press freedom - Page 3

Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Wednesday provided a dramatic insider account of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s defiant stand in a Shanghai courtroom against the judge who sentenced her to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and starting trouble.”

Human rights activists were generally downbeat about the global state of affairs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, often pointing to 2020 as one of the worst years in memory for declining civil liberties.

The headline finding of this week’s report on press freedom in 2020 by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) was that more journalists have been imprisoned for their work than ever before, and China is the world’s worst jailer for the second year in a row. The report, and other material published by CPJ in conjunction with its release, invested a great deal of effort in blaming the dismal state of press freedom on President Donald Trump.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its annual press freedom report Tuesday, once again bestowing the dubious honor of world’s worst jailer of journalists upon Communist China.

French president Emmanuel Macron has complained that the mainstream media appear to be “legitimising” a spate of radical Islamic terror attacks against his country by claiming it is “racist and Islamophobic”.

Police in London arrested 190 anti-lockdown protesters at the so-called ‘Million Mask March’ against the second national lockdown in England.

Mumbai police arrested right-wing Indian news anchor Arnab Goswami – a vocal supporter of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – on Wednesday in relation to a two-year-old case of abetment to suicide.

One of the suspects currently on trial in connection to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January of 2015 is said to have threatened a female police officer in court.

Conservative commentator Darren Grimes is being investigated by police on suspicion of “stirring up racial hatred” because of something that his podcast guest, historian David Starkey, said in an interview.

LONDON (AP) — Environmental activists have blockaded two British printing plants, disrupting the distribution of several national newspapers on Saturday.

A survey released by the Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (Ifop) has revealed that 26 per cent of French Muslims under the age of 25 refuses to condemn the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks.

The Australian Foreign Ministry revealed on Monday that Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei has been detained by the Chinese state without formal charges or legal representation.

Dissident Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, arrested Monday under the oppressive “national security law” imposed by Beijing, emerged from detention Wednesday undaunted but “more cautious,” to quote the advice he gave to young pro-democracy demonstrators.

Dozens of Hong Kong citizens gathered in shopping malls across the city Tuesday to call for press freedom, one day after Hong Kong police raided the local Apple Daily newsroom and arrested its owner, Jimmy Lai, under the city’s new “national security” law.

Shares of Next Digital, the media company that owns Hong Kong’s dissident newspaper Apple Daily, skyrocketed after the arrest of founder Jimmy Lai on Monday.

The last British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, called the raid of the pro-democracy paper Apple Daily and the arrest of the paper’s founder Jimmy Lai the “most outrageous assault yet” on freedom of the press in the former Crown colony.

Chinese activists Chen Mei and Cai Wei are facing criminal charges for publishing a number of articles online that were banned by Chinese Communist Party censors. 

A CNN crew was attacked outside the Atlanta, Georgia, Wendy’s where 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks was killed in a confrontation with police on Friday evening, as rioters began attacking and setting fire to the restaurant Saturday night.

Democratic Party activist and journalist Joe Wieser produced a livestream from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, Washington, on Thursday in which he offered interesting reflections on the state of press freedom in the enclave.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry objected on Friday to Facebook’s policy that state-controlled media organizations will now be labeled as such. Authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea invariably have state-run media, which they would prefer unwitting readers to see as credible independent news organizations.

The Washington Post’s Marty Baron delivered Harvard University’s virtual commencement speech Thursday, repeatedly emphasizing the significance of “facts and truth” in his remarks and warning that “misinformation” and “disinformation … can kill.”

A newspaper editor fled South Africa last week after police repeatedly assaulted him for covering the country’s strict coronavirus lockdowns, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Wednesday.

Chinese journalist Zhang Jialong went on trial Wednesday for the “crime” of using Twitter to distribute “a great amount of false information that defamed the image” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This got him arrested on the CCP’s one-size-fits-all-dissidents charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble. As is customary in China’s repressive justice system, Zhang has been held without trial or formal charges since August, and has not been allowed to see his wife and child.

Police in Gujarat, India, arrested a journalist and charged him with sedition this week for publishing a story suggesting that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) officials were planning to oust the state’s Chief Minister, Vijay Rupani, over his lackluster response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. 

Less than a week after China’s state-run China Daily censored a column written by a group of European ambassadors, less than three months after three of its correspondents were ejected from Beijing over an op-ed the regime didn’t like, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) handed over an op-ed page to Xie Feng, commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong. Xie used the WSJ’s editorial space to repeat China’s political narrative of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newsletter People’s Daily on Monday demanded a controlling role for China’s Belt and Road News Network (BRNN) over all global media, ostensibly to counteract “racially discriminatory messages” from certain Western nations that refuse to stop asking questions about where the Wuhan coronavirus came from.

HELSINKI (AP) – Swedish police say they have identified a body found late last month in a river as that of missing Pakistani journalist Sajid Hussain.

Chinese journalist Chen Jieren was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday under the oppressive Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) one-size-fits-all charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” because he dared to publish criticism of the Party and file investigative reports that undermined its credibility.

The editor-in-chief of the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) and one of his employees were arrested last week for publishing a cartoon on social media deemed “insulting” to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

An activist network called Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) issued a report this week accusing the Chinese Communist government of perpetrating widespread abuses during the coronavirus epidemic, including “draconian measures” to suppress criticism of the regime.

The Communications and Media Commission in Baghdad reportedly suspended Reuters’ license and fined it roughly $21,000 in U.S. currency for a report on Thursday that accused the government of dramatically understating coronavirus cases in Iraq.

The government of Hong Kong officially reprimanded Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) reporter Yvonne Tong on Thursday, accusing her of violating the “One China” doctrine by asking World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director Bruce Aylward about Taiwan in an interview that became a viral sensation, and a global outrage, when Aylward refused to answer the question.

The Trump administration on Monday announced new limits on the number of Chinese staff members allowed to work at China’s state-run media operations in the United States, including the Xinhua news agency, China Global Television Network, and China Radio International. Chinese outlets denounced the personnel caps as a “ridiculous war against Chinese media.”

At a protest against the extradition of Julian Assange celebrities including Vivienne Westwood, Brian Eno and Roger Waters joined activists and supporters of Mr Assange to march from the Australia High Commission to Parliament Square to decry what they believe

A radical Islamic extremist who plotted to massacre the staff of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2010 has been released by Swedish authorities, despite plotting more attacks while in prison.

Brazilian prosecutors charged The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday with cybercrimes for allegedly publishing what were deemed as “hacked” text messages of Jair Bolsonaro administration officials, according to the New York Times.