Blog

Anxiety for jailed Tibetan filmmaker as release nears

2013-05-24T15:57:35Z

In a better world, it is usually a time for joy when a prisoner nears his or her release date. Jailed Tibetan journalists and their families do not live in that world. They live in a crueler place, where freedom is a distant mirage that might never be reached, and exhaustion or death is the reality.

]]> CPJ first met Lhamo Tso in November 2012, when she was in New York to accept a CPJ International Press Freedom Award on behalf of her jailed husband, Dhondup Wangchen. He is a self-taught Tibetan documentary filmmaker who conceived and shot the film "Leaving Fear Behind" to portray life in Tibet. Lhamo Tso says her husband is set for release from a labor camp in Qinghai in June 2014. But this father of four is already in bad health, and his life is at risk.

This petite, unpretentious woman speaks from a mountaintop of integrity grounded in incredibly hard experience: "In Tibet, evidence has shown that political prisoners are granted sudden release when the Chinese authorities try to avoid custodial death in prison and take the blame. I urge you to help me to bring the father of my children back, alive," Lhamo Tso says in asking the international community to pressure the Chinese government.

Later this month, she will be first in Los Angeles and then New York to accept an award for Dhondup from our colleagues at the Visual Artists Guild. She has asked us to help publicize the events and the statement she will make at those ceremonies.

This is what she will tell the people gathered to recognize her husband:

My name is Lhamo Tso, I am the wife of Dhondup Wangchen and would like to express on behalf of my family and friends our gratitude and pride for the decision by the Visual Artists Guild association to award Dhondup for his work.
At this occasion, I also would like to remember Jigme Gyatso, a friend of Dhondup and mine who helped to produce "Leaving Fear Behind" and is now the target of a brutal manhunt, hiding somewhere in the mountains of Tibet as we come together here today.
This award coincides with the final and most critical phase of Dhondup's imprisonment. The reason for my growing worry is an observation that is shared by many people: In the past few weeks a wave of releases of Tibetan writers and activists has taken place. The health conditions of all the released men were deplorable. A close friend of mine called Jigme who spent more than 17 years in prison is among this group of ex-prisoners. I hardly recognized him when I saw his picture.
It is a common experience that prisoners are facing the most dangerous time before being released: Last year, Dhondup was sent for more than six months to solitary confinement and was then shifted to another labor camp in Qinghai. I recently talked with people from the region who told me troubling news. Additional to his liver problems there is now an issue with his eyes. I am worried.
In Tibet, evidence has shown that political prisoners are granted sudden release when the Chinese authorities try to avoid custodial death in prison and take the blame. I urge you to help me to bring the father of my children back, alive.
Dhondup told a story with his small camera and it seems that by truthfully sharing our sorrows of China's occupation and our hopes for freedom he touched your hearts. It gratifies me a lot that the man I love is among the honorees, your award is a compassionate expression of people's ability to care about other people and contributes to Tibetan-Chinese reconciliation.
Over the past five years, I, as a mother, have tried to strengthen the confidence of my children and tried to explain to them why our family has had to undergo so much suffering and anxiety. I told them: Your father is the proud son of a farmer family. He never enjoyed a formal education. His school was life itself and the lessons were extremely harsh. He, however, was fueled by curiosity and strong principles which finally led to the challenge of a regime that does not believe in the good of men.
I pray that our children will understand that our painful sacrifice of separation was not in vain but served the purpose of a better tomorrow for all people in this world.
I pray that the sleepless and lonely nights will soon belong to the past.
And I appeal to you to help me to safely bring back the father of my children and that we are united again as a family.

In Colombia, 'bacrim' pose new press threat

2013-05-24T15:57:32Z

Next to the mayor's office in the northern Colombian town of Caucasia sits a monument to government dysfunction: a half-built public library with broken windows, a water-stained floor, and rusting reinforcement rods protruding from concrete pillars.

]]> According to news reports, construction mysteriously ground to a halt after the town government spent about a million dollars on the project. But when local journalist Rober Nieto recently tried to investigate, a town official warned him to back off.

Such threats are taken seriously by journalists in Caucasia and other towns in northern Antioquia department. The area swarms with former paramilitaries who have formed criminal gangs--known in Spanish as bandas criminales, or simply bacrim--that traffic drugs and extort businesses. The bacrim often work in cahoots with local politicians, and when journalists dig into issues like government corruption, they sometimes receive threats from the bacrim.

"We can register events, but investigative journalism is off limits," Nieto, editor of Región al Día, a monthly newspaper in Caucasia, told CPJ. "We need to have good journalism, but it's dangerous to write about alliances between local authorities and the bacrim."

According to the Bogotá-based Foundation for Press Freedom, or FLIP, Antioquia is one of the most dangerous regions of Colombia for journalists. Besides the bacrim, two Marxist guerrilla groups roam parts of the department. Since 2009, FLIP has registered 31 threats against reporters. During this period, two journalists were forced to flee the region.

The result has been a virtual blackout of in-depth news coverage in parts of Antioquia. Many reporters in Caucasia and nearby towns say they can inform the public about what is going on but get into trouble when they try to explain why.

For example, Oscar Martínez, director of the Caucasia Stereo radio station, said he used to report on alleged ties between public officials--including the police--and the bacrim. But following a 2011 grenade attack on the station that was followed by extortion threats, he stopped reporting on these issues.

"We used to cover everything," Martínez said. "I like to report when the mayor is not doing things right. But it's dangerous."

The situation is even more difficult in the nearby town of Tarazá where both bacrim and FARC guerrillas operate. Luis Carlos Cervantes used to direct the town's only local news program on the Morena FM radio station. It wasn't exactly All Things Considered--the program consisted of Cervantes condensing newspaper stories and making public service announcements.

"We would just read the newspapers on the program," Cervantes told CPJ in an interview at the Morena FM studio, which is located on the Tarazá town square. "But now we can't even do that."

Indeed, the content sometimes included Colombian army and police bulletins as well as stories about the bacrim and the guerrillas--who apparently didn't like the program and began sending Cervantes death threats on his cell phone. After receiving seven of these threats, Cervantes pulled the plug on the news program late last year and now the radio station plays only music.

One of the few remaining combative journalists in the region is Leiderman Ortiz, editor of La Verdad del Pueblo, a monthly newspaper in Caucasia that focuses on crime and corruption.

Ortiz, a former mayoral candidate who plans to run for office again, is something of a crusader. In the latest edition of La Verdad del Pueblo, he published an insert of a "wanted" poster of an alleged bacrim member accused of extortion. But instead of recommending that readers alert the police if they had any information, the poster urged them to call Ortiz and included his cell phone number and email address.

