A state judge ruled Tuesday that any article published by Tribuna in which the governor is mentioned must be approved by the court.

In addition, the judge directed González, who was the editorial director of the newspaper for 30 years until his retirement in 2017, to submit to the court for review any future material in which Sensores is mentioned.

“The verdict against Jorge Luis González and Tribuna is nothing less than a gag order that constitutes a clear case of the courts siding with a state governor in overt efforts to silence any critical reporting of her administration,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “CPJ is alarmed by the sharp increase in lawfare against critical media in Mexico, where journalists continue to be attacked with almost complete impunity.”

The ruling by the Campeche state court is only the latest episode in the ongoing legal assault by Sansores on Tribuna and González, both of whom she sued on June 13, 2025, accusing them of spreading hatred and causing moral damages in coverage of her administration.

It is unclear which specific reports caused the governor to sue Tribuna, González told CPJ. It is also unclear why the lawsuit targets González, as he is no longer with the paper after his retirement in 2017. 

A previous ruling ordered González to pay “moral damages” of $2 million pesos (about USD$110,000) to Sansores and prohibited both the reporter and Tribuna from mentioning the governor in any reports, according to news reports. That sentence was suspended on July 9, after González successfully filed an injunction, which CPJ has reviewed, citing the Mexican Constitution’s prohibition of censorship before publication.

González said he planned to appeal, but it wasn’t immediately clear what strategies were available to him.

Several calls by CPJ to Sansores’ office for comment were unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jan-Albert Hootsen/CPJ Mexico Representative.

A state judge ruled Tuesday that any article published by Tribuna in which the governor is mentioned must be approved by the court.

In addition, the judge directed González, who was the editorial director of the newspaper for 30 years until his retirement in 2017, to submit to the court for review any future material in which Sensores is mentioned.

“The verdict against Jorge Luis González and Tribuna is nothing less than a gag order that constitutes a clear case of the courts siding with a state governor in overt efforts to silence any critical reporting of her administration,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “CPJ is alarmed by the sharp increase in lawfare against critical media in Mexico, where journalists continue to be attacked with almost complete impunity.”

The ruling by the Campeche state court is only the latest episode in the ongoing legal assault by Sansores on Tribuna and González, both of whom she sued on June 13, 2025, accusing them of spreading hatred and causing moral damages in coverage of her administration.

It is unclear which specific reports caused the governor to sue Tribuna, González told CPJ. It is also unclear why the lawsuit targets González, as he is no longer with the paper after his retirement in 2017. 

A previous ruling ordered González to pay “moral damages” of $2 million pesos (about USD$110,000) to Sansores and prohibited both the reporter and Tribuna from mentioning the governor in any reports, according to news reports. That sentence was suspended on July 9, after González successfully filed an injunction, which CPJ has reviewed, citing the Mexican Constitution’s prohibition of censorship before publication.

González said he planned to appeal, but it wasn’t immediately clear what strategies were available to him.

Several calls by CPJ to Sansores’ office for comment were unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jan-Albert Hootsen/CPJ Mexico Representative.

“This case sends the message that Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his administration are so fragile that they are easily threatened by a critical column,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “It’s also a reminder of this government’s willingness to waste public resources by throwing journalists behind bars. Authorities in Zimbabwe must release Faith Zaba unconditionally and without delay.”

Police summoned Zaba to appear at the central police station in the capital, Harare, on July 1, where they charged her over the June 27 satirical column about Mnangagwa’s government published in her newspaper, the business weekly Zimbabwe Independent, according to her lawyer, Chris Mhike. Mhike told CPJ that Zaba has been unwell and was “severely ill” at the time of her arrest.

On July 2, Zaba appeared at the magistrate’s court in Harare, where her bail hearing was deferred to July 3 after the state requested more time to verify her medical history, according to multiple local news reports.

The “Muckracker” column linked to Zaba’s arrest said that Zimbabwe was a “mafia state,” citing the administration’s alleged interference in the politics of neighboring countries, and said that the current government was “obsessed with keeping itself in power.” Under Zimbabwe’s  Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, Zaba could face a $300 fine or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, if convicted.

CPJ has documented an ongoing crackdown on dissent in Zimbabwe, amid political tension. In February, authorities arrested Blessed Mhlanga, a journalist with Alpha Media Holdings, and held him for over 10 weeks on baseless charges of incitement in connection with his coverage of war veterans who demanded Mnangagwa’s resignation. The Zimbabwe Independent is a subsidiary of Alpha Media Holdings.

A spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Paul Nyathi, did not answer CPJ’s calls and a query sent via messaging app requesting comment.

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

Ultrabulk, trans-oceanic cargo ship, Astoria, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Okay, maybe you do read these in the newspaper, but not as much as you should.

1) The dollar’s status as the leading reserve currency does not mean we have to run a trade deficit,

2) There is no direct relationship between the budget deficit and the trade deficit,

3) The explosion in the size of the trade deficit at the start of the century cost millions of manufacturing jobs,

4) The trade deficit is considerably smaller today than it was two decades ago,

5) Manufacturing jobs are not necessarily good jobs. Unions made them good jobs, not the factories.

The graph below shows the trade deficit back to 1947. It helps to make several of these points.

The Dollar as a Reserve Currency and the Trade Deficit

Many people claim that the United States has to run a trade deficit in order to supply the rest of the world with dollars, since it is the leading reserve currency in the world. This story is badly confused for two reasons.

First, while the dollar is the leading reserve currency, it is not the only reserve currency. Euros, British pounds, Japanese yen, and even Swiss francs are held as reserves by central banks. Most reserves are in the form of dollars, but these other currencies can be and are used as alternatives. The same is true for international trade. While most trade is carried through in dollars, companies and countries use whatever currency they find convenient, and often this is not dollars.

The other point of confusion is that the United States can provide other countries with dollars without running a trade deficit. This can be clearly seen in the years from 1947 to 1973, when the US ran modest trade surpluses in most years. During this period, the United States literally was the world’s reserve currency, with other currencies being legally pegged to the dollar.

They were able to acquire dollars though US foreign investment. If the US is investing more abroad than foreigners are investing here, then we will be supplying the rest of the world with dollars without running a trade deficit.

The Relationship Between the Budget Deficit and the Trade Deficit

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s it was common to refer to the budget deficit and trade deficit as “twin deficits.” The argument was that the budget deficit meant that we had insufficient national savings and therefore had to borrow from abroad, which implied a trade deficit. (I’m skipping some steps, but that was the underlying logic of the argument.)

This argument never fit the data very closely even in those years. The trade deficit was brought down from 3.0 percent of GDP in 1987 to less than 0.4 percent of GDP by the fourth quarter of 1991, even as the budget deficit was increasing as a share of GDP. The story fell apart completely in the late 1990s as the trade deficit expanded to almost 4.0 percent of GDP even as the government was running a budget surplus.

The story here was the value of the dollar against other currencies. In 1987, the Reagan administration negotiated with our major trading partners to bring down the value of the dollar against the German Mark, the French franc (this was pre-euro), the British pound, and the Japanese yen. This process proved successful, as the dollar fell in value against these currencies and the trade deficit fell with it.

The trade deficit remained relatively low until the mid-nineties, when Robert Rubin replaced Lloyd Bentsen as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and adopted an explicit high dollar policy. They put meat on the bones of this policy in the East Asian financial crisis where the I.M.F. insisted that the fast-growing East Asian countries pay off their debts rather than get a partial write-down. This meant lowering the value of their currencies against the dollar, so that they could run large trade surpluses.

The harsh I.M.F. policy also prompted other developing countries, including China, to accumulate as many dollars as they could as insurance, so that they would not face the same fate as the East Asian countries. This meant keeping down the value of their currencies against the dollar. China was the most important country accumulating large quantities of dollars, but many other developing countries were following the same path. In the first years of the new century, the trade deficit expanded further, eventually peaking at over 6.0 percent of GDP in the fourth quarter of 2005.

The Tale of Two Graphs: The Trade Deficit in the 00s Cost Millions of Manufacturing Jobs

Many economists claim that we lost manufacturing jobs due to productivity growth and that the trade deficit had little or nothing to do with it. They show this point with a graph that shows manufacturing jobs declining as a share of total employment in more or less a straight line from 1970 to 2010.

I counter this with another graph showing the absolute number of jobs in manufacturing. While this fluctuates with the business cycle, there is only a modest downward trend from 1970 to 2000. From 2000 to 2007, before the Great Recession, we lost 4 million manufacturing jobs, or one quarter of the total. We lost another two million in the recession, although we later got roughly half of these jobs back.

It is dishonest to claim that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the 00s was just due to productivity. It’s pretty odd that productivity just happened to cost so many jobs when the trade deficit was exploding but not in the prior 30 years or subsequent 15 years. States in the Midwest, like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, lost 30 to 40 percent of their manufacturing jobs. This was a huge deal to the affected workers and their communities. We need to recognize this fact. Also, it could have been avoided; there was nothing natural about the pattern of globalization we followed.

One last point, the productivity folks are right in the sense that even if we got the trade deficit to zero, we would only see a modest increase in the number of manufacturing jobs. By my calculation, it would go from 8.0 percent of the labor force to 9.0 percent of the labor force. That is not exactly transformational.

The Trade Deficit Has Fallen Sharply in the Last Fifteen Years

I realized that there is enormous confusion about the size of the trade deficit when I saw a New York Times article earlier this week that told readers the trade deficit was $1.2 trillion and that this was record high. Both parts of this story are wrong. The trade deficit was actually $900 billion last year. The $1.2 trillion figure is only for trade in goods. The US runs a large surplus on trade in services — items like insurance, shipping, and payments for intellectual products. There is no obvious reason to exclude services from the story.

Also, the fact that the deficit is not anywhere near a record when measured as a share of GDP (the only reasonable measure), is also important. Calling it a record implies that the deficit is large and growing, which could seem scary. In fact, it is roughly half the size of its peak in 2005. Insofar as we see the trade deficit as a problem, it is half as large a problem as it was twenty years ago.

Unions Made Manufacturing Jobs Good Jobs, Not the Factories

In 1980, manufacturing jobs offered better pay and benefits, especially for non-college educated workers, than other jobs. This is no longer true. Most or all of the manufacturing wage premium has been eliminated.

The obvious explanation for this fact is the decline of unionization in manufacturing. In 1980, almost one-third of manufacturing workers belonged to a union compared to just 15 percent in the rest of the private sector. Last year, these numbers were 8.0 percent for manufacturing compared to 6.0 percent for the rest of the private sector. That 2.0 percentage point gap does not make much difference in terms of pay and benefits for workers in manufacturing.

This means that there is little reason to prefer manufacturing jobs to jobs in health care, transportation or other sectors. If we want workers to have good-paying jobs, we should want to see more union jobs, whether in manufacturing or any other sector.

Facts Beat Confusion

There is much nonsense in debates on trade — and not all of it is coming from the Trump administration. There is plenty of room for disagreement on policy going forward, but the disagreements will not change these five facts.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post Five Facts About Trade You Don’t Read in the Newspaper appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dean Baker.

The Clarksdale Press Register was ordered to remove an editorial from its website and other online portals on Feb. 18, 2025, after the City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, alleged the article was defamatory.

The editorial, headlined “Secrecy, deception erode public trust” — pulled from the site but archived here — was published on Feb. 8, and detailed how the mayor’s office had failed to properly notify the public of a special meeting held four days prior.

“Mayor Chuck Espy has always touted how ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ he is and he is ‘not like previous administrations of the past 30 years,’” the editorial said. While notice of the meeting was posted on the door of City Hall, it continued, “This newspaper was never notified. We know of no other media organization that was notified.”

In an affidavit, the city clerk admitted that she had not emailed the media a notice announcing the meeting, as required by state law. Floyd Ingram, publisher and editor of the Press Register, approached her after the meeting to ask about its subject, and she said that she gave him a copy of the notice, an agenda, a resolution passed during the meeting and other materials.

Chancery Court Judge Crystal Wise Martin granted the city’s motion for a temporary restraining order without allowing the newspaper to argue against it, ruling that the Press Register must unpublish the article.

“The injury in this case is defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth,” Wise Martin wrote in her order, “and interferes with their legitimate function to advocate for legislation they believe would help their municipality during this current legislative cycle.”

The city praised the ruling in a post to its official Facebook page.

“The judge ruled in our favor that a newspaper cannot tell a malicious lie and not be held liable,” Mayor Espy said. “The only thing that I ask, that no matter what you print, just let it be the truth; be it good or bad.”

City Attorney Melvin Miller II added: “The City touts this as a victory for truth. Not even newspapers can imply lies against City officials conducting city business and get away with it.”

First Amendment advocates, however, criticized the decision. Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that an order compelling a newspaper to take down an editorial critical of the government was blatantly unconstitutional.

“The underlying lawsuit here appears frivolous for any number of reasons,” Stern said. “But even in constitutionally permissible defamation lawsuits, it’s been well-established law for decades that the remedy for plaintiffs is monetary damages, not censorship orders.”

Adam Steinbaugh, a First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also noted that the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times v. Sullivan that governments can’t sue for libel.

The editorial was removed from the Press Register website on the morning of Feb. 19. The newspaper did not respond to requests for comment.

A full hearing on granting a permanent injunction is scheduled for Feb. 27.

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

“Croatian authorities must spare no effort in bringing all perpetrators to justice and ensuring the safety of Novosti’s staff,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Such intimidating attacks create a climate of fear for journalists and can have a chilling effect on press freedom. Authorities must take measures to prevent such threats in the future.”

On February 5, Novosti’s editorial office in the capital, Zagreb, received a letter addressed to the editor-in-chief and referencing the weekly’s recent 25th anniversary. The letter, which contained an unknown powder, referenced “Novichok,” a deadly nerve agent, and accused the newspaper of “Chetnikism” — a reference to the Chetniks, members of a Serbian nationalist guerrilla force.

In May 2024, CPJ reported that Novosti had received dozens of insulting, hateful, intimidating, and threatening messages after parliamentary elections that brought Croatia’s nationalist right-wing party, Domovinski pokret (DP- Homeland Movement), into a coalition government.

Lujo Parežanin, a culture editor for Novosti, told CPJ that on the same day as the letter, a reporter received an email containing insults and derogatory, intimidating comments directed at her and the newspaper.

Police have started an investigation into both threats, Parežanin said, adding that police had charged one person in connection to last May’s attack but that the court proceeding had yet to start in that case.

CPJ emailed the press office of the Zagreb Police Department for comment but did not receive a reply.

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

“We deplore the Israeli government’s attempt to silence a respected Israeli outlet like Haaretz by hurting their advertising and subscription revenue,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Israel’s increasing deployment of restrictions on critical media is further disturbing evidence of its efforts to prevent coverage of its actions in Gaza.”

On Sunday, November 24, Israel’s government unanimously approved a proposal by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi to cease all government advertising and communications with Israel’s oldest print newspaper. 

Karhi proposed the boycott on October 31 as some ministries suspended ties with Haaretz in response to comments by the newspaper’s publisher Amos Schocken, who called for sanctions against Israel, which he described as imposing a “cruel apartheid regime” on Palestinians. 

Schocken was also criticized for referring to Palestinian “freedom fighters.” He has since clarified his use of the term, saying, “freedom fighters, who also resort to terror tactics — which must be combated. The use of terror is not legitimate.”

On November 4, the newspaper published an editorial distancing itself from Schocken’s remarks.

Karhi said on November 24 that the publisher of a newspaper could not call for sanctions against Israel and “support the enemies of the state in the midst of a war” and still receive government funding. 

“We advocate a free press and freedom of expression, but also the freedom of the government to decide not to fund incitement against the State of Israel,” he said.

Haaretz has described the move as an attempt to “silence a critical, independent newspaper.”

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

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has joined the debate about the haka that stunned Parliament and the nation last week, defending the youngest MP for her actions, saying she is a “product of her forebears” and “shining a light” on the new national conversation about the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

That haka has been criticised by some conservative politicians and civic leaders as “appalling behaviour” and led to Te Pāti Māori’s 22-year-old Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke being “named” by the Speaker and suspended from the House for 24 hours.

However, among many have rallied to her support across the nation, with The New Zealand Herald declaring in an editorial on Tuesday that her haka “shines the light on a new conversation growing louder daily and describing where many Māori are at politically”.

• READ MORE: ‘I ripped that in half and chucked it away’ – Hana-Rāwhiti delivers speech after world-shaking haka
• Why NZ is protesting over colonial-era treaty bill – a global perspective
• The biggest difference between Hīkoi mō te Tiriti and past hīkoi: More support from non-Māori
• Other national Hīkoi reports

In light of the haka performed in Parliament, The Herald said, it was “important to understand what was on show” 184 years after the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi by the British Crown and more than 40 Māori chiefs as the founding document for New Zealand.

The haka protest came as thousands joined a massive nine-day Te Hīkoi mō te Tiriti that marched the 1600km length of the country from north and south ending at Parliament in an impressive show of solidarity against the unpopular bill.

“Culturally, haka is the ability to express thoughts and views in a way that provides clarity with the thoughts of those who deliver it. Haka can be delivered and invoked in many different ways and many different times,” said The Herald.

“It can be delivered at the beginning of a kaupapa (cause) — like the All Blacks’ pre-match haka — or delivered near the end as a tangi when a tūpāpaku (body) is being taken to its final destination.”

The newspaper said that when Maipi-Clarke broke into that haka in Parliament, it was her way of expressing her “absolute disgust and loathing of David Seymour’s Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill”.

Unapologetically Māori
“Toitū Te Tiriti, the kōhanga reo generation and unapologetically Māori whānau are intertwined. Their whakapapa is the same,” The Herald said.

“Toitū Te Tiriti says Te Tiriti will endure no matter what. The first of the kōhanga reo generation – the babies brought up in kōhanga reo over 40 years ago, like Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi – and casting their leadership across te ao Māori.

“They have been in the workforce for 20+ years, using te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori (Māori intelligence) as their north compass.

“Maipi-Clarke is part of all three groups. She is a product of her forebears.

“Maipi-Clarke looks at the world through a kaupapa Māori lens. The things which drive her are Māori-centric, first and foremost. That is who she is and what defines her. The new Māori Queen, Nga wai hono i te po, is of the same ilk.

“Unapologetically Māori is a statement that serves as a declaration to the world about who Maipi-Clarke and those of her generation are, their truth and how to act from a holistic Māori world view.”

‘Their very identity threatened’
The newspaper said Maipi-Clarke, her Te Pāti Māori colleagues and other politicians in the House “reacted when they felt their very identity was threatened”.

“They acted the only way they believed was appropriate, with class and with mana.”

The Herald said Maipi-Clarke, like many Māori and non-Māori, were angry with the progression of this bill.

“She responded to it as she was taught by her predecessors and peers with a haka,” the paper said.

“That’s the way Māori of the kōhanga reo generation were brought up to voice their concerns.”

