“Iranian authorities must immediately clarify the legal basis for this mass detention of its citizens and cease treating those who communicate with the media as criminals,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Labeling ordinary Iranians as ‘operational agents’ simply for their association with a news outlet is a dangerous tactic of intimidation and a blatant escalation in Iran’s violations of press freedom.

Iran’s intelligence ministry had been monitoring “the so-called citizen-journalists of the Zionist-Terrorist International Network” – a term the government uses to describe London-based Iran International – during the June 13 to 24 Iran-Israel war, state-owned Mehr News Agency reported. The ministry then “arrested and summoned 98 affiliated operational agents,” the agency said on July 28.

The ministry provided no evidence to support its allegations and did not disclose the names, locations, or legal status of those detained or summoned.

The Islamic Republic has previously arrested Iranians working with international media on vague charges, such as for “collaborating with hostile states” or “propaganda against the state.”

Iran’s reformist Ham Mihan newspaper reported that more than 100 journalists had been fired in the aftermath of the 12-day war, as authorities have cracked down on critical voices, with hundreds of arrests and several executions. 

CPJ emailed Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York for comment but received no response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Regime change on the US agenda

 In 2018, Kenneth Wollack bragged to the US Congress that the NED had given political training to 8,000 young Nicaraguans, many of whom were engaged in a failed attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Wollack was praising the “democracy-promotion” work carried out by NED, of which he is now vice-chair. Carl Gershman, then president of the NED and giving evidence, was asked about Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who had been re-elected with an increased majority two years prior. He responded: “Time for him to go.”

Seven years later, Trump took office and it looked as if the NED’s future was endangered. On February 12, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk froze disbursement of its congressionally approved funds. Its activities stopped and its website went blank. On February 24, Richard Grenell, special envoy to Venezuela, declared that “Donald Trump is someone who does not want to make regime changes.”

Washington’s global regime-change operations were immediately impacted and over 2,000 paid US collaborating organizations temporarily defunded. A Biden-appointed judge warned of “potentially catastrophic harm” to (not in her words) US efforts to overturn foreign governments. The howl from the corporate press was deafening. The Associated Press cried: “‘Beacon of freedom’ dims as US initiatives that promote democracy abroad wither.”

However, the pause lasted barely a month. On March 10, funding was largely reinstated.  The NED, which “deeply appreciated” the State Department’s volte face, then made public its current program which, in Latin America and the Caribbean alone, includes over 260 projects costing more than $40 million.

US “soft power”

Created in 1983 under President Ronald Reagan following scandals involving the CIA’s covert funding of foreign interventions, the NED was to shift such operations into a more publicly palatable form under the guise of “democracy promotion.” As Allen Weinstein, NED’s first acting president, infamously admitted in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” In short, NED functions as a “soft power arm” of US foreign policy.

The NED disingenuously operates as a 501(c)(3) private nonprofit foundation. However, it is nearly 100% funded by annual appropriations from the US Congress and governed mainly by Washington officials or ex-officials. In reality, it is an instrument of the US state—and, arguably, of the so-called deep state. But its quasi-private status shields it from many of the disclosure requirements that typically apply to taxpayer-funded agencies.

Hence we encounter verbal gymnastics such as those in its “Duty of Care and Public Disclosure Policies.” That document loftily proclaims: “NED holds itself to high standards of transparency and accountability.” Under a discussion of its “legacy” (with no mention of its CIA pedigree), the NGO boasts: “Transparency has always been central to NED’s identity.”

But it continues, “…transparency for oversight differs significantly from transparency for public consumption.” In other words, it is transparent to the State Department but not to the public. The latter are only offered what it euphemistically calls a “curated public listing of grants” – highly redacted and lacking in specific details.

NED enjoys a number of advantages by operating in the nether region between an accountable US government agency and a private foundation. It offers plausible deniability: the US government can use it to support groups doing its bidding abroad without direct attribution, giving Washington a defense from accusations of interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It is also more palatable for foreign institutions to partner with what is ostensibly an NGO, rather than with the US government itself.

The NED can also respond quickly if regime-change initiatives are needed in countries on Washington’s enemy list, circumventing the usual governmental budgeting procedures. And, as illustrated during that congressional presentation in 2018 on Nicaragua, NED’s activities are framed as supporting democracy, human rights, and civil society. It cynically invokes universal liberal values while promoting narrow Yankee geopolitical interests. Thus its programs are sold as altruistic rather than imperial, and earn positive media headlines like the one from the AP cited above.

But a look at NED’s work in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba suggests very much the opposite.

Venezuela

 Venezuela had passed an NGO Oversight Law in 2024. Like the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act, but somewhat less restrictive, the law requires certification of NGOs. As even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) – an inside-the-beltway promoter of US imperialism with a liberal gloss –  admits: “Many Venezuelan organizations receiving US support have not been public about being funding recipients.”

The pace of Washington’s efforts in Venezuela temporarily slowed with the funding pause, as US-funded proxies had to focus on their own survival. Venezuelan government officials, cheering the pause, viewed the NED’s interference in their internal affairs as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. In contrast, the US-funded leader of the far-right opposition, Maria Corina Machado, begged for international support to make up for the shortfall from Washington.

WOLA bemoaned that the funding freeze allowed the “Maduro government to further delegitimize NGOs” paid by the US. Hundreds of US-funded organizations, they lamented, “now face the grim choice of going underground, relocating abroad, or shutting down operations altogether.”

With the partial reinstatement of funding, now bankrolling at least 39 projects costing $3.4 million, former US senator and present NED board member Mel Martinez praised the NED for its “tremendous presence in Venezuela… supporting the anti-Maduro movement.”

Nicaragua

 Leading up to the 2018 coup attempt, the NED had funded 54 projects worth over $4 million. Much of this went to support supposedly “independent” media, in practice little more than propaganda outlets for Nicaragua’s opposition groups. Afterward, the NED-funded online magazine Global Americans revealed that the NED had “laid “the groundwork for insurrection” in Nicaragua.

One of the main beneficiaries, Confidencial, is owned by the Chamorro family, two of whose members later announced intentions to stand in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections. The family received well over $5 million in US government funding, either from the NED or directly from USAID (now absorbed into the State Department). In 2022, Cristiana Chamorro, who handled much of this funding, was found guilty of money laundering. Her eight-year sentence was commuted to house arrest; after a few months she was given asylum in the US.

Of the 22 Nicaragua-related projects which NED has resumed funding, one third sponsor “independent” media. While the recipients’ names are undisclosed, it is almost certain that this funding is either for outlets like Confidencial (now based in Costa Rica), or else is going direct to leading opponents of the Sandinista government to pay for advertisements currently appearing in Twitter and other social media.

Cuba

 In Latin America, Cuba is targeted with the highest level of NED spending – $6.6 million covering 46 projects. One stated objective is to create “a more well-informed, critically minded citizenry,” which appears laughable to anyone who has been to Cuba and talked to ordinary people there – generally much better informed about world affairs than a typical US citizen.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez criticized the NED’s destabilizing activities, such as financing 54 anti-Cuba organizations since 2017. He advised the US administration to review “how many in that country [the US] have enriched themselves organizing destabilization and terrorism against Cuba with support from that organization.”

Washington not only restored NED funding for attacks on Cuba but, on May 15, added Cuba to the list of countries that “do not fully cooperate with its anti-terrorist efforts.”

 The NED: Covert influence in the name of democracy

 Anyone with a basic familiarity with the Washington’s workings is likely to be aware of the NED’s covert role. Yet the corporate media – behaving as State Department stenographers and showing no apparent embarrassment – have degenerated to the point where they regularly portray the secretly funded NED outlets as “independent” media serving the targeted countries.

Case in point: Washington Post columnist Max Boot finds it “sickening” that Trump is “trying [to] end US government support for democracy abroad.” He is concerned because astroturf “democracy promotion groups” cannot exist without the flow of US government dollars. He fears the “immense tragedy” of Trump’s executive order to cut off funding (now partially reinstated) for the US Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of the Voice of America, Radio Marti, and other propaganda outlets.

Behind the moralistic appeals to democracy promotion and free press is a defense of the US imperial project to impose itself on countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Those sanctioned countries, targeted for regime change, need free access to food, fuel, medicines and funding for development. They don’t need to hear US propaganda beamed to them or generated locally by phonily “independent” media.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Perry and Roger D. Harris.

One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

• READ MORE: Evicted PNG settlement fears collective punishment over gang rape and killing
• Other BenarNews reports on Asia Pacific Report

“After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

“The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

“We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

“Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

“Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

“And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

“We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”

BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

“Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

“Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

“Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

“Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

“Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

“And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

“Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

“At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

• READ MORE: Evicted PNG settlement fears collective punishment over gang rape and killing
• Other BenarNews reports on Asia Pacific Report

“After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

“The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

“We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

“Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

“Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

“And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

“We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”

BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

“Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

“Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

“Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

“Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

“Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

“And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

“Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

“At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

On the same day, protesters gathered outside Indonesia’s Press Council building and demanded it to take action against Tempo, accusing the outlet of acting in the interest of “foreign agent,” billionaire financier George Soros.

“This is a dangerous and deliberate act of intimidation,” said CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Tempo is well-known internationally for its fiercely independent reporting; using this playbook from autocrats elsewhere simply will not work. President Prabowo Subianto must uphold press freedom and condemn this highly provocative act if he wants Indonesia to be taken seriously as the world’s third-largest democracy.”

The pig’s head, sent in a cardboard box, was addressed to a female journalist at Tempo who covers politics and hosts a popular podcast program, said Wahyu Dhyatmika, chief executive of Tempo’s digital team. He called the incident an attempt to “scare and silence” the Indonesian press into self-censorship, and said Tempo lodged a police report on Friday.

Tempo has reported critically on the Prabowo government’s policies, including a newly launched multibillion-dollar free school meal program. Founded originally as a weekly magazine in 1971 by CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award winner and writer Goenawan Mohamad, the outlet had been banned twice, first for two months in 1982 and later in 1994. It was relaunched in 1998 after the fall of dictator Suharto, who Prabowo once served under and who was accused of using military figures to crack down on dissent.

The national police and presidential office did not immediately respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

MANILA, Philippines – Philippine authorities accused a Chinese government-owned broadcaster of deceptive messaging and propaganda after it reported that a Philippine ship had deliberately engaged in acts to pollute South China Sea waters.

China Global Television Network, or CGTN, released a video Saturday showing smoke emanating from the BRP Sierra Madre at the contested Second Thomas Shoal. The report said the smoke was caused by trash being burned by Filipino marines stationed aboard the rusting Philippine Navy ship.

“Heavy smoke was seen from an apparent burning activity on a grounded Philippine military vessel on Friday,” CGTN said on Facebook.

“The footage highlights a series of environmentally damaging activities onboard, which could pose a serious threat to the ecosystem at Ren’ai Jiao,” the report said, using the Chinese name for the shoal. To Filipinos, Second Thomas Shoal is known as Ayungin Shoal.

“A report released in July last year suggests that the vessel has gravely damaged the diversity, stability, and sustainability of the coral reef ecosystem in the area,” it added.

Philippine authorities on Tuesday refuted the Chinese state media report that the Filipino crew was allegedly causing pollution, and dismissed the claim as propaganda.

“It’s part of the deceptive messaging of the Chinese Communist Party,” Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Philippine Navy spokesman for the West Philippine Sea, told reporters. Manila refers to South China Sea waters within its exclusive economic zone as the West Philippine Sea.

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The Sierra Madre is a World War II-era ship that Manila ran aground on the shoal in 1999 to mark out the Philippines’ territorial claim and serve as its military outpost in the disputed waters.

The shoal is located within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, or EEZ. Manila runs regular rotation-and-resupply missions to the ship manned by Philippine marines.

Trinidad said Filipino troops had burned “combustible materials” on the BRP Sierra Madre on Feb. 28 as part of a fire drill.

However, strong winds caused the fire to spread. “But they were able to put everything in control,” Trinidad said, referring to the troops aboard the ship.

“There was no damage to the environment, all the men aboard the ship are safe. The exercise was conducted successfully,” Trinidad said. He said fire drills such as this are conducted aboard navy ships at least once every month.

“There was no problem. The men of the ship are always prepared to respond to any eventuality to keep everything under control,” said Trinidad.

(AFP)

“The battlefield is the cognitive domain or the minds of the Filipino people. [It’s] designed to shape the perception of Filipinos. This is also called malign influence,” he said.

At publication time, neither CGTN, China’s foreign ministry or embassy in Manila had responded to the latest statements from Filipino officials.

‘Totally absurd’

Meanwhile, Trinidad said claims circulating on Chinese social media platforms such as Rednote and Weibo, claimed that Palawan once belonged to China and that the Philippines should return it to its rival claimant in the South China Sea.

(Douyin)

Palawan, the posts claimed, was once named Zheng He Island, in honor of a Chinese explorer. However, although Zheng He’s existence and travels to Southeast Asia are well documented, there has never been a historical account that he visited the Philippine province.

“Such statements about Palawan are baseless. They are bereft of legal references,” Trinidad said.

“They are beyond common sense. In short, totally absurd.”

Philippine National Security Adviser Eduardo Año agreed.

“These assertions are outright fabrications intended to distort history, deceive the public and challenge the Philippines’ sovereignty over its lawful and internationally recognized territory,” Año said in a statement.

Año urged Filipinos to remain vigilant against disinformation campaigns and “rely on verified historical and legal sources rather than propaganda designed to advance geopolitical agenda at the expense of truth.”

He said Philippine authorities were tracing who started the post. Año also said that there had never been a “historical record or legal precedent” to support the claim.

“Palawan has always been and will always remain an integral part of the Republic of the Philippines,” Año said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Año said that even if Zheng did in fact visit Palawan, this “does not equate to ownership, just as the voyages of other explorers do not alter the sovereignty of nations today.”

While the “false narratives” did not come from official government sites, Año said they appeared to be part of a “broader effort to undermine Philippine sovereignty and manipulate public perception both in the Philippines and China.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jason Gutierrez for BenarNews.

The journalists were identified as Bashdar Bazyani, Dana Salih, Sardasht HamaSalih, and Nabaz Shekhani.

Security forces closed the outlet’s office in Sulaymaniyah on March 1, saying it lacked a license, confiscated several computers, and ordered staff not to return to work, according to two sources who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.

Three sources told CPJ that authorities released three of the journalists on bail on Sunday, March 2. Bazyani remained in custody as of Monday. 

“Authorities’ arrest of four journalists and the forced closure of Media21’s office is a direct attack on press freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York. “Authorities must immediately release journalist Bashdar Bazyani, drop charges against all four journalists, and allow the outlet to resume operations.” 

Two sources told CPJ that the arrests and shutdown are linked to a Media21 interview with the sister of a Kurdistan Regional Government official regarding a family dispute. The official filed a lawsuit after Bazyani messaged him about the interview ahead of publication.

Karwan Anwar, head of the Sulaymaniyah branch of the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, told CPJ that the journalists were charged with defamation under Article 433 of the penal code, which provides for an unspecified prison term and/or a fine. “Harsher penalties” can be imposed on media outlets. 

Media21, which launched on February 21, 2025, condemned the “unjust and illegal” arrests. “These individuals are key members of our investigative team and were arrested while carrying out their journalistic duties,” the statement said.

CPJ’s messages to the Kurdistan Regional Government official did not receive a reply. CPJ’s calls to Salam Abdulkhaliq, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region Security Agency, were unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The trial of RFE/RL’s Farid Mehralizada and six members of Azerbaijan’s most prominent anti-corruption investigative outlet, Abzas Media, epitomizes the way the Azerbaijani government has used retaliatory criminal charges to lock up vast swathes of the country’s leading independent journalists over the past year,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Azerbaijani authorities should immediately drop the charges against nearly two dozen journalists, including Mehralizada and the Abzas Media staff, who are currently on or awaiting trial and release them all.”

Police arrested Abzas Media director Ulvi Hasanli, chief editor Sevinj Vagifgizi, project coordinator Mahammad Kekalov, and reporters Hafiz Babali, Nargiz Absalamova, and Elnara Gasimova between November 2023 and January 2024 on charges of conspiring to smuggle currency, accusing the outlet of illegally receiving Western donor funds. In May, police arrested Mehralizada, an economist who contributed anonymously to RFE/RL, as part of the Abzas Media case, though both Abzas Media and Mehralizada denied that he was connected to the outlet.

The journalists are among more than 20 journalists and media workers charged with serious crimes in a major crackdown on the independent press and civil society in Azerbaijan since November 2023. Most of the journalists, who hail from some of Azerbaijan’s most prominent independent media, have been arrested on similar currency smuggling charges related to alleged Western funding, amid a decline in relations between Azerbaijan and the West.

In August, authorities brought seven additional economic crime charges against the Abzas Media journalists and Mehralizada, including tax evasion and money laundering, which could see them jailed for up to 12 years.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Digital news outlet 404 Media was subpoenaed by the state of Texas on Oct. 22, 2024, in connection with an ongoing lawsuit against Google in Midland County’s district court, according to court filings reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Google in 2022 on the state’s behalf, alleging that the company captured the biometric data of millions of its users in Texas without obtaining consent.

The subpoena to 404 Media seeks communications and documents from investigative journalist Joseph Cox’s article on a leak from Google, including a copy of an internal Google database obtained by the outlet “which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues.”

In an announcement, 404 Media’s founders wrote, “Paxton’s subpoena seeks to turn 404 Media into an arm of law enforcement, which is not our role and which we have no interest in doing or becoming.”

They added that attorneys representing the outlet “vociferously objected” to the subpoena on Dec. 6. The court filing, reviewed by the Tracker, argues the news organization is protected from having to disclose the information by the First Amendment, as well as laws in California — where the outlet is based — and Texas.

404 Media’s founders, who declined to comment further when reached by the Tracker, wrote that the subpoena undermines a free and independent press and demonstrates an alarming trend.

“It also highlights the fact that the alarm bells that have been raised about legal attacks on journalists in a second Trump administration are not theoretical; politicians already feel emboldened to use the legal system to target journalists,” they wrote. “Paxton’s subpoena highlights the urgency of passing the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that has already passed the House and which has bipartisan support but which Democrats in the Senate have dragged their feet on for inexplicable and indefensible reasons.”

Paxton had previously sought records from Media Matters for America using a “civil investigative demand” — a type of administrative subpoena — in 2023 as part of a probe his office launched to investigate “potential fraudulent activity” by the media company. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction forbidding Paxton from pursuing Media Matters’ reporting materials.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

The student newspaper at Indiana University Bloomington was targeted on social media by a state politician on Nov. 12, 2024. The outlet said the posts were intended to chill its reporting.

Micah Beckwith — Indiana’s newly elected lieutenant governor and a self-described Christian nationalist who serves as a pastor in Noblesville — used his official accounts on the social platforms X and Facebook to criticize the Indiana Daily Student’s Nov. 7 front cover. The cover featured an illustration of President-elect Donald Trump overlaid with unfavorable quotes from his former allies.

“This is WOKE propaganda at its finest and why most of America looks at higher education indoctrination centers like IU as a complete joke and waste of money,” Beckwith wrote. “This type of elitist leftist propaganda needs to stop or we will be happy to stop it for them.”

Beckwith also asserted that the publication was “Your tax dollars at work.”

IDS reported that Beckwith’s posts were meant as a threat to both the newspaper and the university.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

“CPJ is alarmed by the recent attack on Radio BIP/Média 25’s headquarters, which follows a disturbing pattern of harassment against this media outlet over the past two years,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Such attacks not only threaten the physical safety of journalists but also create a climate of fear that can severely impact independent reporting. French authorities must take this attack seriously, bring all perpetrators to justice, and implement measures to ensure that journalists can report on issues of public interest safely and without fear of reprisal.”

