group of US journalists, a spokesperson has said, warning that the move sets a “dangerous precedent” – as the EU said the social media platform could fall foul of forthcoming digital regulations. Stéphane Dujarric said on Friday the UN was “very disturbed” by the barring of prominent tech reporters at news organisations including CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times who have written about Musk and the tech company he owns...

Twitter condemned by UN and EU over reporters’ ban (BBC)

The United Nations has joined the European Union in condemning Twitter's decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm. Reporters for the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were among those locked out of their accounts...

Samuel Ramani @SamRamani2 | 5:27 PM · Dec 16, 2022
DPhil/PhD Intl Relations @UniofOxford. Assoc Fellow @RUSI_org. Bylines @ForeignPolicy, WaPo etc. 3 forthcoming books HurstPublishers

Moldova is cracking down on pro-Russian media outlets as it suffers electricity outages resulting from Russian strikes on Ukraine

Six media outlets linked to exiled oligarch Ilan Shor have been shuttered
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Not just electricity outages...

Russian military presence in Transnistria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_presence_in_Transnistria

Elon Musk reinstates Twitter accounts of suspended journalists (Guardian)

On a wild day of bans, sudden U-turns and chaotic messaging, Musk abides by Twitter poll result that favoured restoring the accounts of reporters he accused of ‘doxxing’ him...

Journalists Who Saw And Took Videos Of South Sudan President Wetting Himself Reportedly Go Missing, Some Allegedly Dead (iHarare)

Reports flooding the internet reveal that some journalists who covered the state event in South Sudan where president Salva Kiir Mayardit peed on his pants during a national anthem recitation have been missing one by one. Reports also allege that some have been found dead...

Swedish court blocks extradition of journalist sought by Turkey in Nato deal (Guardian)

Sweden’s supreme court has blocked the extradition of an exiled Turkish journalist, which was a key demand by Ankara to ratify Stockholm’s Nato membership. The court said on Monday there were “several hindrances” to sending back Bülent Keneş, a former editor-in-chief of the Zaman daily, who Turkey accuses of being involved in a 2016 attempt to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Some of the accusations against Kenes are not crimes in Sweden, which along with the political nature of the case and his refugee status made extradition impossible, the court added. “There is also a risk of persecution based on this person’s political beliefs. An extradition can thusly not take place,” the judge Petter Asp said in a statement. As a result, “the government … is not able to grant the extradition request.” The Swedish foreign ministry said: “If the supreme court declares that there are hindrances to an extradition in an individual case the government has to deny the extradition request”...

Forensic tools open new front for using phone data to prosecute journalists (CPJ)

It’s not surprising for authorities to take phones and computers into custody when they are investigating a journalist – in fact, it’s become routine. CPJ’s prison census, a snapshot of journalists in prison on December 1, 2022, lists examples from Iran, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Vietnam, and India, as well as Russia... widely available forensic tools have been used to examine journalists’ phones in order to convict them in Myanmar and search for their sources in Nigeria... A law enforcement agent scrolling through a journalist’s unlocked phone is already a problematic scenario for press freedom. But this risk is supercharged by technology that can copy and search the entire content of phones and computers, sometimes even if they are locked. Like spyware, forensic tools can access everything on a phone or computer, but unlike spyware, such tools are in widespread, open usage in democracies as well as more repressive regimes. Their use has accelerated threats to the press while protections and public awareness lag behind...

Kazakh financial police arrest investigative journalist Mikhail Kozachkov (CPJ)

On Sunday, December 18, officers from Kazakhstan’s Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) in the southern city of Almaty arrested Kozachkov, who covers alleged corruption and abuses by government officials and prominent business figures for independent news website Vremya and his Telegram channel...

Bulgarian authorities question reporter and editor about sources (CPJ)

Prosecutors summoned Lazarov and Nikolova for questioning on December 12 regarding allegations of drug markups in state-owned hospitals that were published in the weekly newspaper Capital...

Belarusian journalist Syarhei Chihrin detained for 7 days on extremism charges (CPJ)

On December 16, security forces in the southwestern city of Slonim detained Chihrin and a local court ordered him to be held for seven days... Authorities accused Chihrin of reposting “extremist materials,” according to those sources, which did not specify the nature of the materials...

Lords inquiry launched into Tory peer accused of bullying female journalist (Guardian)

Authorities at the House of Lords have opened an investigation into another Tory peer, Rami Ranger, the Guardian has learned, after an independent journalist accused him of a campaign of bullying and harassment. Poonam Joshi, a freelance reporter and women’s rights campaigner, has been investigating Lord Ranger over his links to a controversial Indian guru, details of which were revealed by the Observer newspaper earlier this month. Ranger told the Observer he regretted inviting a representative of the guru to the House of Lords, but he responded to Joshi with a volley of abuse over Twitter and WhatsApp, which the Lords commissioner for standards is investigating...