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

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has joined the debate about the haka that stunned Parliament and the nation last week, defending the youngest MP for her actions, saying she is a “product of her forebears” and “shining a light” on the new national conversation about the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

That haka has been criticised by some conservative politicians and civic leaders as “appalling behaviour” and led to Te Pāti Māori’s 22-year-old Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke being “named” by the Speaker and suspended from the House for 24 hours.

However, among many have rallied to her support across the nation, with The New Zealand Herald declaring in an editorial on Tuesday that her haka “shines the light on a new conversation growing louder daily and describing where many Māori are at politically”.

• READ MORE: ‘I ripped that in half and chucked it away’ – Hana-Rāwhiti delivers speech after world-shaking haka
• Why NZ is protesting over colonial-era treaty bill – a global perspective
• The biggest difference between Hīkoi mō te Tiriti and past hīkoi: More support from non-Māori
• Other national Hīkoi reports

In light of the haka performed in Parliament, The Herald said, it was “important to understand what was on show” 184 years after the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi by the British Crown and more than 40 Māori chiefs as the founding document for New Zealand.

The haka protest came as thousands joined a massive nine-day Te Hīkoi mō te Tiriti that marched the 1600km length of the country from north and south ending at Parliament in an impressive show of solidarity against the unpopular bill.

“Culturally, haka is the ability to express thoughts and views in a way that provides clarity with the thoughts of those who deliver it. Haka can be delivered and invoked in many different ways and many different times,” said The Herald.

“It can be delivered at the beginning of a kaupapa (cause) — like the All Blacks’ pre-match haka — or delivered near the end as a tangi when a tūpāpaku (body) is being taken to its final destination.”

The newspaper said that when Maipi-Clarke broke into that haka in Parliament, it was her way of expressing her “absolute disgust and loathing of David Seymour’s Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill”.

Unapologetically Māori
“Toitū Te Tiriti, the kōhanga reo generation and unapologetically Māori whānau are intertwined. Their whakapapa is the same,” The Herald said.

“Toitū Te Tiriti says Te Tiriti will endure no matter what. The first of the kōhanga reo generation – the babies brought up in kōhanga reo over 40 years ago, like Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi – and casting their leadership across te ao Māori.

“They have been in the workforce for 20+ years, using te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori (Māori intelligence) as their north compass.

“Maipi-Clarke is part of all three groups. She is a product of her forebears.

“Maipi-Clarke looks at the world through a kaupapa Māori lens. The things which drive her are Māori-centric, first and foremost. That is who she is and what defines her. The new Māori Queen, Nga wai hono i te po, is of the same ilk.

“Unapologetically Māori is a statement that serves as a declaration to the world about who Maipi-Clarke and those of her generation are, their truth and how to act from a holistic Māori world view.”

‘Their very identity threatened’
The newspaper said Maipi-Clarke, her Te Pāti Māori colleagues and other politicians in the House “reacted when they felt their very identity was threatened”.

“They acted the only way they believed was appropriate, with class and with mana.”

The Herald said Maipi-Clarke, like many Māori and non-Māori, were angry with the progression of this bill.

“She responded to it as she was taught by her predecessors and peers with a haka,” the paper said.

“That’s the way Māori of the kōhanga reo generation were brought up to voice their concerns.”

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

Palau’s largest newspaper is being sued for defamation by the company of President Surangel Whipps Jr’s father, just days ahead of general elections in the Pacific nation.

Surangel and Sons alleges “negligence and defamation” by the Island Times and its editor Leilani Reklai for an article published on Tuesday with “false and unsubstantiated allegations,” owner Surangel Whipps Sr said in a press release on Thursday.

Reklai has rejected the company’s allegations and said the “lawsuit is trying to control how media here in Palau tells a story”, a news article about the case in the Island Times reported on Friday.

• READ MORE: Media freedom at stake? Palau newspaper faces defamation lawsuit
• Regional Asia Pacific media freedoms

“I feel like we are being intimidated, we are being forced to speak a certain narrative rather than present diverse community perspectives,” said Reklai, who is also a stringer for BenarNews.

The Micronesian nation of 17,000 people — 650 km north of Papua New Guinea — goes to the polls on November 5. Whipps Jr’s rival is his brother-in-law Tommy Remengesau Jr, who was president from 2001 to 2009 and 2013 to 2021.

The controversy comes after Palau was top of the inaugural 2023 Pacific Media Freedom Index of 14 island countries that highlighted the region’s media facing significant political and economic pressures, bribes and corruption, as well as self-censorship.

Island Times reported on Friday the suit is seeking compensation and punitive damages and that the company asserts the “monetary awards should be substantial enough to prevent similar conduct from the newspaper and Reklai in future”.

Surangel and Sons financial details — leaked from the country’s tax office — were posted on social media last weekend, prompting heated online debate over how much it paid.

A new corporate and goods and services tax system introduced by Whipps Jr’s government is currently being rolled out in Palau and its merits have been a focus of election campaigning.

The company in a statement said its “privacy rights had been violated,” the tax details were obtained illegally, posted online without consent, and some of the figures had been altered.

Motivation ‘confusing voters’
“The motivation behind the circulation of this document is clearly for misinformation and disinformation to confuse voters. In the end Surangel and Sons is not running for office. Unfortunately, it has been victimised by this smear campaign,” the company posted on social media.

Island Times in a 225-word, front-page story headlined “Surangel & Sons condemns tax report leak as privacy violation” reported the company’s statement on Tuesday. It also quoted financial details from the leaked documents and accompanying commentary.

Whipps Jr. in a press conference on Wednesday accused the Island Times of publishing disinformation.

“Island Times continues to print political propaganda, it’s not accurate,” Whipps Jr said, calling for a correction to be published.

The lawsuit against the paper and its editor was served the next day.

Whipps Jr’s spokesperson told BenarNews any questions related to the lawsuit should be directed to the parties involved.

Surangel and Sons was founded in 1980 by Whipps Sr, who also served as Palau’s president briefly in 2005 and for two years from 2007.

Business ‘offers everything’
The privately-owned business “offers everything from housing design and automotive repair to equipment rentals, groceries, and scuba gear” through its import, sales, construction and travel arms, the company’s website says.

Previously as CEO, Whipps Jr transformed the company from a family store to one of Palau’s largest and most diversified businesses, employing more than 700 people.

His LinkedIn profile states he finished as CEO in January 2021, after 28 years in the position and in the month he became president. His spokesperson did not respond to questions from BenarNews about if he still retains any direct financial or other links to the company.

Surangel and Sons said the revelation of sensitive business information threatens their competitive advantage and puts jobs at risk.

Palau’s Minister of Finance Kaleb Udui Jr told the president’s press conference on Wednesday an investigation was underway, a special prosecutor would be appointed and apologized for the leak to the company.

“I would hope the media would make extra effort to help educate the public and discourage misinformation and breaches of privacy of the tax office and any other government office,” Udui said, confirming the tax documents had been altered before being posted on social media.

He said tax office staff have previously been warned about leaks and ensuring data confidentiality, as breaches negatively impact the confidence of foreign investors in Palau.

Explanation rather than leak
Whipps Jr added that the newspaper should have explained the tax system instead of reporting the leaked information.

He also accused Island Times of failure to disclose a paid advertisement in this week’s edition of the paper for his political opponent.

“I’m disappointed in the Island Times, because there was an article that was not an article, a paid advertisement,” Whipps Jr said about a colourful blue and yellow election campaign graphic.

Island Times told BenarNews it was not usual practice to put “Paid Advertisement” on advertisements but it would review its policy for political campaign material.

Reklai fears the lawsuit could have serious consequences for the media in Palau and bankrupt Island Times, the paper reported.

“If I don’t stand up to this, it sends a signal to all journalists that they risk facing claims for damages for powerful companies and government officials while carrying out their work,” she said.

Palau has two newspapers and four radio stations and enshrined in its constitution are protections for journalists, including a guarantee they cannot be jailed for refusing to disclose sources.

Surangel and Sons said they would no longer sell Island Times through their outlets.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

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

“The brazen shooting at the offices of El Debate not only underscores the ongoing crisis of violence against the press in Mexico but is a stark reminder of the urgent need for the recently appointed government of President Claudia Sheinbaum to investigate this attack and take all appropriate steps to provide El Debate’s staff with protection,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “As long as authorities continue to stand by, impunity in crimes against the press will continue to be the norm, and any pretense of respect for press freedom will ring hollow.”

El Debate is one of Culiacán’s oldest and most widely circulated regional dailies and has extensively reported on the rising criminal violence in the state. 

The Institute for Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which operates under supervision of the Sinaloa state government, and Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya condemned the attack in separate statements on Friday. Moya also ordered an investigation. 

CPJ’s several calls to El Debate and the state public prosecutor’s office (FGE) requesting comment about the investigation were not answered. 

An official who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, as they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which operates under supervision of the federal Interior Ministry in Mexico City, is establishing contact with the newspaper and Sinaloa state authorities to evaluate the need for state-sponsored protection.

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

“Nigerian authorities should release journalists Olurotimi Olawale, Precious Eze Chukwunonso, Roland Olonishuwa, and Seun Odunlami, and end the deepening criminalization of the press,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa Program, from New York. “Nigerian authorities’ additional charges against these four journalists emphasizes their commitment to sending a chilling message to journalists across the country.”

Olawale, an editor of the privately owned National Monitor newspaper; Chukwunonso, publisher of the privately owned News Platform website; Olonishuwa, a reporter with the privately owned Herald newspaper; and Odunlami, publisher of privately owned Newsjaunts website; were newly  charged with making “false and misleading allegations” on social media with intent to “extort” and “threaten” the management of Guaranty Trust Bank, as well as causing “harm” to the bank’s reputation, according the October 14 charge sheet. The alleged crimes fall under sections 24(2)(c) and 27(1)(a) and (b) of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act and sections 408, 422, and 507 of Nigeria’s criminal code.

If found guilty under the criminal code, the journalists could face up to 14 years in prison for violating section 408, seven years for violating section 422, and three months for section 507. Under the Cybercrimes Act, the journalists could face five years in prison with a fine of 15 million naira (US$9,175) for violating section 24 and seven years in prison for violating section 27.

The journalists have been jailed since late September over reporting that implicated Segun Agbaje, chief executive officer of GTBank, in alleged fraud worth 1 trillion naira (US$600 million). The journalists were charged on September 26 with violating the Cybercrimes Act, which was reformed in February but still left journalists vulnerable to prosecution, as CPJ warned.

GTBank’s chief communications officer Oyinade Adegite responded to CPJ’s phone calls for comment with text messages saying she couldn’t talk at that time and did not respond to a follow-up message asking when she would be available to discuss the journalists’ detention. When contacted before the charges were amended, Adegite told CPJ that the journalists’ reporting was “defamatory” and that the bank had sought to have the journalists charged with cybercrime for it.

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

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

Word tends to spread fast in rural Knox County, Ohio. But misinformation has spread faster.

The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

Then a new “grassroots” organization materialized and invited locals to an elaborate event billed as a town hall, with a keynote speaker who denied that humans cause climate change.

Someone sent text messages to residents urging them to “stop the solar invasion” and elect two county commission candidates who opposed the solar farm. And one day this past March, residents received an unfamiliar newspaper that contained only articles attacking Frasier Solar, a large project that would replace hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans with the equivalent of 630 football fields of solar panels.

To many in the deep-red central Ohio community, it seemed that solar had become the focus of news and politics. They were right. Fossil fuel interests were secretly working to shape the conversation in Knox County.

Each cog in the anti-solar machine — the opposition group, the texts, the newspaper, the energy publication — was linked to the others through finances and overlapping agendas, an investigation by Floodlight, ProPublica and The Tow Center for Digital Journalism found.

The campaign against solar power benefited from a confluence of two powerful forces funded by oil and gas interests. A former executive at Ariel Corporation, the county’s largest employer and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of methane gas compressors, was working behind the scenes. And helping in a more public way is the Mount Vernon News, a newspaper now in the hands of Metric Media, which operates websites that reportedly engage in pay-to-play coverage.

Ariel and the former executive did not respond to requests for comment. Metric Media’s leader did not answer questions for this story; he has previously denied that his news outlets are partisan.

Across the country, the oil and gas industry and power companies have exploited a struggling news industry and a fraught political process to fight the transition to clean energy and maximize profits, Floodlight and its partners have reported. In Florida, two power companies paid a consulting firm to hire newspapers to attack a pro-solar politician. In Alabama, the state’s largest monopoly electric company purchased a historic Black newspaper, then didn’t write about soaring power bills. In California, Chevron launched its own newsroom when other papers shuttered; it doesn’t cover itself critically.

In Mount Vernon, a city of 17,000 where the local university named its new sports complex CH4 after the chemical formula for methane, a variety of tactics have been deployed simultaneously, creating an anti-solar echo chamber.

Residents are bombarded with dubious claims: Solar panels are toxic. Their construction depletes the soil and floods fields and depresses home values. China is using them to invade. The campaign has stoked their skepticism and ignited their passions. It intensified the debate in a conservative county that prizes its roots in the gas industry.

Bright yellow “No Industrial Solar” yard signs have sprung up everywhere, competing with a smattering of green “Yes Solar” ones. Citizens packed local government meetings. More than 4,000 public comments, both for and against, were filed with the state regulator that will decide if the solar project can be built — triple the number for any previous solar project in Ohio. And all those opinions have drowned out the voices of the nine landowners, mostly farmers, who’ve signed leases with Frasier’s developer and for whom a total of about $60 million is at stake.

“People are so radicalized and they’re not thinking clearly,” said Rich Piar, a third-generation farmer who hopes to secure his financial future by leasing a portion of his 1,650 acres to Open Road Renewables, the Texas-based company developing the Frasier Solar project.

Politicians who didn’t forcefully denounce the solar project were attacked in Mount Vernon News stories. Thom Collier, a long-serving Republican on the county commission who thinks landowners should be able to choose whether to use their property for solar infrastructure, ultimately lost his reelection bid after a barrage of misleading coverage about his stance on solar.

“I pin this on one or two people from Ariel and some close friends that they have,” Collier said of the anti-solar offensive. “They determined it didn’t matter how much money it would take, they were going to fight this and make it ugly, and they have.”

Just 20 days after Knox Smart Development was registered as an LLC in Ohio, the anti-solar group hosted a town hall at a historic Georgian revival theater in Mount Vernon with 1,000 red velvet seats. Attendees were offered free food and alcohol.

The November 2023 event centered on a presentation from Steve Goreham, who argues global warming is natural and who is the author of several books, including “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.”

“When I think of a town hall meeting, I think of a meeting where everybody from the community can go, everybody has their say. That’s not how their meeting was,” said Kathy Gamble, who said organizers only reluctantly agreed to let her in. She’s pro-solar and not quiet about it.

The town hall established Knox Smart Development as a leading voice against the Frasier Solar project. The group calls itself a simple grassroots defender of Knox County.

It isn’t.

The man who registered the group as a business — and who is its sole member and spokesperson — was an Ariel Corporation employee two decades ago and remained an acquaintance of a top executive there, Tom Rastin. The group’s website was owned for a time by a woman working as an executive assistant at Ariel.

And one of Knox Smart Development’s larger funders is Rastin, a Republican megadonor and a retired executive vice president at Ariel, according to records and sworn testimony. Rastin’s father-in-law founded Ariel and, until recently, Rastin and his wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, led the company. Wright is still the chairman, and her son operates it now. Rastin and Wright did not respond to questions for this story.

The group’s founder, Jared Yost, said in an email that Rastin has not tried to steer its activism. “As a local resident, I believe he should be allowed to donate to whatever cause he aligns with, regardless of his former employment, and to state otherwise is to suggest Mr. Rastin should be censored,” Yost wrote in an email. He said the group relies on volunteers and “our intentions are genuine.”

He added: “The oil and gas industry is not involved in our fight.”

The town hall event headliner, Goreham, said he appeared as a favor to Rastin and Wright. In 2019, he had dinner with the couple when Goreham and his wife were passing through town from Illinois on a road trip to their second home in Virginia Beach. Goreham said that he and Rastin connected over their mutual feelings on the benefits of gas. He said he was glad to accept the invitation to speak at the anti-Frasier Solar event.

“First off, it’s in his county there. Mount Vernon is his city where he lives and where they are based,” said Goreham. “They’re pretty much opposed to renewables and they want everybody to buy gas. That’s their business.”

Goreham says he wasn’t paid to speak, but Wright bought 200 copies of his latest book, “Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure,” which warns about a net-zero-emissions agenda that will cause energy grids to fail. Local officials were given copies of the book that included a personal note from Wright: “Hello! Given the significant misinformation surrounding solar and wind arrays, I bought you this book that really lays out the facts.” She signed the note “Karen Wright, Chairman — Ariel Corporation.”

Shortly after the group was formed, Knox Smart Development’s “No Solar” ads became a fixture on the Mount Vernon News website and in the paper.

The Mount Vernon News had been owned by the same family since 1939, and for decades it chronicled local doings from city council meetings to the county fair.

At its height in the early 2000s, before newspapers started hemorrhaging advertising revenue and readers, the News employed about 15 full-time local reporters. An orange Maine coon cat named Scoop roamed the newsroom.

But by 2020, the News was barely hanging on. Its reporters were still using clunky 20-year-old computers. The back wall of the building was falling down and needed $250,000 in repairs. Kay Culbertson, who owned both the paper and the building, said that she knew it was time to sell. Paying for the repairs would be impossible; even making payroll was a stretch.

An acquaintance of Culberston’s connected her with Metric Media, part of an eight-company network operating more than 1,100 online local news sites. These sites have been described by media researchers and journalists as “pink slime,” named for a filler in processed meat. The final product looks natural, but it’s been tampered with.

A Syracuse University researcher concluded in a journal article published in February that sites like Metric’s “that seem like original news outlets and that appeal to local identity are filling the void” left by the decline of local news. And The Washington Post reported last year that Republican campaigns requested customized news stories that appeared on Metric-owned sites.

Both conservative and liberal pink slime sites exist. But Metric is run by Brian Timpone, an Illinois-based former broadcast reporter who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to conservative campaigns and causes. Timpone’s ventures have been criticized for using foreign-based writers to produce material. Some also have been accused of plagiarism and fabricating quotes. Timpone has blamed the problems on foreign writers providing content, and he apologized to readers.

Metric Media’s nonprofit arm has received $1.4 million “for general operations” from DonorsTrust, a dark-money group that has received significant funding from Charles and David Koch, who made their billions in oil pipelines and refineries. The eight-company network that Metric is part of also has ties to conservative billionaires, including oil-and-gas-industry titan Tim Dunn, shipping magnate Richard Uihlein and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. (Political groups that organize as nonprofits do not have to disclose donors, which is why they’re called “dark money.”)

DonorsTrust CEO and President Lawson R. Bader said in an email that the organization makes about 4,000 grants a year and that it does not dictate how those donations are spent.

Timpone responded to a request for an interview by writing, “We at the Mount Vernon News are now also working on a story — about Pro Publica and Floodlight’s efforts to promote taxpayer-funded ‘solar energy’ businesses in Central Ohio.” He did not respond to detailed questions.