On the evening of October 21, unidentified individuals wearing gloves kicked the front door and attempted to forcibly enter the premises of Radio BIP/Média 25’s headquarters in Besançon, eastern France. They triggered the station’s security alarm, damaging the door and lock before fleeing.

Radio BIP/Média 25, a media outlet known for its reporting on local far-right groups in Besançon, has experienced a series of incidents over the past two years. In May 2022, unknown individuals broke into and entered its premises, robbing equipment; in another incident that same month, its garage door window was broken and an advertising banner was ripped off—followed by successive incidents in which the station received a bomb threat, had its garage door was damaged overnight, and was vandalized with painted swastikas.

CPJ emailed the Besançon police department requesting comment on the ongoing investigation but did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Ihar Ilyash’s detention is yet another example of the ruthlessness of Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime. Belarusian authorities will do anything to demean and harass members of the press,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York. “Authorities should drop any charges filed against Ihar Ilyash, release him immediately, and ensure that no journalists are jailed for their work.”

On October 22, the pro-government Telegram channel Kniga GU “BAZA” published a video in which Ilyash said that he worked with banned Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV and gave interviews to media outlets that Belarus has labeled “extremist groups.”

“Because of this, I’m detained,” said Ilyash. 

The Telegram channel claimed in a caption accompanying the video that Ilyash “was involved in promoting extremist groups and collecting information for foreign intelligence services” with his wife, Belsat TV channel journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva. She has been detained since November 2020, when she was arrested while reporting live in Minsk, the capital, on mass protests demanding President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s resignation.

Authorities labeled Belsat TV “extremist” in July 2021.

CPJ was unable to determine the date and the location of Ilyash’s detention nor the precise charges brought against him. Authorities have previously detained Ilyash multiple times in connection with his work.

CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee, the country’s law enforcement agency, for comment but did not receive any response.

Belarus is the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 28 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2023, when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The forced shuttering of international award–winning investigative outlet Kloop is a shameful episode in the history of modern Kyrgyzstan — a country long viewed as a haven for press freedom in Central Asia — and is a clear indication that under President Japarov this reputation no longer holds,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kyrgyz authorities should immediately reverse their repressive course against the media and allow Kloop and all other independent outlets to work freely.”

On Thursday, Kloop reported that the Supreme Court on July 16 had upheld a lower court’s refusal to hear its appeal against a February liquidation order. The decision, which Kloop learned of on August 22, marks the end of the outlet’s hopes of overturning that liquidation.

Kloop founder Rinat Tuhvatshin said the decision was “expected” but that the organization plans to keep publishing “the most penetrating investigations, the most balanced news, and the sharpest commentary.”

Kyrgyz prosecutors applied to shutter Kloop, a local partner of the global investigative network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in August 2023 and blocked its website amid a series of corruption investigations into relatives of Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and other top state officials.

Under Japarov, Kyrgyz authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting in a country previously seen as a regional beacon for the free press.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

But in recent days, diners have been ignoring safety fears, lining up for hours to eat at the Japanese sushi chain Sushiro, which offers plates of sushi on a conveyor belt, despite widespread import bans and safety inspections by authorities in China and Hong Kong, according to multiple media reports.

According to a video report from Japan's TBS News Dig, dozens of people were waiting in chairs at the newly opened branch in Xidan Joy City, with waiting times advertised at "upwards of 180 minutes," according to a sign at the store.

Diners were attracted by the relatively low prices, which range from 10 yuan (US$1.4) to 28 yuan (US$4) per plate of sushi, as well as a pledge to use only Chinese produce following the import bans, the reports said.

"Since the release of treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese restaurants that handle seafood have been facing headwinds," the TBS News Dig report said. "But conveyor belt sushi, where you can enjoy Japanese food at a low price, is becoming more and more popular."

While Sushiro, owned by Japan's Food & Life Companies, already has more than 40 branches across China, it is still seeking further expansion, according to state-backed English-language newspaper the China Daily.

"Unlike other restaurants, we launched self-ordering digital screens and the conveyor belt system for food delivery for each table at the Beijing restaurant, making the ordering process more fun and convenient," the paper quoted Kazunari Matsuda, general manager of Beijing Sushiro Restaurants, as saying in an Aug. 22 report.

"A sushi train restaurant is more suitable for dine-in experiences, given its unique features,” Matsuda said. “A large proportion of our customers are aged between 18 and 35, including college students and office workers. At our restaurants in Shenzhen and Tianjin, we have also seen many foreign guests from Europe and the United States.”

The COVID-19 pandemic did not significantly affect its operations, and the brand has stuck to in-store cooking, instead of relying on central kitchens, he said.

Sushiro also operates some 30 restaurants in Hong Kong and more than 40 outlets in Taiwan, with more than 800 outlets across East Asia, including Thailand and Singapore.

Online debate

The reports prompted heated online discussions, with one comment in Japanese under a report from TV Tokyo saying that the lines of diners spoke volumes about the safety of Japanese food, while comments in China ridiculed people for flocking to the store, saying they had "poor judgment."

The proprietor of a Japanese restaurant in Hong Kong who identified himself as Master Kong said his business was hard hit by the mass outpouring of anti-Japanese sentiment by "little pink" supporters of the Chinese government last year.

While there have been signs of improvement over the last six months, he has closed two out of four of his branches in the city, citing a recent report in Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper as saying that around one third of Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong closed during the past year.

Master Kong believes that, even if the Hong Kong government lifts the import ban on Japanese seafood, it won't improve business by much in the current economic climate.

"A lot of restaurants have been unable to survive and have closed down," he said. "I don't think there'll be a sudden rush of business just from freeing up [those restrictions]."

He said the seafood bans currently only apply to the Kanto region, and that his restaurants are still able to source ingredients from Kansai and Hokkaido, although deliveries can sometimes be delayed by the authorities at the airport, who insist on taking them for radiation testing.

Yet he doesn't see the bans as the main reason behind the disappearance of so many Japanese restaurants in the city.

"I don't think we're going to see the gradual reappearance of Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong," Kong said, citing a growing tendency among Hong Kongers to venture across the border into China for their culinary adventures.

Hong Kongers have also recently flocked to Taiwan and Japan itself to enjoy the local cuisine and stock up on supplies.

He said many in the city had gotten into the habit of ordering in during the pandemic restrictions.

"This is a problem, because they can just press a button in an app and get it delivered just like that," he said. "They won't sit down and order a bottle of sake or try some imported foods."

"They just want to fill their stomachs."

Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Matthew Leung for RFA Cantonese.

In this context, the editor-in-chief of Right-wing propaganda website, OpIndia, Nupur J Sharma claimed in a tweet that the Supreme Court said that the crime scene at the R G Kar hospital had been altered.

The Supreme Court has said today that the crime scene was altered @KolkataPolice https://t.co/Gqbfm8GfeE

— Nupur J Sharma (@UnSubtleDesi) August 22, 2024

The tweet has been viewed close to 2.5 Lakh times and retweeted over 7,200 times.

Several X (formerly Twitter) users amplified the claim. Among them are handles such as Keh Ke Peheno
(@coolfunnytshirt), 𝑫𝒓. 𝑲 (@smilesalotlady_),Ravi Kukreja (@RaviKuk15405190),Bharat Suthar (@bharat_sut78304), AG (@akg7091), कृष्णा (मोदी अंध भक्त) (@MyindianKrishna), 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚 भारतीय (@NarendraVictory), Pradeep Jakhar (@PradeepkJakhar) and others.

Most of the above tweets, including the one by Nupur J Sharma, were shared in response to a tweet by Kolkata police from August 15, in which they asserted that the vandalism on the previous night had not impacted the seminar room.

Fact Check

To verify the claim, we looked at the X timeline of Live Law and Bar and Bench. Both these legal-reporting handles live-tweeted the proceedings from the Supreme Court.

Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) reported at 11:49 am on August 22 that the CBI counsel, Tushar Mehta, the solicitor general of India (SG), said they did not possess any medical examination report of the accused in the case. He added that they had entered the investigation on the fifth day and everything was altered by then.

The body of the junior doctor was found on August 9. The Calcutta high court handed over the investigation to the central agency on August 13. The CBI took over on August 14.

Below is the Live Law tweet:

SG: we didn’t know there is such report, we entered the investigation on the 5th day, everything was altered

Sibal: everything is videographed not altered

SG: MOST SHOCKING FACT, FIR IS REGISTERED AT 11;45 PM AFTER THE CREMATION #KolkataDoctorDeath #RGKarHospitalRapeMurder…

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) August 22, 2024

The same was live-tweeted by Bar and Bench exactly at the same time (11:49 am).

CJI: The medical examination report of the accused…where is it..

SG: we are not supplied with it

Sibal: it is part of the case diary and submitted

SG: we entered the scene on 5th day and CBI probe to start is a challenge and crime scene is altered

Sibal: seizure memo is…

— Bar and Bench (@barandbench) August 22, 2024

The Bar and Bench also published a full report of the Court proceedings. The relevant part is highlighted below.

The proceedings were also live telecast. We procured the video of the court proceeding from the X handle of media outlet Mirror Now (@MirrorNow), where we located the conversation:

Hearing underway on #Kolkata doctor rape-murder case in #SupremeCourt #CJI-led bench goes through the status reports submitted by #CBI and Bengal govt

‘Scene of the crime altered’ claims #CBI #RGKarMedicalCollegeHospital #JusticeForDevi pic.twitter.com/jzXyBypL7H

— Mirror Now (@MirrorNow) August 22, 2024

0.20-seconds onward in the above video, we can hear the SG saying, “My lord, we entered on the fifth day.. Whatever was collected by the local police, my lord was given to us, and our investigation starts.. And that is itself a challenge by itself.. The scene of offence is altered…” (sic)

We went through the entire proceedings of August 22 but we could not find the CJI or the other members of the Bench stating that the crime scene had been altered.

All major newspapers carried the comments by the CBI counsel on their August 23 editions. Below are a few examples:

None of them mentioned the court having made the observation.

Therefore, the claim by OpIndia editor Nupur J Sharma and the others is false. The Supreme Court did not state the crime scene was altered. It was a claim made by CBI counsel Tushar Mehta, the solicitor general of India.

Interestingly, OpIndia itself published a report on the SC hearing where the headline mentioned that the CBI said in court that the crime scene had been altered.

Ankita Mahalanobish is an intern at Alt News.

The post Supreme Court did not say R G Kar crime scene was altered; false claim by editor of propaganda outlet appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Ankita Mahalanobish.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department refused on July 10, 2024, to include a freelance journalist and a local video news outlet that relies on stringers on its email list for notifications of press conferences.

Doug Roberts, a freelance video journalist for Las Vegas Live, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he has been trying for two years to get on the email list and has been barred from attending three press conferences.

The email list is primarily used to alert journalists about news briefings on developing crime stories, often held near the crime scenes, Roberts explained to the Tracker. He has missed some events, he said, but has been getting by with help from other journalists who share the information with him. Some have even taken his camera into the news conferences when he has been barred from entering.

“We’ve basically been getting by without being added to that list just because of the relationships that we’ve built with other people in the industry,” Roberts said. “Luckily they’re seeing us little guys being discriminated against so they’re helping us.”

In one instance, which Roberts recorded on a body cam and shared with the Tracker, a police public information officer denied him access to a June 26, 2024, press conference on the sidewalk. When he said it was a public space, she moved the press conference inside the police tape, excluding him.

Roberts wrote police a letter on June 27 seeking inclusion on the email distribution list, explaining that he is affiliated with both Las Vegas Live and OnScene.tv, a video distribution company. He wrote his request on letterhead from Live Core Productions, the company that he created for his freelance work. He sought inclusion on the list for Las Vegas Live, OnScene.tv and Live Core Productions.

In a response written by a lawyer for the department on July 10, Las Vegas police denied Roberts’ request, citing a Nevada statute that says criminal history information must be provided to “any reporter or editorial employee who is employed or affiliated with a newspaper, press association or commercially operated, federally licensed radio or television station.”

The letter stated that Roberts’ Live Core was not “a ‘press association’ or any other type of news media.” It didn’t address Las Vegas Live or OnScene.tv, but police didn’t add them to the list.

In the letter, the police argued that a press association had a limited definition, such as The Associated Press, which is a worldwide news cooperative.

“As such, LVMPD may not disseminate criminal history information to Live Core therefore and must exclude Live Core from media briefings,” the letter said.

The police department’s public information office didn’t respond to the Tracker’s repeated phone calls and emails requesting comment.

The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press wrote a letter to the police department on behalf of freelance reporters on July 22.

“The protections of the First Amendment apply equally to traditional and non-traditional journalists and news organizations, including freelance reporters and stringers,” the letter said.

It pointed out that the Nevada Supreme Court, in interpreting the state’s reporter shield law, “clarified that courts ‘are not required to make a fortress out of the dictionary,’ and explained that these protections extend to journalists, including bloggers.”

Roberts filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the police department and received the email distribution list in redacted form. It includes more than 100 email addresses, some for online-only publications, such as tabloid entertainment news TMZ.

Roberts said that his exclusion from the email list and briefings has a chilling effect, because other journalists see that police could restrict access to them, too.

“I think that the media in Las Vegas is not being critical of the police, or they’re not doing their job in terms of holding the police accountable because they become reliant upon the police for information and for leads and for stories,” Roberts told the Tracker. “And if they become critical of police, they might end up in the same boat that we are.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

NBC affiliate KARE-TV was barred from publishing an improperly filed memo in a high-profile murder case in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 19, 2024. Five days later, the broadcast station filed a petition to overturn the gag order with the state Court of Appeals, the outlet reported.

Joseph Sandoval was charged with the murders of two men at a St. Paul sober home in 2022, and he pleaded guilty in May 2024. Ahead of Sandoval’s sentencing, his attorney filed a sentencing memorandum with the court detailing the failures of the state and the sober home to provide him the medical care he needed given his history of mental illness and drug-induced psychosis, KARE-TV reported.

KARE-TV has followed the prosecution as part of a series focusing on the systemic failings in cases involving individuals found incompetent to stand trial who are released without court-ordered mental health treatment and go on to commit new, sometimes more serious, crimes.

The station obtained a publicly available copy of the memo through the court’s website and attempted to film the July 19 sentencing, but Ramsey County District Judge Joy Bartscher refused to allow the camera in her courtroom.

“I believe that the media coverage would make this case more of a circus than a solemn proceeding in which the Court is making a decision about many people’s lives,” Bartscher said during the hearing. “The purpose of media coverage is supposed to be, supposedly what I have been instructed, is to have transparency about what is going on in a courtroom. I don’t think that that’s what the purpose is of media coverage quite frankly.”

Bartscher then granted a protective order for the memo — first orally and then in writing — requiring anyone who had obtained a copy to refrain from publishing and to destroy their copies of the document.

“It’s my understanding that at least one media outlet was able to access that information that should have been confidential,” Bartscher said. “That memorandum shall not be used for any purpose other than consideration by the Court and parties for sentencing.”

Attorneys representing KARE-TV filed a petition with the Minnesota Court of Appeals on July 24, arguing that the gag order violates the First Amendment and amounts to an unconstitutional prior restraint. “The Court’s July 19 Orders had immediate and far-reaching consequences on KARE 11’s reporting,” the appeal stated.

It added that, without a reversal from the court, the outlet would be “forced to choose between reporting on information it lawfully obtained from the Court’s public docket, and risk being held in contempt, or giving up its constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of the press and depriving the public of information on matters of significant public interest and concern.”

The appeal is still pending and no hearing dates have been scheduled, according to records reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Attorneys for KARE-TV did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Facebook has reportedly temporarily blocked posts published by an independent online news outlet in Solomon Islands after incorrectly labelling its content as “spam”.

In-Depth Solomons, a member centre of the non-profit OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), was informed by the platform that more than 80 posts had been removed from its official page.

According to OCCRP, the outlet believes opponents of independent journalism in the country could behind the “coordinated campaign”.

• READ MORE: Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence
• Other Facebook Pacific censorship reports

“The reporters in Solomon Islands became aware of the problem on Thursday afternoon, when the platform informed them it had hidden at least 86 posts, including stories and photos,” OCCRP reported yesterday.

“Defining its posts as spam resulted in the removal for several hours of what appeared to be everything the news organisation had posted on Facebook since March last year.”

It said the platform also blocked its users from posting content from the outlet’s website, indepthsolomons.com.sb, saying that such links went against the platform’s “community standards”.

In-Depth Solomons has received criticism for its reporting by the Solomon Islands government and its supporters, both online and in local media, OCCRP said.

Expose on PM’s unexplained wealth
In April, it published an expose into the unexplained wealth of the nation’s former prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare.

In-depth Solomons editor Ofani Eremae said the content removal “may have been the result of a coordinated campaign by critics of his newsroom to file false complaints to Facebook en masse”.

“We firmly believe we’ve been targeted for the journalism we are doing here in Solomon Islands,” he was quoted as saying.

“We don’t have any evidence at this stage on who did this to us, but we think people or organisations who do not want to see independent reporting in this country may be behind this.”

A spokesman for Meta, Ben Cheong, told OCCRP they needed more time to examine the issue.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and permission from ABC.

Pacific Media Watch reports that in other cases of Facebook and Meta blocked posts, Asia Pacific Reports the removal of Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua decolonisation stories and human rights reports over claimed violation of “community standards”.

APR has challenged this removal of posts, including in the case of its editor Dr David Robie. Some have been restored while others have remained “blocked”.

Other journalists have also reported the removal of news posts.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

We speak with journalist Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, about how he just announced he is leaving after more than a decade and launched a new investigative journalism outlet Monday called Drop Site News, alongside colleague Ryan Grim. “What Ryan and I are trying to do is build a lean, sustainable, reader-supported news organization that’s going to take big swings at powerful people … and to operate with no fear or favor of those in power,” says Scahill. “Our pledge … is to be accountable to the readers, the viewers and the listeners.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Mississippi Today was ordered on May 20, 2024, to turn over confidential source information to a circuit court in a defamation case brought by the former governor over the watchdog’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation.

The nonprofit news outlet has appealed the decision to the Mississippi Supreme Court and asked it to rule on “reporter’s privilege,” which protects journalists from revealing their sources. In a June op-ed for The New York Times, Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau wrote that no state appellate courts have ruled on the privilege and Mississippi is one of eight states that lacks a formal shield law.

“We hope the order from the court will lead to the establishment of reporter’s privilege for the first time in Mississippi’s history,” Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau said in an email to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Ganucheau called Mississippi an outlier but added that “we hope this appeal is taken up by the Supreme Court and the justices guarantee these First Amendment protections for all Mississippi journalists. Importantly, these protections aren’t in place only for journalists; they’re in place for every citizen.”

Mississippi Today has also filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The lawsuit stems from characterizations of former Gov. Phil Bryant after the paper published its series “The Backchannel.” The investigation, which won reporter Anna Wolfe the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, detailed the misuse of $77 million in federal welfare funds when Bryant was governor, including some funneled to pet projects of his friend and former NFL quarterback Brett Favre.

Eight people were later criminally charged. Bryant, who left office in 2020, has not been charged with any crimes.

Bryant’s defamation suit doesn’t question the reporting in the series, but takes issue with characterizations of its findings in a 2022 midyear impact report by Mississippi Today, the paper’s Pulitzer announcement, a talk by CEO Mary Margaret White at a journalism conference, an interview Wolfe gave with a trade publication and ongoing coverage by Mississippi Today.