But Ortiz has paid a high price for his stance. In 2010, a grenade was thrown at his house and he later received two telephone death threats from alleged members of the bacrim. He is now accompanied 24 hours a day by two government bodyguards.

In interviews with CPJ, police officials in both Caucasia and Tarazá admitted that the bacrim continue to smuggle drugs and extort local businesses. But they denied that journalists face any special problems. When asked to rate press freedom on a scale of 1 to 10--with 10 being the highest--Caucasia Police Commander Alvaro Cardoso gave the town a 10.

A similar assessment was provided by Caucasia Mayor José Nadín Arabia, whose office window provides a panoramic view of the half-finished library. Arabia said the project was carried out by his predecessor and professed no knowledge of Nieto's problems in trying to investigate what went wrong.

Except for Ortiz, Arabia said, he hadn't heard of any recent threats against journalists. However, he admitted that reporters had toned down their coverage.

"The bacrim pressure everyone who writes negative things about them," Arabia said. "But reporters no longer publish much about the bacrim."

[Reporting from Caucasia, Colombia]

Hrant Dink murder to be retried, but concerns remain

2013-05-23T19:24:41Z

A decision last week in the murder case of Hrant Dink will lead to a retrial, but Dink's supporters are still not satisfied. The ruling on May 15 by Turkey's Supreme Court of Appeals in Ankara acknowledged that there was a criminal conspiracy to murder the ethnic Armenian journalist, but stopped short of opening the way to a deeper investigation into potential involvement by Turkey's powerful institutions.

]]> The Supreme Court reviewed a verdict by an Istanbul court, passed on January 17, 2012, which was heavily criticized for failing to recognize Dink's murder as an organized and deliberately planned crime, or that state agents bore responsibility, at a minimum, for neglecting threats against the journalist prior to his murder.

Dink, founder and former chief editor of the weekly newspaper Agos, was murdered in front of his Istanbul office in January 2007. The suspects were quickly arrested and put on trial, but the journalist's family and friends--as well as human rights defenders--believed the masterminds were protected by the state. Dink had received threats for a long time before he was killed, and he had publicized those threats through his columns. Hate mail and threatening calls to Agos were part of the newspaper's daily routine.

Supporters of the journalist from the independent Hrant Dink's Friends Platform repeatedly pointed to evidence that government officials, police, military personnel, and members of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) had played roles in the murder--at least, by neglecting their duty to protect the journalist. Evidence presented in court showed that more than one intelligence unit had been aware of the planning stage of Dink's murder but had done nothing to prevent it. The defense also pointed out the triggerman and his immediate associates were not sophisticated enough to organize the professional hit that was Dink's assassination.

On Wednesday, while the Supreme Court acknowledged the existence of a "criminal organization" behind the murder, it failed to recognize that an "armed terrorist" group was responsible for masterminding it. The distinction between the two formulations is crucial in Turkey's law; the latter provides ground for the prosecution to treat the crime as a conspiracy that could involve government officials. The former essentially downgrades the murder to the stature of a regular crime. The investigation is therefore exempt from going beyond the immediate killers of Hrant Dink to seeking the commissioners of the murder among power structures.

The date for the retrial is yet to be determined. The details of the Supreme Court ruling are as follows:

Ogün Samast, the convicted triggerman who had confessed to the murder, had received 22 years and 10 months in prison (a relatively lighter sentence since he was not an adult on the day of the murder and was tried by a juvenile court in Istanbul) on July 25, 2011. The Supreme Court upheld this sentence.

A second defendant, Yasin Hayal, who had confessed to arming Samast and instructing him to kill Dink, had received the punishment of life without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Court upheld this sentence but demanded that Hayal also be tried for founding and leading the criminal organization behind Dink's murder.

Back in January 2012, a third suspect, Osman Hayal (Yasin's brother), was tried and acquitted of aiding the conspiracy to murder Dink. The Supreme Court overturned his acquittal, saying that the investigation into his alleged involvement had been insufficient. Dink's defense team claims that Osman Hayal was with Samast on the day of the murder, based on security camera records.

Also in January 2012, a fourth suspect, Erhan Tuncel, a police informant accused of involvement in the conspiracy to murder Dink, was acquitted of the charge of being a leader of the armed terrorist organization behind Dink's assassination. With the Supreme Court of Appeals' ruling that no such organization existed, Tuncel will be retried on the lesser charge of being a member of a criminal organization.

Three other defendants will be retried on similar charges as Tuncel.

Dink family lawyer Fethiye Çetin told CPJ that justice cannot reach the masterminds of the murder when the perpetrators are classified as a "criminal organization" rather than an "armed terrorist organization." Any group of persons that join together for the purpose of committing even a petty crime may be considered a criminal organization under the Turkish legal system, Çetin said. The term "terrorist organization" would invoke a different set of legal articles that would allow the investigation to go deeper--or, in this case, higher.

The Hrant Dink murder was "committed by an extremely well organized and professional organization," Çetin said. The planning before, during, and after the murder, including removal of the evidence from the scene, shows that this was not the work of just another fanatical nationalist who one day decided to kill a public figure, Çetin said, and the investigation must go further to catch the culprits.

Q&A with an editor of South Sudan's Juba Monitor

2013-05-22T15:49:19Z

Police arbitrarily arrested Michael Koma, the managing editor of South Sudan's daily Juba Monitor, on May 2 and detained him for four days following the publication of an article critical of the deputy security minister. A veteran journalist, Koma has experienced firsthand the poor state of press freedom within Africa's newest country. CPJ spoke with him briefly this week.

]]>

Tom Rhodes: The police recently detained you for publishing a statement that implicated the deputy interior minister in the killing of a traffic officer. Were any charges presented? Could you provide more detail on what exactly happened?

Michael Koma: Yes, I was detained. I spent four days in police custody without charge and was released on bail pending a final investigation into the case involving the deputy minister. The article we published by members of the Nuer ethnic community in Unity State alleges that the deputy minister is a prime suspect in the killing of a traffic officer named Banjioth Mathoat. The body of the officer was found near the minister's house and traces of blood were found inside his fence. [Editor's Note: The minister has denied the allegations.]

TR: A month earlier, in April, national security summoned you and Chief Editor Alfred Taban twice after the Juba Monitor published another statement. Could you tell me more about the statement that caused such consternation and what sort of questions you had to face?

MK: When they summoned us to the national security in April, they objected to the story we published about Yau Yau [Editor's Note: The Yau Yau are a rebel group led by David YauYau that has fought the ruling party in Jonglei State since April 2010] capturing the Marau airstrip in Jonglei from the government. They said it amounted to supporting the Yau Yau rebellion, simply for publishing their statement, and they alleged that this is treason against the state.