But in interviews, he has said his business keeps local news alive when many outlets are scaling back or shutting down. Timpone told the Deseret News in Utah that his sites have no political leaning and are “data-driven and fact-centric.”

Research and news investigations have found that Timpone’s publications tend to champion conservative causes and politicians; they often are linked to mysterious newspapers distributed during key elections.

Culbertson and assistant publisher Liz Lutwick said in an interview that they knew little about Metric Media before the sale. But the company’s promises sounded good and, Lutwick said, “You believe people.”

“They were going to keep everything the same for a while. Lo and behold, they didn’t,” Culbertson said.

Metric paid at least $1 million for the Mount Vernon News, the first time it had purchased an established news organization printing a local paper. When the new owners visited the paper after the sale, they told the staff they’d stop printing every day and would no longer provide benefits; instead, employees would become contractors. Half the staff quit on the spot.

“It was awful. You feel like you’ve betrayed people,” Culbertson said.

Today, the Mount Vernon News only publishes once a week and has no local reporters or photographers.

“It’s obvious when you read the stories, either they’re AI-generated or they’re written by somebody who’s sitting in an office in Chicago who has never been here,” said Bill Davis, a sports editor who said he worked at the paper from 2010 to 2019.

Since Metric took over, only 11% of stories credited the work to authors working for Metric or its sister companies. Most of what it publishes are press releases or content submitted by companies and community groups, according to an analysis by the Tow Center, ProPublica and Floodlight.

After the sale, residents said they could no longer get timely obituaries — people were buried by the time funeral announcements were published — but they could read a lot about endangered farmland and concerns that the sun’s reflection off solar panels could blind nearby pilots.

Even Mount Vernon’s mayor, who was once a sports reporter at the paper, said he stopped reading it. Tanner Salyers, a former Mount Vernon city council member who now oversees public safety for the city, said quality dropped after the sale. “Then Frasier kicked up and they were like, ‘No more news.’ We call it the Solar Times.”

Over the last 12 months, the paper has published at least 52 online news stories on solar energy — 42 of them about the Frasier proposal, the analysis found. Of the 40 print editions published this year, 17 have featured front-page stories about solar. And though the paper has occasionally run a pro-solar letter to the editor, nearly all of the stories slanted anti-solar, according to an analysis of coverage by Floodlight, ProPublica and the Tow Center.

The paper began publishing a weekly opinion column called “Afternoon TEA” — TEA being an acronym for The Empowerment Alliance, a dark-money gas advocacy group Rastin leads.

The columns extolled the superiority of gas as a fuel source.

It isn’t clear if The Empowerment Alliance paid the Mount Vernon News to run the “Afternoon TEA” columns. But tax filings show that since 2020 The Empowerment Alliance has spent at least $6.3 million on a “public education campaign,” which included publishing “Afternoon TEA.” The goal was to promote “the importance of natural gas to the economy and national energy independence.”

One of The Empowerment Alliance’s stated goals is “fighting the nonsense of turning corn fields into solar fields.” It has financed online advertisements attacking President Joe Biden’s energy policies and spearheaded an Ohio bill that defined gas as a “green” fuel source.

Half of the Frasier stories published in the Mount Vernon News over the past year have mentioned Knox Smart Development, the anti-solar group linked to Rastin. Articles often quoted people or cited work from a Koch-backed think tank, The Buckeye Institute, but did not interview Frasier or farmers willing to lease land to it.

The Buckeye Institute is part of the State Policy Network, a group of think tanks that has received millions in funding from organizations connected to the Koch family. Rastin’s wife has served as a director on the State Policy Network board, and in 2019 she gave it $700,000, according to a tax record that typically would’ve been redacted but was posted to a government site.

The Mount Vernon News and pro-gas political groups also were working to influence local elections. The text messages that boosted anti-solar candidates were from a conservative Ohio PAC tied to a group that ran a pro-gas campaign.

And, leading up to the primary, a newspaper called the Ohio Energy Reporter was mailed to Knox County homes. The 8-page paper reprinted several Mount Vernon News stories on solar and featured other articles with headlines including “Ohio’s coming ‘solar trash wave’” and “Could the Texas Power Crisis happen in Ohio?”

The publication did not disclose its owners. The Floodlight, ProPublica and Tow Center investigation used source code from the website, its IP address and business mailing addresses to confirm that it is a product of the wider Metric Media network.

The stories the Mount Vernon News published began undermining politicians who were seen as insufficiently anti-solar and boosting the profiles of solar power’s outspoken critics.

In one article, the News accused Mount Vernon Mayor Matthew Starr of bowing to “energy activists” and pledging to try to remove natural gas from the city. It was not true. Starr was furious and asked the editors to take down the article, but they would not.

And in nearly a dozen stories that mentioned Collier, the county commissioner who was later ousted, the paper consistently misused a comment he’d given about newly placed solar panels at the county jail to falsely insinuate he supported the Frasier project.

Collier was never interviewed for those stories. Yet the paper ran a story devoted entirely to anti-solar commissioner candidate Drenda Keesee, a megachurch pastor who’d never run for office before; the article said she had “emerged as a vocal opponent of solar projects encroaching on the community.” Keesee, whose property would border a portion of the solar site, was the only source in the story.

She won the primary against Collier and is unopposed in the November general election.

For the community, the debate over solar has been passionate and persistent. What it hasn’t always been is civil. Yard signs have been stolen. Insults hurled. Middle fingers extended. Friendships frayed.

“Other than solar, we don’t have any problems with each other,” said Kathy Gamble, who runs the pro-solar group Knox County For Responsible Solar.

Many people in the community say they don’t view the debate through the lens of climate science or fossil fuels; they care about land rights and preserving rural life. Members of Preserve Knox County, an anti-solar group with several members whose land borders the proposed solar arrays, said they worry the solar project will scare off the sandhill cranes and bald eagles that visit their backyards.

Many members are distrustful of Biden’s renewable energy initiatives; they are staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump, who questions the scientific consensus that the climate is undergoing dangerous changes. They also don’t trust the solar developer’s promises to plant enough trees to block the panels from view. And they don’t want to lose the farmland that gives the area its agricultural identity.

“You can’t eat solar panels,” said Jim Boeshart, whose home would be adjacent to solar arrays.

Keith Strait, a farmer who lives not far from Boeshart, agreed: “Let’s face it,” he said, pointing at the ground, “They’re not making any more of this. There will be a time when there won’t be any farm left. Where’re you going to get your food from?”

The farmers who want to lease their land feel their voices have been lost in the debate. For them, a 40-year land contract with Frasier Solar would be steady income. One farmer said he could make four times as much money per acre leasing to the solar project as he’d make renting to another farmer.

Rich Piar, the third-generation farmer, is looking to the solar panels as a retirement plan. He said he has no one to take over the operation when he retires, and he doesn’t think anyone should dictate what he does with his land or when he stops farming.

“Most farmers’ exit strategy is their health,” Piar said. “I don’t want to have that kind of predetermined exit strategy.” He went to one of the public meetings about Frasier but said it was so packed he didn’t get to speak until almost midnight.

In August, the Ohio Power Siting Board, which will rule on whether the project can be built, held a final hearing to accept evidence from both sides. One of the attorneys who spoke on behalf of a farmer who is leasing land for the project was from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. (The Tow Center also is based at Columbia, but its work is separate.)

Frasier lawyers cross-examined Knox Smart Development spokesperson Jared Yost at the hearing, where he testified that Rastin, the retired Ariel executive, was one of the group’s biggest donors. To Open Road Renewables’ vice president of development, Craig Adair, the confirmation pierced the veil.

Everything changed, Adair said in an interview, “when The Empowerment Alliance decided to use its vast financial resources” to shape the debate in Knox County and in the Mount Vernon News.

The News published two stories on the hearing but did not mention the public admission of Knox Smart Development’s ties to Rastin, the Ariel Corporation and The Empowerment Alliance.

The board’s decision is likely to take months.

In the meantime, construction has started at the old Mount Vernon News building, which is being turned into an academic hub for a local university. The building will be named after Rastin’s stepson, a former president of Ariel Corporation.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Cybercrime laws and other regulations governing online content have been widely used to jail journalists around the world. In Nigeria, at least 29 journalists have faced prosecution under the cybercrimes law since it was enacted in 2015.

CPJ had warned that February’s amendments to the law, which followed years of advocacy by human rights groups and CPJ, still left journalists at risk of prosecution due to an overly broad definition of what is a criminal offense. Since the law was reformed, it has been used to summon, intimidate, and detain journalists for their work.

On September 20, police in western Lagos State separately arrested Olurotimi Olawale, editor of the privately owned National Monitor newspaper, and Precious Eze Chukwunonso, publisher of the privately owned News Platform website, Nigerian Guild of Investigative Journalists’president, Abdulrahman Aliagan, told CPJ.

On September 25, police arrested Rowland Olonishuwa, a reporter with the privately owned Herald newspaper, in western Kwara state and Seun Odunlami, publisher of privately owned Newsjaunts website, in nearby Ogun state, Aliagan and Kwara-based journalist Dare Akogun told CPJ.

“Nigerian authorities should immediately release journalists, Olurotimi Olawale, Precious Eze Chukwunonso, Rowland Olonishuwa, and Seun Odunlami, and swiftly drop the cybercrime charges against them,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa Program, from New York. “Since Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act became law, it has been used to arrest and prosecute journalists, and these arrests emphasize that the recent reforms to the law have not reversed that trend.”

On September 27, the four journalists were charged in a Lagos federal court with violating sections 24(1)(b) and 27 of the Cybercrimes Act for reporting that implicated Segun Agbaje, chief executive officer of Guaranty Trust Bank, in alleged fraud worth 1 trillion naira (US$600 million) according to Aliagan, Akogun, and a copy of the charge sheet reviewed by CPJ.

Section 24 of Cybercrimes Act relates to pornographic or knowingly false messages “for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order, posing a threat to life, or causing such messages to be sent,” according to a copy of the law’s amendments signed by President Bola Tinubu in February. Violation of this section is punishable with up to three years in prison and a fine of 7 million naira (US$4,200).

Section 27 relates to attempts to violate the law and conspiracy, as well as aiding and abetting. Conniving to commit “fraud using computer system(s) or network” carries a variable punishment based on the violation and/or up to seven years in prison and a requirement to refund or forfeit stolen funds, according to the same copy of the amendments.

The journalists pleaded not guilty and were remanded at a Lagos correctional center, pending a bail hearing on October 4, Aliagan and Akogun told CPJ.

Although the police compelled the journalists to take down their articles, Nigeria’s federal House of Representatives subsequently announced an investigation into the bank over fraud allegations.

GTBank’s chief communications officer Oyinade Adegite confirmed to CPJ by phone that the bank had sought to have the journalists charged with cybercrime over their reporting, which she said was “defamatory.”

CPJ’s call and text messages to request comment from Lagos State police spokesperson Hauwa Idris-Adamu on September 27 went unanswered.

Editor’s note: This text has been updated in the ninth paragraph to add detail to the penalty for violating Section 27.

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

Cybercrime laws and other regulations governing online content have been widely used to jail journalists around the world. In Nigeria, at least 29 journalists have faced prosecution under the cybercrimes law since it was enacted in 2015.

CPJ had warned that February’s amendments to the law, which followed years of advocacy by human rights groups and CPJ, still left journalists at risk of prosecution due to an overly broad definition of what is a criminal offense. Since the law was reformed, it has been used to summon, intimidate, and detain journalists for their work.

On September 20, police in western Lagos State separately arrested Olurotimi Olawale, editor of the privately owned National Monitor newspaper, and Precious Eze Chukwunonso, publisher of the privately owned News Platform website, Nigerian Guild of Investigative Journalists’president, Abdulrahman Aliagan, told CPJ.

On September 25, police arrested Rowland Olonishuwa, a reporter with the privately owned Herald newspaper, in western Kwara state and Seun Odunlami, publisher of privately owned Newsjaunts website, in nearby Ogun state, Aliagan and Kwara-based journalist Dare Akogun told CPJ.

“Nigerian authorities should immediately release journalists, Olurotimi Olawale, Precious Eze Chukwunonso, Rowland Olonishuwa, and Seun Odunlami, and swiftly drop the cybercrime charges against them,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa Program, from New York. “Since Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act became law, it has been used to arrest and prosecute journalists, and these arrests emphasize that the recent reforms to the law have not reversed that trend.”

On September 27, the four journalists were charged in a Lagos federal court with violating sections 24(1)(b) and 27 of the Cybercrimes Act for reporting that implicated Segun Agbaje, chief executive officer of Guaranty Trust Bank, in alleged fraud worth 1 trillion naira (US$600 million) according to Aliagan, Akogun, and a copy of the charge sheet reviewed by CPJ.

Section 24 of Cybercrimes Act relates to pornographic or knowingly false messages “for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order, posing a threat to life, or causing such messages to be sent,” according to a copy of the law’s amendments signed by President Bola Tinubu in February. Violation of this section is punishable with up to three years in prison and a fine of 7 million naira (US$4,200).

Section 27 relates to attempts to violate the law and conspiracy, as well as aiding and abetting. Conniving to commit “fraud using computer system(s) or network” carries a variable punishment based on the violation and/or up to seven years in prison and a requirement to refund or forfeit stolen funds, according to the same copy of the amendments.

The journalists pleaded not guilty and were remanded at a Lagos correctional center, pending a bail hearing on October 4, Aliagan and Akogun told CPJ.

Although the police compelled the journalists to take down their articles, Nigeria’s federal House of Representatives subsequently announced an investigation into the bank over fraud allegations.

GTBank’s chief communications officer Oyinade Adegite confirmed to CPJ by phone that the bank had sought to have the journalists charged with cybercrime over their reporting, which she said was “defamatory.”

CPJ’s call and text messages to request comment from Lagos State police spokesperson Hauwa Idris-Adamu on September 27 went unanswered.

Editor’s note: This text has been updated in the ninth paragraph to add detail to the penalty for violating Section 27.

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

Retired Major General Harsha Kakar shared the image on X and wrote, “Americans want to know if @RahulGandhi is from India or Pak. Which individual goes abroad to abuse his own home. Unheard in the world. Only exception is this man. Will @INCIndia @sampitroda @kharge @SupriyaShrinate & @Jairam_Ramesh claim this is a Congress custom.” (Archive)

Americans want to know if @RahulGandhi is from India or Pak. Which individual goes abroad to abuse his own home. Unheard in the world. Only exception is this man. Will @INCIndia @sampitroda @kharge @SupriyaShrinate & @Jairam_Ramesh claim this is a Congress custom. pic.twitter.com/nEfD2K3EkP

— Maj Gen Harsha Kakar (@kakar_harsha) September 10, 2024

The tweet has received over 5 Lakh views and reshared over 6,600 times.

The same image was also shared by an X user named Riniti Chatterjee Pandey. (Archive)

अब तो अमेरिकी भी पूछ रहे हैं कि राहुल गांधी भारत से है या पाकिस्तान से ? pic.twitter.com/9iiXkEKemE

— Riniti Chatterjee Pandey (@mainRiniti) September 11, 2024

At the time of this report being written, this tweet has been viewed close to 1.5 Lakh times and reshared over 4,200 times.

Other users who have shared the same image include Neetu Garg (@NeetuGarg6), who, according to her X bio, is linked to the BJP Mahila Morcha and is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah.

Alt News has also received requests on its WhatsApp helpline number (76000 11160) to authenticate the image.

The Image was Viral in the Past as well

Rahul Gandhi visited the US last year as well and delivered a talk in San Francisco, California, in May 2023. Several BJP leaders had then expressed their displeasure at the Congress leader’s speech. Some even said that he was speaking the language of Pakistan. The same ‘newspaper clipping’ had gone viral then as well.

Twitter user Janmajit Sinha (@JSinha007) shared the image of the apparent newspaper report on June 21, 2023. He claimed that the San Francisco-based newspaper published the report because Rahul Gandhi had spoken in a way only an enemy of India could. The tweet has been retweeted over 1000 times. (Archive)

VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi (@Sadhvi_prachi) had shared the image on June 19, 2023. The tweet has received over 1.35 lakh views. (Archive)

Pappu From India or Pakistan ?#PappuDiwas pic.twitter.com/Dc4saXTVMb

— Dr. Prachi Sadhvi (@Sadhvi_prachi) June 19, 2023

Several other users such as @SVishnuReddy, @POLITICALCRIT14, @sarmabjp and other social media users also shared the image with similar claims.

Fact Check

We came across several striking discrepancies in the news report which are usually not seen in newspapers. The text in the image lacks consistency when it comes to the format. It is also filled with grammatical errors and typographical errors, which are unusual for a newspaper (highlighted below). The arrangement of the lines and the lettering look similar to those in texts translated using Google lens.

Besides, the ‘report’ got the name of the place where Rahul Gandhi had given his speech wrong. It mentions that the event happened in ‘Santa Claus, California’ while the Congress leader made his address in Santa Clara, California. We also noticed that at the top left corner of the image, a part of a letter can be seen which is not in English. It looks like Hindi script.

We translated the text from English to Hindi and ran a reverse image search on the picture. This led us to several social media posts that contained this Hindi report.

Vivek Pandey, who, according to his Twitter bio is the chief of Rashtravadi Hindu Mahasabha, shared the Hindi report image on June 5. (Archive)

अमेरिकी पूछ रहे हैं की राहुल भारत के है या पाकिस्तान को???
प्रश्न तो सही है।।।। pic.twitter.com/dat5ZMDGmM

— Vivek Pandey (@INDVivekPandey_) June 5, 2023

When we translated the Hindi text to English using Google translate, the result we got was remarkably similar to the image shared by social media users. This confirms that the apparent English news report by a San Francisco newspaper is actually a Google translated version of a Hindi report.

We also looked up the list of non-English languages newspapers published in California and found that as of now, no Hindi newspaper is published in California. In fact, the only Hindi newspapers available in the US are those that are shipped from India.

Therefore, neither the viral English report nor the Hindi one is from any San Francisco newspaper or any US-based newspaper. The claim made by the Right Wing users that a San Francisco-based newspaper questioned Rahul Gandhi’s allegiance to India is false. The same image had gone viral in the past as well.

The post Viral ‘US newspaper report’ questioning Rahul Gandhi’s nationality is fake appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

The Insajderi newsroom received around 10 phone calls from various numbers on June 24 and 25, threatening its journalists with physical violence if they did not remove a June 24 article, according to reports and recordings of the calls by the outlet and a statement by the local trade union Association of Journalists of Kosovo (AJK). The article identified a Kosovo man who was arrested on several charges, including money laundering and fraud, at the request of Swiss authorities.

Insajderi’s editor-in-chief, Visar Duriqi, told CPJ that the callers presented themselves as family members of the detained man and threatened the newspaper with an arson attack unless they removed the article. The callers also said the family “made a mistake by keeping you alive.”

In an email to CPJ, a press official for the Public Prosecutor Office of Pristina, Laureta Ulaj, confirmed an ongoing criminal investigation that identified one alleged perpetrator. Prosecutors have ordered that person’s arrest.