As part of the suit, Bryant requested unpublished notes and confidential source information related to the series.

The Circuit Court of Madison County ordered the paper to turn over by June 6 a log of privileged information, including confidential sources for the court to examine privately. It noted that Mississippi appellate courts had “not yet recognized a First Amendment reporter's privilege which protects the refusal to disclose the identity of confidential informants.”

The circuit court said that the sources were relevant because the governor must prove that the reporters either made up a source or recklessly used a source that was unreliable.

Ganucheau said Mississippi Today turned over several documents by the June 6 deadline that the outlet’s original reporting relied on, “even though that reporting is not the basis of any of the plaintiff’s claims.” He added the statements at issue relied on previous reporting and public information, not confidential sources.

Bryant had requested far more extensive information: all communications employees of Mississippi Today have had about him for the last two years, including “emails and text messages between Anna Wolfe and sources who were a part of her investigation,” according to court documents.

Bryant filed an additional motion on June 11 requesting that Mississippi Today be held in contempt of court for not handing over all of the requested material, which it said was likely hundreds or thousands of documents.

Ganucheau and Wolfe were added as defendants to the lawsuit, which originally named Mississippi Today and White, the CEO.

Bryant also requested a gag order to prevent Mississippi Today from publicly discussing the case after the paper published an editor’s note addressing the lawsuit.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement in support of Mississippi Today and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has offered legal advice and support, Ganucheau said.

“We’ve been warmly embraced by journalism rights organizations around the world, which is a testament to how seriously every journalist takes threats to the rights of a free press,” Ganucheau told the Tracker.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, caught on a secret recording, recently attacked ProPublica for its reporting on Supreme Court ethics. The nonprofit investigative news outlet has spearheaded coverage of possible conflicts of interest among judges on the nation’s top court, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who has accepted millions in gifts and trips from conservative billionaires. Alito told a filmmaker posing as a conservative activist that ProPublica “gets a lot of money” to dig up “any little thing they can find,” suggesting the reporting was politically motivated. That notion “is just wrong,” says Justin Elliott, one of the lead ProPublica journalists reporting on the Supreme Court. “We took a very hard look at the Democratic-appointed justices, and we simply haven’t found anything close to similar to what we found when it came to Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.” He also says the Senate Judiciary Committee has power it is not currently using to investigate the court amid the ongoing ethics scandal. “There’s really no reason to believe that we actually know all the facts about what these justices have gotten.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Daily Blog, New Zealand’s most important leftwing website of news, views and analyses at the heart of the country’s most conservative mediascape in years, has been hacked.

It was silenced yesterday for several hours but is back up and running today.

The Daily Blog editor and founder Martyn Bradbury launched the website in 2013 with the primary objective of “widening political debate” in the lead up to the 2014 New Zealand election.

Since then, the website has united more than “42 of the country’s leading leftwing commentators and progressive opinion shapers to provide the other side of the story on today’s news, media and political agendas”.

It has 400,000 pageviews a month.

“These moments are always a mix of infuriation and terror”, admitted Bradbury in an editorial today about the revived website and he raised several suspected nations for “cyber attack trends” such as “China, Israel and Russia”.

Bradbury, nicknamed “Bomber” by a former Craccum editor at Victoria University of Wellington, was once branded by the NZ Listener magazine as the “most opinionated man in New Zealand”

The website includes columns by such outspoken writers and critics as law professor Jane Kelsey, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, Palestinian human rights advocate and quality education critic John Minto, political scientist Dr Wayne Hope, social justice academic and former leftwing politician Sue Bradford, and political analyst Morgan Godfery.

It also hosts the popular live podcasts by The Working Group, which tonight features pre-budget “Economists of the Apocalypse Special” by Bradbury, with Matthew Hooton, Damien Grant and Brad Olson at 7.30pm on its revived website.

‘Sophisticated and tricky’
Explaining why The Daily Blog was displaying a “maintenance page” for most of the day, Bradbury said in his editorial:

The hack was very sophisticated and very tricky.

Thank you to everyone who reached out, these moments are always a mix of infuriation and terror.

We can’t point the finger at who did it, but we can see trends.

Whenever we criticise China, we get cyber attacks.

Every time we criticise Israel, we get cyber attacks.

Every time we criticise Russia, we get cyber attacks.

Every time we post out how racist NZ is, we get stupid cyber attacks.

Every time we have a go at New Zealand First’s weird Qanon antivaxx culture war bullshit we get really dumb cyber attacks.

Every time we criticise woke overreach we get cancelled.

This hack on us yesterday was a lot more sophisticated and I would be surprised if it didn’t originate offshore.

We have a new page design up and running in the interim, there will be updates made to it for the rest of week as we iron out all the damage caused and tweak it for TDB readers.

You never know how important critical media voices are until you lose them!

Bradbury added that “obviously this all costs an arm and a leg being offline” and appealed to community donors to deposit into The Daily Blog’s bank account 12-3065-0133561-56.

The Daily Blog can be contacted here.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

On April 25, four unidentified men on two motorbikes threw petrol bombs inside the privately owned Class Media Group’s office in the Labone district of Ghana’s capital Accra, and fled the scene, according to media reports and Class Media Group Operations Officer Theodore Edwards, who spoke to CPJ by phone. 

Class Media Group owns nine local radio stations across the country, including Class 91.3FM, Accra 100.5FM, KUMASI 104.1FM, No.1 105.3FM Accra , Ho FM, Adehyee FM, Taadi FM, Dagbon FM and Sunyani FM; the C TV television broadcaster, and the Class FM news site, according to Patrick Ayumu, an editor with the website who spoke with CPJ by phone and messaging app.

The Accra attack shattered the media outlet’s door, including the entryway glass leading to the office corridor, but no staff members were injured, according to Edwards and Ayumu, and footage of the attack reviewed by CPJ.

“Authorities in Ghana must swiftly and comprehensively conclude their investigation into the firebomb attack on Class Media Group’s office in Accra, ensure that the attackers are held to account, and step-up actions to ensure that the press can operate safely,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in New York. “This attack is a frightening reminder of the dangers media workers face in Ghana, where the murder of journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela in January 2019 remains unsolved, and numerous attacks on other journalists are carried out with impunity.”

Edwards told CPJ that Class Media occasionally received online complaints about their reporting, which covers a wide variety of subjects, but the complaints were general and did not seem linked to the attack. Edwards and Ayumu told CPJ that they did not immediately see a motive for the attack on their office.

Class Media Group reported the firebomb attack to police on April 25, but Ayumu said on Friday May 3, that police were still investigating and had not updated them on any developments.

On April 26, President of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association Cecil Thomas Sunkwa-Mills condemned the attack, said that it was crucial for police to investigate, and called on Class Media’s management to increase its office security, according to Ayumu and a media report. 

In an earlier incident in Accra, on January 16, 2019, men on a motorcycle shot and killed Ghanaian journalist Ahemed Hussein-Suale Divela, and those responsible have yet to be identified and held accountable. Last year, CPJ documented a years-long pattern of impunity in attacks on the press in Ghana. 

CPJ’s calls and text messages on May 3 to the Ghana police spokesperson, Grace Ansah-Akrofi, went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“After last month’s mass arrest of journalists linked to anti-corruption outlet Temirov Live, the forced closure of Kloop—one of the most respected media outlets not just in Kyrgyzstan but in the whole of Central Asia—signals Kyrgyz authorities’ intent to wipe out an investigative reporting hub that has previously set the country apart from its authoritarian neighbors,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said in New York on Monday. “Authorities in Kyrgyzstan should allow Kloop to remain open, reverse their escalating campaign against the press, and allow independent media to work freely.”

On February 9, Oktyabrsky District Court in the capital, Bishkek, granted an application by the city’s prosecutor to shutter Kloop Media on the grounds that the organization’s charter does not cover journalistic activity, according to news reports.

Prosecutors also cited expert assessments commissioned by the court and Kyrgyzstan’s state security services alleging that Kloop’s reporting contained “harsh criticism” of the authorities and that its “purely negative” coverage was demoralizing the public and causing “psychological disorders,” “sexual anomalies,” drug addiction, and “suicidal disposition” among the population.

Kloop’s chief editor, Anna Kapushenko, told CPJ that the outlet rejected the claims and planned to continue operating pending appeal.

Kloop, a partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project global investigative network, frequently publishes investigative and fact-checking articles critical of Kyrgyz authorities.

On August 22, prosecutors applied to the courts to shutter the outlet on the same day that Kloop published an investigation alleging relatives of senior officials including President Sadyr Japarov were involved in the construction of a soccer academy in Kyrgyzstan franchised by the Spanish soccer club Barcelona.

In September, authorities initiated a block on the outlet’s website days before the publication of another investigation into the president’s family.

In recent months, Kyrgyz authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting in a country previously seen as a regional haven for the free press.

In January, police arrested 11 current and former staff of the investigative outlet Temirov Live, after deporting its Kyrgyzstan-born founder Bolot Temirov, and security services raided and brought a criminal case against privately owned news agency 24.kg.

Last year, authorities blocked Radio Azattyk, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for eight months, and ordered it to shutter, until the outlet removed a report about border clashes from its websites.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The United States and Britain on January 23 followed Australia in imposing sanctions on Russian citizen Aleksandr Yermakov, who was designated for his alleged role in a cyberattack that compromised the personal information of 9.7 million Australians.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced its sanctions against Yermakov after Australian authorities said their investigation tied him to the breach of Australian private health insurer Medibank in October 2022.

The department said in a statement that the United States and Britain imposed sanctions on Yermakov because of the risk he poses. The U.S. action freezes any assets he holds in U.S. jurisdiction and generally bars Americans from dealing with him.

“Russian cyber actors continue to wage disruptive ransomware attacks against the United States and allied countries, targeting our businesses, including critical infrastructure, to steal sensitive data,” said Brian Nelson, U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

"Today’s trilateral action with Australia and the United Kingdom, the first such coordinated action, underscores our collective resolve to hold these criminals to account," he added in a statement.

Yermakov, 33, who used the online aliases blade_runner, GustaveDore, and JimJones, resides in Moscow, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The Australian government imposed its power to sanction an individual for cybercrime for the first time, applying the law against Yermakov after Australian Federal Police and intelligence agencies linked the Russian citizen to the Medibank cyberattack.

"This is the first time an Australian government has identified a cybercriminal and imposed cybersanctions of this kind and it won't be the last," Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil told reporters.

The cyberattack on Medibank, Australia’s largest health insurer, involved sensitive medical records that were released on the dark web after the company refused to pay a ransom.

O’Neil said it was “the single most devastating cyberattack we have experienced as a nation."

The leaks targeted records related to drug abuse, sexually transmitted infections, and abortions.

"We all went through it, literally millions of people having personal data about themselves, their family members, taken from them and cruelly placed online for others to see," O’Neil said, calling the hackers “cowards” and “scum bags."

The Australian sanctions impose a travel ban and strict financial sanctions that make it a criminal offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment for anyone found guilty of providing assets to Yermakov or using his assets, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the sanctions are part of Australia’s efforts to expose cybercriminals and debilitate groups engaging in cyberattacks.

“In our current strategic circumstances we continue to see governments, critical infrastructure, businesses, and households in Australia targeted by malicious cyberactors," Marles said in a statement.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has given a lengthy interview in which he discusses what he sees as the origins of the "Bloody January" protests of 2022 as well as the threat of dual power systems.

Speaking to the state-run Egemen Qazaqstan newspaper, which published the interview on January 3, Toqaev said the protests that began in the southwestern town Zhanaozen on January 2, 2022, following a sharp rise in fuel prices and which quickly spread to other cities, including Almaty, were instigated by an unidentified "rogue group."

Toqaev's shoot-to-kill order to quell the unrest led to the deaths of more than 230 protesters, and the Kazakh president has been criticized for not living up to his promise to the public to answer questions about the incident.

The Kazakh authorities have prosecuted several high-ranking officials on charges that they attempted to seize power during the protests, with some removed from office or sentenced to prison, and others acquitted.

Many were seen to be allies of Toqaev's predecessor, long-serving Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbaev.

When asked what caused the unrest, Toqaev initially cited "socio-economic problems accumulated over the years," which had led to stagnation and undermined faith in the government.

However, Toqaev then suggested that "some influential people" did not like the changes to the country's political scene after he was appointed as acting president by Nazarbaev in 2019 and later that year elected as president.

Toqaev said the unknown people perceived the change "as a threat" to the power structure after decades of rule by Nazarbaev, and then "decided to turn back the face of reform and destroy everything in order to return to the old situation that was convenient for them."

"This group of high-ranking officials had a huge influence on the power structures and the criminal world," Toqaev alleged. "That's why they decided to seize power by force."

Toqaev, citing investigations by the Prosecutor-General's Office, said the unidentified group began "preparations" about six months before the nationwide demonstrations in January 2022, when the government made what he called "an ill-conceived, illegal decision to sharply increase the price of liquefied gas."

From there, Toqaev alleged, "extremists, criminal groups, and religious extremists" worked together to stage a coup. When the protests broke out in January 2022, Toqaev claimed that 20,000 "terrorists" had entered the country.

Experts have widely dismissed suggestions of foreign involvement in the mass protests.

Aside from about 10 members of the fundamentalist Islamic group Yakyn Inkar -- which is considered a banned extremist group in Kazakhstan -- who were arrested in connection with the protests, no religious groups have been singled out for alleged involvement in the protests.

The goal of the alleged coup plotters, Toqaev said, was to set up a dual power structure that would compete with the government.

"I openly told Nazarbaev that the political arrogance of his close associates almost destroyed the country," Toqaev said, without expounding on who the associates might be.

Toqaev had not previously mentioned speaking with Nazarbaev about the mass protests.

Toqaev also suggested that Kazakhstan, which has come under criticism for its imprisonment of journalists and civil and political activists, does not have any political prisoners.

When asked about political prisoners, Toqaev said only that "our legislation does not contain a single decree, a single law, a single regulatory document that provides a basis for prosecuting citizens for their political views."

For there to be political persecution, according to Toqaev, there would need to be "censorship, special laws, and punitive bodies" in place.

Toqaev also appeared to subtly criticize Nazarbaev, who became head of Soviet Kazakhstan in 1990 and became Kazakhstan's first president after the country became independent in 1991.

Nazarbaev served as president until he resigned in 2019, although he held the title of "Leader of the Nation" from 2010 to 2020 and also served as chairman of the Security Council from 1991 to 2022. Nazarbaev has since been stripped of those roles and titles.

While discussing Nazarbaev, Toqaev said that "everyone knows his contribution to the formation of an independent state of Kazakhstan. He is a person who deserves a fair historical evaluation."

But the current Kazakh president also said that "there should be no senior or junior president in the country."

"Go away, don't beg!" Toqaev said. "Citizens who will be in charge of the country in the future should learn from this situation and stay away from such things and think only about the interests of the state and the prosperity of society."

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

The Baltimore Banner, an online news outlet, broke a story in November (11/2/23) about a man’s death being ruled a homicide due to “trauma to the body.” The man, Paul Bertonazzi, had been transported by Baltimore Police to Johns Hopkins psychiatric hospital, where he died five days later. The death occurred in January 2023, but the ruling had just been determined.

The original version of the story was short on details, with information vaguely sourced to “Baltimore Police.” It described the man (initially unidentified) as “combative” and self-harming. A second article (11/3/23) on the evolving story was published the next day with more information, including that the man’s spine had been severed at some point. That article includes quotes from a police report.

Baltimore Banner (11/2/23)

Despite limited information, the Banner’s articles prematurely exonerate the police in Bertonazzi’s death, taking the police’s own account of his behavior and the officers’ actions at face value while focusing blame on the hospital.

It is perhaps not surprising that Baltimore media published a police-friendly story relying on partial and questionable information, sourced to the police themselves. As I previously wrote about for FAIR (9/22/23), the Baltimore Sun and other news outlets played a major role in perpetuating false stories about what happened to Freddie Gray by uncritically repeating Baltimore Police claims.

Yet unlike the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Banner is not a corporate news outlet. It is a nonprofit news outlet that was introduced in 2022 as a promised corrective to the Sun’s habits of reporting. Since its founding, the Banner has stirred up controversy on social media for actions, statements and stories that seemingly perpetuate the worst habits of its corporate news competitor, including “police say” journalism.

In the Bertonazzi case, despite a lack of evidence, the Banner repeatedly concluded that he must have been killed by violence while a patient at the hospital. The second story ended with some background on “serious events” happening in Maryland hospitals. A followup story (11/9/23) was even more emphatic: “Violence at Maryland Hospitals Was a Concern Before a Death at Hopkins Was Ruled a Homicide,” the headline stated.

At the same time, the Banner gave space for the police to seemingly implicate Bertonazzi himself and/or his pre-existing injury in his death. The second article (11/3/23) cited a police report claiming Bertonazzi “said his neck hurt,” and was “hitting his head against the inside of the van” while in the midst of a “behavioral crisis” during his arrest.

Red flags from Freddie Gray case

Baltimore Banner (11/3/23)

For long-time observers of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), these claims struck a familiar chord: Police said the exact same things about Freddie Gray, who was fatally injured in BPD police custody in 2015, including that he was banging his head in the van (Washington Post, 4/29/15). This turned out to be a false story, part of an effort to cover up brutal deadly force (and not the first time BPD has used that story). The Banner articles are filled with red flags that echo back to the Gray case, including that Bertonazzi was transported to the hospital in a police van instead of an ambulance, despite reports of serious medical and psychiatric symptoms.

Any number of things could have happened to cause Bertonazzi’s fatal injury, involving any number of parties and/or his preexisting condition. The details offered by the Banner belie its rhetorical effort to shift attention away from the police and onto the hospital. According to “medical staff,” he became immediately immobile upon entry, when he was transferred from the wheelchair to a board.

The Banner (11/3/23) released partial body camera footage showing Bertonazzi crying “help” and “you’re hurting me” before he was wheeled into the hospital, while police unsuccessfully commanded him to stand up. The news outlet describes the video as showing him “moving, talking” to explain why BPD exonerated the officers, as if that alone proves that his spine wasn’t damaged yet (another echo to the Gray case, in which police dismissed video of him crying out  in pain during his arrest).

A nonprofit business model 

Lenfest Institute

The Baltimore Banner provides a case study in whether a shift to a nonprofit business model in newsrooms is enough to transform journalism. The news outlet was launched in 2022 in the midst of intensive public support for an alternative to the Baltimore Sun, which had been the only big game in town for decades.

In 2021, an investment firm, Alden Capital Group, was poised to purchase the Baltimore Sun’s owner, Tribune Publishing. A Vanity Fair article (4/5/21) about the takeover referred to Alden Capital as a “blood-sucking hedge fund.” A group called “Save Our Sun,” made up of Sun staffers and prominent locals, was hoping to beat Alden’s offer and transform the Sun into a nonprofit newspaper.

Another party interested in buying the Sun was Stewart Bainum, Jr., the CEO of Choice Hotels, the nursing home chain Manor Home Inc. and other corporations he inherited from his father. Bainum has also served as a Democrat in the Maryland General Assembly. He was framed as the possible “savior” of Baltimore media (Washington Post, 2/17/21, 10/26/21; New York Times, 2/17/21) and won the support of the “Save Our Sun” team.

After losing his bid to Alden Capital, Bainum launched the Baltimore Banner as a separate nonprofit news outlet (known as the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, its parent organization, on tax documents). Bainum pledged $50 million over three and a half years. The Banner’s nonprofit status bought it an enormous amount of good will, with glowing articles months in advance of its launch.

