2015

The violence over the tightening of laws banning the consumption of beef in parts of India and debate over the reach of a right-wing Hindu agenda are having an impact on press freedom. An editor who wrote about the benefits of beef was fired last week, journalists have received death threats from extremist groups, and…

“These people will kill you,” Nikhil Wagle, a prominent journalist in India, told me as we discussed reports of him being named as a target by a member of a hard-line Hindu group who is being questioned by police over the murder of a writer.

Images of police forcibly suppressing protesters, such as the one above, are seen in many places around the world. Too frequently, journalists trying to cover these events find themselves caught in the crosshairs, with news crews beaten by police batons, exposed to teargas or hit by water cannon. From race riots in Ferguson in the…

On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera was forced off the air in India after the government demanded the Qatar-based news broadcaster be suspended for five days for broadcasting images of maps between 2013 and 2014 that did not display Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as separate territory.

“Modi has tightened the screws on information.” This statement from Bangalore-based journalist Subir Ghosh underscores a common challenge repeated to me by several of India’s journalists, who say the space for criticism is shrinking under Narendra Modi’s rule. Since a landslide victory made him leader of the world’s largest democracy nearly one year ago, the…

In an historic decision, India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down part of a law used to silence criticism and free expression. While this marks a pivotal victory that has been welcomed in many quarters, many challenges remain for press freedom in the country.

What do Delhi, Beijing, and Villiers-sur-Marne have in common, but Ouagadougou does not? The first three recently banned access to films their governments deemed inappropriate. But a film festival in the fourth, the capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa, is stepping up security to show an acclaimed but controversial movie about Islamic militancy in…

Mumbai may be 7,000 kilometers from Paris but the debate on freedom of expression sparked by coverage of the January 7 attack on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is close to home for large parts of the Indian press.

Protests against the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo were held in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and parts of Africa over the weekend, as crowds demonstrated against the magazine’s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad, according to news reports.