News anchor Ciro Gómez Leyva survives shooting attempt in Mexico City (CPJ)

Late Thursday evening, two unidentified attackers on a motorcycle shot at Gómez Leyva while he was driving near his Mexico City home and then fled the scene, according to news reports and tweets by the journalist shortly after the attack. Gómez Leyva, a well-known TV journalist who hosts the Por la Mañana morning radio show on Grupo Fórmula and a primetime TV news show on Grupo Imagen, tweeted photos of his vehicle with several bullet holes and said he was unharmed thanks to bulletproofing armor on his car...

Guardian hit by serious IT incident believed to be ransomware attack (Guardian)

News organisations around the world have been regular targets for cyber-attacks both by criminals and nation states, although at this stage the company said it believed the incident was likely to be a ransomware attack. These involve hackers gaining access to a computer system then making demands to restore services...

Mexico media say president’s attacks on journalists are ‘invitation to violence’ (Guardian)

Mexico could be plunged into “an even bloodier” era of deadly violence against the press unless its populist leader stops harassing the media, scores of top journalists have warned after an apparent attempt to assassinate one of Mexico’s best-known news anchors shocked the nation. In an open letter, the signatories – who include professionals from major outlets including El Universal, Excélsior, Milenio and Reforma – issued a rebuke to Mexico’s media-bashing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Almost all of the outpourings of hatred towards journalists are incubated, born and disseminated from the presidential palace,” said the declaration, which was penned in response to last Thursday’s botched gun attack on the newsreader Ciro Gómez Leyva in Mexico City...

TikTok’s parent company fires four workers for improper access of user data (Guardian)

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of popular video app TikTok, said on Thursday that some employees improperly accessed TikTok user data of two journalists and were no longer employed by the company, an email seen by Reuters shows. ByteDance employees accessed the data as part of an unsuccessful effort to investigate leaks of company information earlier this year, and were aiming to identify potential connections between two journalists, a former BuzzFeed reporter and a Financial Times reporter, and company employees, the email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen said. The employees looked at IP addresses of journalists attempting to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information...

Blind BBC reporter fights off mugger who snatched his phone (Guardian)

A blind BBC reporter fought off and detained a mugger who snatched his mobile phone in London in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Sean Dilley sustained several cuts and injured his elbow during the incident, which happened just before 6am, while he was on a break during a night shift. A person riding a bike stole the phone near the BBC’s New Broadcasting House. Dilley sensed that his attacker was next to him and managed to jump towards him and restrain his arms, retrieving his iPhone and using a voice assistant on the device to call 999. As he waited for the police, another person arrived and offered to help. The news correspondent told the mugger he would let him go providing they left immediately...

Guardian reporter Ian Traynor reported on friday 21 Feb, 14 "Ukraine's bloodiest day as dozens lay dead after protests, police display snipers and use live ammunition"....AMDG....

Ukraine is a main source, transit and, destination country for men, women, and children trafficked trans nationally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, per "wikipedia"....JMJ....

>248 brone: on friday 21 Feb, 14

I think that may take the record for the worst date format I've ever seen. It is at least an incredibly rare one. Is that 2021 or 2014? It looks like it's 2014, which brings up another question; why is it on a thread about 2022?

>250 prosfilaes: The quarrelsome man is always ready to fight. This is conveyed by the words ,"which brings up another question", always ready to contradict, more than one post in here mentions dates ealier than 2014. The idea is Pro/con. That all men have a beautiful house to live in is a dream that may or may not be attainable, but for all men to live in the same beautiflul house is not a dream at all it is a nightmare....JMJ....

The facts are that the 2014 Nazi terrorists are now US taxpayer funded heroes of freedom, the full extent of US gov officials in cahoots with Ukrainian businees and gov officials may never be known, the 50,000 A Month job given to a sitting VP's son smacks of influence peddling. On Oct 16, 2019, the top Dem on the Homeland Security Subpanel, Max Rose(NY) sent a letter signed by 40 Democrats asking why wasn't the Neo Nazi Asov Batallion placed on the list of foreign terrorist organizations'. Two years later the Asov Battalion is now morphed from a terrorist Nazi organization to "the celebrated Asov Btn" according to the NYTimes. I suppose that the 40 signatories of the letter would likely to prefer us all to fagetaboutit, they likened these Nazis to ISIS terrorists and noted that they openly recruited Neo Nazis to their ranks. The 115th congress specificly denied funds to this organization. All this occurred when Volodymyr Zelensky was widely regarded as some kind of ally or tool of Donald Trump how dare a sitting President of the US call another head of state to congratulate him on his election, so it was in their interest then to play up the Nazi element in Ukraine, just as it is in their interest now to pretend that element doen't exist. In answer to your demeaning remark "why is this post on a thread about 2022" (1) I have a right to express my views, (2) Do you think those Nazis of 2014 died of old age?....JMJ....