“It is a welcome development that Kosovo authorities reacted quickly to the threats made by unknown individuals to the editorial staff of the newspaper Insajderi,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Authorities must bring all perpetrators to justice, take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of the journalists working there and demonstrate that threats against journalists do not go unpunished.”

Duriqi told CPJ that Insajderi journalists had received many threats of physical violence since their founding in 2016, including death threats against former editor-in-chief Vehbi Kajtazi in 2021. In February 2021, masked assailants attacked and injured Duriqi outside his home.

Duriqi told CPJ that police have not made progress in these cases.

A joint international press freedom mission to Kosovo in 2022 noted that the safety of journalists and impunity for crimes against journalists continue to pose challenges. While physical assaults remain rare, journalists are often targeted with smears and threats of physical violence and death. The judicial process in criminal and civil cases remains slow, and journalists expressed concern over the lack of prosecutions.

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

Vuk Cvijić, a reporter for the weekly newspaper Radar, was walking by a cafe around 1 p.m. on May 29 in the capital, Belgrade, when publisher Milan Lađević began shouting insults and expletives, asking how he dared to write an article connecting him to Slobodan Malešić, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ, and news reports. Malešić is the former head of police in Novi Sad, a city in northwestern Serbia, and is currently being tried on organized crime charges.

Lađević is co-owner of Media Network, which publishes pro-government newspaper Telegraf, and was sitting with his deputy, Boris Vukovic. 

Cvijić said he tried to move away from the pair when Lađević stood up, approached the journalist, and punched him on the right side of his chin, causing Cvijić to fall on the sidewalk and break his phone screen. He was treated at a hospital for a contusion and given medication.

Cvijić told CPJ that Lađević was referencing an article printed by the weekly magazine NIN — where the journalist worked in 2023 — in which the journalist described Lađević as a close ally of Malešić, according to CPJ’s review of the 2023 November article.

Lađević denied attacking the journalist in a statement to the newspaper Republika, which serves as the online edition of Telegraf, and claimed Cvijić was the one who provoked, insulted, attacked them, and then staged the incident. CPJ emailed questions to Lađević but received no reply.

The Belgrade prosecutor’s office started an investigation and took statements from Lađević, Vukovic, and Cvijić, but had not issued any further updates as of Wednesday, according to Cvijić. CPJ’s emailed questions to the prosecutor’s office did not receive a response.

“It is a welcome development that Serbian authorities have started an investigation following the recent attack against journalist Vuk Cvijić. They must ensure that the investigation is swift, thorough, and transparent, hold those responsible to account, and ensure the journalist’s safety,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Independent journalists in Serbia work in an increasingly hostile atmosphere, and authorities must demonstrate a zero-tolerance policy for such attacks.”

Veran Matić, a 1993 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award and member of Serbia’s Working Group for the Security and Protection of Journalists, told N1 TV that police and prosecutors gave high priority to the investigation. Matić said it was important that the case was resolved as the attack was against an investigative journalist in an increasingly toxic climate in Serbia, and Lađević is the head of a media company that “often targets journalists like Vuk Cvijić, with untruths [and] fake news.”

Radar condemned the attack in a May 29 statement and demanded Serbian authorities properly investigate the case, adding that independent media and the Serbian society as a whole face “a dangerous spiral of violence — unfortunately, encouraged by the authorities and media close to them.”

Press freedom groups SafeJournalists network, Media Freedom Rapid Response partners and Coalition for Media Freedom condemned the attack in a May 30 statement as the most recent incident in ongoing attacks against journalists in Serbia.  

CPJ has documented how independent journalists in Serbia face an increasingly hostile atmosphere in 2024 with a growing number of physical and online attacks due to the anti-press rhetoric from President Aleksandar Vučić’s supporters, government officials, and pro-government media.

Journalists working for NIN quit the newspaper in January 2024 and launched Radar in March, citing a need to protect professional integrity amid criticism that NIN’s new owner is curtailing editorial independence.

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

Novosti journalists have received dozens of insulting, hateful, intimidating, and threatening messages by email, letter, phone, social media comment section, and direct message since April, according to news reports and editor-in-chief Andrea Radak, who spoke with CPJ. Novosti is the most prominent Serbian minority language newspaper in Croatia and is based in the capital, Zagreb.

The wave of attacks began after the April parliamentary election, which brought Croatia’s nationalist right-wing party, Domovinski pokret (DP- Homeland Movement), into a coalition government. DP has campaigned to end state funding for Novosti, claiming the outlet fails to focus exclusively on minority issues.

Radak told CPJ that they filed a criminal complaint with the police and gave initial statements. As of Wednesday, the outlet has yet to receive an update on the investigation.

“Croatian authorities must investigate the dozens of threats received by journalists of the newspaper Novosti, hold the perpetrators to account, and ensure the safety of the outlet’s reporters,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “It is completely unacceptable to threaten journalists because of their work, and Croatian authorities must show that such actions have consequences. Ruling government coalition officials should encourage the work of journalists instead of discrediting them or threatening their funding.”

The messages included smears, insults, and indirect intimidation, such as championing Croatia’s fascist government during World War II, Radak told CPJ. They also included threats, such as saying those who conduct pro-Serbia reporting should be driven out of the country and warning that a second “Operation Storm” was coming — a reference to the strategic victory of the Croatian Army against the rebel Croatian Serbs, which helped the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries during the 1990s Yugoslav wars.

One of Novosti’s investigative journalists who covers far-right nationalism and requested anonymity, citing safety concerns, received a letter with insults calling his mother a Chetnik — a reference to members of a Serbian nationalist guerilla force during World War II — threats that “we will get you,” and ending with an intimidating salute of the country’s pre-World War II fascist Ustasha regime: “For the homeland — ready.”

Radak told CPJ that similar messages were sent to the independent trade union Croatian Journalists’ Association, as many Novosti journalists are union members, and the union issued a May 14 statement defending the journalists.

In a May 16 editorial, Radak said that Novosti will continue reporting despite threats, verbal attacks, and accusations of being “anti-Croatian.”

CPJ emailed the press office of the Zagreb Police Department and the DP party 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.

CUED (5/15/24): “A large share of Amazon warehouse workers report facing financial strain,
including difficulties meeting basic needs.”

A new report (5/15/24) from the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois/Chicago reflects the largest nationwide study of Amazon workers to date, some 1,500 Amazon workers across 451 facilities in 42 states. The big takeaway: Roughly half of Amazon’s frontline warehouse workers are struggling with food and housing insecurity, with a third relying on public assistance programs.

Now, the Washington Post, owned by Amazon chair Jeff Bezos, has heard of the Center. The paper quoted it in a 2022 piece (12/10/22) about robots that led with the news that “Amazon has robotic arms that can pick and sort cumbersome items like headphones or plushy toys.” Oh, and “other companies are making progress, too.”

And even in a 2020 piece (9/3/20) on how overworked and exhausted warehouse workers were “bracing for a  frenzied holiday rush.” Though beleaguered Amazon workers came in at the end, after Kohl’s and Wayfair, Best Buy and Target and so on. Bezos’ paper allows some pointed criticism of Amazon; it’s just often in “opinion” pieces, like a 2020 oped from Alex Press (4/25/20).

So we’ll wait and see if the paper gives proper news coverage to what is incontrovertibly a news story: the clear association, as report co-author Beth Gutelius put it, between “the company’s health and safety issues, and experiences of economic insecurity among its workforce.”

Featured Image: Photo of Amazon warehouse worker from CUED report (5/15/24).

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

The Facebook handle of the BJP Belagavi rural district shared the image with the caption stating that this was appeasement politics.

Several handles belonging to BJP supporters shared the newspaper clipping with the same claim on X.

It was also posted on YouTube in Kannada.

Fact Check

According to 2011 Census data, Hindus constituted 83% of Karnataka’s total population, while Muslims made up only 11%. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely for any party or chief minister to claim that they did not need the votes of the majority Hindu population.

We have provided a Google translation of this newspaper clipping below. The claim made in the sub-head of the report is incorrect. In March, Alt News debunked the viral claim that Siddaramaiah had stated that he wanted to be born as a Muslim in his next life. The fact check can be found here.

When we searched for keywords related to this issue on Google, we found no articles on such claims apparently made by the Karnataka chief minister. Since this is a sensitive issue, if Siddaramaiah had indeed made such a statement, it would have been a major issue not only in the state but also nationally.

A reverse image search of the viral picture on Google led us to a report on the First India website from June 2, 2023. According to this report, before a cabinet meeting, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah met senior officials to implement five guarantees (Griha Jyoti, Anna Bhagya, Griha Lakshmi, Sakhi Shakti, and Yuva Nidhi). Dainik Bhaskar also published this news with the same image on June 2, 2023.

We also found that Siddaramaiah had dismissed the viral news as fake, stating that BJP-JDS supporters were behind this with a view to stirring up communal tension. The Karnataka chief minister also stated that he had filed a police complaint regarding the doctored image.

The miscreants supported by the unholy alliance of BJP-JDS have fabricated a piece of disinformation mimicking a report from the Kannada newspaper.This fake news is loaded with content that stirs up communal tensions and has been widely disseminated across social media platforms.… pic.twitter.com/lHh0BpqTGC

— Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) April 10, 2024

In conclusion, it is clear that many BJP supporters shared a fake newspaper clip falsely claiming that Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah had said he did not need Hindu votes, as Muslim votes were sufficient for him to win.

The post Fake newspaper clip on Siddaramaiah’s statement on Muslim votes viral appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

Napo-Koura is due to appear in court on March 20 in the Togolese capital, Lomé, over a defamation complaint filed in March 2023 by Charles Kokouvi Gafan, former general manager of Togo Terminal, about a report published in the privately owned Tampa Express in January 2023 about alleged mismanagement at the company, according to the journalist, who spoke with CPJ, and a copy of a letter from his lawyer, Elom Kpade, and a copy of the complaint.

The complaint claimed Tampa Express published “false information” about Gafan that constituted defamation, and that the allegations were repeated by Napo-Koura on a broadcast by the privately owned Taxi FM and circulated on social media. The complaint also requested that the court find Tampa Express and Napo-Koura guilty of defamation under the penal code and order them to pay Gafan 30 million West African francs (about US$50,000), among other remedies.

Togo’s press code says that offenses involving journalists must be handled by the communications regulator, but in certain circumstances still allows for journalists to be prosecuted under the penal code. Article 156 of the press code says that journalists who “used social networks as a means of communication” to commit such offenses are instead “punished in accordance with the common law provisions.”

Napo-Koura could receive a prison sentence of up to six months and a fine of up to 2 million CFA francs (US$ 3,321) under Article 290 of the penal code.

Separately, on March 4, Togo’s media regulator, the High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication (HAAC) suspended the privately owned La Dépêche for three months over its February 28 report that questioned the 2023 conviction of Major General Abalo Kadangha for the murder of Lieutenant-Colonel Bitala Madjoulba in 2020, according to the newspaper’s editor Apollinaire Mewenemesse and a copy of the decision reviewed by CPJ.

“Togolese authorities should reverse their suspension of La Dépêche newspaper and cease harassing the Tampa Express newspaper and its publishing director Francisco Napo-Koura,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “The repeated suspension of news outlets in Togo and the threat of journalists being criminally prosecuted for their work has become far too commonplace in the country and violates citizen’s access to information.”

Gafan also complained to the HAAC last year about the same January 2023 Tampa Express article, which prompted the regulator to suspend publication of the newspaper for three months in February 2023, according to Napo-Koura, and a copy of the HAAC’s decision, reviewed by CPJ.

In the case of La Dépêche, the HAAC said the newspaper provided “no evidence to support its allegations and insinuations” about the murder trial and that its report contained incitement to tribal hatred and popular revolt and called for ethnic confrontation between military officers. These allegations were not substantiated by CPJ’s review of the report.

 The HAAC also alleged “recidivism” by La Dépêche, saying that it had previously summoned the newspaper in May 2023 and November 2020 over other reports.

Under Article 65 of Togo’s law regulating communications, the HAAC can suspend daily newspapers for up to 15 days and other publishers and broadcasters for up to four months for non-compliance with its recommendations, decisions, and warnings.

Napo-Koura has previously faced legal action over his reporting. In September, he was questioned by judicial police following a complaint by the civil service minister, Gilbert Bawara, over an August 2023 Tampa Express report on allegations of corruption in civil service recruitment, Napo-Koura and Kpade told CPJ, adding that the case was pending with the prosecutor.

CPJ’s calls to Gafan and the HAAC to request comment were not answered.

The HAAC suspended Liberté newspaper in 2022 and L’Alternative and Fraternité newspapers in 2021 and barred L’Indépendant Express from publishing in 2021 over their critical reporting.

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

Officials from the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, a statutory body concerned with gender equality, invited a group of local journalists to cover a briefing on plans to open a regional office in Gweru, a town in the Midlands Province about 223 kilometers (138 miles) south of the capital Harare, on February 27. Before the meeting could begin, Owen Ncube, the Minister of State for Midlands Provincial Affairs and Devolution, asked all the journalists to introduce themselves, saying some were not fit to cover government events, according to news reports and the two journalists who spoke to CPJ. 

After Mubaiwa, a reporter with the privately owned Mirror Midlands Newspaper, and Chadenga, a reporter with the privately owned newspaper Newsday, introduced themselves, Ncube told them they were “not welcome,” accused their outlets of attacking the government, and banned them from future government meetings in the Midlands Province. Ncube then ordered his security officers to escort the journalists out of the room.

“Barring journalists from covering government events points to a troubling unwillingness by Minister of State for Midlands Provincial Affairs and Devolution Owen Ncube to be scrutinized by the press in a manner that all public officials should expect,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo in Nairobi. “Ncube should withdraw his order barring journalists Sydney Mubaiwa and Stephen Chadenga from covering state events, and Zimbabwean authorities must ensure journalists have access to report on the government.”

Six journalists from the privately owned newspapers Midweek Watch and The Sun, the state-owned newspapers Chronicle and Gweru Times, and state-owned radio station YaFM were allowed to stay and cover the meeting, Mubaiwa and Chadenga said.

Zimbabwe Gender Commission Chairperson Margaret Mukahanana Sangarwe and an official from the communications department apologized to the two journalists as they were escorted out of the meeting room. Reached by messaging app, Sangarwe told CPJ she had no comment.

Mubaiwa and Chadenga told CPJ that they had been too afraid to attend government events in Midlands Province since February 27.

The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists “unequivocally condemns” the minister’s actions, the secretary-general of the union, Mswathi Hlongwane, told CPJ, adding that the union “will not accept any attempts aimed at dividing the media along private or public media lines.”

CPJ’s repeated calls and app messages to Ncube, Virginia Muwanigwa, CEO of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, and Jenfan Muswere, Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, for comment did not immediately receive replies.

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

Students at Northwestern University, in the Chicago suburbs, woke up on October 25 to face an unexpected allegation. “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” declared the school’s venerable student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, in a front-page story.

The students, however, weren’t really looking at the Daily Northwestern. Instead, they had found the Northwestern Daily, a parody newspaper attacking the school’s stance on Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. 

The mock front page featured fake quotes from school officials, accusations of Israeli war crimes, and a fake ad for Birthright Israel — the travel abroad program that sends young American Jews to Israel — with the tagline “One man’s home is another man’s former home!” Overnight, someone had pinned the mock papers on bulletin boards, spread them on desks in lecture halls, and even wrapped the false front pages around roughly 300 copies of the Daily Northwestern itself.

A photo of the parody cover of the Daily Northwestern mocking Northwestern University’s stances on Israel’s war in Gaza.

The stunt quickly sparked a furor among Israel’s supporters online. One writer, at the conservative National Review, said the fake newspaper included an antisemitic “blood libel.” The university itself said the spoof “included images and language about Israel that many in our community found offensive.” 

The parent company of the school paper, Students Publishing Company, or SPC, announced that it had “engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible.” The results of the inquiry are just now coming to light. 

Following the investigation, local prosecutors brought charges against two students for theft of advertising services. The little-known statute appears to only exist in Illinois and California, where it was originally passed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from distributing recruitment materials in newspapers. The statute makes it illegal to insert an “unauthorized advertisement in a newspaper or periodical.” The students, both of whom are Black, now face up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

“I have never seen anyone charged with theft of advertising,” said Elaine Odeh, a lawyer who formerly supervised public defenders in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Evanston, where Northwestern is based.

Jon Yates, a spokesperson for Northwestern, told The Intercept and Responsible Statecraft, “The Students Publishing Company, independent publisher of The Daily Northwestern, pursued a criminal complaint related to the publication of the ‘fake Daily’ this fall. As required by law, University Police pursued a criminal investigation, which led to a citation for violating state law that was issued to multiple students.” (SPC is independent from the university, though several professors and students sit on its board of directors.)

Some student staffers working for the actual Daily Northwestern are angry that charges are going forward, according to a former Daily Northwestern editor and current student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from school officials. “It’s very clear that this is a discriminatory action,” the student said. The Daily Northwestern’s own editorial board wrote Monday that its publisher should formally request that the case be dropped, calling the investigation “unnecessary and harmful.” (Disclosure: I am a graduate of Northwestern’s journalism school but was never involved with the Daily Northwestern.)

The Class A misdemeanor charges, the highest level short of a felony, represent an escalation in the battle over free speech and protest on college campuses as the war in Gaza drags into its fifth month. Pro-Palestine activism on campus has faced a severe crackdown due to what Israel’s backers say is antisemitism and hate speech, with school administrations working closely with police. 

“It’s always a concern when colleges and universities appear to be disproportionately targeting one form of political speech.”

At American University, school officials enlisted the FBI to help investigate incidents in which students defaced pro-Israel posters. Several colleges have banned or suspended chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, a popular pro-Palestine group, including at Columbia University, which subsequently beefed up its police presence. And several dozen students at the University of Michigan are facing charges for trespassing after refusing police orders to leave a building.

Graham Piro of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit specializing in free speech advocacy, said, “It’s always a concern when colleges and universities appear to be disproportionately targeting one form of political speech.”

“Pursue It as a Criminal Act”

At Northwestern, the criminal charges struck many as a serious escalation. One student, who requested anonymity to prevent backlash from family in Israel, said he found the parody “offensive” but felt the charges went too far. 

Stephanie Kollmann, the policy director of a Northwestern’s law school clinic focused on criminal justice, questioned why SPC chose to go directly to the police rather than issuing a cease-and-desist letter to the students. Kollmann said colleges and affiliated institutions often seek to keep incidents out of the courts despite potential criminal conduct. The fact that charges were brought in this case means that SPC, university police, and the state’s attorney’s office all used their discretion to opt for the harshest response.

“The idea that multiple people in a chain of reaction to this incident repeatedly decided to not use any of the other tools of reproval available to them,” said Kollmann, “but rather chose to pursue it as a criminal act is frankly remarkable.”

Many at the university are pushing back on the charges. Over 70 student organizations — including high-profile groups like Mayfest Productions, which sponsors an annual music festival on campus — have pledged to not speak with the Daily Northwestern until the charges are dropped. “Even students who have just been generally quiet on what’s happening with Israel and Palestine, I’ve been seeing them speak out for the first time regarding this,” said a student organizer, who requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation from the university.

