On the May 6 episode of The Jim Bakker Show, Bakker warned his viewers that unless they sent him one million dollars, he could lose his ministry. Never shy about fleecing his followers, Bakker once again played the “we’re in the End Times” card as he has many times before.

Bakker, an avid supporter of Donald Trump, bemoaned the fact that contributions to his ministry have dropped, saying “A lot of people have not been giving any more because it’s perilous times.”

“I believe if everyone who watches this program will give a thousand dollars, we’ll be able to pay our bills and stay on the air,” said Bakker. “… Otherwise, we’ve got about another month, I don’t know, to stay on the air. We’re at the end. God doesn’t have an end, He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.”

Bakker, 85, claimed that he doesn’t have any money saying that “For 40 years, I have not made a salary, … What we need is a miracle, and it’s gonna happen if a thousand people give a thousand dollars.” If he doesn’t get the money he could lose his house and be forced out into the street.

“It is hard to prove or disprove Bakker’s assertions, as his organization operates under Morningside Church in Branson, Missouri. Churches do not need to declare their financials or file a 990 tax form,” Liz Lykins pointed out at The Roys Report.

According to Lykins, Bakker’s “$125 million media empire was comprised of the PTL Network, which he ran with his then-spouse Tammy Faye Bakker, and the Christian theme park Heritage USA. …the third most-visited theme park in 1986 with six million visitors, according to the History TV network. It followed behind Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in terms of attendance.

His empire came crashing down amidst a sex scandal and the fraud convictions.”

The Christian Post noted that “Bakker’s appeal comes against the backdrop of a televangelist career marked by both prominence and controversy. In the 1980s, he built a media empire with the PTL Ministry, including a TV network and the Heritage USA resort. He was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. According to the New York Times, government prosecutors argued that Bakker bilked followers of his PTL Ministry out of $158 million by offering promises of lifetime vacations he could not provide).

“He was also accused of diverting about $3.7 million to support a lavish lifestyle, including an air-conditioned dog house and a fleet of luxury vehicles.

“He was found guilty on all 24 counts on Oct. 5, 1989, and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He was ordered to pay a $500,000 fine. Bakker later filed an appeal. In 1991, an appellate court upheld his conviction. But he was granted a sentence-reduction hearing, during which his sentence was reduced to eight years. He served almost five years before he received parole in 1994.

In 2020, Bakker sold a health supplement dubbed “Silver Solution” that he claimed would cure Covid-19. “A year later,” Liz Lykins noted, “the Missouri attorney general ordered Bakker to pay restitution of $156,000 to settle a false advertising lawsuit.”

Bakker has also been hawking a bevy of survival products, including long-term food buckets, while preaching about the End Times.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

A Dakar court judge charged Zik Fm editor-in-chief Simon Pierre Faye with spreading false news on April 14 and released him under judicial control. On the same day, the Dakar gendarmerie questioned for several hours online broadcaster Source A TV’s journalists Omar Ndiaye and Fatima Coulibaly, and freelance news commentator Abdou Nguer, over their comments on the death of a local official. Nguer’s lawyer told local media that the gendarmes detained the journalist on false news charges related to a TikTok post that does not belong to him. The post called for an autopsy of the official. Ndiaye and Coulibaly were released without charges.

“Senegalese authorities must drop all charges against journalist Simon Pierre Faye, release news commentator Abdou Nguer, and end their judicial harassment of journalists,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa Representative. “Authorities should instead focus their efforts on advancing promised reforms to decriminalize press offenses.”

Police arrested Faye on April 10 for a post on his outlet’s Facebook page, later deleted, republishing another article on the alleged distrust of President Faye’s leadership.

Responding to a parliamentarian’s question about Faye’s detention, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said that “penal policy will now be zero tolerance” for spreading “false news.”

CPJ has documented detentions of Senegalese journalists on false news charges, an offense punishable by one to three years in prison. In his campaign, President Faye promised to replace imprisonment for press offenses with fines. 

Separately, on April 13, police and gendarmes stopped and questioned Al Jazeera Qatar journalist Nicolas Haque and his camera operator, Magali Rochat, upon their arrival in the southern Ziguinchor city, where they sought to report on the return of people displaced by the region’s conflict. The journalists were sent back to Dakar the day after, Haque told CPJ.

CPJ’s email to the government’s information and communications office was not answered.

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

She’s not alone: Niang is one of at least five journalists jailed since last year in Senegal in connection with their work. It’s the highest number ever recorded in the country since CPJ began keeping track in 1992 with its annual December 1 prison census.  

“The government has tried to silence all discordant voices,” Babacar Touré, director of the Kéwoulo news site, where Niang worked, told CPJ in a January interview. “Maty’s place is with us, in our editorial office to prepare for this election.”

Though the journalists were arrested months before the current unrest, their detentions are indicative of a broader crackdown on press freedom and dissent which has called into question Senegal’s reputation as a stable democracy. Authorities have repeatedly jailed opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, most recently in July when they also dissolved his political party, and responded violently to protests. Journalists have faced arrest over coverage of Sonko’s prosecution, and other efforts to curb political reporting.

In early February, after President Macky Sall decided to postpone elections originally scheduled for later in the month, attacks on the media spiked. Senegalese police have targeted dozens of journalists with tear gas, violence, and harassment as they covered demonstrations against the election delay. The government has also repeatedly blocked mobile internet access.

A press code used against the press

Niang and the four other journalists in Senegal’s prisons — Allô Sénégal news presenter Ndèye Astou Bâ, the outlet’s columnist Papa El Hadji Omar Yally, its camera operator Daouda Sow, and its manager Maniane Sène Lô — face a raft of charges. Notably, each is accused of “usurping the function of a journalist.”

