CPJ

New York, December 21, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists announced the addition of three leading journalists to its board of directors today: Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices, Ahmed Rashid, journalist and scholar, and María Teresa Ronderos of Semana.com.

CPJ staffers blogged around the Web today, touching on various issues from our 2009 census of journalists killed. Deputy Director Robert Mahoney has a piece contextualizing the numbers on The Huffington Post; Washington Representative Frank Smyth blogged for The Hill about the importance of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act; and Tom Rhodes, CPJ Africa program coordinator, wrote an article for World Focus on the decade-high toll for journalists in Africa.

Full posts are available at: The Huffington Post, The Hill Blog, and World Focus.

Did you miss it? Yesterday was the 61^st anniversary of the United Nation General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Barack Obama, as he was leaving for Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, declared December 10 Human Rights Day. To help mark it, his national security advisor, the retired Marine General James L. Jones, at left, invited representatives of a number of human rights and related groups including CPJ to meet with him and other senior national security advisors in the White House.

New York, December 9, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins in the call to journalists across the world to join the Global Day of Solidarity today to demand justice for the journalists slaughtered in Maguindanao province of the Philippines on November 23.

Today CPJ released its annual census of imprisoned journalists around the world. Citing 136 journalists jailed for their work around the world, the report brings to the foreground one of the toughest issues CPJ and other advocacy groups grapple with: Advocacy working at its best can make a difference over time and, in some cases, can win the early release of journalists from prison. But when that fails what can be done to for journalists languishing in jail, often in horrifying conditions?

Four groups in the Philippines released what appears to be the most authoritative account on the murder of 57 people on November 23 in Ampatuan, in Maguindanao province, in the Philippines’ southernmost main island, Mindanao. The report puts the death toll for journalists at 30, with a few others classified as media workers—drivers and other support staff. Some bodies are still unidentified. The nine-person investigative team spent November 25 to 30 in the nearest large city, General Santos City, and traveled to the site of the massacre in Ampatuan and to nearby towns interviewing relatives of those killed.

Small in stature but strong in her words, Naziha Réjiba tells a reporter of all the things the Tunisian government does to try to frighten her. But Réjiba said that she will not be scared, that she will never allow such tactics to have power over her. Editor of Kalima, an online news Web site blocked in her own country, Réjiba was honored Tuesday at CPJ’s International Press Freedom Awards at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria for displaying just that sort of courage. Four other leading journalists were recognized as well. 

We want to thank all of you who responded to the challenge set out by our chairman, Paul Steiger, calling on individuals who care about independent media to support CPJ. His e-mail has already generated an unprecedented response, but we still have a ways to go before reaching our goal. Paul has offered a $25,000 matching gift that will effectively double new or increased contributions, up to $500.  

We've launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who exposed the workings of the Arellano Félix drug cartel. They are among the 758 journalists killed for their work since 1992. Our new database memorializes these women and men, most of whom were local reporters, photographers, producers, and editors who confronted the powerful or took unpopular positions.

Author and CPJ board member Kati Marton’s parents worked as foreign correspondents in Budapest during the Cold War in the 1950s, exposing Marton to the grit of living in a Communist state. She described feelings of alienation and displacement she felt as a child to an audience at CPJ’s New York offices today. “We lived a pro-American life,” she said. “We stood out like princesses in a concentration camp.”