TR: It would appear that there is growing intolerance toward individuals and groups critical of the government, including the media--would you agree with that sentiment?

MK: The situation of the press and the media in South Sudan is very bad. On Monday morning, for instance, some officials of the national security service at the Juba Airport detained all the copies of the Juba Monitor until 2 p.m. after the intervention of the Ministry of Information. Authorities in Juba appear to be targeting our paper more and more without basis. The confiscation of the copies has incurred us a lot of financial losses.

The government officials do not tolerate "negative press"--as they called it. They don't give specific reasons for harassing the media, but any press that does not praise the government's assumedly positive reputation is shunned. I am expecting dark days ahead.

TR: Certain topics appear to be "no-go" areas for the press including reporting on insecurity, corruption, and inter-ethnic rivalry. Is this an accurate observation? And how has the Juba Monitor managed to cover these topics?

MK: The authorities are getting increasingly nervous amid growing public unpopularity and increasing intolerance over views and opinions being expressed by the Juba Monitor. They don't like content that is critical of government conduct. The issues that are touchy to them are talking about corruption, incompetency of government institutions, power struggles between the president and his deputy, etc. We have not resorted to grave self-censorship yet, but it is likely.

TR: What about the status of the media bills? The Media Authority Bill, which was passed on Tuesday, ostensibly sets up an independent regulator, and the two other bills, the Access to Information and Public Broadcaster, will soon be presented in parliament. Do you think their passage would help journalists in terms of security, etc?

MK: Although the media bills will be passed soon, it is doubtful that it will improve the press environment within the country. Rural areas will still be a no-go area for media coverage as well as issues concerning insecurity and corruption. Authorities consider that negative coverage in these areas undermine the state's authority and image, which national security is keen to protect. Further, especially in the rural areas, authorities do not always adhere to the law--why should the media laws be any different?

Premature praise for Burma's press reforms

2013-05-22T14:40:04Z

Burmese President Thein Sein made a historic visit to the White House on May 19, the latest in a series of high-level symbolic exchanges between the two nations. While Thein Sein has been regularly commended by U.S. officials for his broad democratic reform program, President Barack Obama's praise this week overlooked a significant backtracking on promised media-related reforms.

]]> To be sure, Burma's press has enjoyed significant gains under Thein Sein's quasi-civilian administration. Since taking office in 2011, the Burmese leader has ordered the release of all the journalists jailed under the previous military regime, ended pre-publication censorship of the local press, and lifted blocks imposed on the Internet, including bans punishable by imprisonment for accessing foreign and exile-run news sites.

Relaxed media restrictions have ranked among the most visible and measurable of Thein Sein's reforms. In response to Burma's opening, the U.S. has suspended economic sanctions, promoted private investment, and opened the way for renewed multilateral lending from financial institutions like the World Bank. On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, a staunch critic of Burma's previous military regime, announced his intention to allow key sanctions legislation to lapse in response to the country's recent democratic progress.

But as Thein Sein has won Western accolades and concessions, certain reforms of his have stalled or gone into reverse. That was seen tellingly in late February when the Ministry of Information unveiled a Draft Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law that aims to impose broad and vague censorship guidelines, including a ban on any media criticism of existing laws. That provision underscored laggard legal reform, including over laws used in the past to suppress and imprison journalists. Violations of the proposed censorship guidelines in the new draft law would be punishable by six months in prison.

Ministry officials tried to push the bill quickly through parliament in March, but resistance from local journalists and press groups suspended those deliberations until June. If the bill is passed into law in its current form, Rangoon-based journalists believe its censorship provisions, as well as an arbitrary licensing system, will undermine the authority of a separate Press Law now being drafted by the Myanmar Press Council with an eye toward protecting, rather than eroding, press freedoms. Ministry officials have since indicated they would make revisions to the Draft Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law, though a new version has not yet been made public.

Obviously, the U.S. has a wider strategic agenda in engaging Burma beyond the promotion of democracy and rights. News analyses have pointed to Washington's desire to counter-balance China's rising influence and nip budding relations between North Korea's and Myanmar's militaries. But if the Obama administration's public tack is to reward reform progress with carrots, it should consider re-imposing sanctions and other punitive measures in cases of backtracking. While Thein Sein's media-related reforms have been hopeful, there is no guarantee they will deepen or last.

European Parliament reaffirms principles, but action lacks

2013-05-21T18:31:50Z

The European Parliament, meeting in a plenary session in Strasbourg, France, adopted today a resolution stating that "changes in EU member state's media laws that make it easier for governments to interfere in the media should be monitored every year at EU level."

]]> Based on a report drafted by liberal Romanian MEP Renate Weber, the resolution was adopted by 539 votes to 70, with 78 abstentions.

The resolution comes as the gap is widening between model EU countries and those with poor press freedom records. In particular, the EU has shown it does not know how to manage Hungary, a member state that has been regularly criticized by the European Commission and at the European Parliament for its seriously flawed media law.

Weber's report reflects a certain European idea of press freedom. Besides referring to the conventional articles in international and European law enshrining freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it emphasizes a number of issues that characterize and dominate the European debate: the role of public service media, media pluralism, and journalists' independence from both internal and external pressures.

Despite the wave of privatization initiated in the 1980s, public service broadcasting remains a mainstay of the European media landscape. The report, which recalls the "important role of the public service media and their institutional duties to provide high quality and accurate and reliable information," warns however these values and principles--independence, pluralism, and impartiality--are at risk. In many former Eastern European countries but also, to a lesser extent, in old Europe, ruling parties tend to consider these public service media as their own.

The report therefore calls for "the devising of procedures and mechanisms for the selection and appointment of media heads, management boards, media councils, and regulatory bodies that are transparent, based on merit and indisputable experience, and integrity, instead of political or partisan criteria in the framework of a spoil system linked to the results of elections or the will of those in power."

Media pluralism is also hailed as "a pillar of media freedom in terms of ensuring that media (...) offer a wide range of views." Highlighting the dangers of media concentration, it also pleads for transparency in ownership and management, an issue that is particularly acute in some former Communist countries where businessmen with dubious records own influential mass media and dictate their editorial line.

In order to counter such unsavory intrusions into the media, the report underlines "the importance of ensuring the independence of journalists both from internal pressures from editors or owners and externally from political or economic lobbies or other interest groups."

In its efforts to promote public interest and ethical journalism, the EU is at times suspected of being intent on over-regulation. Such accusations often come from anti-European circles, particularly in the U.K., but vigilance is well-advised: in January, for instance, the report of the High Level Group on media freedom and pluralism convened by Neelie Kroes, EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, gave Eurobashers an axe to grind by suggesting EU-wide statutory self-regulation.