More than 5,000 people have signed a student-led petition calling on SPC to drop the charges and alleging that the incident represents “targeted over-policing of Black students.” 

Students and lawyers expressed surprise that prosecutors chose to bring the hammer down using such a little-known law, especially one originally designed to target white supremacist groups. Chicago police have only ever arrested one person under the statute, according to the city’s arrest database.

The decision of whether to prosecute the charges now rests solely with the local prosecutor, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, which did not respond to a request for comment. SPC, however, can join students in asking prosecutors to drop the case, which could influence their decision-making going forward. 

SPC’s board of directors, for its part, denies that political motivations had anything to do with its decision to report the incident to police. “This is not an issue of free speech or parody,” the board said in a statement. “[J]ust as you cannot take over the airwaves of a TV station or the website of a publication, you also cannot disrupt the distribution of a student newspaper.”

The board includes several prominent journalists and media executives, including longtime ESPN personality J.A. Adande, CNN legal director Steve Kiehl, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robert Samuels.

The war in Gaza has created a litany of challenges for Northwestern. President Michael Schill initially drew backlash when, shortly after October 7, he said the school would not take a position on the conflict. Schill issued a second statement just a day later, in which he condemned Hamas’s attacks as “barbaric acts” that are “clearly antithetical to Northwestern’s values.”

“If this was done about literally any other topic, there would not be this amount of blowback.”

Some faculty and students have loudly condemned the school, saying it’s showed a bias against pro-Palestinian activists. However, pro-Israel advocates claim Schill has failed to protect Jewish students. Alums for Campus Fairness dropped a cool $600,000 on ads attacking Schill, including a 30-second spot that ran during Northwestern’s bowl game. The ad alleged that student groups “resoundingly support” Hamas and called on the school to “take decisive action against individuals violating university policy.”

Evgeny Stolyarov, a Jewish student at Northwestern who supports a ceasefire in Gaza, said that the charges will have a “chilling effect on speech” related to the war. 

“If this was done about literally any other topic, there would not be this amount of blowback,” Stolyarov said. “It also, in some ways, reinvigorates the student body,” he added. “Hopefully this ends up bringing activists on campus together.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Connor Echols.

Ho Chi Minh City police have detained Nguyen Cong Khe and Nguyen Quang Thong while they investigate accusations they violated “regulations on management and use of State assets, causing losses and waste,” the ministry said. 

The two men, both former editors-in-chief for The Young People (Thanh Nien) Newspaper, were connected to the sale of a plot of land in Ho Chi Minh City where a complex of offices, luxury apartments and a commercial center was eventually built.

The Government’s Information Portal reported that in 2008, the newspaper planned to purchase a land lot in Ho Chi Minh City from Sai Gon Tobacco Factory to build the newspaper’s headquarters. 

But later, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Nguyen Cong Khe, signed a cooperation agreement between the Thanh Nien Media Corporation Joint Stock Co. and Vinpearl Tourism and Services Joint Stock Co. to build the high-rise complex.

Thanh Nien, one of the largest newspapers in Vietnam, holds 51% registered capital in the Thanh Nien Media Corporation Joint Stock Co. The land use right was the newspaper’s contribution to the high-rise project.

The two sides eventually agreed to terminate the contract, and the land lot was transferred to a private owner, which caused losses to the State, the ministry said on Tuesday. It was unclear when the agreement was terminated.

After Vietnam’s reunification in 1975, Nguyen Cong Khe worked at Ho Chi Minh City’s Youth Union and later worked at the Vietnam Women’s Newspaper before joining Thanh Nien. 

He was co-founder of the Thanh Nien newspaper and its editor-in-chief from 1988 to 2008, and is now the chairman of the Thanh Nien Media Corporation Joint Stock Co.’s board of directors. 

Nguyen Quang Thong was editor-in-chief of Thanh Nien from 2009 to 2021. 

The newspaper is managed by the Vietnam Youth Federation, which falls under the leadership of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.

In 2022, Vietnam Communist Party Secretary General’s Nguyen Phu Trong initiated his “blazing furnace” anti-corruption drive, which has proved popular with Vietnamese people tired of bribery and favoritism.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

The Sentinel Colorado newspaper is entitled to a recording of a closed Aurora City Council meeting that the council had earlier refused to release, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Dec. 7, 2023.

The city council held the closed meeting on March 14, 2022, to discuss whether to censure Council member Danielle Jurinsky for violating the city charter and the council’s rules of order, after Jurinsky criticized the city’s police chief on a talk radio show, calling her “trash,” the Sentinel reported. The council voted at the session not to censure Jurinsky.

The Sentinel reported that reporter Max Levy filed a records request for a recording of the session on March 18. The city clerk denied the request on March 22, claiming that because an outside law firm hired by the council was present to advise on the investigation into Jurinsky’s conduct, the session involved “privileged attorney/client communication” and was therefore “exempt from disclosure.”

The Sentinel, represented by Rachael Johnson of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, sued the clerk, arguing that the city violated Colorado’s Open Meetings Law by secretly voting on Jurinsky’s censure and without advance public notice about the nature of the session.

A district court reviewed the recording and ordered the city council to turn it over to the Sentinel, then reversed its decision at the request of the city council, ruling that the council had undone its violation of the Open Meetings Law by holding a regular meeting to discuss the censure on March 28.

The Sentinel appealed, and the Colorado Court of Appeals ultimately reversed the district court’s decision, agreeing with the newspaper that the city council had violated the Open Meetings Law and ordering the city council to release the recording.

The city can still decide to appeal the decision to the Colorado Supreme Court, the Sentinel reported.

“We’re pleased that the Court of Appeals saw this executive session for what it was: an unlawful meeting that prevented the community from observing the city council as it conducted the public’s business,” RCFP attorney Rachael Johnson said. “The Sentinel looks forward to the release of the recording.”

Levy and Sentinel publisher and editor Dave Perry did not respond to emailed 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.

A family-owned New England newspaper and its New Hampshire reporter Robert Blechl were subpoenaed on Sept. 25, 2023, over Blechl’s coverage of a civil suit involving a local activist and an interstate waste management company, according to court documents reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

The subpoenas, served to Blechl and the Caledonian Record, a daily covering northeastern Vermont and northern New Hampshire, were withdrawn on Oct. 6, the attorney representing them, Gregory Sullivan, told the Tracker.

According to an account by New Hampshire Public Radio, lawyers for Casella Waste Systems Inc. claimed that a May 18 article by Blechl misrepresented the settlement of its defamation suit against Jon Swan, who had been fighting a proposed landfill in New Hampshire. A review of court documents indicates the firm was seeking testimony and all of Blechl’s notes and communications with Swan related to the litigation and his May 18 report.

In a Sept. 29 affidavit describing his newsgathering, however, Blechl said that Swan had refused to speak to him about the litigation, so he had relied strictly on public records.

Sullivan told the Tracker that in his Sept. 29 motion to quash the subpoenas, he argued that New Hampshire law protects the news media from having to share sources and that neither Blechl nor the Record possessed any of the information that Casella was seeking.

“It is well-settled law that requiring reporters and publishers to respond to subpoenas and to appear for depositions has a chilling effect on the news gathering and publishing processes,” Sullivan wrote in his motion. “When, as in this case, no valid basis for the subpoenas exists, the First Amendment and … the New Hampshire Constitution mandate the quashing of the issued subpoenas.”

According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, while New Hampshire does not have a shield law, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has recognized a qualified constitutional privilege to protect the identity of confidential news sources.

Although the subpoenas were dropped after they were issued, Sullivan said the fact that they were instigated in the first place creates a chilling effect on the media.

“Anytime a news media organization, or one of its reporters, is subpoenaed, and it's not a necessary subpoena, it is an unfortunate situation, certainly for the paper,” he told the Tracker. “It's a significant amount of money for a small newspaper to incur based upon what we felt were frivolous attempts to get information.”

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

Journalist Bernardo Isaías Amaro Pérez, who publishes under Isaías Amaro, was shot in the arm Oct. 4, 2023, by a leader of a community organization in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, who had previously taken issue with his portrayal in Amaro’s publication.

Amaro, who was taken to a local hospital for treatment, is the publisher of the El Periodiquito, a Spanish-language newspaper that uses humor and caricature in its reporting, describing itself as “un periódico serio escrito en bromas” — a serious newspaper written in jokes.

In an interview with the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Amaro said that he began reporting on Víctor Pérez Balbuena in June 2023. His articles included claims that Pérez was using his position as president of La Casa Dominicana de Hazleton to exploit community members. Pérez denied these allegations and accused Amaro of defamation in a lengthy video.

Amaro later charged that, in response to the reporting, Pérez threatened him and local businesses distributing El Periodiquito with a gun; threatened to kill Amaro and a candidate for mayor while speaking on a radio show; and punctured Amaro’s car tires.

Pérez told law enforcement that he decided to confront Amaro over illustrations in El Periodiquito that featured him, his wife and his daughter, after Amaro attempted to distribute the newspaper where Pérez’s daughter works, according to WOLF-TV. Pérez told police that Amaro exited his vehicle wielding a knife, and that he shot at the publisher to stop him from approaching.

In his conversation with the Tracker, however, Amaro denied having any weapons and accused Pérez of cornering him at his art workshop and shooting at him multiple times while shouting that he would kill him. One of the rounds struck Amaro in the arm.

The Hazleton City Police Department said in a press release that Pérez fled the scene, but was arrested later that evening. He was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, including one with a deadly weapon, as well as reckless endangerment, according to court records reviewed by the Tracker.

Amaro said that he continues to be in fear for his life and has suffered sleeping problems since the shooting. He added that while he and his colleagues are working to publish the November edition of El Periodiquito, his injuries prevent him from drawing its characteristic illustrations.

Editor’s Note: Our interview with Isaías Amaro was translated from Spanish by Dagmar Thiel of Fundamedios, a partner of 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.

An Ohio man left a mailbox, lighter fluid and a note that said, “Bomb Don’t Touch,” outside the entrance to offices of The Chronicle-Telegram in the metro Cleveland area city of Elyria, Ohio, on Sept. 24, 2023, the newspaper reported.

Elyria police and firefighters, along with the Lorain County bomb squad, investigated the items and did not find any explosives.

The next day, local resident Robert S. Reynolds Jr. turned himself in at the Lorain County Sheriff's Office and admitted to leaving the items, the newspaper reported. He was charged by the Lorain County prosecutor with inducing panic, a felony, and taken into custody and held without bond.

A detective told the paper that Reynolds threatened the publication because he “was upset about coverage of his family earlier this year in the Chronicle.” Reynolds’ father owns a drive-through restaurant in the adjacent Elyria Township; the paper has reported on several complaints by the restaurant’s customers about racist remarks allegedly made by both Reynolds and his father.

“He was mad about our work,” the Chronicle-Telegram’s managing editor, Julie Wallace, told the Tracker via email. She added that the paper has not made any changes to safety protocols since the incident.

“Our building was remodeled and added onto in about 2008 and many safety precautions were added at that time,” Wallace said. “We are safe.”

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

On September 29, Christof Maletsky, CEO of state-owned New Era Publication Corporation, which publishes the daily newspaper, suspended Beukes until October 31 over an editorial critical of the judiciary, three journalists who saw the suspension letter told CPJ, on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.

In the suspension letter, Maletsky raised issues regarding non-compliance with New Era’s mandate and the overall professional conduct of the newspaper, according to the journalists. Maletsky barred Beukes from making public statements about his suspension and from entering New Era’s offices in Windhoek, the capital, those sources said.

“Johnathan Beukes’ suspension raises serious questions about the editorial independence of New Era, a taxpayer-funded publication,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Angela Quintal, in New York. “Beukes must be allowed to resume work immediately, and New Era’s management should allow the publication’s editors and journalists to exercise their editorial judgment and to keep the public informed without interference or censorship.”

On October 2, the newspaper published a front-page apology to the judiciary, saying it had “published stories and an editorial that fell way below the standards that we had set ourselves.” It referred to an editorial that “painted a picture of a non-transparent commission with regards to the selection of a judge for the Fishrot corruption trial.” The Fishrot case involves an international scandal over alleged corruption in the country’s fishing quota system that has ensnared former government ministers.

On September 29, New Era published an editorial, which CPJ reviewed, alleging the judiciary lacked transparency in its public communications over the appointment of judges and questioning why it never responded to demands for transparency in its decisions. 

John Nakuta, Namibia’s Media Ombudsman, whose office is mandated with hearing complaints against the media, said that he would review the content of the editorial but not the suspension decision, following a referral from the local press freedom organization Editors’ Forum of Namibia, The Namibian newspaper reported. 

On October 9, the Namibian Media Professionals Union led a peaceful protest at the New Era offices, calling for Beukes’ suspension to be lifted. 

Maletsky told CPJ via messaging app that the matter was an internal process that should be allowed to run its course.  

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

New Caledonia’s daily newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes is back six months after it closed — but with a big difference. It is online only and free, almost.

The return of the news outlet which had been an institution for half a century is welcomed in many quarters, but some local mayors would have liked to also see the news print version which traditionally carried special local community liftouts.

In March, the then owners, the Melchior Group, publishers of a chain of giveaway titles, announced the closure of the publication just months after halting the daily newspaper edition.

• READ MORE: Death of a newspaper – Inside Story
• Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes font leur retour en ligne
• Other New Caledonia media reports

This left the French overseas territory of New Caledonia (population 275,000) without a daily newspaper.

Readers were shocked when the website of the LNC also shut down abruptly on March 10 citing economics and the covid pandemic.

The Melchior Group owned printing presses, Les Editions du Caillou publishing house and the radio station NRJ-Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Reports surfaced in September that there were efforts to revive LNR as a digital-only publication with the need for a daily news source strengthened with New Caledonia on the threshold of major political changes with the Noumea Accord era drawing to a close and growing polarisation between anti- and pro-independence advocates.

According to the state-owned public broadcaster Nouvelle Calédonie 1 Première TV, the new chief editor Nicolas Lebreton — who had been part of the previous LNC team — pledged: “We will give Caledonians quality and free information.”

In an Inside Report article in May headlined “Death of a newspaper”, Nic Maclellan wrote: “It [LNC] made little pretence of impartiality during the armed conflict that divided New Caledonia in the mid-1980s, denigrating indigenous Kanak and editorialising in favour of the anti-independence party, Rally for New Caledonia in the Republic.”

• The revived LNC website, which began republishing on Monday, is here.

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

The Kansas Bureau of Investigations has launched a probe into the shocking police raid on the newsroom of the Marion County Record and the home of its publisher and co-owner, Eric Meyer. Last week, police seized computers, hard drives, servers and phones. Eric Meyer lived with his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was co-publisher of the family-owned newspaper. She died one day after the raids. We get an update from Sherman Smith, editor-in-chief of the nonprofit news outlet the Kansas Reflector, who was speaking to Joan Meyer on the phone as the raid was underway. “If the police in Marion County are allowed to get away with this, it becomes open season on journalists everywhere in Kansas,” says Smith. He discusses the reported dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who accused it of illegally obtaining information about a drunk driving incident, and how the paper had also been actively investigating Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody over sexual misconduct charges at a previous job in Kansas City. Details about that investigation were on a computer seized in the raid.

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

“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said in an article on the Marion Record’s website. “But we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.”

The police action raised concerns among press freedom groups — including CPJ – and national news organizations about the possible violation of federal law limiting local law enforcement’s ability to search newsrooms.

In a letter sent to Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody on Sunday, attorneys for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press noted that, “under any circumstances, the raid and seizure appeared overbroad and unduly intrusive.” The letter was signed by CPJ along with more than 30 media outlets.

The use of search warrants against journalists remains rare in the United States, according to statistics maintained by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a CPJ partner. In 2019, San Francisco law enforcement and federal agents seized unreported source material from the home office of freelance video reporter Brian Carmody, who eventually won a settlement against the FBI.

Police Chief Cody told The Associated Press via email that, while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.” The report said that Cody did not provide further information about what the wrongdoing was.

Marion County police and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emails and phone calls requesting comment.

To better understand the local context of the raid, CPJ spoke by phone with Sherman Smith, the editor in chief of the Kansas Reflector, a non-profit news website focused on Kansas politics. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Why do you think that law enforcement used this dragnet, and highly questionable, approach? Isn’t there a state shield law in Kansas?

We really need the court to release the affidavit that supports the search warrant to get more clarity about why they thought this was necessary.

The exception to Kansas’ state shield law is only in matters of national security, and I think we can all agree that this does not rise to that level.

From the police statement on their Facebook page, they believed that this conduct [of the Marion County Record] amounted to identity theft and justified the raid. And I think the media everywhere would simply say they are wrong. If there were other motivations [they] are not exactly clear to me right now.

This is a small town of about 2,000 people, and so there is rampant potential for conflicts of interest with everybody involved. There’s a lot of small-town drama that we haven’t all clearly unpacked yet. Hopefully the affidavit will shine a light on that.

What message does this send to journalists working in Kansas?

I think it has this chilling effect on journalists in Kansas. If law enforcement is able to get away with this– and they appear now to have the support of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation– that means there’s open season on journalists everywhere in Kansas,

Police and prosecutors always want to know, who’s giving us [journalists] information? What do we know? How did we know it? And the ability of police to obtain our unreported information, and to identify our sources would prohibit us from doing our job; it would stop the flow of information; it would be a direct attack on democracy. And that’s why we’re all very interested in what happens here.

How has this event affected your thinking about protecting the Kansas Reflector’s unreported source material?

We’re just starting to have those conversations. One of the things that the raid underscores here is the importance of being able to back up information on the cloud in a way that we can continue to access it, if personal devices are taken.

We have to take great precautions to protect our sources, how we store the information on our personal devices and anywhere else.

We are eager for the legal outcome here, and [are hopeful that] it will send a clear signal to law enforcement that this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.

The first time we spoke in January 2022, it was about how Kansas lawmakers barred media from the Senate floor, stymieing newsgathering. Do you think that kind of state-level activity creates a permission structure for local law enforcement to infringe upon freedom of the press?

It shows that we can’t take our freedoms for granted. We have to constantly fight to preserve them. Part of this is the need to educate people about what we do, and why we do it, and the value that we, as journalists, bring.

There is a general misunderstanding, or lack of understanding, by the public about who we [journalists] are and what we do. And so we have to do a better job of going out and telling our story and making it clear that we [journalists] are people who are in these communities that are gathering information, vetting that information, trying to hold powerful people accountable, and trying to get information out that somebody doesn’t want to have disclosed. That this kind of work is at the heart of so much of what we do.

When we see an action like what happened in Marion County. You know, it’s very clearly a direct attack on newspapers saying things that [powerful people] don’t want the public to hear. 

What are the key takeaways for people outside of Kansas to understand about what’s happening in Marion County right now?

It’s important to push back on the narrative that police have put out there, which is that no reporter is above the law. The issue is not about a reporter being above the law, everybody understands that nobody’s above the law.

