In recent years, CPJ has returned to using less precise language like “killings” to refer to murders whenever discussing them in the aggregate. It’s the kind of euphemism preferred by despots like the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
More journalists were killed last year than ever before. No doubt the world has become a more dangerous, but not necessarily in ways that people might expect.
“It is one thing for DHS to act when there is probable cause; it is quite another to abuse that discretion to chill free speech.”
President Yahyah Jammeh, the former despot of Gambia, claimed to win four awards in the U.S. Only one, a satirical, land-locked Nebraska “admiralship” was real.
The Colombian journalist, Hollman Morris, had his request for a U.S. visa to study at Harvard as a prestigious Nieman Fellow denied on grounds relating to alleged terrorist activities as defined by the U.S. Patriot Act.
Environmental journalists in nations from around the world face being silenced whether through being censored or jailed, attacked or murdered outright, or through various forms of harassment.
Because the United States has set a high standard for press freedom, any perceived weakening in U.S. protections provides cover for authoritarian regimes to justify crackdowns on their own press and others.