Weber's recommendations are much more subtle. She proposes that the European Commission "should organize the monitoring of media freedom in the EU on a yearly basis" and "institutionalize EU-level cooperation and coordination on the media," especially for audiovisual media. The resolution also insists that "media regulatory bodies should always be independent and created by the media sector itself."

Hungary has been for the past two years the elephant in the room in these parliamentary discussions on press freedom. Weber's report makes an indirect reference to the controversy, which is seen as a litmus test of the legal prerogatives and the political will of the Commission--the official guardian of EU values as defined in the union's treaties, and in particular the most recent, the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, which purported to clarify what powers belong to the EU, the member states, or are shared. "The treaties provide the EU with a mandate and powers to ensure that fundamental rights are protected in the EU," the report says, even though some EU law experts beg to disagree and consider this reference to the EU powers as a an excessively liberal interpretation of the treaties.

However, in a Parliament dominated by the European People's Party (EPP)--a center-right group that hosts Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban--it is very unlikely that the proposal of the Liberal group's president, former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, to activate Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty (suspending a member state's voting rights) will find a majority soon.

The European Parliament can be forceful in defending lofty principles, but it can turn wooly-kneed when it has to take concrete measures that might adversely impact its most powerful members.

[Reporting from Brussels]

Goodale: Pentagon Papers have lessons for AP case

2013-05-17T21:09:33Z

Forty-two years ago next month, The New York Times published the first of the Pentagon Papers, a trove of classified documents on U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, sparking a landmark legal case on press freedom.

]]> The daily's win against government officials who sought to halt publication in the Supreme Court case The New York Times Co. v. the U.S. was a decisive legal victory against prior restraint, or censorship. But any notion that the press freedom fight in the United States is settled was dispelled on Tuesday when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder tried to justify the government's decision to secretly seize two months of phone records from The Associated Press by describing information published in an AP article last year as "a very, very serious leak...It put American lives at risk." It was an especially relevant moment, then, to discuss James Goodale's newly published book, Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles, at an event held Thursday at CPJ's New York offices. On hand were veteran journalists including Dan Rather, Judith Miller, Victor Navasky, and Seymour Topping.

Goodale, who was general counsel for the Times during the Pentagon Papers and the architect of the paper's legal defense--and is a member of CPJ's board of directors--was quick to relate the current scandal to the precedent-setting case. "Notice [Holder] didn't tell you why it was the worst national security leak, he didn't tell you what [the damage was]...The lesson from the Pentagon Papers is: Don't trust the government when it claims national security" concerns, Goodale said. He came to this conclusion in the process of researching his book, for which he poured over formerly classified documents from the case. "I wanted to give the government the benefit of the doubt, but about three quarters of the way through I realized it was totally nonsense, they never had a damn thing," Goodale said. Four decades later, he noted, no one has ever shown damage to U.S. national security caused by publication of the papers. Reporters today may do well to consider this point as they debate what, if any, actual harm was incurred by the AP article that revealed a secret CIA operation and foiled terrorist plot in Yemen and is at the heart of the subpoena fracas.

While Goodale could not have anticipated the timely revelation of the secret AP subpoena, he clearly did have one current issue in mind when he decided to write his account: the ongoing saga of WikiLeaks and its embattled and polemic founder, Julian Assange. While acknowledging that many traditional journalists find Assange to be a baffling character, Goodale said, "If you're angry at Assange for publishing the information, you should be mad at The New York Times too. Assange is [reporter] Neil Sheehan and The New York Times" in the Pentagon Papers case, he added. "Assange is the publisher, so there shouldn't be any question we are dealing with a First Amendment issue. If we don't recognize that in the digital age, we are in a lot of trouble."

Of course, there are notable differences between Assange and the Times, whose own partnership in publishing the first set of leaked documents eventually publicly broke down. Assange received widespread scorn from the journalism community for WikiLeaks' later disclosure of thousands of classified, unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables that potentially put people's lives at risk. (CPJ, for example, documented at least one Ethiopian journalist who was forced to flee his country after he was cited in one of the cables.) Nonetheless, Goodale noted that the measure of whether publication of leaked material meets journalistic quality and ethical standards does not affect whether it qualifies for First Amendment protection. In other words, while WikiLeaks may not have taken care to redact or contextualize the data as the Times did, professional failures "do not [constitute] a legal distinction for the First Amendment." Moreover, Goodale emphasized, journalists must be aware that the precedent of prosecuting WikiLeaks, essentially criminalizing the newsgathering process, would put the whole profession at risk.

Goodale has received a lot of press in recent days for stating that Barack Obama is on a path to becoming "worse for press freedom than [former U.S. President Richard] Nixon." That's the kind of headline that would make any president shudder, and in a sign the White House crisis-control team is on full alert, Obama unexpectedly called this week for a renewed push to pass the long-dormant federal shield law that would enshrine the reporter's privilege to protect confidential sources. While many in the room with Goodale Thursday welcomed the move as an added protection for the press--most notably Judith Miller, who famously went to jail to uphold that principle--the bill comes with several controversial elements, including a national security exemption and the need to legally define who is a journalist in order to be effective.

Whatever happens with the legislation, Obama's announcement was characteristic of the schizophrenic nature of the administration's record on whistleblowers and leaks. The low level of tolerance for leaked information under Obama, and post 9-11 more generally, led Miller to question whether Goodale could have won the Pentagon Papers case in the 21st century. (After doing a numbers analysis of the current makeup of the Supreme Court, Goodale's response was an emphatic "Yes.")

As pointed out by CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon, the shield law and leak cases highlight that the Pentagon Papers case settled the issue of prior restraint (which has become largely irrelevant and unenforceable in the Internet era), but the debate on classified documents is unresolved. Decades after Goodale first articulated to corporate media lawyers the feasibility and importance of the First Amendment as a legal defense, he and his book are a handy and relevant reference for a new generation of attorneys tasked with protecting the press.

As great as his influence on journalism has been, the lawyer and published author, showed that he is not impervious to newsroom competiveness after his decades at the Times. The original impetus for his book, he confessed, was seeing a play about the case performed three years ago. In the production, he said, "The Washington Post came out as the hero. I couldn't stand it."

News blackout deepens Turkey press freedom doubts

2013-05-17T19:21:52Z

When twin car bombs shook the district of Reyhanli in Turkey's southeastern province of Hatay near the Syrian border last Saturday, killing at least 51 people and wounding dozens of others, a local court issued a gag order on all news coverage of the attack. The ban was unprecedented in scope and in the way by which it came about.