The Baltimore Banner website launched in June 2022. In many ways, it was hard to distinguish from its corporate competitor. For one, most of its articles were behind a paywall. (Both the Banner and Sun charge about $20/month after an introductory period.) Many other nonprofit news outlets with similar multi-million budgets, like the Texas Tribune or ProPublica, offer their content for free.

In developing its business model, the Banner consulted with the Lenfest Institute, a nonprofit organization that runs the Philadelphia Inquirer, which does charge for subscriptions (Washington Post, 10/26/21). The Inquirer was often described as a model for the Banner. Yet, unlike the Banner, the Inquirer is a for-profit limited liability corporation owned by a nonprofit. There are very few nonprofit news outlets comparable to the Banner that make readers pay for news.

Ties to the corporate world

The Baltimore Banner‘s “About Us” page promises “to be an indispensable resource that strengthens, unites and inspires our Baltimore community…through trustworthy, quality journalism that tells the varied stories of our people.”

One issue might be the lack of nonprofit leadership experience at the Banner. The news outlet didn’t have a board of directors until about six months after it launched. With two exceptions (including Bainum’s wife, an actor), the Banner’s executive team and board of directors are composed of people from the corporate world, including corporate media.

So are most of its reporters. The Banner’s first prominent hires came from the Baltimore Sun, including its managing editors and numerous reporters. Although the Banner’s newsroom is more diverse than at the Sun, with an editorial staff that is about 27% people of color, the city has a roughly 70% non-white population. Meanwhile, the crime, politics and “enterprise” (investigations) desks are still overwhelmingly staffed with white reporters. (This data doesn’t include the “Banner Bot,” an AI function that pens a regular column on real estate and has no race.)

While the Banner’s subscription prices caused some online stir, the outlet also drew attention for its relationships with local corporations. The Baltimore Brew (6/9/23) reported that the Banner was getting a discount on rent from a major real estate development company.

The Banner also ran ads from Atlas Restaurant Group, a mammoth company owned by Alexander Smith, whose family owns the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting Group. Atlas has faced controversy for policies that restrict service based on racist and arbitrarily enforced dress codes. Atlas also catered the Banner’s launch event, and the Banner has continued to hold events at Atlas Restaurants, while giving the company significant uncritical press (e.g., 7/11/23, 10/2/23, 10/18/23).

The early marketing for the Banner emphasized its mission “to be an indispensable resource that strengthens, unites and inspires our Baltimore community.” Despite millions from Bainum, discounted rent and an income stream from ads, the community has had to pay for access.

Nonprofit news outlets can operate legally in a number of different ways, but the Baltimore Banner‘s chosen business model cost it much of its nonprofit sheen.

Controversial hires

Within its first few months as a news outlet, the Baltimore Banner also made a number of editorial choices that alienated local readers who were hopeful for a real alternative to corporate news.

When editor-in-chief Kimi Yoshino (who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times) proudly announced the hiring of former Baltimore Sun and ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis as editor-at-large (Twitter, 6/1/22), she faced immediate backlash. Many people reminded her that MacGillis had spent the previous two years minimizing the Covid pandemic and mocking Covid precautions. He was an extremist voice on the topic, comparing school closures to both South Africa’s apartheid and the Iraq War.

Twitter (12/24/20)

Locals also reminded Yoshino that MacGillis had been, up until his hiring, retweeting prominent anti-trans activists who expressed concern about gender nonconformity. Yoshino didn’t respond to the criticism, and MacGillis was brought on board.

Baltimore Banner (9/20/22)

Then, in September 2022, the Banner published an op-ed (9/20/22) from a man named Brian Griffiths, a “conservative activist,” according to his bio. He argued that government buildings shouldn’t fly pride flags: “You may see the transgender pride flag as a symbol of tolerance and acceptance,” he wrote. “I see it as a flag that denies the basic facts of biology and sex assigned at birth.” There was enormous outcry, with many people promising to cancel their subscriptions. Even several Banner reporters spoke out against the op-ed.

Yoshino published a written response (9/22/22), an “apology from the editor.” After expressing regret for causing harm, she defended her choices. She described Griffith’s piece as “carefully edited” and reviewed by LGBTQ staffers. She insisted the Banner had a responsibility to share a “range of viewpoints.” Griffiths, she acknowledged, was hired to write a column from a conservative perspective.

At the time, the Banner had published only 14 of what it called “community voices,” and Griffith had written four of those. None of the other op-ed writers had been published twice. He was the Banner’s first columnist, it seemed.

Yoshino’s response to the Griffith outcry was her second public apology of sorts. She had previously apologized in June 2022, when the Banner published an op-ed (6/1/23), which is still online, that casually used the phrase “Jewtown” to describe a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

After the Griffiths debacle, Yoshino announced the hiring of a public editor, DeWayne Wickham, a former opinion writer for USA Today and founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, who wrote a regular column for the Banner over the next year. His columns occasionally commented on the Banner’s work, but mostly covered the media in general. At one point, Wickham (12/31/22) did come down on the Banner for a claim he felt wasn’t substantiated. That criticism was tucked into a mostly positive review of the outlet’s work to date. His next article (1/2/23) was an apology for criticizing his colleagues. (Wickham left the Banner in July 2023 and hasn’t been replaced.)

More recently, the Banner has seemed to temper its approach, no longer publishing Griffiths, for one. It hasn’t entirely backed away from inflammatory content, though. On November 17, 2023, its Twitter account posted a tweet that seemed to encapsulate the tension between its pursuit of a “range of viewpoints” and its civic-minded, nonprofit branding:

Twitter (11/17/23)

The Banner offered free access to this “health story,” which was a letter justifying opposition to vaccination. (The tweet has since been deleted, but the letter is still online.)

Accountability issues

Baltimore Banner (8/27/22)

In its “Code of Conduct,” the Banner promises, “When we make a mistake, we are humble, admit our error and correct it,” and “if we ever stray from [our promises], readers should call us out and demand that we make amends.” Accountability and transparency remain ongoing issues for the outlet, as illustrated by the Banner‘s failure to “make amends” when it published a story that turned out to be unsubstantiated.

In August 2022, the Banner (8/27/22) reported that a Hollywood television production was shut down in Baltimore because drug dealers “threatened to shoot someone” and “attempted to extort $50,000 from the crew to stand down.” According to the Banner, “producers declined to pay.” The only source for the article was a Baltimore Police spokesperson.

The story was picked up by national news and entertainment press (e.g., Deadline, 8/28/22; LA Times, 8/28/22). It fostered the common perception that Baltimore is overrun by criminality and an unsafe place to mount a production.

Twitter (8/28/22)

When Baltimore locals expressed doubts about the story on Twitter, one of its reporters, Justin Fenton, insisted that it was true. “It did happen,” he said to a skeptical commentator.

A few days later, the Banner (8/30/22) reported that it probably didn’t happen: “Police Scale Back Accusations Related to Alleged Threat on Set of ‘Lady in the Lake,’” the headline stated. Police had investigated the initial claim and it didn’t hold up. The chief BPD spokesperson described the first article as “preliminary information.”

The Banner published this second story as if it were passively updating the original story, with no mea culpa for its role in running with the initial account prematurely.  Fenton quietly deleted his tweets that had asserted that the incident “did happen.”

Issues with accountability and transparency are present in Fenton’s more recent articles on Bertonazzi, the man who died in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Certain claims are attributed to unidentified “police,” even though the Banner’s Code of Ethics insists that anonymous sources will be avoided:

When using information from an anonymous source, we include a reason why the source needs their name withheld…. Always, but especially in stories about politics or government, we examine requests for anonymity for possible ulterior motives.

The Code of Ethics also calls for transparency and specificity around corrections, but both Bertonazzi stories were updated many times without the specific updates noted, an ethical practice in journalism that shows readers how a story develops. What’s lost to the public is how the news outlet shaped its stories over time to support the police’s claims.

The Banner does deserve credit for some critical work that would likely not have appeared in the Baltimore Sun, including a series on healthcare in Maryland prisons and coverage for Baltimore’s large and growing immigrant population. But it hasn’t let go of the corporate media habit of publishing stories on policing sourced largely or exclusively by police (e.g., 11/7/23). It’s a particularly corrosive habit when the police are killers or suspects.

Competing for dollars 

Baltimore Banner (6/16/23)

On April 21, 2022, Former President Barack Obama mentioned the “encouraging trend” of nonprofit newsrooms popping up across the country, citing Baltimore in a list of cities. By itself, “nonprofit” is a neutral term, a business model. There are countless nonprofits dedicated to ending the rights of women to have abortions. Religious groups like Scientology are 501(c)3 nonprofits known to commit harm.

The Banner’s own former public editor (6/16/23) acknowledged that the news outlet had a long way to go to look different from corporate news: “At other times it looked a lot like the city’s traditional news organizations—which is to say it hasn’t always looked like something new and different in its first year,” Wickham wrote in a year-in-review:

Of course, that’s to be expected. Most of its reporters and editors came from—and honed their journalism in—the old-school newsrooms that the Banner is trying not to duplicate.

In an article in the Conversation (1/17/19), Bill Birnbauer writes about the “huge disparity” between large and successful nonprofit news outlets, established by “wealthy individual donors” providing “venture-like capital,” and smaller outlets which comprise the vast majority of nonprofit newsrooms and rely on fickle private funding.

There is a downside to an institution like the Baltimore Banner operating as a nonprofit, especially when its approach to the news has been so variable. There is only so much private charitable money available in the city.

The Baltimore Brew, a small news outlet, has long been on top of financial corruption in the city, breaking the story (7/16/20) that led to former State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s recent federal conviction. The Baltimore Beat is Black-led and publishes a regular column on injustice in the courts. The Beat also publishes a monthly free print version, which is beneficial in a city that has many residents without internet access.

These and other independent Baltimore outlets will compete for funding with a nonprofit news site that is supported by a very wealthy businessman, has a revenue-driven business model, and was marketed aggressively as the savior of Baltimore media.

The post Baltimore’s New Nonprofit Outlet Looks a Lot Like the Same Old Corporate News appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Justine Barron.

Police in the capital, Baku, detained Hasanli outside his apartment early Monday morning on suspicion of unlawfully bringing money into the country, Hasanli’s lawyer, Zibeyda Sadygova, told CPJ by messaging app. Police later raided the apartment and searched Abzas Media’s offices, according to multiple news reports; Sadygova told CPJ that authorities claim to have found 40,000 Euros (US$43,770) in the office.

In a statement published on Facebook, Abzas Media said that Hasanli’s arrest and the raid were part of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev’s pressure on the outlet for “a series of investigations into the corruption crimes of the President and officials appointed by him.” In recent months, privately owned Abzas Media has published investigations into the origins of the wealth of senior state officials and relatives of President Aliyev.

“The raid on the offices of Abzas Media, one of the few domestic Azerbaijani media outlets that still dares to investigate official corruption, and the arrest of its director Ulvi Hasanli, appear to be in retaliation for the outlet’s pioneering journalism,” said CPJ Advocacy and Communications Director Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, in New York. “Azerbaijani authorities should immediately release Hasanli and end their harassment of Abzas Media.”

If Hasanli is charged and convicted of unlawfully bringing money into the country, he could be sentenced to up to eight years in prison, according to article 206.3.2 of Azerbaijan’s criminal code.

Hasanli left his home at around 4:30 a.m. to take a flight abroad but failed to board that flight, the outlet’s chief editor Sevinj Vagifgizi told local news agency Turan. In a voice recording published by Abzas Media, Hasanli said he entered a taxi outside his home when a vehicle blocked the taxi’s path and masked men came out and grabbed him from the vehicle, punching him in the eye. The men took him to Baku City Police Department, where officers punched and kicked him and asked him why Abzas Media writes about corruption, he said. He was later taken to the Khatai District Temporary Detention Center in Baku, according to Abzas Media.

At around midday, Baku police searched the Abzas Media office for around five hours, forcefully removing journalists who attempted to film outside the building, footage posted by Abzas Media shows. Abzas Media staff told Turan that they believe the 40,000 Euros allegedly found by police had nothing to with the outlet or Hasanli and claimed the money had been placed there by police to provide a legal basis for possible charges against Hasanli and Abzas Media.

Abzas Media is one of a handful of independent outlets that remain in the country following a series of raids, arrests, and criminal investigations against independent media and press freedom groups since 2014.

CPJ emailed the Baku Police Department, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Office of the President of Azerbaijan for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Soldiers arrested Htet Aung, the Sittwe-based reporter for Development Media Group, or DMG, and night watchman Soe Win Aung, and no one has had any contact with them yet, they said.

DMG was established in 2012 along the Thailand-Myanmar border, but later moved its operations to Rakhine’s capital Sittwe. The news outlet covers armed conflict and human rights violations in the western state that borders Bangladesh.

When some family members went to the Sittwe police station where the two were detained, police did not allow them to meet, said Ma Aye Yi, mother of Htet Aung.

“When I went there to take lunch [to my son], they told me that [he] had been taken to the military security affairs office for interrogation,” she said. 

Silencing news outlets

The ruling military junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, has cracked down on independent media outlets in Myanmar to silence them from reporting about the coup, its violent aftermath, and armed conflict. 

In 2021, the junta shut down five media outlets that provided independent coverage of the protests against military rule. This year, the regime threatened legal action against Democratic Voice of Burma TV and Mizzima TV, demanding the shuttered independent news broadcasters pay thousands of dollars in transmission fees, VOA reported in July.

Soldiers arrested Htet Aung while he was taking news photos at the Wingabar open field in Rakhine’s capital city. Sometime later, about 20 junta troops with police raided DMG’s office and arrested the night watchman.

The soldiers and police also confiscated cameras, computers and office accessories before sealing the building, DMG news agency officials said.

It was a violent suppression of the independent news media, one news agency official said.

“We condemn the arresting of journalists and office staff and raiding of the office,” the person said. “It is an act of terrorism. No matter how they suppress us, we will report the truth from the ground as much as we can.”

Not the first time

Meanwhile, the families of the other workers who fled to safety said they don’t know about their whereabouts.   

RFA’s calls to the state attorney general, who is the junta’s spokesman for Rakhine state, went unanswered.

The State Administration Council, as the junta regime is known, has not yet issued a statement about the raid.

This isn’t the first time the military has targeted DMG.

In 2019, the military and the military-controlled Home Affairs Ministry under the previous civilian-led government filed a criminal case against DMG editor-in-chief Aung Min Oo for allegedly violating Section 17(2) of the country’s Unlawful Associations Act.

The military filed defamation lawsuits under Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law against other DMG reporters in 2021.

Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw for RFA Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

Soldiers arrested Htet Aung, the Sittwe-based reporter for Development Media Group, or DMG, and night watchman Soe Win Aung, and no one has had any contact with them yet, they said.

DMG was established in 2012 along the Thailand-Myanmar border, but later moved its operations to Rakhine’s capital Sittwe. The news outlet covers armed conflict and human rights violations in the western state that borders Bangladesh.

When some family members went to the Sittwe police station where the two were detained, police did not allow them to meet, said Ma Aye Yi, mother of Htet Aung.

“When I went there to take lunch [to my son], they told me that [he] had been taken to the military security affairs office for interrogation,” she said. 

Silencing news outlets

The ruling military junta, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, has cracked down on independent media outlets in Myanmar to silence them from reporting about the coup, its violent aftermath, and armed conflict. 

In 2021, the junta shut down five media outlets that provided independent coverage of the protests against military rule. This year, the regime threatened legal action against Democratic Voice of Burma TV and Mizzima TV, demanding the shuttered independent news broadcasters pay thousands of dollars in transmission fees, VOA reported in July.

Soldiers arrested Htet Aung while he was taking news photos at the Wingabar open field in Rakhine’s capital city. Sometime later, about 20 junta troops with police raided DMG’s office and arrested the night watchman.

The soldiers and police also confiscated cameras, computers and office accessories before sealing the building, DMG news agency officials said.

It was a violent suppression of the independent news media, one news agency official said.

“We condemn the arresting of journalists and office staff and raiding of the office,” the person said. “It is an act of terrorism. No matter how they suppress us, we will report the truth from the ground as much as we can.”

Not the first time

Meanwhile, the families of the other workers who fled to safety said they don’t know about their whereabouts.   

RFA’s calls to the state attorney general, who is the junta’s spokesman for Rakhine state, went unanswered.

The State Administration Council, as the junta regime is known, has not yet issued a statement about the raid.

This isn’t the first time the military has targeted DMG.

In 2019, the military and the military-controlled Home Affairs Ministry under the previous civilian-led government filed a criminal case against DMG editor-in-chief Aung Min Oo for allegedly violating Section 17(2) of the country’s Unlawful Associations Act.

The military filed defamation lawsuits under Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law against other DMG reporters in 2021.

Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw for RFA Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Prem Thakker.

At a closed-door hearing on September 15, the Belarusian Supreme Court labeled the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), an independent Czech Republic-based investigative media outlet, as “extremist” at the request of the general prosecutor’s office, according to a statement by the office, a report by the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group operating from exile, a Telegram post by BIC, and Alesia Rudovich, the center’s grant manager, who spoke to CPJ via email.

In late 2022, authorities had previously labeled BIC’s content and logo as “extremist,” according to media reports and a list of materials deemed extremists by the authorities, which Rudovich shared with CPJ.

“By labeling the Belarusian Investigative Center as ‘extremist,’ the Belarusian authorities are once again seeking to intimidate and obstruct the work of an independent outlet known for its sharp investigations into alleged corruption in the country,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Belarusian authorities should immediately repeal the country’s shameful extremism legislation instead of routinely using it against independent media and members of the press.”

Anyone who distributes extremist materials can be held for up to 15 days, according to the Belarusian rights organization Human Constanta. Organizations classified as extremist are banned from operating in Belarus, according to the Belarusian law. In addition, individual entrepreneurs and legal entities face up to three years in jail for displaying the logo of an organization deemed extremist.

Authorities accused BIC of “inciting social, political, and ideological hostility,” distributing “extremist” materials and so-called “false information about the political, economic, social, military, and international situation in Belarus,” as well as “discrediting government bodies and administration.” The Supreme Court denied BIC’s request to participate in the hearing via videoconference, according to those reports and Rudovich.

“This is an unfortunate attempt by Belarus’ authorities to further repress and intimidate independent media,” BIC head Stanislau Ivashkevich told CPJ via messaging app.

BIC reports on corruption, economics, politics, and the war in Ukraine. In 2022, BIC and banned Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV published a joint investigation into a possible corruption scheme involving the prosecutor general and his brother.

BAJ deputy head Barys Haretski told CPJ via messaging app that BIC was the second media outlet, after the now-defunct independent news website Tut.by, to be labeled an “extremist organization.”

”The fact that BIC is the only active media labeled an extremist organization…shows the importance of our investigators’ work in revealing corruption among Belarus’ political elites and their schemes of sanctions evasion,” Ivashkevich told CPJ.

More than 15 media outlets are labeled as “extremist groups,” Haretski told CPJ, with BAJ having been added to that list in February. Anyone charged with creating or participating in an “extremist” group faces up to 10 years in prison, according to the Belarusian Criminal Code, with potential sentences of up to eight years for financing extremism and up to seven years for facilitating such activity.

CPJ emailed the Belarusian Supreme Court and the general prosecutor’s office for comment but did not receive any reply.