The question is whether police can act outside the law in this way and get away with it. What would the repercussions be?

I think there’s a lot still to understand about, for instance, why a judge would sign this in the first place, and also understanding the qualifications for a magistrate judge in Kansas. In this case, [the judge] is a licensed attorney, but under Kansas law, it doesn’t have to be. And so I think, in Kansas, and perhaps elsewhere, we should be looking at, you know, who is qualified to sign off on a search warrant? And are they really doing more than simply rubber stamping them?

Usually when there are these kinds of attacks on journalists, law enforcement try to pick off somebody who is a freelancer, or maybe a contributor of some kind, but not a full time employee for a news organization. And this case is a bit of an outlier: it’s a raid on [an] entire news organization that’s been in operation since the post-Civil War era. 

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

“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said in an article on the Marion Record’s website. “But we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.”

The police action raised concerns among press freedom groups — including CPJ – and national news organizations about the possible violation of federal law limiting local law enforcement’s ability to search newsrooms.

In a letter sent to Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody on Sunday, attorneys for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press noted that, “under any circumstances, the raid and seizure appeared overbroad and unduly intrusive.” The letter was signed by CPJ along with more than 30 media outlets.

The use of search warrants against journalists remains rare in the United States, according to statistics maintained by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a CPJ partner. In 2019, San Francisco law enforcement and federal agents seized unreported source material from the home office of freelance video reporter Brian Carmody, who eventually won a settlement against the FBI.

Police Chief Cody told The Associated Press via email that, while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.” The report said that Cody did not provide further information about what the wrongdoing was.

Marion County police and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emails and phone calls requesting comment.

To better understand the local context of the raid, CPJ spoke by phone with Sherman Smith, the editor in chief of the Kansas Reflector, a non-profit news website focused on Kansas politics. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Why do you think that law enforcement used this dragnet, and highly questionable, approach? Isn’t there a state shield law in Kansas?

We really need the court to release the affidavit that supports the search warrant to get more clarity about why they thought this was necessary.

The exception to Kansas’ state shield law is only in matters of national security, and I think we can all agree that this does not rise to that level.

From the police statement on their Facebook page, they believed that this conduct [of the Marion County Record] amounted to identity theft and justified the raid. And I think the media everywhere would simply say they are wrong. If there were other motivations [they] are not exactly clear to me right now.

This is a small town of about 2,000 people, and so there is rampant potential for conflicts of interest with everybody involved. There’s a lot of small-town drama that we haven’t all clearly unpacked yet. Hopefully the affidavit will shine a light on that.

What message does this send to journalists working in Kansas?

I think it has this chilling effect on journalists in Kansas. If law enforcement is able to get away with this– and they appear now to have the support of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation– that means there’s open season on journalists everywhere in Kansas,

Police and prosecutors always want to know, who’s giving us [journalists] information? What do we know? How did we know it? And the ability of police to obtain our unreported information, and to identify our sources would prohibit us from doing our job; it would stop the flow of information; it would be a direct attack on democracy. And that’s why we’re all very interested in what happens here.

How has this event affected your thinking about protecting the Kansas Reflector’s unreported source material?

We’re just starting to have those conversations. One of the things that the raid underscores here is the importance of being able to back up information on the cloud in a way that we can continue to access it, if personal devices are taken.

We have to take great precautions to protect our sources, how we store the information on our personal devices and anywhere else.

We are eager for the legal outcome here, and [are hopeful that] it will send a clear signal to law enforcement that this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.

The first time we spoke in January 2022, it was about how Kansas lawmakers barred media from the Senate floor, stymieing newsgathering. Do you think that kind of state-level activity creates a permission structure for local law enforcement to infringe upon freedom of the press?

It shows that we can’t take our freedoms for granted. We have to constantly fight to preserve them. Part of this is the need to educate people about what we do, and why we do it, and the value that we, as journalists, bring.

There is a general misunderstanding, or lack of understanding, by the public about who we [journalists] are and what we do. And so we have to do a better job of going out and telling our story and making it clear that we [journalists] are people who are in these communities that are gathering information, vetting that information, trying to hold powerful people accountable, and trying to get information out that somebody doesn’t want to have disclosed. That this kind of work is at the heart of so much of what we do.

When we see an action like what happened in Marion County. You know, it’s very clearly a direct attack on newspapers saying things that [powerful people] don’t want the public to hear. 

What are the key takeaways for people outside of Kansas to understand about what’s happening in Marion County right now?

It’s important to push back on the narrative that police have put out there, which is that no reporter is above the law. The issue is not about a reporter being above the law, everybody understands that nobody’s above the law.

The question is whether police can act outside the law in this way and get away with it. What would the repercussions be?

I think there’s a lot still to understand about, for instance, why a judge would sign this in the first place, and also understanding the qualifications for a magistrate judge in Kansas. In this case, [the judge] is a licensed attorney, but under Kansas law, it doesn’t have to be. And so I think, in Kansas, and perhaps elsewhere, we should be looking at, you know, who is qualified to sign off on a search warrant? And are they really doing more than simply rubber stamping them?

Usually when there are these kinds of attacks on journalists, law enforcement try to pick off somebody who is a freelancer, or maybe a contributor of some kind, but not a full time employee for a news organization. And this case is a bit of an outlier: it’s a raid on [an] entire news organization that’s been in operation since the post-Civil War era. 

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

Local law enforcement executed a search warrant on the home of the owners and editor/publisher of the Marion County Record on Aug. 11, 2023. A simultaneous raid on the Kansas newspaper’s offices and equipment seizure jeopardized its ability to publish its upcoming weekly edition.

A copy of one of the search warrants, obtained by the Kansas Reflector, shows that the searches were undertaken as part of an investigation into alleged unlawful use of a computer and identity theft.

According to the Record, however, when a reporter requested a copy of the probable cause affidavit that summarizes the circumstances and evidence supporting the warrant, the district court issued a signed statement that there wasn’t one on file.

The Record reported that during an Aug. 7 city council meeting a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, had accused the newspaper of illegally obtaining information that she had a prior DUI conviction and had driven without a license, as well as supplying the information to Marion Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel.

In an article responding to the allegations, Editor and Publisher Eric Meyer said that a source had reached out with the information via Facebook, and had independently sent it to Herbel as well. The Record had verified the allegations through a public website but decided not to publish it, instead alerting the Marion Police Department that the source may have obtained the information illegally.

The morning of Aug. 11, Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar signed search warrants for the newsroom and Meyer’s home — where he lives with his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, a co-owner and correspondent for the Record. According to the Reflector, Marion Police Department officers and Marion County sheriff’s deputies executed the warrants within hours.

Joan Meyer passed away the following day, which the Record attributed in part to the stress of the raid. According to the Record and other sources, officers seized at least one computer and router from the home, as well as Eric Meyer’s cellphone.

Meyer, a veteran reporter from the Milwaukee Journal and former journalism professor at the University of Illinois, told The Kansas City Star following the raid that the Record had also been investigating Cody’s background and allegations of wrongdoing.

Cody, who did not immediately respond to a request for further information, told the Star that the lack of an article about the allegations shows they had no basis. “If it was true, they would’ve printed it,” Cody said.

On Aug. 14, a coalition of more than 30 press freedom organizations sent a letter to Cody condemning the raids and calling for the return of the newspaper’s equipment and reporting materials.

Freedom of the Press Foundation, which operates the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, called the raid “alarming.”

“Based on the reporting so far, the police raid of the Marion County Record on Friday appears to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, and basic human decency,” said Director of Advocacy Seth Stern. “Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.”

In a statement released on Facebook, Cody defended the legality of the raid and said that the Marion Police Department had received assistance from local and state investigators.

“It is true that in most cases, [the federal Privacy Protection Act] requires police to use subpoenas, rather than search warrants, to search the premises of journalists unless they themselves are suspects in the offense that is the subject of the search,” Cody wrote.

Meyer, who could not immediately be reached for comment, told the Record that while the paper’s attorneys are working to have the equipment returned, they also plan to file a federal lawsuit to ensure that such a raid never happens again.

“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said, “but we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.”

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

Reports said that a search warrant issued by a district court magistrate gave police authority to search for devices that were used to access the Kansas Department of Revenue records and records relating to a local restaurant owner.

“The raid by police on the Marion County Record is deeply disturbing,” said CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg. “Local news providers are essential in holding power to account — and they must be able to report freely, without fear of authorities’ overreach.”

U.S. federal law provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists, with requests for material usually going through a subpoena process.

 “This kind of action by police – which we sadly see with growing frequency worldwide – has a chilling effect on journalism and on democracy more broadly,” said Ginsberg. “The actions of the police and the judiciary in this case must be thoroughly and swiftly investigated.” 

A Marion County Record report said the raids contributed to the death of the paper’s co-owner, 98-year old Joan Meyer, whom it said collapsed and died on Saturday afternoon following the police search of her home.

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

A Solomon Islands news company was granted more than U.S.$130,000 by the Chinese government in exchange for agreeing to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intention to help develop” the Pacific island country, a funding document and email reviewed by RFA-affiliated news organization BenarNews shows.

The Solomon Islands has become a hotspot in Chinese-U.S. rivalry in the Pacific after the government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched the island country’s diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019.

The Solomons signed a security pact with China last year, alarming the United States and allies such as Australia, who fear it could pave the way for a Chinese military presence in the region.

The July 2022 funding proposal from the owners of the Solomon Star newspaper and its Paoa FM radio station to the Chinese embassy says a partnership will benefit Beijing by “promoting China as the most generous and trusted development partner in Solomon Islands.”

The pay-for-play arrangement was first reported Sunday by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which is funded by nonprofit foundations and government agencies. It says its Pacific reporting is funded by a no-strings attached U.S. government grant.  

The documents reviewed by BenarNews provide specific details of what was an open secret in some circles in the Solomon Islands about largesse from China’s embassy directed at the country’s media. The Solomon Star is one of two main newspapers in the Solomon Islands.

A July 17 email to several Solomon Star reporters from the paper’s senior journalist, Alfred Sasako, reprimanded the reporters for critical coverage of Sogavare’s official visit that month to Beijing.

“I write to place on record my profound disappointment about our front page article, titled China Trip Exposed,” Sasako said in the email reviewed by BenarNews.

“My further disappointment is the fact that such publicity makes it very difficult for me to deal with the Chinese Embassy on matters pertaining to Chinese Government support for [the] Solomon Star,” he said in the email that also extolled the benefits of China’s assistance to the Solomon Islands.

Sasako didn’t answer calls to his mobile phone.  

An editorial in the Solomon Star’s Tuesday edition defended its Chinese government funding and denied the Chinese embassy had reproached the newspaper for negative coverage or attempted to censor any reports.

“Yes, Solomon Star has nothing to hide,” said the article. “We have received funding support from China.” It claimed that other media organizations and journalists in the Solomon Islands were also receiving or seeking Chinese government funding.

The funding document said the Lamani family-owned Solomon Star approached the Chinese embassy in 2021 about financial assistance and the embassy agreed to provide about U.S.$41,000. 

The agreed funding was increased in June 2022 to about U.S.$133,000 based on a “new Project format” provided by the embassy, it said.

The media outlet’s finances were battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing it to sack half of its 100 staff, and an aging printing press meant it was sometimes unable to print its editions on time, according to the document. 

It expressed concern about delays in getting the funds for new printing equipment, which meant the “intent of our mutual partnership to inform, educate and entertain the people of Solomon Islands about China and its development marvels has suffered as well.” 

The paper prints 6,000 copies daily and estimated readership to be double that.

China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions. 

The Solomon Islands has been China’s highest profile success in building influence among Pacific island countries in recent years. 

Under Sogavare, the Solomon Islands has sought to benefit from the rivalry between China and the U.S. by securing more development assistance. The country, an archipelago about 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) northeast of Brisbane, Australia, struggles with crumbling roads, limited telecommunications and lack of basic healthcare.

Sogavare was feted by China’s leaders during his week-long visit to the country last month. He, in turn, heaped praise on his hosts including the “visionary” leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for BenarNews.

The issue at hand?  Allegations that a BBC presenter, said to be a “household name”, had paid £35,000 to a youth over a period of several years in return for sexually explicit photos.  The payments are said to have started when the young person in question was 17, leading to questions about whether a crime had taken place in the making, sharing or possessing of incident images.

The story made its debut in that king of rags, The Sun.  The howls followed.  As an article headline read: “Top BBC star who ‘paid child for sex pictures’ could be charged by cops and face years in prison, expert says.”

Within a few days, three issues started to thump and pulsate in the mediascape: whether the as yet unnamed presenter had solicited the images in the first place; whether the BBC had shown indifference in ignoring the complaints of that behaviour by a concerned family member; and whether the entire matter was, according to the lawyer representing the young person, “rubbish”.

The whole affair led to various episodes of sheer terror within the BBC itself, with Jeremy Vine, a colleague of the still unnamed presenter, demanding the identity be revealed in order to stop “yet more vitriol being thrown about at perfectly innocent colleagues at his”, placing the broadcaster “on its knees”.

The BBC found itself in a bizarre, masochistic bind of constantly covering itself, repeatedly running stories on the matter, including a report on July 11 that a second young individual had supposedly received abusive messages from the presenter via a dating app. Much of this was put down to journalistic integrity, not wishing to sweep such matters under the carpet.

More details emerged, even as the NATO summit in Vilnius continued.  The unnamed person was outed as BBC anchor Huw Edwards.  On July 12, it was revealed by his wife, Vicky Flind, that he had been hospitalised, suffering a mental breakdown – the handiwork, it was claimed, of The Sun’s lurid coverage.  But what also emerged was that the police had found no evidence or grounds to suggest that a crime had been committed.  The whole matter had been an issue of outing the private life of a public figure.

The excuses and apologias are thickening over the reasons for the coverage, fed by platoons of analysts, journalists, and pundits.  The BBC, reasons former president of CBS, Howard Stringer, is “always at the centre of the storm because of its power.”  It’s seen, like the monarchy, “as a symbol of continuity in a polarised society.”  Edwards, having himself broken the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, having led BBC coverage of King Charles III’s coronation, and having been an anchor of BBC News at Ten, “captured that sense of stability.”

A far better reading of this was that the BBC had fallen for the bait crudely laid out by Murdoch’s less savoury publications. In its self-policing zeal, the corporation had effectively done the bidding of a tabloid.  In doing so, former editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger suggested it had “lost its sense of proportion”.  The BBC, he observed, “gets into this mindset where it feels it must make up for sluggishness in handling issues by showing a clean pair of hands in covering them.” Such a mindset was well aided by the conduct of previous employees, such as the late comedian and predatory Jimmy Savile, whose conduct was only exposed after his death in 2011.

While its own management regarding complaints was hardly beyond rebuke – the BBC director-general, Tim Davie, did only involve himself in the matter after The Sun put additional allegations from the mother to the broadcaster on July 6 – the colossal canvas here is obvious.  This was a salvo fired by the Murdoch Empire.

Since the 1980s, Murdoch has done venomous battle with public broadcasters through his various press outlets, with the BBC being foremost among his targets.  In his own, revealing words, “A monopoly is a terrible thing – until you get one.”

In 1985, a sense of Murdoch’s attitude to the corporation was made clear in a January leader in The Times.  “The BBC,” it went, “should not survive this parliament in its present size, in its present form and with its present terms of reference intact.”  The implications were all there: cutting, trimming, slimming.

Again, the same view is to be found on July 17, 2015 in the paper’s leader titled “Slimming Auntie,” this time in response to the DCMS Green Paper on BBC Charter renewal.  The nub of the issue: the BBC’s boggling power, aided by public funds.  “The corporation is a broadcaster, not a publisher. It cannot expect a renewed charter to endorse a status quo that lets it trample on private sector rivals with public funds.  Technology has allowed the BBC to expand as if on steroids.”

Such opinions stem from an individual who presided over the now defunct News of the World, a central outlet in the phone-hacking scandal that eventually saw the demise of Britain’s most popular lavatory reading.  It catalysed the Leveson Inquiry, which managed to at least get a confession from Murdoch that the paper had been engaged in a cover-up over the extent of the phone hacking.

On May 1, 2012, a UK parliamentary select committee report found that the media mogul “exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications” and concluded that he was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”.  Such an exemplary steward for public interest journalism.

The Sun, for its part, denies ever suggesting the need for a criminal inquiry in the Edwards saga.  Just see its journalism as doing a public duty, aiding desperate parents.  “From the outset, we have reported a story about two very concerned and frustrated parents who made a complaint to the BBC about the behaviour of a presenter and payments from him that fuelled the drug habit of a young person.”  How very noble of them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

An article published by the pro-China Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao about the diplomatic row was unavailable to Hong Kong readers on Wednesday, sparking concerns that the authorities are starting to impose China's Great Firewall of internet censorship in the city, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent.

Clicking on a link to the June 21 article on the paper's website displayed in Google search results from Hong Kong yielded an error message that read: "Sorry, but that page doesn't exist."

However, other stories on the same website were accessible around the same time.

Further investigations from Hong Kong revealed that articles mentioning the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the recent arrests of Hong Kongers commemorating it in public were also unavailable on the paper's website.

The same articles were easily accessible from outside Hong Kong, however.

Network engineer and citizen journalist Zhou Shuguang, who currently lives in democratic Taiwan and uses the online handle “Zuola,” said the block had likely occurred within Hong Kong-based servers hosting the paper's content, rather than being imposed by the paper in Singapore.

"There are host servers in many different places around the world ... including in Hong Kong, Osaka, Japan, and the United States," Zhou said after investigating the page and its domain name, server and other technical information available on the paper's website. 

"The purpose is to allow readers faster access to content."

But the servers in Hong Kong will come under the control of the authorities there, who would likely apply provisions from a draconian national security law banning public criticism of the authorities.

"Servers in Hong Kong are governed by the Hong Kong National Security Law, or the Hong Kong government," Zhou said.

But he said it wasn't out of the question that the Lianhe Zaobao had also engaged in some form of self-censorship to gain access to readers in China.

Expansive national security law

Hong Kong data scientist and pro-democracy activist Wong Ho-wa agreed, saying that the paper appears to have made a decision to deny Hong Kong users access to certain content.

He said if the authorities had imposed an external block, then the entire website would be unavailable, as was the case in 2021 when they blocked access to the Hong Kong Chronicles website.

"If you can get onto the website, but some content is visible and other content isn't, most of that is controlled by the media organization or the official website," Wong told Radio Free Asia. "Naturally there are certain factors they consider."

"It's not about the server – it's a programming or regional issue," he said, citing regional variations in availability of content on streaming site Netflix as an example.

An employee of the Lianhe Zaobao who responded to a query about the issue from RFA on Wednesday said: "We are looking into it." However, no further response had been received by the time of writing.

An official who responded from the Hong Kong government's Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau said the issue didn't fall within its remit.

Hong Kong's national security legislation applies – in theory, at least – anywhere in the world.

The British government in February hit out at authorities in China and Hong Kong after they put pressure on the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch to take down its entire website, citing the law.