]]> Within hours of the bombing--in a busy shopping area in Reyhanli, the temporary home of thousands of Syrian refugees--police in Hatay, Istanbul, and Ankara visited newsrooms and presented the court order to media managers to ensure they heed to it. The order banned "every type of voice and visual recording, [video] feeds, print and visual media [records], and data on the Internet" about the Reyhanli incident. The order also banned sharing of information about "the event scene, the dead and the wounded at the event scene, and the contents of the event."

To further ensure that the order was widely disseminated, the state broadcasting regulator RTÜK also announced it. Even though few of Turkey's media adhered to the ban, the very fact that it was passed deepens concerns over the state of press freedom and freedom of information in Turkey, and casts further doubts on whether Ankara is genuinely prepared to keep to its international commitments on the issue.

At the heart of the problem is Turkey's flawed legal framework, which allows for authorities to censor the media; as well as the authorities' instinct to control the press rather than let it do its job.

The mechanics of the ban were as follows:

After the bombings, the Chief Republic Prosecutor's Office of Reyhanli, which is responsible for the investigation into the attack, filed a claim with the Reyhanli Penal Court of Peace to ban all news outlets from covering the incident, alleging that coverage "violates the secrecy of the investigation," news reports said.

The court approved the claim and banned all news, on any platform. As justification, the court cited, in part, Article 3 of Turkey's Press Law, which allows for restrictions on news media when the "public health and morals, national security, public order, public safety, and the unity of the land" are at stake. It was not clear how the ban was meant to be enforced.

Independent and opposition print and online media immediately challenged the gag order, calling it an attempt at blanket censorship. The vibrant Turkish Twittersphere swirled with comments on the issue. "A penal judge cannot act as if he is a lawmaker," tweeted Adem Sözüer, dean of the Law Faculty of Istanbul University, on Monday. "Basic rights cannot be limited by law," Sözüer said. However, television and radio stations, which can be shut down on the order of RTÜK, largely adhered to the ban.

Although the ban was technically imposed by a court and not by the government, leaders of Recep Tayyp Erdoğan's AKP party quickly spoke out in support of it. Interior Minister Muammer Güler, Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin, Health Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu, Hatay Governor Celalettin Lekesiz and Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay held a joint press conference on Saturday on the Reyhanli attack. Of the gag order, Ergin said: "The matter of the news ban in such events is for both protecting the safety of the investigation and to prevent the public's psychology from being negatively influenced."

While the news media were gagged, government officials continued to talk to the press about the bombing--indicating that all news is not created equal. Evidently, government-sanctioned information is allowed; independently gathered information is not.

Hüseyin Çelik, deputy AKP leader, made these statements on NTV television on Monday: "Many times journalists produce news with background stories, things they hear from each other [and] what someone on the street says [because] they have a concern for scooping [the competition]." He said the news blackout was necessary for the investigation into the bombing to proceed unobstructed. Puzzlingly, he added, "Such precautions were taken in the USA during the 9/11 attacks."

The latter statement, of course, is false. Furthermore, time and again, the record has shown that news blackouts do not prevent rumors and speculation but breed them. As such, blackouts are not only unnecessary--they are harmful.

In the end, the news ban was scrapped Thursday on appeal. It is unclear who filed the appeal, but a court in Hatay lifted the ban, just like the Reyhanli court had imposed it. Perhaps Turkish authorities figured out that, in the digital era, information is impossible to stifle.

Bahrain's "Blogfather" emerges from hiding

2013-05-16T21:33:13Z

For two years, Bahrainis have been asking "Where is Ali Abdel Imam?" And now finally, they have an answer.

The prominent opposition blogger suddenly emerged from hiding last week, announcing he had been granted asylum in the United Kingdom, news sources reported.

He had not been heard from since March 17, 2011, when he cryptically tweeted, "I get tired from my phone so I switched it of no need for rumors plz." The Bahraini government had just declared a state of emergency, as massive reform protests rocked the island country. Abdel Imam, who had already been arrested twice before for his work, feared the government would arrest him again in an impending crackdown. So when they came for him the following day, Abdel Imam made sure he wasn't there. He had not been heard from since--until last week.

]]> The story of Abdel Imam's escape from Bahrain, as reported by The Atlantic, reads like a Hollywood script, complete with outlandish plots involving body doubles, code names, and secret compartments. The news electrified the Bahraini opposition and human rights defenders across the region. His first tweet since his disappearance, simply reading "online," was retweeted 257 times and favorited 74 times.

There was one group clearly not entertained by the news: the Bahraini government. In a statement to CNN, the government accused Abdel Imam of "inciting and encouraging continuous acts of violent attacks against police officers." The government also expressed its surprise that "certain NGOs have taken it as their mission to aid and abet fugitives from justice."

In the strictest sense of the term, Abdel Imam is in fact a fugitive. In June 2011, Abdel Imam was sentenced in absentia to 15 years imprisonment for attempting to overthrow the regime by an extraordinary tribunal established under martial law. Some of his co-defendants--bloggers, activists, and opposition politicians--received life sentences.

In April the following year, CPJ was one of 50 human rights and press freedom groups that sent a letter to King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa in support of Abdel Imam and his 20 co-defendants--all convicted for their political beliefs and activism.

Despite such pressure, a civilian court upheld Abel Imam's convictions in September 2012. At the time, CPJ slammed the court decision, and our executive director, Joel Simon, said, "The expression of critical opinion is protected by international law and can never be a crime."

As such, Abdel Imam is not so much a fugitive as an opposition voice in exile. The U.K.'s decision to grant Abdel Imam asylum indicates the British too believe the charges against him amount to political persecution.

The Bahraini government makes clear in its statement to CNN that it considers Abdel Imam a serious threat to security, explaining he is the"founder of Bahrain Online, a website that has repeatedly been used to incite hatred."

To be sure, anger towards the government is readily apparent on Bahrain Online. Founded almost 15 years ago, Bahrain Online became a central hub for opposition voices, hosting blogs and an immensely popular discussion forum. With opposition voices largely excluded from the traditional press, dissent in Bahrain went digital years before YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Abdel Imam became known as the "Blogfather of Bahrain," and he helped pave the way for netizens across the Arab world to establish their own blogs and online forums.

As the hope of the 2011 Pearl Revolution devolved into repression and street clashes, anger in some corners of the opposition grew. Today, a banner on Bahrain Online reads "No dialogue with you" next to a picture of a vampiric King Hamad and a massive fireball. Some threads now discuss how to battle riot police in actions described by the posters as self-defense. The government calls such operations--usually involving molotov cocktails, stones, and iron rods--acts of terror.