Separately, on September 14, law enforcement officers in Brest, a Belarusian city at the Poland-Belarus border, detained Syarhey Hardzievich, a former correspondent with the independent regional news website Pershy Region, after checking his phone, and took him to a detention center in Brest, according to BAJ. A court in Belarus later ordered Hardzievich to be held for 15 days, BAJ reported.

The journalist was returning from a short personal trip to Poland when he was detained, a BAJ representative told CPJ on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Authorities allegedly charged the journalist with distributing extremist materials, the source told CPJ.

CPJ is investigating to determine whether Hardzievich’s detention is related to his journalism.

Hardzievich was released from jail in October 2022 after completing a one-and-a-half year prison-sentence on charges of insulting Lukashenko and two police officers, as well as defaming one of those officers.

CPJ emailed the Brest police for comment but did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

CamboJA – short for Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association – reported on Thursday that agricultural expert Ny Nak criticized Minister of Agriculture Dith Tina on Facebook over the minister’s handling of a report on rice prices. 

The Facebook post doesn’t mention the minister’s name. It went live the day before the Sept. 12 assault, which left Ny Nak initially unconscious and bleeding from the head after several unidentified men beat him with metal batons. 

The ministry responded to the article in a letter to CamboJA on Friday that said their reporting “speculates that the attack on Ny Nak was politically motivated based on his recent baseless posts criticizing government officials and institutions.”

The article also includes the minister’s name “even though the minister has never been mentioned by name in any of Ny Nak’s recent Facebook posts,” the letter said.

The ministry urged CamboJA “to rectify these serious breaches of journalistic ethics by removing unsubstantiated claims and speculations” that hurt the reputations of ministry officials. 

It also demanded that the publication remove the minister’s name from the article and that it “ensure that such malicious intentions and defamatory speculations do not recur in the future which would result in legal actions that could lead to the same outcome” of Voice of Democracy, an independent media outlet that was closed by the government in February.

Posting under a pseudonym

CamboJA, a network formed by former reporters of The Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post, deleted the minister’s name from the article and added an editor’s note on Monday.

It also added the name of Associate Editor Jack Brook as a contributor to the article and corrected the spelling of the name of an investigator for human rights group Adhoc who was quoted in the article.

“We think the Ministry of Agriculture’s request is acceptable and we’ve removed [ the minister’s] name because Ny Nak's Facebook posting didn’t mention the minister by name, only his picture,” CamboJA Executive Director Nop Vy told RFA.

Ny Nak was recently released from an 18-month jail term for criticizing Cambodia’s COVID-19 restrictions. Since his release, he has posted comments critical of the government on Facebook under the pseudonym IMAN-KH.

His post last week about the minister came a day after he said he was approached by two members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party asking him to join the party. He said he had refused the invitation, saying he is “neither a member of the ruling party or the opposition.”

He was traveling with his wife Sok Sinet in Phnom Penh on Sept. 12 when a motorbike crashed into them and unidentified men began beating them.

Ny Nak was taken to a local hospital and pledged on Friday to join the CPP – but only if Prime Minister Hun Manet can arrest his attackers.

On Monday, Minister of Interior Touch Sokhak told Voice of America that the suspects were probably using the accident as a pretext to rob Ny Nak and his wife.

“Until we arrest them we will see what they will answer about their intentions. We will know what this case is all about,” he told VOA. “But for the preliminary [assessment] this is a violent action and intended to rob the victim’s motorbike.

‘Ny Nak won’t run away’

Sok Sinet denied that her husband’s attack was a robbery.

“To me, I observed their actions. They intended to kill my husband,” she said. “It was an assassination attempt. I didn’t lose any handbag, money, phones or a motorbike.” 

RFA was unable to reach Touch Sokhak for comment on Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Tuesday that the attack “shares similarities with assaults reported earlier in 2023 against members of the opposition Candlelight Party, which were never seriously investigated.”

Ny Nak said on Facebook on Monday that he will be released from the hospital soon, and he promised not to run away from Cambodia.

“This is my part as a Cambodian. I will continue to help the country until I die,” he wrote. “Ny Nak won’t run away, doesn’t hide, sell out or seek asylum in a third country but will continue to stay with Cambodian farmers forever.”

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

“Following their recent application to shutter the outlet and now their threat to block its website, Kyrgyz authorities’ appetite for retaliation against Kloop for its uncompromising anti-corruption reporting appears to know no bounds,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities in Kyrgyzstan must cease all efforts to silence Kloop and repeal the false information law, which has once again proven its only purpose is to shield officials from  criticism.”

On Thursday, September 7, Kloop received a letter from Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport and Youth Policy warning that if the outlet didn’t remove a September 1 article within 48 hours its website would be blocked under the country’s false information law. The letter did not specify which information was false and followed a complaint against the outlet by the State Committee for National Security.

The article cited a jailed opposition politician’s allegations of ill-treatment—which he had posted on his personal Facebook page and was widely reported by Kyrgyz media—and included a rebuttal of the politician’s claims by the country’s penitentiary service.

Kloop does not intend to remove the report, the outlet’s co-founder Bektour Iskender told CPJ by phone, and the outlet has filed a complaint with the ministry. Iskender said Kloop has been expecting such a step from authorities and set up a mirror website in February.

On August 22, authorities applied to shutter Kloop after the outlet published an investigation alleging the involvement of relatives of Kyrgyzstan’s president and the head of the State Committee for National Security in the construction of a Barcelona soccer academy in Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyz authorities previously blocked Radio Azattyk, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, for nine months from October 2022, and restored their access following the removal of a report from the outlet’s websites.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On August 22, the city prosecutor in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, applied to the courts to liquidate Kloop Media because the foundation’s charter allegedly did not list media activity among its statutory activities. Kyrgyzstan’s civil law code allows for the liquidation of legal entities by a court decision if they “systematically” conduct activities inconsistent with the purposes set out in their charters.

The application also alleged that Kloop’s publications included “sharp criticism” of the authorities, demoralized the public, and aimed to incite a revolution. The application did not state whether the outlet or its staff would face separate prosecution in relation to these allegations.

Kloop received notice of the application on Monday, August 28, according to the outlet’s lawyer, Fatima Yakupbayeva, who told CPJ that the outlet can only file a complaint against the application if the court declines to take the matter to trial. Yakupbayeva added that Kloop’s reporting was represented in the foundation’s charter under activities such as the “analysis of current affairs” and the provision of an “information platform” for the free expression of opinions on socio-political and economic developments.

Kloop’s chief editor, Anna Kapushenko, told local media that the prosecutor’s claims were unfounded and described the lawsuit as part of a “long chain” of repressive actions by present authorities against rights defenders and the press.

“Kyrgyz authorities’ application to shutter Kloop is an outrageous and deeply cynical attempt to stifle some of Kyrgyzstan’s most probing investigative journalism, including investigations of alleged corruption involving leading state officials,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Authorities should immediately withdraw this application and stop their campaign of pressure against the independent press.”

Kloop, a local partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project global investigative network, frequently publishes investigative and fact-checking articles critical of Kyrgyz authorities.

Bektour Iskender, co-founder of Kloop, told CPJ by phone he believed the shuttering application could be related to an August 22 investigation by Kloop alleging that relatives of both the Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and the head of the country’s State Committee for National Security were involved in the construction of a soccer academy in Kyrgyzstan connected to the Spanish soccer club Barcelona. 

On August 26, Japarov sharply criticized the article, saying that outlets like Kloop “bring only harm and no benefit to the Kyrgyz.”

The application also cites a State Committee for National Security investigation, opened in November 2021, into Kloop’s publications that allegedly made public calls for the violent seizure of power.

Yakupbayeva said Kloop had no further information about that investigation. Making public calls for the violent seizure of power online is punishable by three to five years in prison under Article 327 of Kyrgyzstan’s criminal code.

The application quoted opinions from several court experts—officially designated by the state for their testimony to be used in court—gathered as part of that investigation who accused Kloop’s publications of containing “hidden manipulation of social opinion” and who said the outlet’s “constant negative statements” and “false or discrediting information” provoked “dissatisfaction” and “distrust” for authorities and could lead to instability and revolution.

CPJ’s message to the president’s press secretary and emails to the State Committee for National Security did not receive any replies. CPJ’s email to the Bishkek City Prosecutor was returned due to a full inbox.

In November 2022, Kyrgyz authorities deported anti-corruption reporter Bolot Temirov. Authorities also blocked Radio Azattyk, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, for nine months from October 2022, and restored their access following the removal of a report from the outlet’s websites.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Monday, August 21, Gaon Savera’s Facebook page became inaccessible in India, and its account on X, formerly known as Twitter, was also blocked the following day, according to news reports and Mandeep Punia, editor of Gaon Savera, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

On Tuesday, August 22, Gaon Savera received an email from X, reviewed by CPJ, stating that the account had been withheld in response to a legal demand by the Indian government under the Information Technology Act. Gaon Savera did not receive a notice from Meta, which owns Facebook, or the Indian government, Punia said.

CPJ was able to access the outlet’s social media pages from the United States.

The previous week, the website and social media accounts of the independent online news magazine The Kashmir Walla were blocked in India.

“The Indian government’s arbitrary ban on Gaon Savera’s social media accounts, within days of blocking The Kashmir Walla’s website and social media accounts, marks a disturbing new trend of censorship in India,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Kuala Lumpur. “The Indian government must stop targeting independent news publications and allow Gaon Savera to report without interference.”

Some articles on the site of Gaon Savera, which covers grassroots people’s movements in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab, have disappeared, Punia told CPJ, adding that the outlet’s technical team was investigating.

Punia told CPJ that he suspected that the censorship was in response to Gaon Savera’s coverage of ongoing farmer protests in Punjab and Haryana ahead of a national convention of workers in Delhi on August 24.

Punia was arrested while reporting on farmers’ protests as a freelancer in January 2021 and detained for four days.

Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

A new media monitoring watchdog, Muslim Media Watch, published its first edition today featuring a cover story alleging that a Malaysian cult leader who was reportedly now in New Zealand could “create social unrest”.

Named as Suhaini bin Mohammad, he was allegedly posing as a Muslim religious leader and was said to be wanted by the authorities in Malaysia for “false teachings” that contradict Islam.

His cult ideology was identified by MMW as SiHulk, which was banned by the Johor State Religious Department (JAINJ) in 2021.

• READ MORE: Media, the courts, and terrorism: Lessons from the Christchurch mosque attacks – Gavin Ellis, Pacific Journalism Review
• Islam in the media: By the numbers

In an editorial, the 16-page publlcation said a need for “such a news outlet” as MMW had been shown after the mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019 and the Royal Commission inquiry that followed.

Fifty one people killed in the twin attacks were all Muslims attending the Islamic Friday prayer — “they were targeted solely because they were Muslims”.

The editorial noted “the shooter was motivated largely by online material. His last words before carrying out the shootings were: ‘Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.'”

“It is therefore disappointing that, while acknowledging the role of the media in the shootings, none of the 44 recommendations in the government’s response to the [Royal Commission] relate to holding media to account for irresponsible reporting, or even mention media; the word does not appear in any recommendation,” writes editor Adam Brown.

Often not neutral
“Indeed, the word Muslim appears only once, in ‘Muslim Community Reference Group’.
It has long been acknowledged that media reporting of Muslims and Islam is often not neutral.”

The editorial cited an Australian example, a survey by OnePath Network Australia which tallied the number, percentage and tone of articles about Islam in Australian media in 2017, in particular newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp: The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Herald Sun, The Courier Mail and The Advertiser.

“Over the year, the report found that 2891 negative articles ran in those five newspapers, where Islam and Muslims were mentioned alongside words like violence, extremism, terrorism and radical. This equates to over eight articles per day for the whole year; 152 of those articles ran on the front page,” said the MMW editorial.

“The percentage of their opinion pieces that were Islamophobic ranged from 19 percent
to 64 percent.

“The average was 31 percent, nearly a third, with one writer reaching almost two thirds. Also, as OnePath comment, ‘Even though they are stated to be “opinion” pieces, they are often written as fact.'”

Editor Brown said the situation in New Zealand had not improved since the shootings.

“Biased and unfair reporting on Muslim matters continues, and retractions are not always forthcoming,” he wrote.

Examples highlighted
The editorial said that the purpose of MMW was to highlight examples of media reporting — in New Zealand and overseas — that contained information about Islam that was not
accurate, or that was not neutrally reported.

It would also model ethical journalism and responsible reporting following Islamic practices and tradition.

MMW offered to conduct training sessions and to act as a resource for other media outlets.

On other pages, MMW reported about misrepresentation of Islam “being nothing new”, a challenge over a Listener article misrepresentation about girls’ education in Afghanistan, an emerging global culture of mass Iftar events, an offensive reference in a Ministry of Education textbook, and the ministry “acknowledges bias in teacher recruiting”, an article headlined “when are religious extremists not religious extremists”, and other issues.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

“The court-imposed suspension of TELE1 due to an RTÜK order, along with the imprisonment of the outlet’s chief editor Merdan Yanardağ in June, are unlawful and shameful acts aimed at intimidating the opposition media in Turkey into silence,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative, on Tuesday. “TELE1 should immediately be allowed to continue broadcasting, and Turkish authorities should make peace with the fact that a free and critical news media is essential for democracy.”

The blackout started on Sunday, August 6, and will last until Saturday, August 12, according to reports by TELE1 and other outlets.

Yanardağ was arrested, pending trial, in June due to his criticism of authorities over the prison conditions of Abdullah Öcalan, the convicted leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

At that time, RTÜK also ordered a seven-day suspension of TELE1, which was delayed pending a lawsuit filed by the media organization. The RTÜK decisions can be appealed in court, according to the related Turkish laws. However, TELE1 reported on August 1 that it had been informed that an Ankara court had lifted the stay of execution and allowed the suspension to go into effect.

RTÜK’s board is based on political party seats in parliament, which is currently controlled by the ruling Justice and Development Party and its allies. In the past, RTÜK has favored pro-government outlets and has focused penalties on critical outlets. In April, CPJ joined other press freedom, freedom of expression, and human rights organizations in calling for the regulator to stop punishing broadcasters for critical reporting.

TELE1 published a press statement on Saturday assuring its audience that the outlet will live on and “continue on its path as a distinguished example of honorable journalism in the history of the press.” The outlet also published an online video that day in which the TELE1 staff vowed to continue doing their jobs after the suspension ends despite the pressure they face.

CPJ emailed RTÜK but did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

On Tuesday, July 25, the Russian general prosecutor’s office outlawed SIA TV Rain and TVR Studios BV, the outlet’s branches in Latvia and the Netherlands respectively, by declaring them “undesirable” organizations, according to media reports, Dozhd TV reports, and a statement by the prosecutor’s office.

Organizations that receive the undesirable classification are banned from operating in Russia, and anyone who participates in them or works to organize their activities faces up to six years in prison and administrative fines. The designation also makes it a crime to distribute the outlet’s content or donate to it from inside or outside Russia.

“By banning Dozhd TV as ‘undesirable,’ Russian authorities are showing that their battle against news outlets offering independent information is by no means over,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should immediately overhaul the legislation on ‘undesirable organizations’ instead of using it to stifle free reporting.”

In August 2021, Russia’s justice ministry labeled Dozhd TV a “foreign agent,” compelling the outlet to submit regular detailed reports on its activities and expenses and to flag that status on its content. The ministry has since regularly added Dozhd TV journalists to its foreign agent list.

Dozhd TV suspended operations in Russia in March 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, subsequent criminalization of “false information” about the Russian military, and the blocking of its website by state media regulator Roskomnadzor.

The outlet relocated to Latvia, but Latvia’s media regulator canceled its broadcasting permit in December 2022, prompting Dozhd TV to move its editorial center to the Netherlands.

The Russian prosecutor’s office accused SIA TV Rain and TVR Studios BV of distributing materials from “undesirable,” “extremist,” and “terrorist organizations,” as well as “foreign agents” such as the independent news website Meduza.

The office also said the companies “discredit” Russian government bodies and law enforcement agencies, “disseminate false information” about the war in Ukraine, and support foreign agents.

Dozhd TV editor-in-chief Tikhon Dzyadko said that the outlet had suspended crowdfunding in Russia, canceled subscriptions from Russian citizens, and asked them not to share its content within the country for their own safety. 

“We’ve been labeled ‘undesirable in Russia,’ but we’re not: 13 million viewers in Russia last month confirm it,” he said in a statement.

In an interview with Meduza, Dzyadko called the prosecutor’s office decision “completely illegal” but “expected” and said that Dozhd TV will continue its work and look for other ways to secure funding. Dzyadko told CPJ via messaging app that an “important” part of Dozhd TV’s revenue came from donations from Russia.

Since 2021, Russian authorities have labeled dozens of organizations “undesirable,” including Meduza, Novaya Gazeta Europe, as well as investigative outlets iStories, The Insider, Bellingcat, and Proekt.

CPJ’s call to the Russian general prosecutor’s office was not answered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

The outlets were accused of misrepresenting the government’s reputation and prestige and of failing to meet the Ministry of Information’s conditions for doing business, according to a July 12 letter signed by Srun Kimsan of Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia.

The blocked sites include RFA’s Khmer and English websites and RFA’s Khmer language Twitter page. 

The regulator also ordered the blocking of the Kamnotra website, produced by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, or CCIM. The website posts information, data or documents that people can use. 

RFA condemned the order, calling it a “clear violation of Cambodian law and an attempt to censor the free flow of information ahead of the July 23 election,” according to RFA spokesman Rohit Mahajan.

“Access to timely, accurate news and information, which RFA’s programming and content provides to the Cambodian people on a daily basis, is essential in any democracy where the rule of law supports free speech and a free press,” he said. 

“Despite these unfortunate efforts, RFA will keep striving to inform its audience in Cambodia with up-to-the-minute journalism during this critical time and beyond,” Mahajan said.

‘Undermines their rights’

As of Monday afternoon Washington DC time, access to some of RFA’s websites were blocked within Cambodia, sources there said.

Some RFA monitors inside the country said they were still able to access RFA broadcasts on Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and Twitter. 

However, Kamnotra has already been blocked by major internet service providers like Cellcard and Ezecom, CCIM director Ith Sothoeut said. 

“When sources of information are blocked, it undermines the right to information of the general population, which is guaranteed by law, especially before the election,” he said.

“It undermines their rights as voters, who need to be fully informed to make it easier for them to make informed decisions,” he said.

Cambodia’s 1993 constitution guarantees press freedom. 

But in February, the government closed independent news outfit Voice of Democracy after it reported that the prime minister’s son had approved a government donation to support Turkey’s earthquake recovery efforts. 

Previous crackdowns

Several other independent media outlets were forced to shut down prior to the last general election in 2018. 

And a government crackdown in 2017 led to the closure of 32 FM radio frequencies, including those that broadcast RFA Khmer Service content, the arrest of two former RFA journalists and the closure of The Cambodia Daily newspaper.

The July 12 letter from the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia also ordered the blocking of a Khmer language website that has continued to publish stories under The Cambodia Daily name.

RFA has not been able to contact Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia spokesmen Seang Sethy and Im Vutha for comment. Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications  spokesman Sovisothy and Ministry of Information spokesman Meas Sophorn also weren’t immediately available on Monday.

However, Ministry of Information spokesman Meas Sophorn confirmed to CamboJA News on Monday that the ministry had ordered the closure of the websites.

Cambodia’s Information Ministry issues licenses to broadcasters and other media outlets. The Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia is an autonomous unit within the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.  