"You and Hong Kong Watch are obliged to remove the website ... without delay, and immediately cease engaging in any acts and activities in contravention of the national security law or any other laws of Hong Kong," the city's national security police wrote to the group's CEO Benedict Rogers.

"Should you fail to do so, further action will be instituted against you and Hong Kong Watch without further notice."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

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

A video of a woman being tortured and killed by a group of men and women, some of whom can be seen wearing Army-style camouflage attire, is viral on social media with the claim that the incident occurred recently in Manipur. Some claimed that the woman belonged to the Kuki community while others claimed that she was a Meitei. Social media users and Assamese newspaper Amar Asom related this incident to the ongoing violence in Manipur since May 3.

The woman in the video can be seen handcuffed while the group slaps her, kicks her and she pleads with them. The words spoken by them are incomprehensible. Towards the end of the video, one of the persons from the group blindfolds the woman and shoots her from behind. After she falls down to the ground he shoots her in the head multiple times.

Assamese newspaper Amar Asom carried a report on Page 1 on June 19 with a frame from the video. The caption said, “Cruel: A young woman shot point black on the main road”. The ‘turn’ on page 13 said that the video showed the barbarism rampant in Manipur due to the ongoing violence. It also said that the incident affirmed the claim by a retired Army officer that the situation in Manipur could be compared to that of Syria and Lebanon. (Archive 1, 2)

Twitter Blue user Mαɳιʂԋ Kυɱαɾ αԃʋσƈαƚҽ (@manishkumarttp) shared the video on June 19 with the above-mentioned claim. The caption in Hindi can be translated as: “#Manipur has gone out of control of Modi and Shah. Videos of armed civilians torturing a Kukhi Christian young girl and eventually shooting her to death are emerging. Manipur is burning and Modi is silent.” The tweet has now been deleted. (Archive)

Author Ashok Kumar Pandey quote tweeted the above tweet by @manishkumarttp with a Hindi caption which said, “All this is happening in one part of the country and the government and the media are busy trying to prove that everything is fine.” He later deleted the quote tweet. (Archive)

While Twitter user हम लोग We The People (@ajaychauhan41) who shares misinformation on a regular basis, shared the same video the same day claiming that the woman killed in the video was a Meitei Hindu woman. (Archive)

Several other users, including @niayayakkural, @samwham6, shared the video on social media. The video is also viral on WhatsApp. Alt News received multiple requests to fact-check the viral video.

Fact Check

After breaking down the video into keyframes, we ran a reverse image search on a few of them. This led us to several news reports related to the the viral video. A news report by Mizzima, a Burmese multimedia news organisation from December 8, 2022 carried a screengrab from the video and the headline said: “NLD investigating execution of alleged junta informer in Sagaing’s Tamu Township”. NLD stands for the National League for Democracy, a de-registered liberal democratic political party in Myanmar founded by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The report mentioned that the woman’s name was Aye Mar Tun (24), a resident of Sagaing Region’s Tamu Township. She was allegedly killed in June 2022, by the members of People’s Defence Force (PDF) on suspicion of being an informant, which led to the arrest of several PDF members. It was also mentioned that the government said that severe penalties would be imposed on PDF members if they were found guilty of killing the woman.

We came across several other news reports that reported the same. Reporting on the matter, Myanmar Now mentioned that the people in military attire seen in the video asked the woman to confess that she was an informant. When she kept denying, she was killed by one of the members of the group present at the scene.

Therefore, the video is not from Manipur and the woman in the video is not from the Kuki or the Meitei community. The incident occurred last year in Myanmar.

The post Manipur woman shot dead on road? Viral video is actually from Myanmar; misreport by Assam newspaper appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

The Moundville Times reported that an unknown individual fired a bullet through a window of the newspaper’s office in Moundville, Alabama, in early May 2023. The office was empty at the time and no one was injured.

The Times reported that the shooting happened sometime between May 3 and May 7. On May 7, Editor Travis Vaughn noticed a piece of molding had fallen off the wall. Then, three days later, when moving a plant on the windowsill, he discovered damage to the blinds and a hole in the window.

Police later recovered the bullet from an interior wall and are investigating the incident, which would be a felony, the paper reported.

Vaughn told WBRC-TV that he is worried about whether it was a random accident or if someone targeted the newsroom.

“It's very scary. It's very disturbing to think about what could have been,” Vaughn said. “You try to do a good job and you try to be fair, but you have to cover the news. So you wonder: Could it be somebody retaliatory, or a message of, ‘Hey, back off.’”

Vaughn did not respond to requests for additional comment.

Moundville Police Chief Toby Banks told the weekly newspaper that shootings in downtown Moundville are rare.

“Since I’ve been chief here, you can count on one hand the number of incidents even remotely like this in downtown Moundville,” Banks said. “We’re hoping no one was targeting the Moundville Times and that it was just someone goofing off or someone made it accidentally happen.”

Publisher Tommy McGraw wrote in an op-ed for the newspaper on May 17 that both the Times and its sister paper, the Sumter County Record Journal, have received numerous threats over the more than 30 years they’ve been publishing.

“That is the sad and frightening thing about being in the newspaper business, sometimes fearing for your life for doing the right thing, exposing corruption, and printing the truth,” McGraw wrote.

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

A California judge has ordered The Bakersfield Californian to comply with a subpoena seeking unpublished materials from a jailhouse interview conducted by one of the newspaper’s reporters. The newspaper and its reporter, Ishani Desai, were instructed on May 10, 2023, to turn over the materials by May 17, but they have refused and now face possible contempt charges.

The dispute began after Desai conducted a jailhouse interview in February with Sebastian Parra. Parra was a key witness in the murder indictment of another inmate, Robert Pernell Roberts, but was subsequently indicted as a co-defendant.

The Californian published Desai's article about Parra on Feb. 26. On March 3, the public defender representing Roberts, Alexandria Blythe, subpoenaed the newspaper seeking any audio or video recordings of the interview or, if no recording exists, a copy of Desai’s notes and interview questions. The Tracker has documented that subpoena here.

While the first subpoena was quashed on April 4, a nearly identical subpoena was issued the same day and served to The Californian on April 10.

An attorney representing the newspaper, Thomas Burke, filed a motion to quash the second subpoena on April 25, according to court filings reviewed by the Tracker.

“In a civil case, the protections for these materials would be absolute; but even criminal defendants like Roberts are not entitled to subject newsgatherers to compelled discovery unless strict conditions are met,” Burke wrote. “Defendant Roberts still cannot begin to satisfy those conditions — he’s simply trying for a second time.”

During a hearing before Kern County Superior Court Judge Elizabet Rodriguez on May 10, Blythe argued that because Parra’s statements to The Californian differed from his sworn testimony it was possible he made other claims that would support Roberts’ defense, according to a transcript reviewed by the Tracker.

Kern County Superior Court Judge Elizabet Rodriguez sided with Blythe during the hearing, ruling that unlike with the first subpoena, Blythe had successfully shown that the documents would assist in Roberts’ defense.

“Clearly Ms. Blythe does not know what’s in the reporter’s notes since they have not been disclosed,” Rodriguez said, according to the hearing transcript. “There is no requirement that she in fact prove that the notes will be helpful. The requirement is just to make a showing that the information will materially assist his defense.”

Rodriguez ordered the newspaper and Desai to turn over the interview questions and notes by 5 p.m. local time on May 17. According to the transcript, Blythe also intends to call Desai as a witness at the trial, which is scheduled to begin on May 24.

Burke told the Tracker that one of the most alarming aspects was how the judge's decision might encourage similar demands for reporters' notes in future.

“She announced it in a courtroom where I counted at least five prominent criminal defense attorneys who were really listening, as she said how frankly easy it is for a criminal defendant to get notes from a reporter who interviews them,” Burke said. “That’s not a good development. Absent a reversal by the Court of Appeals, that’s like a blueprint for every criminal defendant that the newspaper interviews.”

The Californian filed an emergency appeal on May 15 requesting a stay of the order compelling Desai to turn over her notes. The Court of Appeals determined that the request was premature, and that a newsperson must be held in contempt before the appellate court can intercede.

Burke confirmed to the Tracker that The Californian would not turn over the materials, and Desai said she and the newspaper plan to continue fighting the order.

“We are doing this because we don’t believe that my notes, my unpublished materials, should be seized by any government agency in order for them to use them for their purposes,” Desai said. “A news organization is independent, we don’t help the government do its job.”

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

“The decision of the elPeriódico newspaper to cease publication is the result of the President Alejandro Giammattei administration’s judicial and financial harassment of the outlet’s founder, José Rubén Zamora, and its journalists for their critical reporting on corruption,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “The international community should send a clear message ahead of Guatemala’s upcoming presidential elections by demanding that Giammattei immediately release Zamora.”  

Zamora, who has been in pre-trial detention since July 29, 2022, went to trial on May 2, 2023, on money laundering charges. Zamora and eight elPeriódico journalists and columnists are also under investigation for obstruction of justice based on their coverage of the legal proceedings. In April, a judge ordered the arrest of three lawyers defending Zamora.   

ElPeriódico ended its print edition due to “political and economic pressure” in December 2022, but had continued to publish on its website.

“The closure of elPeriódico after 26 years of doing great journalism is devastating. The simple fact of doing journalism–investigating and denouncing corruption–must not be criminalized,” José Zamora, son of José Rubén Zamora, told CPJ by email. “One hundred [and] sixty-six exceptional professionals have lost their jobs, and 17 million citizens have lost an important source of information to them.”

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

In an announcement in a column on its A14 page of Thursday’s newspaper, the Chinese-language Ming Pao said Zunzi's cartoon strip would be terminated, with just two more editions left to run.

"We would like to thank Zunzi for witnessing the changes of the past 40 years alongside us," it said, adding that the decision had been reached through an "agreement" with the cartoonist.

The newspaper union, the Ming Pao Staff Association, issued a statement on Thursday expressing "regret and a sense of helplessness" over the axing of Zunzi, as well as thanking him for his hard work over the years, including "upholding social justice and kindness."

Huang Jijun, 68, who has published work relating to the June 4, 1989, bloodshed under the pen-name Zunzi and had cartoons in every edition of the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper for 26 years, declined to comment on the reason for the move when contacted by Radio Free Asia on Thursday, saying he needed to focus on his last two comic strips.

Asked why his cartoon had been shut down, he said only: "The comic ceased publication as the result of an agreement with Ming Pao, and it's inappropriate for me to speak on behalf of the Ming Pao."

Humor as a tool

The Ming Pao's announcement came a day after the government took aim at a recent Zunzi comic strip satirizing recent changes to electoral rules for the city's District Council, which mean the government will directly appoint members of district anti-crime and fire protection committees, who are currently directly elected by local people.

"The Ming Pao today (May 9) published a cartoon strip by Zunzi that distorts and discredits the principle of appointment of members of the District Fight Crime Committee and District Fire Protection Committee by the Government," the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau said in a statement on its Facebook page.

"Recently, the Ming Pao has made some misleading remarks about the government's proposed plans for improving district governance ... a political act that tramples on ethics," it said.

Hong Kong security czar Chris Tang hit out at Zunzi last month for making fun of a police request for better surveillance equipment.

Zunzi has also taken aim at the Hong Kong government's global talent recruitment drive, quipping that "priority will be given to applicants who are accepting of harsh governance, prompting the police force to write an angry letter to the Ming Pao, while a strip depicting political censorship was criticized by cultural officials as "wantonly smearing" the authorities.

Arrests and prosecution under the national security law have followed similar public denunciations by officials or Chinese Communist Party-backed media organizations in a number of past cases.

Mak declined to comment on the axing of Zunzi when asked about it by journalists on Thursday.

"The government will humbly listen to different opinions, but we must clarify false statements or things that are inconsistent with the facts, so the public can know the truth," she said.

Crackdown on dissent

The move highlights the dwindling number of independent media organizations in Hong Kong under an ongoing crackdown on dissent.

"There are fewer and fewer free newspapers in Hong Kong, but it's not necessarily total silence," he said. "The times are changing, and the platforms that speak out are also changing."

Huang, who has previously said he plans to remain in Hong Kong, told RFA Cantonese he could "take a trip" out of town. 

Ronson Chan, former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, which has also been denounced by pro-China newspapers, said the government's level of tolerance "appears to have changed."

"In the past you could say whatever you liked, and draw whatever you liked," he said. "There was once a variety of different voices in Hong Kong."

"Now, you can cross [invisible] red lines for no reason, and the risks [of operating here] are off the scale."

He said ongoing government censorship has led to a climate of fear.

"If people see that others are less willing to speak out, they will be less willing, and it will be a vicious circle," Chan said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Yuk Yue for RFA Cantonese.

“By detaining Infa-Kurier’s journalists, raiding the outlet’s office, and labeling its content ‘extremist,’ Belarusian authorities have effectively driven one of the country’s last independent regional outlets out of operation,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Belarusian authorities should cease using the country’s shameful extremism legislation to suppress independent reporting.”

On March 15, authorities in the central city of Slutsk searched Infa-Kurier’s editorial office, seized technical equipment, and detained four of its journalists. Two of them were released after signing a nondisclosure agreement, while a court ordered chief editor Syarhei Stankevich and deputy editor Aleh Rubchenya to be arrested for 15 days for allegedly disobeying police. Both were released on March 30.

On March 28, a court in the capital, Minsk, labeled six Infa-Kurier articles published in 2020 as “extremist,” according to reports and Zhanna Avdeeva, the publishing editor of Infa-Kurier’s print edition, who communicated with CPJ via messaging app. On April 5, the same court declared all of Infa-Kurier’s content “extremist,” according to news reports and the Belarusian Association of Journalists, an advocacy and trade group operating from exile.

On April 8, Infa-Kurier announced in a statement, which CPJ reviewed, that it was stopping all print and online operations. “We are not ashamed of the 23 (+) years we have lived! Sorry for such a frustrating and unpredictable ending! We didn’t choose it,” the statement said.

Avdeeva told CPJ that the “extremist” label was the “final blow” to the outlet, as they had no intention of stopping their work before the label. Infa-Kurier was not told who initiated the two extremism trials, Avdeeva said, adding, “We were not invited to the court. We don’t know who the judge was; we don’t know who the linguist who identified ‘extremism’ in our materials was.”

“This is a political order,” Avdeeva told CPJ, adding that Infa-Kurier is facing the same degree of rejection by the authorities and has a similar level of influence as leading independent news website Tut.by, albeit “on a local scale.”

Founded in 2001, Infa-Kurier is a newspaper covering history and news in Slutsk, according to the statement. “[Infa-]‘Kurier’ was the region’s brand. It was trusted; it was read [and] respected, even by officials,” Avdeeva told CPJ.

CPJ emailed the Partyzanski District Court of Minsk for comment but did not receive any reply.

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

In the early morning of Wednesday, March 29, authorities arrested Prothom Alo correspondent Shamsuzzaman Shams under the Digital Security Act for allegedly spreading “false news” in a March 26 article.

On Wednesday evening, authorities in the capital city of Dhaka opened another DSA investigation into Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman, Shams, an unnamed camera operator at the outlet, and other unidentified people, according to news reports, Prothom Alo executive editor Sajjad Sharif, who spoke to CPJ by phone, and a copy of the first information report launching that investigation, dated March 29 at 11:10 p.m., which CPJ reviewed.

Also on Wednesday, Mithun Biswas, a lawyer based in southern city of Chittagong, issued a legal notice to Rahman, Sharif, and Shams demanding they unconditionally and publicly apologize for that March 26 article within seven days or face legal action, according to news reports and a copy of the notice reviewed by CPJ.

On Thursday morning, Shams appeared before a Dhaka court and was denied bail, according to news reports. Authorities had not arrested Rahman or the camera operator as of Thursday evening, Sharif said.

“Bangladesh authorities’ harassment of staff members with the Prothom Alo newspaper and the arrest of correspondent Shamsuzzaman Shams under the draconian Digital Security Act are clear attempts to quash critical reporting,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Authorities must immediately release Shams and cease abusing the legal process against journalists, which produces a chilling effect on the media.”

That March 26 article and a post on Facebook briefly used a child’s photo to accompany a quote from an adult laborer about price hikes; the outlet swiftly removed the Facebook post and re-published the article on its website and Facebook page with a correction.

The investigation opened Wednesday night by the Ramna police station in Dhaka was sparked by a complaint by Abdul Malek, a lawyer who said the accused had used “print, online and electronic media to tarnish the image and reputation of the state” and displayed that erroneous image. When reached by phone, Malek told CPJ that he stood by the allegations in the complaint, and the journalists should be punished for their work “against the independence” of the country.

Police are investigating the accused under three sections of the Digital Security Act pertaining to the transmission or publication of offensive, false, or threatening information; publication or transmission of information that deteriorates law and order; and abetment, according to the first information report.

The first two offenses can carry a prison sentence of three to seven years and fines of 300,000 taka to 500,000 taka (US$2,797 to $4,662), according to the law, which says abetment can carry the same punishment as committing an offense itself.

CPJ called and messaged Abu Ansar, the investigating officer in the case, and Roy Niyati, a Dhaka metropolitan police spokesperson, for comment, but did not receive any replies.

CPJ called the phone number listed for Biswas in his legal notice, but received an error message. CPJ was unable to immediately find other contact information for him.

In February, CPJ joined civil society organizations in a letter calling on Bangladesh to cease the judicial harassment of Prothom Alo special correspondent Rozina Islam, who faces an ongoing investigation under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act and the penal code in apparent retaliation for reporting on alleged corruption in the public health sector at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

In February, authorities indicted 10 Kurdish journalists and accused them of membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

On March 16, authorities in the southern city of Mersin detained Bayram, who works in distribution for the pro-Kurdish daily newspaper Yeni Yaşam, as part of the investigation into those journalists, according to multiple news reports and court documents reviewed by CPJ.

On March 21, the First Court of Penal Peace in Ankara, the capital, formally arrested Bayram and also accused him of being a member of the PKK, according to those sources. He is being held in Ankara’s Sincan Prison.

“Turkish authorities should immediately release Yeni Yaşam employee Hamdullah Bayram and all journalists who are being held behind bars on trumped-up terrorism allegations,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Authorities must stop retaliating against journalists and other media outlet employees over outlets’ coverage.”

Authorities questioned Bayram about times he retweeted his employer on Twitter as well as books, magazines, and other printed material confiscated from houses in Mersin and in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, according to those court documents, which said that Bayram denied the accusations and did not have a home in Mersin.

Authorities also alleged that Bayram had incriminating material on his cell phone, which he blamed on the fact that he bought the phone second-hand and it still contained data from its previous owner, those documents said. He said he was unfamiliar with people whom authorities accused him of contacting via WhatsApp, and said he did not use that program.

CPJ emailed the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office for comment but did not immediately receive any response.

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

New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, has folded after the commercial court accepted the publishing company’s request for its liquidation.

The court had deferred its decision by a day after an injunction by the public prosecutor who wanted to see if there was still a possibility to rescue Les Nouvelles.

The prosecutor had argued that it was worth preserving Les Nouvelles as a tool of pluralism and freedom of expression.