The charge stems from the combined application of Senegal’s press and penal codes. Adopted in 2017, the press code, which regulates the media sector, was promoted by officials as a way to professionalize the local press and strengthen democracy. But, as press freedom advocates warned at the time, it imposed limitations on who could be considered a journalist. “Only holders of a national card can claim the status of journalist,” reads Article 22 of the press code. Article 227 of Senegal’s criminal code punishes people who claim to work in a “legally regulated profession” – such as journalism – without “fulfilling the required conditions” with up to two years in prison and a fine.

“Holding the card is not about the professional identity of journalists, it’s simply a document that allows journalists to be distinguished from those who are not journalists when they go to a ceremony,” Serigne Saliou Gueye, publication director of the Yoor Yoor newspaper who has been working as a journalist for over 20 years, told CPJ. “I’m all for professionalizing journalists,” he added, but the issue of impersonating journalists is a “false problem.”

Gueye was jailed in May 2023 over a column Yoor Yoor published under an anonymous byline that criticized the prosecution of opposition leader Sonko. He was held for nearly a month and accused of usurping the function of a journalist and of contempt of court, before being released in June under judicial control, a conditional freedom set by the judge.

‘Paranoia in our ranks’

At least four other journalists – Pape Sane, Pape Alé Niang, Pape Ndiaye, and Touré – have been arrested in connection with their work over the past year and then released under strict conditions, including not speaking publicly about their cases, their lawyers told CPJ. The journalists face various accusations under the penal code, including false news and conduct likely to undermine public security. Those who spoke to CPJ did so about the general media environment in Senegal, not the specifics of their prosecutions.

“It’s all about muzzling the press…and putting pressure on those who resist,” Pape Alé Niang, editor of the news site Dakarmatin, told CPJ. His arrest in 2022 put Senegal on CPJ’s prison census that year for the first time since 2008. He was released and rearrested that December for discussing his prosecution in a Facebook live broadcast, released in January 2023, and then detained again for 10 days in July and August over a broadcast about Sonko’s arrest.

In separate cases last year, Senegalese police also arrested two Senego news website reporters—Abdou Khadre Sakho in August and Khalil Kamara in September—and accused them each of spreading false news in publications about Sonko. Kamara was additionally accused of defamation, contempt of court, and insulting the head of state. Both were released without charge within 24 hours.

“These arrests and imprisonments of journalists have created a paranoia in our ranks,” Ibrahima Lissa Faye, president of the Association of Online Press Professionals, known by the French acronym APPEL, told CPJ. “At any moment you could be prosecuted for disseminating false news without there being any false news, or for undermining state security: catch-all offenses that amount to absolutely nothing, but are used to muzzle journalists.”

CPJ reached Senegal’s Minister of Communication, Telecommunications, and Digital Economy, Moussa Bocar Thiam, over the phone and he asked to be sent a message, but did not subsequently respond to CPJ’s questions about the arrests. Calls to government spokesperson Abdou Karim Fofana, as well as calls and messages sent to Justice Minister Aïssata Tall Sall, went unanswered.

An ongoing ‘spiral’ of fear

Senegal’s constitutional court ruled in mid-February that a new election must take place as soon as possible, and a national dialogue panel has proposed June 2 as a new date. Sall has reaffirmed his earlier commitment not to run again and said he would exit office on April 2, when his term ends. Journalists have continued working amid ongoing unrest, but the prospect of arrest looms alongside threats of violence and censorship.

“There’s this constant anxiety that journalists feel on a daily basis,” Moustapha Diop, director of the Walf TV broadcaster, told CPJ. Walf TV was taken off air for a week in early February; last June it was suspended for a month over protest coverage. “We have the impression that whenever there is tension, the authorities have a simple reflex: Wal Fadjri [the parent group of WalfTV] must stop broadcasting,” Diop said.

Internet shutdowns since the election delay have also impeded journalism in what is now a familiar pattern for the local press. In 2023, internet and social media were shut down and social media was blocked in 2021. The 2023 shutdowns prompted civil society groups to file a lawsuit in January against the Senegalese government at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice. The plaintiffs, including Moussa Ngom, an author of this piece, claimed that the 2023 shutdowns violated their freedom of expression and right to work.

“Senegalese journalists have been working in fear. Especially those in groups labeled ‘against the power,’” Ayoba Faye, another local journalist and plaintiff in the internet shutdowns lawsuit, told CPJ. “Above all, the new president must stop this spiral.”

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

“The case brought against Senegal at the ECOWAS court is an important effort to hold accountable those responsible for shutting down the internet in 2023,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “Senegal’s internet shutdown in early February 2024, following the postponement of the presidential election, showcased the continued need for action to curb such blunt censorship. The internet is crucial for journalists to work freely and safely, and for the public to access information.”

Media Defence, a human rights organization that provides legal support for journalists, and the Stanford University Law School’s Rule of Law Impact Lab filed a case before the ECOWAS court on January 31 challenging the Senegalese government’s shutdowns of the internet in the country during June, July, and August 2023, according to a press release published Tuesday by those groups. The plaintiffs in the case include Senegal-based human rights group AfricTivistes and local journalists Ayoba Faye and Moussa Ngom. Ngom also works as CPJ’s Francophone Africa Correspondent.

In June, July, and August 2023, the Senegalese government disrupted access to the internet and social media platforms amid protests over the arrest and prosecution of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.

Senegalese President Macky Sall, on February 3, 2024, announced the postponement of the country’s presidential elections, originally scheduled for February 25. Over the next two days, amid protests and other press freedom violations, authorities blocked access to mobile internet. Mobile internet access was restored on February 7.

Similar blocks of access to social media platforms were reported in 2021.

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