Translated by Sok Ry Sum and Keo Sovannarith. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

On June 23, Burkina Faso’s media regulator, the Superior Council for Communication (known by its French acronym CSC), suspended LCI, which is part of private broadcaster TF1, for three months for allegedly airing false information about deteriorating security conditions in the country on its current affairs show, “24H Pujadas,” according to several media reports and a copy of the decision.

“We call on the Burkinabè authorities to reverse their decision and immediately lift the suspension of LCI’s broadcasting,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator in New York. “The latest suspension of a French media outlet over its insurgency reporting appears retaliatory rather than grounded in fact and robs the people of Burkina Faso of their right to know what is happening in their country.”

Thousands of Burkinabè citizens have died and millions have been displaced in the eight-year insurgency led by militants affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, who currently control large areas of the country. Soured relations between France, the country’s former colonial power, and Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta led to the February withdrawal of French troops helping to fight the insurgents.

LCI is the third French outlet to be suspended since December 2022 in Burkina Faso after France 24’s suspension in March and the radio station RFI in December. In addition, two French journalists working for Le Monde and Libération were expelled from Burkina Faso in April.

The CSC suspension decision said commentary by LCI’s popular “24H Pujadas” host, Abnousse Shalmani, on an April 24 segment titled “Sahel, the lost zone” was “not based on any concrete evidence” and “lacked objectivity and credibility.” It also said the report exaggerated the scale of the insurgency and “seditiously” exposed “unverified” failures in Burkina Faso’s military response to the insurgency, Reuters reported.

Blahima Traoré, CSC general secretary, told CPJ by messaging app that the three satellite television providers that carry LCI for subscribers, were formally notified of the decision on June 23.

Canal+ Burkina, Neerwaya Multivision, and Stars Médias Burkina—the three providers—would be “liable for penalties” if they failed to suspend LCI for three months from the notification date, a CSC notification sent to Canal+ Burkina’s general manager said. At least one of the three—Canal+ Burkina—has suspended LCI broadcasts, but the channel is still available online, Guézouma Sanogo, president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina, told CPJ via messaging app on July 10. CPJ was not able to immediately confirm whether Neerwaya Multivision and Stars Médias Burkina have suspended LCI broadcasts.

According to Article 46 of the 2013 law that establishes the regulator and sets out its powers and composition, the CSC can suspend the broadcasting of a program “for a maximum of three months” depending on the seriousness of the breach.

CPJ tried unsuccessfully to contact LCI and Shalmani for comment via their social media accounts.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Ministry of Information and Communications concluded in an inspection report that Zing News, also known as Zing News Online Knowledge magazine, had to stop its online service, though the publication did not cite a specific reason in a notice to its readers on Thursday.

The site, which covers economic, culture and political news in Vietnam, is run by the Vietnam Publishing Association, an entity that does not receive funding from the government or the Vietnamese Communist Party, but still must obey its orders. 

Zing’s announcement said it would focus on implementing a prime ministerial decision issued on April 3, 2019, for a master plan on press development and management nationwide through 2025. 

The government’s plan states that “the press is a means of information, a tool for propaganda, and a weapon” that is “important ideological fuel” for the party and the state. It also calls for continuous efforts to complete legislation for the government’s management and organization of the media and to eliminate the “overlapping situation” by reducing the number of newspapers.  

Though Zing did not state what the shortcomings are, it said it would continue to innovate content to ensure the implementation of the principles and purposes specified in its license and to promote an identity of “prestige information, impressive images” that better serves readers.

Vietnam ranks near the bottom of Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 Press Freedom Index – 178 out of 180 nations – for quashing dissent, controlling the public’s access to social media and prosecuting journalists on contentious charges, such as “distributing anti-state propaganda” and “abusing democratic freedoms.”  

As of May 2022, Vietnam had 815 news outlets, including 138 newspapers and 677 magazines, of which 29 operate only in electronic format, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications.

To implement the government’s plan, the online Tri Tri online newspaper (Zing.vn) of the Vietnam Publishing Association converted to an e-magazine model on April 1, 2020.

In 2022, the government suspended publication of two other websites for three months, Vietnam Law newspaper and the e-magazine Vietnam Business and Border Trade Journal.

The ministry determined that Vietnam Law Newspaper had 13 violations and was fined 325 million dong (US$13,720). The other publication, operated under the auspices of the Vietnam Association of Border Traders, was fined 70 million dong (US$2,960) for an administrative violation.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

Investigative news outlet Black Star News was targeted in a cyberattack on May 16, 2023, that disrupted publishing and deleted nearly 26,000 articles.

The New York City-based newspaper reported that over the course of the attack, it lost the ability to post new articles until May 27. But BSN Publisher Milton Allimadi told Journal-isms that the developer building the newspaper’s new website had been archiving past articles and managed to save most of the 25,768 deleted articles, except those published between March and May.

“In the past, some of our most critical editorials or articles about corruption allegations had been specifically targeted and deleted,” BSN reported. “But never before had our website crashed.”

The outlet reported the incident to the New York Police Department and the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James, BSN reported. Allimadi did not respond to requests for comment from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

While BSN wrote that it was disappointed by the disruption, it added that it took it as a confirmation of the importance of its investigative reporting: “We are elated to know that we are producing journalism that some individuals or entities are scared of — individuals or entities that like operating in darkness.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

“Today’s judgment is a massive victory for media freedom in South Africa and an important vindication of a journalist’s ethical duty to protect confidential sources in the public interest,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland’s judgment reaffirms that the country’s courts will not condone pre-publication censorship without appropriate notice and that investigative journalists have the right to hold and use leaked information in the public interest.”

Quintal has been an amaBhungane board member since October 2013.

A judge granted the original injunction against amaBhungane on June 1—following a secret application by the Moti Group, the subject of the outlet’s coverage—and the action was widely condemned as a threat to media freedom in the country. The injunction ordered the outlet to return leaked documents and refrain from publishing further articles based on them.

On June 3, amaBhungane launched an urgent application in the Johannesburg High Court to overturn the order, in which the parties agreed that the investigative outlet would not destroy or alter the documentation until the matter could be heard in open court. 

AmaBhungane sought another urgent application seeking to overthrow the original order last week; the judgment in its favor was delivered Monday, July 3.

Sutherland called the Moti Group’s application an “abuse of the court process,” according to multiple news reports and a joint statement by the South African National Editors’ Forum, the Campaign for Free Expression, and Media Monitoring Africa, three local press freedom organizations who joined amaBhungane in its legal case. The judge ordered the Moti Group to pay amaBhungane’s and the three organizations’ legal costs.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

In April, amaBhungfane published a series of articles based on leaked documents about South African businessman Zunaid Moti and the Moti Group of companies, which he led as CEO until resigning in March. The Moti Group alleged a former employee stole those documents.

On May 30, the Moti Group launched an urgent application to be heard in secret, in terms of a legal process where no notice needs to be given to the other party concerned, to force amaBhungane to return the documents in its possession and to bar it from any further reporting on the company. On June 1, Judge John Holland-Muter granted an interim order effectively gagging amaBhungane until the matter could be argued in open court on October 3 and ordering it to return the documents within 48 hours, according to a report by the outlet and a statement by the industry body South African National Editors’ Forum. AmaBhungane’s lawyer was only informed about the interim order after it was granted.

“We hope that when the matter is fully ventilated in open court, investigative journalism in the public interest and the protection of confidential sources that are key to exposing massive alleged corruption in South Africa and elsewhere will be vindicated and not eroded,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Not to do so would mean any party can stop investigative journalists from exposing corruption or any other matter of public interest by claiming that the information relied upon is stolen, endangering the lives of whistleblowers or confidential sources by forcing disclosure.”

Quintal has been an amaBhungane board member since October 2013.

David Frankel, executive director of The Sentry, a U.S. outlet that collaborated with amaBhungane on its investigations into the Moti Group, in an email to CPJ described amaBhungane’s reporting as “public interest journalism of the purest kind.”

“Questions about Moti Group’s apparent payments to firms linked to the President and Vice President of Zimbabwe, a cozy relationship with an official at a major South African bank, and the financial motives behind donations to a Presidential candidate in Botswana–these are all important and appropriate subjects for investigative journalism,” Frankel said.

Moti has denied the allegations of impropriety and state capture in media interviews, opinion articles, a TikTok campaign, and paid-for media articles, as reported by amaBhungane.

To protect its sources and not hand over the documents, as well as to continue reporting on the Moti Group, amaBhungane sought an urgent reconsideration of the order on Saturday morning, June 3, ahead of that evening’s deadline to return the documents.

Judge Stephan van Nieuwenhuizen dealt only with the order to return the documents and granted a variation of the order. As a result, amaBhungane would not be compelled to hand over the documents, although the bar on publishing further articles would remain until the case was eventually heard in court.

Van Nieuwenhuizen reportedly said he could not understand how Holland-Muter granted the interim order and criticized Moti Group’s legal representatives for being “unreasonable.”

“While we are disappointed that the gag order issued against us–unjustifiably and abusively in our view–remains in place for now, we will fight this in due course and believe today’s variation was necessary to protect our sources,” amaBhungane tweeted after the revised order was issued.

In its court papers filed on June 6 challenging the interim order, which CPJ reviewed, amaBhungane said that Section 16 of the South African Constitution permitted journalists to receive information from sources on a confidential basis.

“Regardless of the manner in which information has been obtained by a source, it is not unlawful for journalists to hold any information provided by a source, provided they do so in the public interest,” the outlet wrote in those court papers.

Journalists had a right and duty to keep their source material and the identity of anonymous sources confidential, the document said, adding that it was unlawful and unconstitutional to order a journalist to hand over their source material or identify a source to any other party.

“A prior restraint on journalist publication can only be granted in exceptional circumstances and never without notice,” the documents said, adding that it was “unlawful and unconstitutional to interdict a journalistic publication without notice, whether on an interim or final basis.”

AmaBhungane is expected to return to court within the next few weeks.

In an opinion article published Sunday, Zunaid Moti said the legal dispute was “in no way about supposedly ‘gagging’ media” but “preventing journalists from reporting upon stolen information.” 

In that article, Moti accused amaBhungane of having “used the flimsy excuse of ‘public interest’ to participate in theft; published stolen, altered documents and convoluted conspiracy theories as fact; and has even gone as far as to share private banking details and other personal information on public platforms.”

This justification was repeated in a statement to CPJ by the Moti Group’s lawyer Ulrich Roux, which said the June 1 order was not a “gagging order” against the media and amaBhungane but had to be seen in the context of a “clear case of theft committed by an ex-employee,” who downloaded more than 4,000 “editable” Moti Group documents before resigning. 

The statement said these documents included proprietary information and intellectual property, which could cause significant monetary damages to the group if confidentiality was not maintained, adding that the papers were not in the public interest and denied that the former employee was acting as a “whistleblower.”

In television interviews, Moti said the secrecy of the June 1 hearing was necessary because he believed amaBhungane could have concealed or destroyed the documents if they had received prior notice about the group’s court action.

In an opinion column published Monday, William Bird, executive director of the local press rights group Media Monitoring Africa, labeled the June 1 interim court order a “travesty of justice” and said, “Even if we accept this argument, had amaBhungane sought to delete the documents, they could still have concealed the material even after the order was granted.”  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

In April, amaBhungfane published a series of articles based on leaked documents about South African businessman Zunaid Moti and the Moti Group of companies, which he led as CEO until resigning in March. The Moti Group alleged a former employee stole those documents.

On May 30, the Moti Group launched an urgent application to be heard in secret, in terms of a legal process where no notice needs to be given to the other party concerned, to force amaBhungane to return the documents in its possession and to bar it from any further reporting on the company. On June 1, Judge John Holland-Muter granted an interim order effectively gagging amaBhungane until the matter could be argued in open court on October 3 and ordering it to return the documents within 48 hours, according to a report by the outlet and a statement by the industry body South African National Editors’ Forum. AmaBhungane’s lawyer was only informed about the interim order after it was granted.

“We hope that when the matter is fully ventilated in open court, investigative journalism in the public interest and the protection of confidential sources that are key to exposing massive alleged corruption in South Africa and elsewhere will be vindicated and not eroded,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Not to do so would mean any party can stop investigative journalists from exposing corruption or any other matter of public interest by claiming that the information relied upon is stolen, endangering the lives of whistleblowers or confidential sources by forcing disclosure.”

Quintal has been an amaBhungane board member since October 2013.

David Frankel, executive director of The Sentry, a U.S. outlet that collaborated with amaBhungane on its investigations into the Moti Group, in an email to CPJ described amaBhungane’s reporting as “public interest journalism of the purest kind.”

“Questions about Moti Group’s apparent payments to firms linked to the President and Vice President of Zimbabwe, a cozy relationship with an official at a major South African bank, and the financial motives behind donations to a Presidential candidate in Botswana–these are all important and appropriate subjects for investigative journalism,” Frankel said.

Moti has denied the allegations of impropriety and state capture in media interviews, opinion articles, a TikTok campaign, and paid-for media articles, as reported by amaBhungane.

To protect its sources and not hand over the documents, as well as to continue reporting on the Moti Group, amaBhungane sought an urgent reconsideration of the order on Saturday morning, June 3, ahead of that evening’s deadline to return the documents.

Judge Stephan van Nieuwenhuizen dealt only with the order to return the documents and granted a variation of the order. As a result, amaBhungane would not be compelled to hand over the documents, although the bar on publishing further articles would remain until the case was eventually heard in court.

Van Nieuwenhuizen reportedly said he could not understand how Holland-Muter granted the interim order and criticized Moti Group’s legal representatives for being “unreasonable.”

“While we are disappointed that the gag order issued against us–unjustifiably and abusively in our view–remains in place for now, we will fight this in due course and believe today’s variation was necessary to protect our sources,” amaBhungane tweeted after the revised order was issued.

In its court papers filed on June 6 challenging the interim order, which CPJ reviewed, amaBhungane said that Section 16 of the South African Constitution permitted journalists to receive information from sources on a confidential basis.

“Regardless of the manner in which information has been obtained by a source, it is not unlawful for journalists to hold any information provided by a source, provided they do so in the public interest,” the outlet wrote in those court papers.

Journalists had a right and duty to keep their source material and the identity of anonymous sources confidential, the document said, adding that it was unlawful and unconstitutional to order a journalist to hand over their source material or identify a source to any other party.

“A prior restraint on journalist publication can only be granted in exceptional circumstances and never without notice,” the documents said, adding that it was “unlawful and unconstitutional to interdict a journalistic publication without notice, whether on an interim or final basis.”

AmaBhungane is expected to return to court within the next few weeks.

In an opinion article published Sunday, Zunaid Moti said the legal dispute was “in no way about supposedly ‘gagging’ media” but “preventing journalists from reporting upon stolen information.” 

In that article, Moti accused amaBhungane of having “used the flimsy excuse of ‘public interest’ to participate in theft; published stolen, altered documents and convoluted conspiracy theories as fact; and has even gone as far as to share private banking details and other personal information on public platforms.”

This justification was repeated in a statement to CPJ by the Moti Group’s lawyer Ulrich Roux, which said the June 1 order was not a “gagging order” against the media and amaBhungane but had to be seen in the context of a “clear case of theft committed by an ex-employee,” who downloaded more than 4,000 “editable” Moti Group documents before resigning. 

The statement said these documents included proprietary information and intellectual property, which could cause significant monetary damages to the group if confidentiality was not maintained, adding that the papers were not in the public interest and denied that the former employee was acting as a “whistleblower.”

In television interviews, Moti said the secrecy of the June 1 hearing was necessary because he believed amaBhungane could have concealed or destroyed the documents if they had received prior notice about the group’s court action.

In an opinion column published Monday, William Bird, executive director of the local press rights group Media Monitoring Africa, labeled the June 1 interim court order a “travesty of justice” and said, “Even if we accept this argument, had amaBhungane sought to delete the documents, they could still have concealed the material even after the order was granted.”  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On May 2, the Court of General Jurisdiction in Yerevan ordered 9 million dram (US$23,000) of Sargsyan’s assets to be frozen, as well as 9 million dram of the assets of his employer, 168 Hours, according to news reports and Sargsyan’s lawyer Aram Orbelyan, who spoke to CPJ.

The freeze stems from a civil defamation suit filed by Yerevan Deputy Mayor Tigran Avinyan on March 31, in response to a February 5 video report by Sargsyan accusing him of corruption.

On May 16, Avinyan’s lawyer announced on Facebook that he had applied to the court to withdraw the freeze on Sargsyan’s assets, saying his client had “no intention of bankrupting any media outlet or causing any financial inconveniences.”

Orbelyan told CPJ on Monday, May 22, that a court representative had confirmed the receipt of Avinyan’s application to drop the freeze, but authorities had yet to act on it. CPJ called the Court of General Jurisdiction for comment but no one answered.

“The asset freezes imposed on Armenian journalist Davit Sargsyan and the outlet 168 Hours are a worrying development that could have a chilling effect on the country’s media,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities should drop these freezes and ensure that civil lawsuits against the media do not risk bankrupting independent outlets.”

168 Hours is frequently critical of the Armenian government. In the February video report, “Tigran Avinyan, the newly rich man,” Sargsyan alleged that Avinyan’s family was “steadily getting richer” through political influence since Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power in 2018, those reports stated.

Orbelyan told CPJ that Avinyan did not challenge the facts cited in Sargsyan’s report but denied that they constituted corruption. CPJ emailed Avinyan for comment but did not receive any reply.

Ashot Melikyan, chair of the local advocacy group Committee to Protect Freedom of Speech, told CPJ that the case was the first time a media outlet has been sued for the maximum 9 million dram since Armenia enacted amendments tripling maximum fines for insult and defamation in 2021.

Aramazd Kiviryan, a lawyer for 168 Hours, told CPJ that insult and defamation claims in Armenia are generally in the range of 100,000 to 500,000 dram (US$258 to $1,292) and while courts occasionally froze media outlets’ assets, they typically involved much smaller sums.

The present freeze poses a significant problem for 168 Hours’ operations, he said. Kiviryan told CPJ that 168 Hours would apply to have the freeze lifted, and if they failed it would remain in place until the court’s final decision on the lawsuit, which could take years.

Sargsyan wrote on Facebook that he relied on previously published materials for his reporting, which Avinyan had not denied at the time. He wrote that he believed the suit aimed “to cause me significant financial damage and thus to keep me silent.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On May 5, about 50 protesters with the right-wing political group La Resistencia gathered at IDL-Reporteros’ office in Lima, the capital, where video of the protest showed them setting off small explosives and throwing flares, bags of trash, tree branches, and broken glass at the building.

Some of the demonstrators shouted threats, including “Gorriti, your days are numbered” and “Gorriti: you will die,” Gustavo Gorriti, the outlet’s editor-in-chief, told CPJ via messaging app. Gorriti said the demonstration lasted about two hours and did not result in any injuries to the outlet’s staff or damage to the building.

Gorriti told CPJ that members of La Resistencia previously held about 20 protests against IDL-Reporteros, including at the outlet’s office and at his home. He described the May 5 demonstration as the most violent against IDL-Reporteros so far and said that several police officers observed it but did nothing to disperse the protesters.

“The continuous, unchecked effort by the same right-wing group to harass and intimidate Peruvian journalists demands an urgent response from authorities,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Authorities must take the threats against Gustavo Gorriti and IDL-Reporteros seriously, ensure the outlet’s safety, and hold those responsible for this campaign of threats to account.”

La Resistencia is a group that supports former right-wing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, and is reported to have the backing of some conservative politicians and retired military officers. CPJ was unable to find contact information for the group.

Gorriti said the La Resistencia began targeting IDL-Reporteros in 2018 after the news organization published reports about the alleged involvement of right-wing politicians in corruption scandals.