Yet such posts apparently came from website users and not Abdel Imam, who was in hiding, and they are essentially part of an ongoing intra-opposition debate over how to seek change in Bahrain. In an interview with Al-Jazeera last week, Abdel Imam blamed the increase of violence by protesters on the regime "because they didn't provide any proper channel for change."

Asked about his new life in exile, Abdel Imam told Al-Jazeera, "I didn't plan it, but if it's the price of the freedom for my country and for the people I love to have their rights then I'm willing to pay." Separated from his family, at least now Abdel Imam is safe, physically and legally--unlike so many journalists and activists still in Bahrain.

Just yesterday, a Bahraini court jailed six people for insulting King Hamad on Twitter, and another court once again delayed the trial of photographer Ahmed Humaidan, accused of "using violence to assault police" after he covered anti-government demonstrations. In the past month, three international journalists were asked to leave the country for covering unrest coinciding with a major Formula One race, and police continued to harass professional photographers working for outlets like The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and others.

Not everyone under threat can choose exile. Now, the opposition voices that remain will at least once again have an essential advocate to amplify their message.

Turkey's press freedom must be on Obama-Erdoğan agenda

2013-05-16T18:24:33Z

When President Obama meets with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyp Erdoğan today, he needs to deliver the message that Turkey's failure to improve its record on press freedom is eroding the country's strategic relationship with the United States and sabotaging its regional leadership ambitions, CPJ's executive director, Joel Simon, and Reporters Without Borders' director general, Christophe Deloire, write in an opinion piece in Foreign Policy.

]]> Forty-seven journalists continue to languish in Turkey's prisons--most of them not yet even tried. Thousands of other journalists in Turkey have been subjected to crippling punitive lawsuits, while Erdoğan continues to chastise media outlets and individual journalists who challenge his policies. Many reporters and columnists have been forced from their jobs as a result, Simon and Deloire write. In response to criticisms of his government's treatment of journalists, Erdoğan has been defiant and defensive.

"Obama is right to recognize the strategic importance of Turkey's relationship with the United States. Turkey is a NATO member and an economic engine for the Middle East," Simon and Deloire write. "But Turkey's strategic value also depends on its appeal as a model--a moderate Muslim democracy that has managed to cultivate deep trade ties with Europe--for the newly democratizing states of the Middle East. Turkey's poor record on press freedom undermines its credibility as a model and blunts its soft power."

To read the entire op-ed, click here.

Transparency, accountability at stake in Manning trial

2013-05-16T15:58:35Z

On June 3, when the long-anticipated court-martial of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning begins in Fort Meade, Md., journalists will crowd the courtroom. But at some point the press and the public likely will be ordered out while confidential testimony--including from State Department officials and active military personnel-- is heard. If the pre-trial proceedings are any indication, the press will also be denied access to written submissions deemed sensitive.

]]> Precisely how much of the Manning trial will be hidden from public view will be decided by the judge in the case, Col. Denise Lind, and is the subject of legal wrangling, including Freedom of Information requests and an amicus brief protesting restrictions and signed by more than 30 media organizations. While the case is undoubtedly sensitive, the U.S. government has a credibility problem when it comes to classification. For example, after WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, thus making them available to anyone around the world with an Internet connection, the U.S. government took the absurd view that the documents remained classified and warned unauthorized government employees not to access them, even on home computers.

The possibility that portions of the Manning trial will take place in secret is all the more troubling because the trial will touch on issues of grave concern to U.S. journalists--in particular, whether the act of releasing classified documents to the public violates the 1917 Espionage Act and is tantamount to "aiding the enemy," a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Espionage Act, under which civilians but not (so far) journalists have been prosecuted, makes it a crime to "communicate" information, but the word "publish" was deliberately omitted from the statute by Congress, according to the legislative history.

The novel view of the military prosecutors is that when Manning sent classified material to WikiLeaks using that site's secure dropbox, he knew that Al-Qaeda would eventually see the information. The fact that some of the material published by WikiLeaks was found on Osama Bin Laden's personal laptop is expected to be a key argument. Manning pleaded guilty in February to leaking classified information, a crime for which he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. But prosecutors are continuing to pursue more serious charges, including violations of the Espionage Act. They have said that they are seeking life imprisonment rather than the death penalty.

As Floyd Abrams and Yochai Benkler noted in a March 13 op-ed in The New York Times, a successful prosecution in the Manning case could deter future journalistic sources, particularly those in the military who, like Manning, are subject to prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The military prosecutors seek to convict Manning for "knowingly giv[ing] intelligence to the enemy" solely on the ground that he disregarded the risk that an enemy might access the same information widely available to the public.

In his statement to the court in February, Manning said that he initially sought to publicize classified after-battle reports from Afghanistan and Iraq through the traditional media, and contacted both The Washington Post and The New York Times. (This claim was viewed with skepticism by former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller.) By Manning's account, it was only when he did not hear back from either paper that he sent the documents to WikiLeaks. While traditional journalists and WikiLleaks treat classified material very differently, they are both in the business of making information available to the public. The prosecutor in the Manning case acknowledged to the judge that he would be seeking the same charges if Manning had leaked the information to The New York Times. In other words, under the prosecution's legal theory, a source that provides classified information to the media could, potentially, face the death penalty. That would be the ultimate chilling effect.

There is another reason journalists should be concerned about the Manning prosecution, according to CPJ board member James Goodale, author of a new book, Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. Goodale's view is that a Manning conviction would make it easier for the U.S Department of Justice to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a civilian court under the Espionage Act. If Manning has already been found guilty of violating the act, then all the government has to do is prove that Assange conspired with Manning. In December 2010, CPJ wrote to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder opposing any effort to prosecute Assange for conspiracy under the Espionage Act because a successful prosecution of Assange would effectively open the door for the potential prosecution of journalists in the United States, and around the world, for doing their job in gathering information about the U.S. government which may be classified.

With this much at stake, journalists and the public should be paying close attention to the Manning trial. The U.S. government has an obligation to ensure that excessive secrecy and over-classification do not impede media coverage and full public airing of the vital issues being decided. In considering government requests to close portions of the trial, Col. Lind should take into account the overwhelming global public interest in ensuring that Manning's trial is open and the proceedings transparent.

News of convictions in journalist murders sadly infrequent

2013-05-15T16:55:18Z

We received an unusual email last week. Michaella Ortega wrote to tell us that Marlon Recamata, who confessed to shooting her father, Philippine journalist Gerardo Ortega, in 2011, had been convicted and sentenced to life for the crime.

