Since its founding in 1981, the Committee to Protect Journalists has,
as a matter of strategy and policy, concentrated on press freedom violations
and attacks on journalists outside the United States. We do not systematically
monitor problems facing journalists in any of the developed industrial
democracies. We devote most of our efforts to countries where journalists
are in the greatest need of international support and protection.
While CPJ recognizes that press freedom requires constant vigilance and
aggressive defense everywhere, we are able to rely within the United States
on the thorough, professional efforts of organizations with a primarily domestic
focus, such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Society of
Professional Journalists, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press,
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and
the National Association of Broadcasters, among others. We recommend to
journalists and other researchers the work of these and similar organizations,
as well as the ongoing coverage of First Amendment issues provided by
the American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Editor
& Publisher, and other specialized publications. On U.S. policy issues
directly affecting the ability of U.S. reporters to work safely and legally
abroad, CPJ works with U.S. journalism organizations for constructive
change.
CPJ's overriding concern in the United States continues to be the safety
of immigrant journalists and cases of journalists who are murdered for reasons
directly related to their profession. As a U.S. organization that forcefully
urges governments to investigate and prosecute the assassinations of local
journalists, we believe that it is essential to hold our own government equally
accountable when similar crimes are committed at home. Since the widely
publicized 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles,
at least 11 other journalists have been murdered in the United States because
of their work. In all but one case, the victims were immigrant journalists
working in languages other than English. Seven of those 11 homicides remain
unsolved. Most received little or no national media attention. In December
1993, CPJ released a report on these murders titled Silenced: The
Unsolved Murders of Immigrant Journalists in the United States.
As part of its campaign to eliminate criminal defamation laws from the Americas,
CPJ has expressed concern to U.S. officials about the fact that at least
19 states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books that classify
libel as a criminal offense. Such statues are clearly unconstitutional, and
would be overturned by the Supreme Court if any attempt were made to prosecute
a journalist under these laws. Because criminal defamation laws have no place
in a democratic society, CPJ believes that state legislatures should expunge
all criminal defamation statutes in order to set an example for countries
throughout the world where journalists are routinely jailed because of what
they write. |
|