“This group is acting with impunity,” Gorriti told CPJ, saying he had filed an official complaint about the harassment. “We are demanding protection from the government which must not become an accomplice to these delinquents.”

La Resistencia has harassed other Peruvian journalists, politicians, and human rights organizations and has interrupted book readings, according to news reports.

Adriana León, a representative of the Lima-based free expression group Institute for Press and Society, told CPJ that La Resistencia supporters also harass journalists online, and said the group often labels IDL-Reporteros as a pro-communist, pro-terrorist, and anti-patriotic organization that spreads false news.

CPJ contacted Peru’s National Police, Interior Ministry, and the attorney general’s office in Lima by phone and messaging app for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On April 7, an individual emailed Moy Gorod’s editorial office in the northwestern city of Oral saying they had planted a bomb in their building, according to a Moy Gorod report and Anel Kainedenova, Moy Gorod‘s editor-in-chief who spoke to CPJ by messaging app.

The emailer described themselves as a “Russian shahid,” an Arabic or Islamic word for a martyr—and said they had set 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of TNT to a timer that would shortly detonate.

Police searched the office, but did not find any explosives, Kainedenova said. She said the threat could be related to Moy Gorod’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Russian separatist sentiment in western Kazakhstan. Moy Gorod has not previously received threats, she said.

“Bomb threats against media outlets must be taken fully seriously and demand a swift response,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director in New York. “Kazakh authorities should conduct a thorough investigation into recent threats and cyberattacks against Moy Gorod and take measures to ensure the safety of its staff.”

Moy Gorod (My City) is an independent newspaper and website covering current affairs in Kazakhstan’s western provinces, with over 400,000 followers across its social media accounts, its website said.

Kainedenova said Moy Gorod’s staff did not initially see the threat because it landed in the outlet’s junk mail, but that Oral police called her at home the evening of April 7 and asked her to open the editorial office after several local schools and courts received the same threat. Police with bomb-sniffing dogs searched the office, but did not find anything suspicious, she said.

In the message, the emailer identified themselves as Andrei Petrov and wrote it was a “great day” that “Kazakhstan will remember forever,” adding they will “put an end to this governance forever. … Soon (the explosives) will all detonate and the ammonal charge will do away with your pitiful lives tick tock.”

Kainedenova said she is unsure why the emailer chose Moy Gorod or how seriously to take the threat. She said separatist sentiment has been more frequently expressed in West Kazakhstan Region, where Oral is located, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The region borders five Russian oblasts—an administrative division similar to a province—and ethnic Russians comprise about 20% of its population.

Moy Gorod, which publishes in Russian, has been subject to repeated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since September 2022, Kainedenova said. The outlet believes this could be related to its reporting on the Ukraine war—which it has called a “war” rather than the Russian-designated term of “special military operation”—and on local separatist sentiment.

Russian authorities have repeatedly sought to censor Russian-language Kazakh reporting on the Ukraine war, and Kainedenova added that the start of the DDoS attacks coincided with a wave of such attacks on Kazakh media outlets and a mass influx into Kazakhstan of Russians seeking to avoid military drafts. Karla Jamankulova, head of local free-speech organization Adil Soz, shared data with CPJ that showed at least 11 Kazakh outlets were targeted by DDoS and hacking attacks since the start of 2022, but Jamankulova said there was not sufficient information to comment on the source of these attacks.

In 2021, Kazakh outlet Aq Zhayiq, which also covers west Kazakhstan and reported critically on Russia, received threats from users evincing strong Russian nationalist sentiment.

CPJ emailed Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment, but did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

NPR on Wednesday announced plans to leave Twitter—the social media platform now owned by billionaire Elon Musk—after being branded last week with a "state-affiliated media" label that, after backlash, was replaced with "government-funded media."

"NPR's organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent," the media organization said in a statement.

"We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence," the statement added. "We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities. There are plenty of ways to stay connected and keep up with NPR's news, music, and cultural content."

After the platform's initial decision last week, NPR president and CEO John Lansing said that "we were disturbed to see... that Twitter has labeled NPR as 'state-affiliated media,' a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR."

Others also criticized applying that specific label to NPR—including Liz Woolery, PEN America's digital policy leader, who called it "a dangerous move that could further undermine public confidence in reliable news sources."

In an email exchange, an NPR reporter informed Musk that—like other U.S. public media—only about 1% of NPR's budget comes from the government, while about 40% is from corporate sponsors and 31% is from local stations' programming fees.

Musk reportedly wrote to the journalist that "the operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-U.S. accounts as [government], then we should do the same for U.S., but it sounds like that might not be accurate here."

Twitter then updated the label on NPR's main account—which has 8.8 million followers—to government-affiliated, a label that has also been applied to the BBC, which has disputed the platform's decision.

"The BBC operates through a Royal Charter agreed with the U.K. government, which states the corporation 'must be independent,'" the British outlet explained Wednesday. "Its public service output is funded by U.K. households via a TV license fee, as well as income from commercial operations."

In a wide-ranging Tuesday interview with the BBC, Musk said: "We want [the tag] as truthful and accurate as possible. We're adjusting the label to [the BBC being] publicly funded. We'll try to be accurate."

Since Musk finalized his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October, when he was the world's richest man, "it has been quite a rollercoaster," Musk admitted to the BBC. "It's been really quite a stressful situation."

The billionaire has come under fire for various platform policy and business decisions, from suspending journalists reporting on the movements of his private jet to laying off Twitter staff. While there was an initial exodus of advertisers, Musk said Tuesday that "I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back."

However, the battle over how or even whether to label publicly funded media and NPR's decision to become the first major media outlet to ditch Twitter have some users, such as the U.S.-based advocacy group Free Press, asking, "Should we all join them?"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

New York broadcast station News 12 Hudson Valley and one of its reporters were threatened with legal action in a statement released by Newburgh city officials on March 20, 2023.

In the statement, part of a press release around a crime-reduction operation with the FBI in 2022, City Manager Todd Venning asserted that a News 12 reporter created a “conspiracy theory” suggesting the City of Newburgh was falsifying crime and arrest data and failing to submit reports to the state. Venning indicated that the City will pursue legal recourse.

“Legitimate reporters from well-credentialed news organizations don’t always get it right, so it’s not surprising to see a local television personality struggle with basic tenets of professional journalism,” Venning said. “The City will explore its legal options against this presenter and News 12 for its reckless disregard of the truth.”

Venning was referencing News 12 reporter Blaise Gomez’s March 15 reporting in which she outlined a pattern of his office withholding information from the press and public. Gomez first reported on the lack of transparency nearly a year prior, writing that Venning had issued what amounted to gag orders and directed information requests to go through City Hall.

As part of Gomez’s reporting, she interviewed Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler. In a recording of the interview obtained by Mid Hudson News, Gomez asks multiple questions concerning allegations that Newburgh city officials are withholding information about crime in order to improve the city’s image. The interview did not include any mention of state or federal crime reporting requirements.

Gomez declined to comment, directing questions to News 12; the station did not respond to requests for comment.

When reached by phone, Venning told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker to direct all requests to press@cityofnewburgh-ny.gov. The email to that address was returned as undeliverable. Venning and his chief of staff, Michael Neppl, did not respond to additional requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Early in the morning of March 20, unidentified people entered the outlet’s office in the southern city of Concepción where they stole cleaning and office supplies, opened envelopes and archives, and set a small fire that did not spread, according to news reports and Resumen editor Felipe Valenzuela, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.

The intruders, who were filmed on security cameras, also broke into neighboring offices in the building where they stole money and a computer, Valenzuela said. He told CPJ he did not know if the burglary was connected to Resumen’s journalism.

Previously, unidentified people stole a camera, image stabilizer, and other equipment from the outlet’s office in July 2022. The intruders also set a fire in that incident, according to Valenzuela and reports from the time.

“Chilean authorities must take seriously their responsibility to protect the Resumen news outlet amid repeated attacks on its office,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York. “Authorities need to send an unequivocal message of condemnation and take swift action to hold those responsible to account.”

Valenzuela told CPJ that Resumen often reports on political corruption in and around Concepción. In January 2023, a criminal court judge in Concepción convicted Resumen journalist Felipe Soto Cortés of defamation for reporting that a local fish and wildlife official was allegedly receiving excessive pay.

“We’ve been attacked twice in eight months plus our journalists are being harassed with lawsuits,” Valenzuela said.

Valenzuela filed a police report about the burglary with the Concepción police. When CPJ called the police for comment, a spokesperson said he could not provide information over the phone and that the attorney general’s office was investigating.

CPJ’s calls to the Concepción attorney general’s office were not answered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On Wednesday, March 15, the outlet suspended its operations indefinitely, according to media reports and the outlet’s owner, David Boio, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Boio told CPJ that the decision to shutter Camunda News, which covered current affairs on its website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel, came after months of government harassment.

“Angolan authorities must commit to the development of a free and independent media and refrain from harassing online outlets like Camunda News,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Instead of censorship through intimidation and archaic licensing requirements, the government should encourage a plurality of media to fulfill the public’s right to access information.”

In October 2022, officials with the police National Criminal Investigation Service, the SIC, questioned Boio about Nelson Demba, an activist and co-host of the weekly current affairs show 360˚ aired on Camunda News’ YouTube and Facebook channels, Boio told CPJ.

Demba is facing charges including incitement to rebellion and outrage against the president, and is presently in hiding, according to reports, which said he believes the charges against him are retaliation for his political activity.

Boio told CPJ that SIC officers had also summoned Camunda News senior reporter llídio Manuel and two other staff members in October. He declined to name those staffers for fear of their safety.

Subsequently, in February 2023, SIC officers called Boio to summon him for questioning as a potential state witness in Demba’s case, according to Boio and those news reports. In that phone call, an investigator warned Boio that an arrest warrant would be issued if he failed to appear and instructed him to bring company documents related to Camunda News.

During three hours of questioning on March 7, Boio told CPJ that he was only asked one question about Demba and that most of the questions were related to Camunda News, its legal status and funding, and his personal life.

Shortly after that questioning, Boio suspended Camunda News’ current affairs video content. On Wednesday, he suspended the entire platform, he said.

“The harassment and intimidation are getting to a point where it could lead to more serious problems, and we know how the system in Angola can be complicated and make up serious accusations, so I need to consider my safety as well as that of all others working at Camunda,” Boio told CPJ.

Manuel, the senior reporter summoned in October, told CPJ that he was unable to hire a lawyer in time and did not attend the questioning, and had not received another summons. He said no details of the case had been disclosed to him.

Boio told CPJ that in May 2020 an SIC investigator had arrived at Camunda News’ offices and asked about its ownership, and the following day the broadcaster received a notification from the Ministry of Telecommunications Technologies and Media requesting the documentation to prove the outlet was operating legally.

“We wrote back to the Ministry explaining that we couldn’t find the legal framework for online content such as what we produced,” Boio told CPJ.

“If we had a license, we would probably be treated the same way the TV channels that got cancelled did, but because there is no legal framework they use SIC to intimidate us,” Boio said. Authorities suspended three TV broadcasters in 2021.

Benja Satula, a lawyer representing Camunda News, told CPJ via messaging app that there is no legal framework covering online content platforms, so there could be no illegal activity warranting a criminal investigation.

SIC spokesperson Manuel Alaiwa responded to CPJ’s requests for comment by phone and messaging app saying that he would call later. He had not responded by the time of publication.

When CPJ called Ministry of Telecommunications Technologies and Media spokesperson João Demba for comment, he said the ministry could not comment because it was awaiting information from the SIC.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On Sunday, February 12, Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a statement on his official Facebook page authorities would revoke Voice of Democracy’s license on Monday morning, according to multiple news reports.

At 10 a.m. Monday, a group of 10 Ministry of Information officials, police officers, and other authorities delivered a letter to the outlet’s office in Phnom Penh, the capital, formally revoking its license, a Voice of Democracy representative who requested anonymity told CPJ.

The outlet will stop publishing news while pursuing all options to reinstate its license, Voice of Democracy associate editor Ananth Baliga told CPJ via email. CPJ emailed the Ministry of Information and the prime minister’s office for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

“Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s order to close the Voice of Democracy is unacceptable and should be immediately reversed,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “If Cambodia wants to maintain any pretense of democracy ahead of this year’s general elections, independent media must be allowed to report without fear of reprisal. This type of government harassment of the free press is all too familiar and must stop now.”

In his Facebook statement, Hun Sen said Voice of Democracy had intentionally slandered him and his son Hun Manet in a February 8 article about Cambodia’s official assistance to earthquake victims in Turkey.

The article alleged that Hun Manet, who serves concurrently as joint chief of staff and deputy commander of the country’s armed forces, overstepped his authority by signing a US$100,000 aid agreement on behalf of the prime minister.

The prime minister initially gave Voice of Democracy 72 hours to verify the story’s facts and issue an apology, but Hun Sen later said the news organization’s response was unacceptable and ordered its closure, those news reports and the Voice of Democracy representative said.

Voice of Democracy, which is run by the Cambodia Center for Independent Media nongovernmental organization, issued a second apology letter early Monday morning, but Hun Sen replied on Facebook saying he was standing by his closure order, the Voice of Democracy representative said.

 “The absence of independent media will only allow corruption to go unchecked and those in positions of power to run amok,” Ananth Baliga told CPJ.

Voice of Democracy is widely recognized as one of the few remaining independent news outlets in Cambodia, and has investigated corruption and human rights issues in the country.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Brussels today to address the European Union Parliament. The visit comes after he made surprise trips to Paris and London where he urged European nations to begin providing Ukraine with fighter jets and long-range weapons. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has repeated his call for the war to end. For more on the war’s prognosis, our guest is Alexey Kovalev, investigative editor of Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet recently banned by the Russian government, which designated it an “undesirable organization.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On January 24, the Leninsky District Court in the western city of Vladimir summoned the Kazakhstan-based independent news website Arbat.Media to a February 17 hearing for publishing allegedly inaccurate information about the war in Ukraine, according to multiple media reports, a report by Arbat.Media, and the outlet’s chief editor Syrym Itkulov, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Itkulov called the summons “surreal” and added that it “goes without saying” that the outlet’s representatives would not travel to Russia to respond to the summons.

“After cracking down on the coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine on its own territory, Russian authorities are now trying to censor reporting abroad as well,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately drop any legal proceedings against the Kazakh outlet Arbat.Media, and stop trying to put foreign media under the same yoke as Russian outlets. Kazakh authorities, for their part, must send a clear signal that the country’s news outlets are in no way subject to Russian law.”

A court notice published on Arbat.Media’s website states that the Vladimir military prosecutor’s office requested the outlet be banned in Russia and accused Arbat.Media of publishing “false” information about Russian army casualties, Russian forces’ shelling of residential buildings, and the deaths of civilians.

The notice also alleges that an article about Russian forces retreating from the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in September 2022 was “misleading,” and accused the outlet of “shaping a distorted perception of current events among the Russian Internet audience and creating dissenting sentiments.” Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor requested Arbat.Media remove that article in November, but the outlet refused to comply.

In a public letter sent to the Kazakh Ministry of Information on Thursday, independent local free speech organization Adil Soz reminded authorities that “censorship is prohibited in Kazakhstan.”

Adil Soz head Karla Jamankulova told CPJ that she hoped the Kazakh government would take “a public firm stand” to “protect our information space from any attempts of other countries to dictate what our media should write about and how.”

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Roskomnadzor said in a statement that all media “must only use information and data received from official Russian sources,” under the threat of being blocked online. Since then, authorities have requested at least 11 Kazakh media outlets to remove war-related content, according to data sent to CPJ by Adil Soz.

The independent media outlet Vlast and the news portal Informburo.kz refused such orders, while other outlets complied, according to reports.

“This is a violation of international jurisdiction,” Itkulov said. “How can a Russian district court summon a foreign media outlet to a trial?”

Roskomnadzor has blocked several Central Asia media outlets, including services affiliated with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Kyrgyz independent news outlet Kloop, Kazakh information portal NUR.kz, and the Central Asian service of independent Russian news outlet Mediazona over their war coverage.

CPJ emailed the Leninsky District Court, Roskomnadzor, and the Kazakh Ministry of Information for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“Kyrgyzstan authorities’ attempt to censor Kloop, one of the country’s most respected news outlets, once again shows the absurdity and arbitrariness of its false information law, which should never have been enacted,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities should withdraw their threat to block Kloop’s website, repeal the false information law, and cease their escalating repression of the independent press.”

On January 20, Kloop covered allegations that the state Community Development and Investment Agency, known as ARIS, had inflated its construction costs. On January 25, the outlet reported that ARIS denied the allegations.

In a letter sent along with other documents dated Wednesday, February 1, the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport, and Youth Policy demanded that Kloop “immediately” remove or amend the January 25 article. ARIS objected to the summary of its denial, that article’s headline, and the mention of a government official who accused the agency of inflating its costs, according to reports by Kloop.

Kloop has refused to take down the article, saying it did not contain false information. If the outlet refuses to comply, its website could be blocked for at least two months under the country’s false information law.

In October 2022, Kyrgyz authorities blocked the websites of Radio Azattyk, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and have since applied to shutter the outlet over the same report for which it was blocked.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On Thursday, January 26, the Russian general prosecutor’s office declared the activity of the Medusa Project, the news website’s legal entity, “undesirable” and a “threat to the foundations” of Russia’s constitutional order and security, according to multiple news reports and the prosecutor’s website.

Organizations that receive such a classification are banned from operating in Russia, and anyone who participates in them or works to organize their activities faces up to six years of imprisonment and administrative fines.

“By banning Meduza by putting multiple labels on it and blocking its website, Russian authorities are showing that they will do anything to impede the work of one of the leading independent Russian-language media outlets,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must overhaul the country’s regulations on undesirable organizations and foreign agents, and let all media outlets work freely.”

Meduza, which is based outside of Russia, covers various topics, including politics, social issues, culture, and the war in Ukraine.

The move is an escalation from the previous designation of Meduza as a “foreign agent” in April 2021 and the blocking of its website in early March 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“This is a very bad event. We are de facto outlawed in Russia,” Meduza editor-in-chief Ivan Kolpakov told CPJ via messaging app, adding that it was now “forbidden not only to give us interviews or comments, but even to publish links to our articles.”

“Nevertheless, we were waiting for this to happen – and we tried to prepare ourselves, morally and organization-wise,” Kolpakov told CPJ. “Meduza will carry on its work. The stronger the pressure, the stronger our resistance.”

The designation makes it a crime to distribute the outlet’s content or donate to it from inside or outside Russia, according to reports and the Mass Media Defense Center, a Russian group that provides legal aid to journalists and news outlets.

“We fear for our readers,” wrote Meduza’s editorial staff in a January 26 statement. “We fear for those who have collaborated with Meduza over the years. We fear for our loved ones and friends. Still, we believe in what we do.”

According to Mass Media Defense Center director Galina Arapova, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, the Russian authorities’ goal is “to create insurmountable difficulties” for Meduza’s work “so that the voices of Meduza journalists would cease to be heard, and readers would be afraid to read it.”

“But I don’t think they will achieve that goal,” Arapova said. “Meduza is probably the strongest and most professional independent Russian publication, operating from a different jurisdiction. No amount of labeling will undermine their already established professional reputation.”

In July 2022, President Vladimir Putin signed a law imposing criminal punishment on individuals working abroad with organizations that the government has labeled “undesirable” within Russia, according to reports. 