]]> Emails like this are all too rare. The last time CPJ received news of a conviction in a journalist's murder was in January, when a court sentenced former police general Aleksei Pukach to a life term on charges of killing Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000. In 2012, former police lieutenant colonel Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was convicted of organizing the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and a Salvadoran court sentenced former gang member Jonathan Alexander Martínez Castro to 30 years for the murder of cameraman Alfredo Antonio Hurtado Núñez. In 2011, the killers of U.S. journalist Chauncey Bailey were sentenced, and two perpetrators imprisoned for the murder of Anastasiya Baburova in Russia. Several suspects were also jailed in connection with two murders in Nepal: the 2011 stabbing of radio journalist Uma Singh and the abduction and murder of Birendra Shah in 2007.

That makes a rate of two to four convictions per year among cases of journalists that CPJ has confirmed were murdered for their work. Compare that fact to this one: An average of 30 journalists are murdered every year, according to CPJ research.

But Recamata's conviction is only a partial victory--and one that is a reminder of a troubling fact in journalist murders: Those who order the crime are almost never prosecuted.

Recamata, a hired gun, was paid 10,000 Philippine pesos (243 USD), according to a statement issued by the Ortega family. "Cell phones and gadgets cost more than my father's life," wrote Michaella Ortega.

In the vast majority of media murders in the Philippines, and often elsewhere, such henchmen do the work of more powerful figures with a motive to silence the victim. Gerardo Ortega sought to expose corruption through his work, like the 190 other journalists targeted for murder since 1992. In particular, he highlighted irregularities in mining contracts awarded by the former governor of Palawan province, Joel Reyes, who, along with his brother Marjo Reyes, the former mayor of a small resort town, was named by Recamata as having ordered Ortega's assassination. An appellate court blocked an attempt by the Department of Justice to arrest the Reyes' brothers, who are reported to have since fled the Philippines.

The case is all too similar to the 2005 murder of another well-known Philippine journalist, Marlene Garcia Esperat, who also sought to expose corruption by local officials. Three suspects were convicted in this landmark case, and in the course of the trial, one suspect named regional agriculture department officials Osmeña Montaner and Estrella Sabay as the individuals who ordered him to hire the gunmen. Arrest warrants have been issued against the two officials on multiple occasions but, thus far, all efforts to bring them to trial have been quashed.

In dozens of other cases, masterminds have eluded arrest and investigations have failed to go beyond lower-level suspects. In both the Gongadze and Politkovskaya cases, the political will to pursue the higher-ups behind the killings has been seriously questioned. In Gongadze's case, President Leonid Kuchma has been implicated as sanctioning the journalist's murder in retaliation for his reporting on corruption in the government, but evidence behind this accusation has been deemed unusable by courts. It is also not known if Pavlyuchenkov gave information leading to the person who ordered that Politkovskaya be killed, because he was tried behind closed doors as part of a deal with the prosecution.

In Nepal, at least one suspect in the murder of Uma Singh has been out on bail since 2011 with no indication of whether his trial will resume. District police told an international delegation last year, of which I was part, that other suspects, including one of the men believed to have ordered Singh's attacks, have fled to India.

Last week's news was indeed a welcome demonstration that it is possible to chip away at the high rate of impunity in the Philippines. Let's hope the next steps--the apprehension of and a fair and timely trial for the Reyes brothers--aren't far behind. Masterminds have escaped justice for far too long.

In Uganda, media muzzled over alleged Muhoozi project

2013-05-15T14:07:36Z

While Uganda's politicians and social media are abuzz over a sensational letter reportedly written by a top security official about a high-level assassination plot, police have dutifully harassed the mainstream press in a bid to suppress the chatter.

]]> Police spent the entire day Tuesday interrogating three journalists from the private Daily Monitor over their coverage of a letter by the Coordinator of Security Agencies, Gen. David Sejusa (better known as Tinyefuza), Editor Charles Mwanguhya told me. The general, known for his occasional defiance of the presidential State House, claimed in the letter there was a plot to assassinate senior government officials to ensure President Yoweri Museveni's son, Brigadier Muhoozi Kainerugaba, assumes the presidency in 2016, the Monitor reported. Those opposed to the son's ascension to office--dubbed the "Muhoozi Project," Sejusa claims--face imminent threats by security personnel, according to the Monitor's coverage last week. The Monitor quoted Sejusa confirming that he authored the letter.

Although the newspaper published authorities' denunciation of Sejusa's accusations, the Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Directorate summoned Managing Editor Don Wanyama and senior reporters Richard Wanambwa and Risdel Kasasira over the story. "They were interested to know how we got the letter Gen. Sejusa wrote, but there is no way we could reveal our sources since it goes against our code of ethics," Wanyama told me. The police did not officially charge the journalists, but accused them of withholding information and ordered them to return at 11 a.m. today. "It is some kind of intimidation exercise," Wanyama said.

Journalists who tried on Saturday to cover Gen. Sejusa's return to Uganda from an official trip abroad were blocked or detained, Monitor journalist Isaac Kasamani told me. Kasamani and seven other print and broadcast reporters were prevented from passing the security checkpoint at Entebbe airport, the Ugandan Human Rights Network for Journalists reported. Security officers threatened and detained private NBS Television reporter Ivan Kabaale for four hours at the Entebbe police station, the human rights network said. In the end, the general did not show up.

But the worst violation of press rights occurred last week, when security agents detained popular radio host James Kasirivu on May 8, after he reported on Sejusa's claims, and released him two days later. Plainclothes agents picked up the host from Endigito Radio in the southwestern town of Mbarara and held him at Kireka Special Investigations Unit in Kampala, Kasirivu told me. Kasirivu suspects the detention is linked to his comments over Sejusa's letter, since the agents requested recordings of the program. "I didn't go into detail over the case, just reported the issue, but immediately after airing [the report] they came to request the recording," he said.

The boss of the Special Investigations Unit, Beata Chelimo, said Kasirivu was accused of receiving 870 million Ugandan shillings (US$337,000) in illicit payments from a fraudulent traditional healer, according to news reports. But the agents did not tell Kasirivu about these allegations during his detention and the alleged funds were not found in his bank account, he said. The presenter of the current affairs program "World Express" is no stranger to government intimidation. In January, the state-controlled broadcast regulator, the Uganda Communications Commission, ordered Radio Endigito's management to suspend Kasirivu or risk losing its operating license, local journalists and news reports said. "Without explanation, they ordered my suspension," Kasirivu told me. "They just communicated through the boss." Kasirivu believes the temporary suspension was in retaliation for hosting four member of Parliament critical of the government. The same station also temporarily suspended Kasirivu in December 2010, after he reported on an opinion poll that gave the former opposition contender Kizza Besigye a clear lead in upcoming elections.

