Chauncey Bailey

In "Banding Together: The Chauncey Bailey Project Fights Impunity," CPJ’s Maria Salazar-Ferro describes how a group of Bay Area journalists worked together to ensure that the murder of their colleague did not go unpunished. Using investigative journalism as an advocacy tool, the Bailey Project held authorities accountable and brought about the conviction of the mastermind. (3:05)

Please read the CPJ special report on journalists killed and visit our database of reporters, editors, photojournalists, and others who have given their lives for their work.   

Press freedom groups worldwide are banding together today, the International Day to End Impunity, to demand justice for hundreds of journalists murdered for their work. On this day, the Committee to Protect Journalists and dozens of other members of the International Freedom of Information Exchange are remembering journalists killed, and urging governments to take action against those responsible for their deaths. We are also looking for lessons learned in past fights--like the one led by a group of journalists from the San Francisco Bay area, who battled tirelessly to ensure that justice was served in the slaying of their colleague Chauncey Bailey.

After a lengthy police investigation that involved a number of questionable irregularities, a jury in Oakland, Calif., today found two men guilty of the 2007 murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey. Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey were both convicted of first-degree degree murder in Bailey's slaying.

Indictments came down on Wednesday in the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was shot on an Oakland, Calif., street in August 2007. An Alameda County grand jury indicted the leader of the now-closed Your Black Muslim Bakery, Yusuf Bey, on charges that he ordered Bailey killed. 

The Chauncey Bailey Project is shaking up California authorities from Oakland to Sacramento, after alleging misconduct by police--including mishandling or withholding evidence by the chief detective investigating their colleague's murder. Evidence recently published by the project, a rare, ad hoc consortium of committed journalists, has led the Alameda district attorney to open an independent oversight investigation, and the Oakland mayor to demand a separate, state investigation of the Bailey murder case.