>252 brone: The facts are that the 2014 Nazi terrorists are now US taxpayer funded heroes of freedom

You're not a big fan of subtlety or complexity, are you? There are only two nations in the world with Jewish presidents; Israel and Ukraine. There's certainly complexities about the Neo-Nazi issues in Ukraine, but Ukraine is not a Nazi nation.

Ever heard of Operation Paperclip, where the 1944 Nazi terrorists became US taxpayer funded heroes of freedom? That Ukraine incorporated them into their military is problematic, but so did we, for the same reason, to fight against Russia.

All this occurred when Volodymyr Zelensky was widely regarded as some kind of ally or tool of Donald Trump how dare a sitting President of the US call another head of state to congratulate him on his election,

The "how dare" part was

"I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible." Then "Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me."

Identifying the issue as "how dare a sitting President of the US call another head of state to congratulate him on his election" is just wrong, whether or not you think the impeachment was justified. You keep coming with claims from some right-wing sites that don't care about facts; maybe that's part of your problem in getting banned from groups?

In answer to your demeaning remark "why is this post on a thread about 2022" (1) I have a right to express my views,

And I have a right to respond to them. And that post was unclear as to its relevance or what it was trying to say. It did not mention Nazis, it had a malformatted date, and had no link to the source.

Ukraine is a corrupt gov, it is up to its ears in money laundering, 2nd in the world in human trafficking, kidnapping women and selling them all over the world (including Israel) and the fact is the Asov is far more influential than just a battalion. The paper clip heroes you mentioned are by far "the worst date format I've ever seen"....JMJ....

>254 brone: "the worst date format I've ever seen"

Since that seem to have confused you:
"friday 21 Feb, 14" is not a standard date format, and it's wrong in several ways. Friday is always capitalized in English; in a written sentence, February would be written out (or at the very least be written with a period, "Feb.", to indicate it's a contraction); and the year would be written 2014 or '14 if you felt like being colloquial. To add to the confusion, Americans tend to write the day of the month after the month, e.g. "February 21", unlike the British who write "21 February". As 14 and 21 could be both be days of the month or stand for recent years, the format left me confused whether it meant February 21, 2014, or February 14, 2021.

>254 brone: Ukraine is... 2nd in the world in human trafficking

Although it's off topic for this thread, I'd be interested to see a source for that statistic. One source I found gives the worst ten countries in 2017 as Belarus, CAR, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Sudan and Syria. In 2021 the US State Department named Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Comoros, Cuba, Eritrea, Guinea Bissau, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan and Venezuela as the worst countries "in fighting human trafficking" (which of course is not quite the same thing). And the Global Organised Crime Index's 2021 report ranks Libya, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Burundi, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, UAE, Yemen, Bangladesh, Iraq, North Korea, Kuwait, Pakistan, Panama, Qatar, Somalia and Sudan as the worst for human trafficking.

Having said that, Wikipedia reminds us how difficult it is, if not "impossible to produce reliable statistics on a phenomenon happening in the shadow economy" and in which different countries collect statistics in different ways and even define human trafficking differently.

Edited to add: I suspect that the current Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a recent increase in human trafficking as people try to flee the conflict.

Today is Saturday, December Thirtyfirst. in the year of Our Lord, Twenty Twentytwo....JMJ....

Human Trafficking from Latin America 70% of the women and children who finally make it to the US (8000 a day) were exploited sexually, we have no idea what has happened to all he unescorted children once the cartels get them, we do know there is an epidemic of Child pornogrophy currently flooding platforms all over the world....JMJ....

>258 brone: That's a worthy topic but I'm not sure how it pertains to this thread about journalists

Recognising and apologising that it's off topic, but I just wanted to post this:

Interpol says a top human trafficker arrested in Sudan (AP)

An Eritrean national described as one of ‘’the world’s most wanted″ human traffickers has been arrested in Sudan after an international manhunt led by the United Arab Emirates... The suspect — identified as Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam — is accused of leading a criminal organization that abducts, extorts and murders East African migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, the France-based police agency said in an online statement...