Europe & Central Asia

2014

  

Slideshow: Journalists killed in 2014

In 2014, at least 60 journalists and 11 media workers were killed in relation to their work, according to CPJ research. Local and international journalists died covering conflicts, including in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine, while many others were murdered reporting on corruption and organized crime in their own countries. Here, CPJ remembers some of the…

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Press in Ukraine still suffering one year after attacks on journalists

A year ago today, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on the first mass assaults on press freedom in Ukraine, after police were ordered to disperse protesters in the capital, Kiev, and other cities. At least 51 journalists–including local and international reporters–were attacked by police and protesters while covering the early days of the standoff…

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Accounting for impunity is obligation for all states

This week, members of UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication will meet to discuss the director general’s biannual report, which examines the cases of nearly 600 journalists killed around the world from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2013. The report, and lacklustre response from member states who had been asked to provide…

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Engaging Turkey’s leadership

Last month, a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute met with senior Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ.

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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Brussels last year. Hungary and its media law have come under scrutiny in the EU. (Reuters/Yves Herman)

Orbán walks fine line in Brussels with Hungary’s media law

“With the Islamic state offensive, the Ebola epidemic and Ukraine, Hungary is not on anyone’s mind in Europe,” mused one of our interlocutors during the Committee to Protect Journalists’ fact-finding mission in Budapest in October. “Viktor Orbán has really nothing to fear from Brussels.”

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Press freedom groups urge Russia to probe murders of journalists

On Sunday, which marked the first United Nations-backed International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, CPJ joined a coalition of international press freedom and human rights groups in urging Russian investigators to serve justice for our murdered colleagues.

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Russian actor condemned for wearing press insignia and firing weapons

Russian actor Mikhail Porechenkov has joined basketball star Dennis Rodman, who declared North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un his best friend, and Jennifer Lopez who sang “Happy Birthday Mr. President” to the authoritarian leader of Turkmenistan, on the list of celebrities who have made human rights faux pas.

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Tamás Bodoky, editor-in-chief of Atlatszo, which advocates for information access. (AFP/Peter Kohalmi)

In Hungary, an independent website defies censorship and pressure

A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists, led by board member Kati Marton, traveled to Hungary in October on CPJ’s first fact-finding and advocacy mission to an EU member state. We went there in response to concerning reports of deteriorating conditions for the press, and met dozens of journalists, media lawyers, managers, rights defenders,…

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People protesting in Budapest about a new Internet tax on data use hold up their smartphones. (Reuters/Laszlo Balogh)

Mission Journal: Creeping authoritarianism in Hungary

On the Buda side of the River Danube stands the glass and steel headquarters of the thriving German-owned entertainment channel RTL. On the Pest side of the Hungarian capital, tucked in a corner of a converted department store, lies the cramped office of struggling online news outlet Atlatszo.

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CPJ joins call for Azerbaijan to end persecution of investigative reporter

A coalition of international press freedom groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, today called on Azerbaijani authorities to lift the travel ban and end the politicized prosecution of Khadija Ismayilova, an award-winning investigative reporter. In the past week authorities in Baku detained Ismayilova upon her arrival from Strasbourg where she had traveled to brief…

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2014