In July 2021, independent investigative outlet Proekt was the first Russian outlet to be classified as “undesirable.” In 2022, authorities declared three investigative outlets–iStories, The Insider, and Bellingcat–as undesirable, according to news reports.

“All of the media that were previously considered undesirable…have not only survived, but are actively developing,” Arapova said. “Their teams are growing, the number of subscribers is increasing. This means that the methods used by the authorities to put pressure on them have proven ineffective.”

Meduza director Galina Timchenko received CPJ’s Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award in November 2022.

CPJ’s call to the Russian general prosecutor’s office was not answered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A California judge granted a motion on Nov. 16, 2022, seeking to prohibit reporters from contacting people who filed letters of support for a Contra Costa middle school teacher accused of sexual abuse.

East Bay Times reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker she and a colleague attended a bail hearing in October for the teacher, who was arrested the month before for sexual misconduct with a minor.

During the hearing, Public Defender Manisha Daryani submitted 16 letters of support from the teacher’s students, their parents and his family members.

Mercader said she received a copy of the public motion, which had the letters attached, from the clerk’s office after the hearing. “​​Each letter included the person’s name and email and phone number,” she said.

As Mercader began contacting the letter writers, she received a call from Daryani who accused her of attempting to influence witnesses and the outcome of the case. Both Mercader and an East Bay Times editor, also contacted by Daryani, refused the requests to stop contacting the supporters.

“To be clear, none of these letter writers are considered witnesses at this point, and all I am asking them is if they would like to speak with me about their letters,” Mercader said.

On Nov. 16, without a hearing or notice to the journalists, the California judge signed and entered the public defender’s motion requesting that “further unwanted contact by the press be ceased.”

The order, which included an instruction for the parties to “advise those individuals to whom disclosure of the contact information has been made,” was sent to the East Bay Times by Daryani.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

On October 5, unidentified individuals sent a severed pig’s head to Orda’s editorial offices in the southern city of Almaty, with a torn photo of Bazhkenova in its mouth, according to news reports and Bazhkenova, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

The incident is the latest in a series of threats, online harassment, and cyberattacks against Bazhkenova, her family, and Orda, following the outlet’s publication of an investigation into alleged lobbying practices by a company reportedly connected to Kazakhstan’s former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Bazhkenova told CPJ she believes these incidents are connected to this and other investigations into Nazarbayev-linked organizations.

CPJ emailed representatives of Nazarbayev for comment via an address provided on his official website but did not immediately receive any reply.

“The shocking and repulsive campaign of threats and harassment against Gulnara Bazhkenova and her outlet Orda are something no journalist ought to face for simply doing their work,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kazakh authorities must swiftly and transparently investigate all incidents of harassment of Bazhkenova and her staff, hold the culprits accountable, and ensure that journalists can operate free from such odious forms of pressure.”

Orda’s July 13 investigation suggested that a London-based company allegedly controlled by Nazarbayev had employed a British lord to lobby on behalf of the former president’s U.K. business interests. A week later, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks began against the outlet’s website, forcing it offline for three weeks, Bazhkenova said.

While Orda has strengthened its cybersecurity, Bazhkenova said DDoS and other forms of cyberattacks have continued “incessantly” since July, with perpetrators constantly seeking “weak spots,” causing the site to go offline for short periods.

Bazhkenova said they do not believe the cyberattacks came from Kazakh authorities, who normally simply block websites, and that such attacks require considerable resources—experts have told her they cost up to $15,000 per day to carry out.

Alongside the website cyberattacks, she said, unidentified users have flooded Orda’s Telegram chat with indecent images and insults directed at Bazhkenova and Orda staff, orchestrated mass complaints that caused the outlet’s Instagram accounts to close, and posted Bazhkenova’s photo and number and the number of Orda’s editorial office in social media ads proposing sexual services, causing them to receive large numbers of unsolicited calls, among other forms of online harassment.

In recent weeks, the online insults have been replaced by threats against Bazhkenova and her seven-year-old son, the journalist said. Photoshopped, pornographic images featuring Bazhkenova and her son have been sent to the outlet’s Telegram chat, accompanied by the address of her son’s school and threats to kidnap him, she said.

On October 4, the day before the pig’s head delivery, threats against Bazhkenova and her son were graffitied in large letters on a square overlooked by Orda’s office windows, according to Bazhkenova and a post by the journalist. Bazhkenova said she filed a complaint with police following this incident and police are investigating both incidents together.

CPJ emailed Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment but did not receive a reply. Information Minister Darkhan Qydyrali, whose ministry oversees the media, condemned the pressure on Orda on Facebook and offered the outlet legal support.

In October 2021, independent news website HOLA News was apparently blocked by Kazakh authorities for 10 days following reporting on Pandora Papers leaks concerning Nazarbayev’s wealth. Bazhkenova said Orda also was blocked for one day during that time over its coverage of the same story.

At the start of Kazakhstan’s mass anti-government protests in January 2022, Orda was one of two outlets blocked before authorities enacted a nationwide internet shutdown.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On July 1, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) ordered DarMpya to suspend publication immediately, according to news reports and a copy of TCRA’s July 1 letter.

The letter cited the TCRA’s June 28 inspection of the outlet’s office in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam, where authorities found that the outlet’s license had expired in 2021, and it was therefore publishing in breach of the Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) Regulations.

A person familiar with the matter, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity citing safety concerns, said that DarMpya had applied for its license renewal shortly before the suspension. On July 6, DarMpya tweeted that it had ceased publication until it could renew its license.

The letter said the inspection followed complaints about DarMpya’s coverage of a protest, but did not specify the reporting in question. In a since-deleted tweet seen by CPJ, DarMpya alleged that a June 17 protest against alleged Kenyan interference in the Tanzanian government’s plan to evict members of the Maasai community from lands in northern Tanzania was staged. The person who spoke to CPJ said that the inspection was in response to that tweet.

Tanzanian Information Minister Nape Nnauye told CPJ via messaging app that DarMpya had been under scrutiny for allegedly unbalanced content, but said the outlet’s suspension had nothing to do with its journalism and was solely due to its failure to comply with licensing requirements.

“Tanzanian authorities are using a repressive set of regulations to control who may and may not express themselves online. The suspension of the DarMpya news outlet shows how such regulations can become tools of censorship,” said CPJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should allow DarMpya to resume operations without interference, cease using harsh regulations to police speech on the internet, and urgently reform the country’s laws to nurture, rather than limit, press freedom.”

DarMpya publishes national news and commentary on its website, on YouTube as DarMpya TV, where it has about 809,000 followers, and on Twitter as DarMpya Blog, where it has over 309,000 followers. It has not published news content on those channels since July 2.

Tanzania’s online content regulations were first issued in 2018, and at the time CPJ called on authorities to scrap the regulations, as they threatened the “diversity and robustness of online media.”

A new version of the regulations was issued in 2020, and those rules were amended earlier this year, narrowing the scope of the licensing requirements, but news blogs, online television broadcasters, and online radio stations must still register with the TCRA and comply with content restrictions.

Nnauye told CPJ that the Tanzanian government was engaging with local journalists about reforming media laws, but while the regulations remain on the books, the government will enforce them.

“We can’t close our eyes and say the law isn’t there,” he said. “As long as the law is there, it is not suspended, it is not changed. I am sworn to stand and make sure these laws are followed. If it is changed, then we will follow the new one.”

Under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took office last year, Tanzania has committed to reforming its  media laws, as CPJ has documented. However, at least two other publications—Raia Mwema and Uhuru—were suspended last year, as CPJ has documented.

In a phone call today, a representative of the TCRA said they would follow-up on emailed queries CPJ had sent about DarMpya’s case. CPJ had not received a response at the time of publication.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Moments later, Nicaraguan National Police officers raided the outlet’s offices in the capital Managua and “aggressively forced” the outlet’s receptionist and accountant to leave, according to EFE and multiple news reports. Later on June 10, Trinchera de la Noticia announced that it was shutting down operations. EFE reported on June 12 that the police still occupied the offices.

The official notice of the closure, which Nicaraguan news website Confidencial published and CPJ reviewed, was issued by the Public Registry of Real Estate, which is under Nicaragua’s judicial branch. It accused Trinchera de la Noticia of committing a “severe infraction” by violating various articles of Nicaragua’s criminal code, commercial code, the General Law of Public Registries, and others. The resolution stated that the outlet “disrupted social peace and refused to provide information within the established time frame or did so incompletely” and ordered the outlet’s owners to pay a fine of 53,748 córdobas (US$1,500).

CPJ called Talavera several times and sent a message through Twitter to the outlet seeking comment. The outlet’s Twitter account responded, saying that Trinchera de la Noticia was not giving any further statements. CPJ emailed the Nicaraguan police and judiciary for comment but did not receive a response.

Trinchera de la Noticia was founded in 1999 by journalist Xavier Reyes Alba and produced a news website and a weekly print tabloid distributed in hotels and embassies in Managua, according to the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America. That report said the outlet operated on an annual subscription basis and usually covered politics and financial news. After its closure, there is only one subscriber-funded print tabloid–Bolsa de Noticias–left in Nicaragua, according to that report.

CPJ has extensively covered the Nicaraguan government’s ongoing crackdown against the press since a wave of protests in spring 2018, including imprisonments, criminal proceedings, the occupation of news outlets, criminal defamation charges, and physical attacks. One journalist was killed while covering protests in April 2018.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

On Tuesday, May 17, Asia Plus announced that it was ceasing coverage of ongoing protests in Tajikistan’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (Badakhshan/GBAR) after receiving an official warning from the country’s prosecutor general threatening to shutter the outlet unless it modified its coverage of the events, according to news reports and a statement published on the Asia Plus website.

Separately on May 17, journalist Mullorajab Yusufzoda, known as Yusufi, and video journalist Barotali Nazarov, pen name Barot Yusufi, who both work for U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Tajik service, known locally as Radio Ozodi, were leaving an interview with an activist when two unidentified men approached them, beat them, and stole their equipment, according to reports by RFE/RL and Radio Ozodi, and Yusufzoda. The latter spoke to CPJ by telephone.

Later, three unidentified individuals stole the equipment of reporter Anushervon Orifov and camera operator Nasim Isamov with Current Time TV, a Russian-language outlet run by RFE/RL, according to those sources and Orifov, who spoke to CPJ by phone. Orifov and Isamov were also leaving an interview with the same activist, who Tajik authorities have accused of organizing the Badakhshan/GBAR protests, leading the journalists to believe it was a coordinated attack.

“Tajikistan authorities’ actions against Asia Plus amid the continuing internet shutdown in the Badakhshan region constitute censorship and must stop immediately,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “The attacks on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists are unacceptable. Authorities in Tajikistan must conduct a credible investigation into these attacks, hold those responsible to account, and ensure that journalists can provide the Tajik public and the rest of the world with reliable information about events in the region.”

At least 25 people are reported to have died since Tajik authorities sent troops to quell protests that broke out in the ethnically and linguistically distinct Badakhshan/GBAR region on May 14. Since May 16, the internet in the regional capital Khorog and surrounding districts has been shut down, a move authorities previously used in the region following similar anti-government protests from November 2021 to March 2022.

In its statement, Asia Plus said it had received an official warning from the Prosecutor’s Office and an unspecified number of unofficial warnings from other unnamed state agencies accusing it of “one-sided” coverage of events in Badakhshan/GBAR and of “destabilizing the situation in the country.” Authorities ordered the outlet to “address these shortcomings” or else face closure, it said.

CPJ called Asia Plus, but the outlet’s management declined to comment beyond the published statement. Besides not covering the Badakhshan/GBAR conflict since May 17, the outlet appears to have deleted previous coverage of events in the region, according to a CPJ review of its website.

Asia Plus, Tajikistan’s most popular domestic news site, has been intermittently blocked in the country in recent years.

Nuriddin Karshiboev, head of the National Association of Mass Media in Tajikistan, an independent advocacy organization, told CPJ by phone that although there is no specific legal provision in Tajik law stating that authorities can close a media outlet on a second warning, there is a precedent for the Prosecutor General’s Office to apply for the courts to shutter outlets on various grounds if the outlet ignores warnings.

CPJ emailed the Prosecutor General’s Office for comment but did not receive any reply.

The attack on Yusufzoda and Nazarov occurred at around 2 p.m. close to the home of activist and veteran journalist Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva in the capital Dushanbe’s Sino district, Yusufzoda told CPJ. As the journalists returned to their car after interviewing Mamadshoeva, two men approached them and demanded that they hand over their cell phones, on which they had recorded the interview.

When Yusufzoda asked the men who they were, they hit the journalist two or three times in the face, pushed Nazarov to the ground, and repeatedly threatened to shoot Yusufzoda if he did not hand over the phones, Yusufzoda told CPJ, adding that the men were not visibly carrying guns.

The men took three phones, a USB flash drive, chargers, a tripod, and Yusufzoda’s wallet but returned his cash and bank cards, the journalist said.

Around 30 minutes later, as Orifov and Isamov were preparing to drive off after interviewing Mamadshoeva in the same area, a vehicle blocked their exit. Three men got out, one of them grabbing Orifov’s phone through his open window, Orifov said. When Orifov asked the men to identify themselves, they refused and demanded that the journalists hand over the camera they had used when they interviewed Mamadshoeva.  

Based on their clothes and appearance, the journalists believe two of the three men were the same as those who attacked Yusufzoda and Nazarov, Orifov said. The men took the camera and cell phones of the two journalists and their driver.

In both incidents, the men promised to return the journalists’ equipment. Yusufzoda and Orifov told CPJ that for this reason and due to the speed and professionalism of the men’s actions, they believed the men were likely law enforcement officers. It was clear that the men were explicitly seeking the interview recording and that they aimed to prevent the Mamadshoeva interview from being broadcast, the journalists added.

None of the journalists was seriously hurt in the attacks, they told CPJ. They filed a complaint with Dushanbe police over the incidents but said they do not expect the attacks to be adequately investigated, citing a lack of progress in investigating a March 2021 attack on Yusufzoda and Radio Ozodi colleague Shahlo Abdulloeva.

On May 18, the day after the attack on the RFE/RL journalists, officers of the State Committee of National Security arrested Mamadshoeva and charged her with calling for the overthrow of the constitutional order, Radio Ozodi reported. CPJ continues to investigate whether Mamadshoeva’s detention is related to her journalism. 

Tajik journalists have previously anonymously reported receiving warnings and instructions to avoid covering unrest in Badakhshan/GBAR and the ongoing war in Ukraine. A manager at Radio Ozodi confirmed to CPJ by telephone that authorities had pressured Ozodi and other outlets to reduce coverage of Badakhshan but requested not to be cited by name, citing safety concerns.

CPJ emailed the Interior Ministry of Tajikistan and called the State Committee of National Security for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Since March 7, authorities have detained at least seven journalists with Sota.Vision, including two who were sentenced to multiple days in prison, and also fined and harassed employees of the outlet, according to media reports and Sota.Vision editor Aleksey Obukhov, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

“Russian authorities must stop their repeated harassment and detentions of journalists with Sota.Vision and other independent outlets,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “With independent Russian journalists fleeing abroad in droves to avoid being jailed for factual reporting on the war against Ukraine, the few that remain must be allowed to provide crucial information to the Russian people.”

On March 7, authorities fined Sota.Vision correspondent Gleb Sokolov 20,000 rubles (US$200) for allegedly violating the establishes procedure for rallies after he covered an anti-war protest in Moscow on February 25, the outlet wrote on its Telegram channel.

On March 17, law enforcement searched the home of Sota.Vision journalist Elena Izotova in the southwest city of Kazan and seized her technical equipment, according to Sota.Vision and Obukhov, who said that authorities have labeled her as a witness to an investigation into incitement to mass disorder, which he believed was a pretext to harass her.

On March 18, authorities detained Sota.Vision journalists Pavel Ivanov, Ruslan Terekhov, Artyom Kriger, Nika Samusik, and Aleksandr Filippov in Moscow and St. Petersburg ahead of planned rallies in those cities supporting the Russian military, according to news reports and Obukhov.

Kriger, Samusik, and Filippov were released later that day without charge, and Ivanov and Terekhov were charged and convicted of disobeying authorities, according to those sources, which said that Ivanov was sentenced to three days of administrative detention and Terekhov to 10 days.

The Second Special Regiment, a special police unit designed to disperse rallies, alleged that Terekhov refused to show his camera cases for inspection to determine whether they contained explosives, according to Sota.Vision, which said he had appealed the conviction.

On March 19, a police officer visited the home of Sota.Vision journalist Pyotr Ivanov in St. Petersburg in connection with the journalist’s detention at an unsanctioned rally on March 6, according to his outlet and Obukhov.

“The visit was most likely an attempt to intimidate him” before he covered an anti-war rally, Obukhov told CPJ, saying that such a visit “makes you understand that you are ‘on the hook’ and will be detained if you show up at the rally, despite your press card, editorial assignment, [press] vest, and so on.”

On March 23, Russian Investigative Committee operatives searched the home of Sota.Vision editor Darya Poryadina in the northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, according to multiple posts on Sota.Vision’s Telegram channel and media reports.

After the search, authorities held Poryadina for more than 12 hours at the Investigative Committee’s Arkhangelsk office, and released her after she signed a non-disclosure agreement, according to those reports.

During her detention, authorities interrogated Poryadina as a witness in a criminal case over opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s creation of an alleged “extremist community,” according to those reports. During the search, authorities seized her equipment and press card, as well as about 100,000 rubles in savings, according to Obukhov.

“Darya had never been affiliated with any of Navalny’s organizations, but had covered protests in Arkhangelsk, including the January 21 return and arrest of Navalny,” Obukhov said.

And on Friday, March 25, police briefly detained Sota.Vision freelance contributor Aleksandr Peskov, and released him after designating him as a suspect in an investigation for allegedly insulting law enforcement, according to Sota.Vision and Obukhov. If charged and convicted under Article 319 of the criminal code, he could face a fine of up to 40,000 rubles (US$400) or up to one year of corrective labor.

CPJ was unable to contact the Russian Interior Ministry or Investigative Committee for comment, as their websites did not load.

[Editors’ note: This article has been changed in its second paragraph to correct Obukhov’s title.]

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On February 23, Medina, the owner and news director of the independent Cadena Sur television station in the southern city of Ica, arrived at the station and found on the doorstep a plastic bag full of trash and excrement and a floral arrangement with an envelope containing a .38-caliber bullet, according to news reports and a CPJ interview via messaging app with the journalist. Medina told CPJ that inside the envelope was a hand-written note that said: “Gastón Medina, you will die.”

The death threat came just days after the morning news program Medina hosts on Cadena Sur reported on allegations of cost overruns in the purchase of tomography equipment for a state-run hospital in Ica, he told CPJ. “I think the death threat is related to our reporting,” Medina said.

“Peruvian authorities should urgently investigate the death threat against journalist Gastón Medina, hold the perpetrators to account, and ensure he and his outlet are able to report safely,” said Natalie Southwick, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, in New York. “The threatening note and materials were left at Medina’s outlet, suggesting that he was targeted for his reporting, and authorities must consider this in their investigation.”

Medina reported the death threat on February 23 to the Ica police, who told him they would investigate. CPJ’s phone calls to the Ica police department went unanswered.

In October 2020, Cadena Sur was forced off the air for one week after the station and two Ica radio stations were raided by the police following a complaint by Mónica Guillén, a then-congressional candidate and the wife of the Ica governor, about coverage of her campaign, as CPJ documented at the time. Police confiscated cell phones, computers, and other equipment from Cadena Sur, which were returned after six months, Medina told CPJ.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.