State House intimidation against radio stations in western Uganda increases during election periods since the region is routinely a political stronghold for the ruling party, Kasirivu said. "Few presenters make political comments in western Uganda these days," he said, because they fear retribution from their bosses who heed the directives of the ruling party. In January, police temporarily detained three staff members of the Twerwaneho Listener's Club, a local civil society organization that produces radio programs covering human rights and governance issues in western Uganda, accusing them of making defamatory statements against Uganda's first family, news reports said. In March, police froze the club's bank accounts, despite Ugandan law that stipulates only courts are empowered to do so, according to reports.

Police and security forces, under the auspices of the state, appear determined to intimidate any media house in the country that provides coverage to those critical of the ruling party or of the growing rebellion within the party itself. Museveni's 2013 New Year's message accused the media and politicians of "indiscipline" and warned "firm steps will be taken," according to news reports. These "firm steps" will undoubtedly increase as Uganda creeps towards 2016 elections and the ruling party's grip on power appears increasingly tenuous. But authorities' knee-jerk, sometimes violent reaction to negative press coverage misses the point that Ugandan citizens and the press alike are already discussing via social media sensitive issues such as the alleged "Muhoozi Project"--despite efforts to suspend radio hosts and interrogate print reporters. As one tweet reads, "When Gen. David Sejusa sneezes the whole of Uganda catches a cold."

[Reporting from Nairobi]

Liberian press boycotts Sirleaf over aide's comments

2013-05-14T21:14:36Z

Most governments, even repressive ones, at least give lip service to supporting freedom of the press--especially on World Press Freedom Day, May 3. But in Liberia this month, Othello Daniel Warrick, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's chief security aide, shocked local journalists by threatening them and calling them "terrorists" at a public event to mark the occasion, according to news reports and local media groups.

]]> Warrick's threats set off a firestorm of protest which has yet to subside. Although he has since backpedaled and some government officials have spoken up to reaffirm their commitment to press freedom, the media are imposing a blackout on coverage of the presidency, which they insist they will uphold until Sirleaf herself speaks out.

Warrick--the head of Liberia's presidential guard, the Executive Protection Service (EPS), which oversees Sirleaf's personal security--was a scheduled guest speaker at a May 3 event titled "Media-Security Relations: An Imperative for Consolidating Peace in Liberia" in west-central Grand Bassa County. But instead of emphasizing peace when he took the podium, he threatened the gathering of over 100 media practitioners assembled, saying the EPS has the right to arrest them without warrant and he would "go after" any journalist who publishes articles critical of him or the presidency, news reports said.

"Any press member that surpasses his/her responsibility to get involved in presidential intelligence; trust me, we will restrict you," Warrick said. "Be careful, because you have your pen and we have our guns. And if you incriminate the character or integrity of Liberians, like myself, we will come after you... the EPS has the right to arrest you without warrant."

A shocked and angry audience reacted with murmurs and boos. In response, Warrick yelled, "Some of you, not all of you, are terrorists," according to news reports.

Following the event, Warrick, a Liberian-American military veteran who has courted controversy in the past, told the Global News Network Liberia that he had no regrets about his anti-press statements. "I am here to protect the presidency. EPS will not hesitate to go after any journalist who will intrude the intelligence of the presidency," he was quoted as saying.

Warrick clearly wasn't expecting the ensuing backlash from the press, civil society, political groups, and individuals, who rallied to demand that Sirleaf sanction Warrick and that he retract his statement, according to news reports.

For days, the government dragged its feet, with presidential spokesman Jerolinmek Piah citing ongoing investigations into the incident, FrontPage Africa reported. On May 8, Isaac Jackson, deputy information minister, wrote to Peter Quaqua, president of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), an ensemble of some 400 journalists with over 40 newspapers, over 20 radio stations, and six television stations, to reaffirm the government's commitment to press freedom, asking Quaqua to disregard Warrick's comments as "lacking in authority to pronounce the established position of the government."

Jackson's letter did not pacify the PUL, which called a mass meeting of its members on May 9 and decided to boycott coverage of the Liberian presidency to protest Sirleaf's "glaring silence" and perceived endorsement of Warrick's threats, according to news reports. In addition, independent newspapers printed black front pages; radio and TV stations suspended broadcast for two hours a day; and the PUL said it would consult with The Africa Editors Forum about revoking the forum's 2010 Friend of the Media Africa Award bestowed on Sirleaf, the reports said.

That shook the government. Warrick backpedaled, saying his comments were meant to encourage journalists to sensitively handle intelligence information about the presidency and not meant to endanger any journalist's life, according to news reports. When reached by telephone, Warrick declined to comment, referring me to the Ministry of Information.

Jackson issued a press release May 11 asking the PUL to reverse its decision, which he likened to "unjustifiably" penalizing innocent Liberians, according to news reports. "It defies the imagination that a free press would bind itself to self-censorship, and by its own consideration and action, deliberately deny the Liberian people of their fundamental right to information about their government," Jackson said.

When I contacted Jackson, he maintained that this is the government's position, and said the PUL's action violates Article 15 (c) of the Liberian Constitution which states "...there shall be no limitation on the public right to be informed about the government and its functionaries."

In an email exchange with me, Information Minister Lewis Brown said PUL's demand that Sirleaf personally address Warrick's comments was "unfair." He said the union's decision to maintain a news blackout was "unjustifiable" and an "overreaction" in the face of "consolidated repudiation by the agencies of the government vested with the authority to speak on behalf of the government and the president."

PUL President Peter Quaqua told me the Information Ministry's statements would have no effect on PUL's decision. "The [PUL protest] actions will stay in force until the president can redeem herself" by breaking her silence, Quaqua told me. "She continues to remain silent on this grave issue that has questioned her promise for democracy through press freedom. Silence means consent," Quaqua said.

Sirleaf, who is currently on an official visit to the United States, has been criticized for her silence on press freedom issues in the past--notably when Liberian journalist Mae Azango, a 2012 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee, went into hiding for weeks following death threats for her reporting on the prevalence of female genital mutilation in the country.

Video: CPJ panel on Iran, with Jon Stewart, Maziar Bahari

2013-05-14T14:57:06Z

Check out the full video of "Censorship and Power in Iran," a panel discussion on imprisoned journalists in Iran that was held on May 8 at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The panel, featuring Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari and CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon and moderated by political satirist Jon Stewart, was followed by a lively Q&A.

The discussion followed a special screening of Bahari's film, called "Forced Confessions," and a short video, called "Iran's Journalists in Chains" about the deterioration of press freedom in the country.