However, there has been no interest in taking over the loss making enterprise.

The paper was launched in 1971 and owned by the French Hersant group until 2013 when it was sold to New Caledonia’s Melchior Group.

Faced with losses, the newspaper became an online only publication at the end of last year but has now closed, with more than 100 people losing their jobs.

The last edition of Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes appeared last Thursday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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

On March 3, two uniformed carabinieri officers arrived at the newsroom of independent private daily newspaper Domani in Rome, according to media reports, a statement by the newspaper, and Domani journalist Francesca de Benedetti, who is familiar with the case and spoke to CPJ via phone and messaging app.

The officers presented reporters Giovanni Tizian and Nello Trocchia with an order from the Rome prosecutor’s office to seize the “hard copy” of a January 26 article they had published, saying it was the subject of a criminal defamation complaint by Claudio Durigon, a government official, according to those sources. The journalists printed out that article, which was published online and in print, and gave it to the officers, who then left the scene.

If charged and convicted of criminal defamation, the journalists face up to six years in prison under the Italian Press Law of 1948.

“Italian authorities should ensure that the Domani newspaper and its staff do not face harassment or intimidation as part of a criminal defamation suit; as a democracy, Italy should not even have criminal defamation statutes in its books,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Government officials must expect and endure criticism, and authorities should not allow the police to be used as a bludgeon against the press.”

The January 26 article alleged that Durigon, a senator and undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, had ties to organized crime while previously serving as a member of parliament and the secretary of a trade union.

In its statement, Domani’s editorial team said Tizian and Trocchia had reached out to Durigon during their reporting, but he refused to answer questions and instead threatened them with lawsuits. Durigon has announced two additional criminal defamation complaints against the newspaper, according to that statement and de Benedetti, who said the outlet had only been formally notified about one of them.

In 2021, Italy’s constitutional court ruled that Article 13 of the 1948 press law, which criminalizes defamation, was unconstitutional; it is currently under review by the country’s Senate, according to media reports.

CPJ emailed the Rome prosecutor’s office, the Roman police, and Durigon’s office for comment, but did not receive any replies.

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

“By labeling the Belarusian Association of Journalists as ‘extremist,’ Belarusian authorities are doing nothing but lashing out at an organization that has already been forced from the country in retaliation for its fight for journalists’ rights,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must stop obstructing BAJ and the Brestskaya Gazeta newspaper’s work and cease using extremism legislation to silence independent journalism.”

The KGB decisions on both cases were issued February 28 and made public this week, according to those reports and a statement BAJ deputy head Barys Haretski sent to CPJ. Anyone charged with creating or participating in a group that has been labeled as extremist faces up to 10 years in prison, according to the Belarusian Criminal code.

“Under the current conditions, no one in Belarus should publicly call themselves a BAJ representative,” Haretski told the Poland-based outlet Belsat TV.

Haretski’s statement said that the group will continue its work from exile and considered the decision “absurd” and “a new manifestation of the authorities’ pressure on Belarusian media outlets and journalists.” Founded in 1995, the association documents press freedom violations, provides support for journalists in trouble, and has more than 1,300 members. Belarusian authorities have repeatedly obstructed BAJ’s work, raided its offices, and in 2021 dissolved the organization.

In July 2021, authorities raided Brestskaya Gazeta’s office. When authorities declared that its website featured extremist content in November 2021, the outlet said it considered its persecution “politically motivated” and would continue its work. Brestskaya Gazeta’s website is continuing to publish as of Tuesday.

CPJ emailed the KGB for comment but did not receive any replies.

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

Dainik Dinkal suspended operations on February 20 after the Bangladesh Press Council, a quasi-judicial, government-funded body headed by a former High Court judge, rejected its appeal against a government shutdown order, Biswas told CPJ.

“The shutdown of Dainik Dinkal is a blatant attack on media freedom ahead of Bangladesh’s January 2024 national election,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Closing a newspaper violates the democratic principles purportedly espoused by the Awami League-led government, and we call on the Bangladesh Press Council to review its order and uphold the free flow of information.”  

The district administration in the capital, Dhaka, accused Dainik Dinkal on December 26 of violating local law on grounds that its publisher was a convicted criminal, but the publisher named in the order resigned the post in 2016, Biswas said.

Biswas told CPJ that the newspaper had filed documentation before the Press Council’s ruling that Tarique Rahman, acting chair of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was no longer Dainik Dinkal’s publisher. Rahman has been convicted of several criminal and money laundering charges, and lives overseas.  

Dainik Dinkal covers BNP activities and has frequently criticized the ruling Awami League party, including the arrests of BNP politicians and supporters in what rights groups have characterized as a crackdown ahead of elections next year. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said the polls will be “fair and free.”

CPJ emailed Mohammad Mominur Rahman, the Dhaka deputy commissioner who filed the government order, and Mohammed Nizamul Huq Nasim, head of the Bangladesh Press Council and its three-member appeal board, but did not receive any replies.

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

RNZ Mediawatch

New Zealand’s media were in emergency mode yet again this week, offering hours of extra coverage on air, online and in print.

Outlets in the hardest-hit places reported the basics — even without access to basics like power, communications and even premises.

What will Gabrielle’s legacy be for media’s role in reporting disasters and national resilience?

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Before and after Gabrielle
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Death toll rises to 11, Civil Defence targets isolated communities
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Pasifika songs of gratitude ring out across Hawke’s Bay
• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Susana Suisuiki reports
  
• Cyclone Gabrielle death toll rises to 9, thousands uncontactable and landslide risk in Auckland
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Where to donate
• Follow RNZ live updates

“Keep listening to the radio. You guys have done a great job updating people and it’s very much appreciated,” the Civil Defence Minister Keiran McAnulty told Newstalk ZB’s last Sunday afternoon as Gabrielle was just beginning to wreak havoc.

Barely two weeks earlier, sudden and catastrophic flooding in and near Auckland caught the media off-guard, but some commentators claimed the heavy warnings about Gabrielle were oppressively ominous — and risked “crying wolf”.

Gabrielle ended up as a national emergency and sparked non-stop rolling news coverage. There were few flat spots on TV and radio, and live online reporting around the clock also give a comprehensive picture — and pictures — of what was going on.

It stretched newsrooms to their limits, but news reporters’ work was skillfully and selectively supplemented with a steady stream of vivid eyewitness accounts.

Forestry slash flood
Tolaga Bay farmer Bridget Parker’s description on RNZ Nine to Noon of yet another inundation at her place with added forestry slash was among the most confronting (and sweary).

Checkpoint’s emotional interview on Wednesday with a couple that owned a house in which a friend “disappeared under water” was compelling — but also chilling.

RNZ’s Kate Green arrived in Gisborne on Monday with the only means of communicating that worked — a satellite phone.

“You can’t even dial 111. Everything that can break is broken,” she told RNZ Morning Report listeners, quoting the local mayor.

RNZ’s Māni Dunlop, who managed to fly in on Tuesday, told listeners that from the air the East Coast looked “buggered”.

Gisborne is a city and Tairawhiti a region not well covered at the best of times by New Zealand’s national media, which have no bureaux there. It is a bit of an irony that in the worst of times, it was so hard to get the word out.

But the locally-owned Gisborne Herald stepped up, somehow printing editions every day distributed free to 22,000 homes — with the help of NZDF boots n the ground on some days.

Proud news day
“I’m proud to be working on this paper today,” reported Murray Robertson said, signing off an eye-opening video of scenes of the stricken city posted online once power came back and a fresh Starlink unit kicked in.

On Wednesday, ZB’s Mike Hosking pleaded on air for diesel to keep their signal up in Hawke’s Bay, while the editor of Hawke’s Bay Today Chris Hyde — only months into his job — found himself literally powerless to publish when the rivers rose, cutting the electricity and cutting him off from many of his staff.

“The first day I was in a black hole. In a big news event, the phones ring hot. This was the biggest news event in Hawke’s Bay since the Napier earthquake  . . . and my phone wasn’t ringing at all,” he told Mediawatch.

Hyde, just 32 years old, was a student in Christchurch when The Press stunned citizens by publishing a paper the morning after the deadly 2011 quake.

Hyde said NZME chief editor Shayne Currie and The New Zealand Herald’s Murray Kirkness were instrumental in putting the Auckland HQs resources into getting NZME’s upper North Island dailies promptly back in print and available for free.

“Just keep supporting local news, because in moments like this, it really does matter,” Chris Hyde told Mediawatch.

On Wednesday, Hyde had the odd experience of seeing Tuesday’s edition of the paper on the AM show on TV before he had even seen it himself.

Cut-off news focus
On Wednesday, RNZ switched to focus on news for areas cut off or without power — or both — where people were depending on the radio. RNZ’s live online updates went “text-only” because those who could get online might only have the bandwidth for the basics.

Day of ‘danger’

This is the first copy of Tuesday’s @hawkesbaytoday that I’ve seen. It never made it to my home, to our offices, to our subscribers. When I wrote that headline had some idea of what was coming, and yet we had no idea. pic.twitter.com/57PmhoeyYr

— Chris Hyde (@chrishydejourno) February 16, 2023

“Thank God for news media in a storm,” was former Herald editor Gavin Ellis in his column The Knightly Views.

He was among the critics of media coverage of Auckland’s floods a fortnight earlier.

Back then he said social media and online outlets had trumped traditional news media in quickly conveying the scale and the scope of the flooding.

This time social media also hosted startling scenes and sounds reporters couldn’t capture — like rural road bridges bending then buckling.

But Gavin Ellis said earlier this week he couldn’t get a clearer picture of Gabrielle’s impact without mainstream media.

“Those two episodes where chalk and cheese. Coverage of Cyclone Gabrielle by all media was excellent, both in warning people about what was to come – although that wasn’t universal – and then talking people through it and into the aftermath, And what an aftermath it’s been,” he told Mediawatch.

“This is precisely why we need news media. They draw together an overwhelming range of sources and condense information into a readily absorbed format. Then they keep updating and adding to the picture.” he wrote.

Retro but robust radio

“It’s even more pressing if you haven’t got electricity, and you haven’t got those online links. That was when radio really came into its own,” said Ellis.

“Organisations like the BBC,and the ABC (Australia) are talking about a fully-digital future and moving away from linear broadcasting. What happens to radio in those circumstances if you haven’t got power? If you’re sitting on your rooftop surrounded by water, you can still have a radio on, he said.

“We need to have a conversation about the future of media in this country and the requirements in times of urgency need to be looked at,” Ellis told Mediawatch.

RNZ’s head of news Richard Sutherland’s had the same thoughts.

“It has certainly been a reminder to generations who have not been brought up with transistor radios they are important to have in a disaster. This will also sharpen the minds of people on just how important ‘legacy’ platforms like AM transmission are in civil defence emergencies like the one we’ve had,” he said.

“With the Tonga volcano, Tonga was cut off from the internet. and the only thing getting through was shortwave radio. In the 2020s, we are talking about something that’s been around since the early 1900s still doing the mahi. In this country, we are going to need to think very carefully about how we provide the belt and braces of broadcasting infrastructure,” he told Mediawatch.

“Everyone was super-aware of the way that the Auckland flooding late last month played out — and no one wanted to repeat that,” said Sutherland, formerly a TV news executive at Newshub, TV3, TVNZ and Sky News.

“Initially the view was this is going to be bad news for Auckland because Auckland, already very badly damaged and waterlogged. But as it turned out, of course, it ended up being Northland, Coromandel, Hawke’s Bay have been those areas that caught the worst of it,” Sutherland told Mediawatch.

News contraction
“Over the years, and for a number of reasons, a lot of them financial, all news organisations have contracted. And you contract to your home city or a big metropolitan area, because that’s where the population is, and that’s where the bulk of your audience is,” he said.

“But this cyclone has reminded us all as a nation, that it’s really important to have reporters in the regions, to have strong infrastructure in the regions. I would argue that RNZ is a key piece of infrastructure,” he said.

“This incident has shown us that with the increasing impact of climate change, news organisations, particularly public service lifeline utility organisations like RNZ, are going to have to have a look at our geographic coverage, as well as our general coverage based on population,” he said

“We are already drawing up plans for have extra boots on the ground permanently  . . but also we need to think where are the regions that we need to have more people in so that we can respond faster to these sorts of things,” he said.

“We are at a moment where we could do something a bit more formal around building a more robust media infrastructure . . . for the whole country. I would be very, very keen for the industry to get together to make sure that the whole country can benefit from the combined resources that we have.

“Again, everything comes down to money. But if the need is there, the money will be found,” he said.

Now that the government’s planned new public media entity is off the table, it will be interesting to see if those holding the public purse strings see the need for news in the same way.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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

In an in-depth interview with longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader, we look at Republican-led efforts to gut Medicare and Social Security amid debt limit talks, backed by some Democrats, and other proposed cuts to the social safety net, as well as corporate greed and watchdog journalism. Nader also discusses his newly launched newspaper, the Capitol Hill Citizen. “It’s all about Congress, and Congress has to be captured by the people instead of being controlled by 1,500 corporations who swarm the corridors,” says Nader.

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

The largest daily newspaper in Moderna's home state of Massachusetts published an editorial on Sunday urging the Biden administration to "play hardball" with the pharmaceutical giant over its plan to raise the price of its Covid-19 vaccine by up to 4,000% over the cost of production, a proposal that has drawn backlash from vaccine equity campaigners and members of Congress.

The Boston Globenoted in its editorial that Moderna's reported plan to charge between $110 and $130 per dose for its mRNA vaccine—which was developed with the critical aid of U.S. government funding and scientific advances—would mean "more than quadrupling" the price compared to what the federal government paid in its latest contract with the company.

The coronavirus vaccine is Moderna's only product on the market, and stock price appreciation resulting from the development of the shot helped make CEO Stéphane Bancel a billionaire.

"In 2021, Moderna made over $12 billion in profits, the first year it turned a profit since it was founded in 2010," the Globe's editorial board observed. "While Moderna's proposed sticker price mirrors Pfizer's commercial plans for the Covid vaccine that it developed with BioNTech, Moderna is in a worse position to defend such a drastic increase. Unlike Pfizer's vaccine, the clinical development of Moderna's mRNA vaccine was almost exclusively funded by the US government and included collaboration with scientists at the National Institutes of Health."

While the White House has voiced concerns over Moderna's planned price hike, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters earlier this month that it is hard to "understand or to justify," the Globe noted that "the Biden administration has not taken any serious steps to ensure that Moderna's vaccine will be reasonably priced—let alone accessible to anyone who wants it."

Citing public health advocates, the Globe argued that "the administration should be willing to play hardball" with Moderna, which has rebuffed pressure from governments and global institutions such as the World Health Organization to make its vaccine technology widely available, particularly for developing nations that have struggled to access a sufficient quantity of doses.

The editorial continued:

As Asia Russell, the executive director of the public health advocacy organization Health GAP, pointed out to the Globe editorial board, there is precedent for doing so.

In the midst of the 2001 anthrax attacks that targeted media and government offices, the U.S. government sought to boost its stockpile of Cipro, a drug that treats anthrax. Bayer, which produced the drug under a patent, balked at the George W. Bush administration's request for a discount. So Tommy Thompson, then secretary of Health and Human Services, threatened to bypass Bayer's patent and allow both production and purchase of generic alternatives. He didn't have to follow through on his threat; Bayer quickly agreed to dramatically reduce the drug's price.

The administration can also take—or deter Moderna's price hike by simply threatening to take—steps to slash the company's share of the market overseas.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the first member of Congress to publicly denounce Moderna's coming price hike, welcomed the Globe's editorial.

"The Boston Globe is right," Sanders wrote on Twitter. "The Biden administration should not allow Moderna to more than quadruple the price of the Covid vaccine to $130 when it costs just $2.85 to produce. The Covid vaccine must be used to save lives, not to further enrich the billionaire owners of Moderna."

Moderna's plans to raise the price of its coronavirus vaccine come as the Biden administration is shifting away from purchasing the shots and Covid-19 treatments and toward commercialization. As White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha put it in August, Covid-19 vaccines and treatments will be moved "into the regular healthcare system"—a hotbed of dysfunction, price gouging, and deadly denial of care.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently noted that "while most consumers with public and private insurance will be protected from having to pay directly for vaccine costs, those who are uninsured and underinsured may face cost barriers when the federally-purchased vaccine doses are depleted."

In a letter to Moderna's CEO last week, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) warned that the firm's proposed price hike "threatens to reduce access to a lifesaving vaccine while boosting your company's profits."

"Thanks to billions of federal dollars used to support production and delivery of Moderna's vaccine product, Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine is currently free for patients in the United States," the senators wrote. "Over 665 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the U.S., and many million more worldwide, and more than 80% of the total U.S. population has received at least one dose."

"This is a landmark public health achievement," they continued. "But this progress may be put at risk because of Moderna's greed, which has the potential to increase vaccination costs for millions of un- and underinsured Americans."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Note: This is from the Newport News Times Friday 1/27. I’ll leave it as a stand alone. There will be a note at the end.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.

— Joseph Conrad, The Task of the Artist

I’ve been a wordsmith since my late teens: sports reporting intern in Tucson for the evening daily newspaper.

My first magazine gig was with Skin Diver magazine, and that was an interesting journey into 25 cents per word, but $50 for each photo. I was diving in Baja; I waited out a hurricane that wiped out a small village where I had spent time before and after the storm. Two shots of mountains of hammerhead jaws drying in the sun and sharks underwater; two photos of the village (before and after); shots of some of the villagers digging out; and a photo of me hanging onto a humpback whale landed me more cashola than the 1,000-word article.

I ended up in Bisbee, Tombstone, Nogales, Cochise’s Stronghold and all along the U.S.-Mexico border (La Frontera) as a reporter filing stories on all manner of cool, odd, and sometimes boring stories around planning and zoning, city council and school board meetings.

Words, accuracy, research and inventiveness were everything to me, even before the newspaper gigs in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The Daily Wildcat was my home at the University of Arizona. Words and deploying more than just an inverted news triangle were powerful, and accuracy was a must since everyone on and off campus was reading my work.

I took this gig seriously enough to end up at the University of Texas teaching college composition while finishing a master’s degree. My entire career around words has been anchored to the power of the word to not only transform a community, but oneself.

This isn’t an arcane belief. To be, say a marine biology student (I was one of those), doing some deep reef work AND then writing a report on the findings, but also on the reason for the experiment in the first place, that is the power of the word. We had to write about the cultural history, too — the people and the sea.

Literacy is somewhat new in the USA, that is, reading and writing. Unfortunately, functional illiteracy is high. I ended up teaching U.S. military members at Fort Bliss a week-long writing class with the goal of getting some of the less literate students to at least a seventh grade reading level.

Nationwide, on average, 79 percent of U.S. adults were literate in 2022. Conversely, 21 percent of adults in the U.S. are illiterate. However, more telling, 54 percent of adults have literacy below sixth grade level. Worse still is that up to 80 percent of Americans in all demographic categories can’t follow eighth grade instructions on correctly installing a child car seat.

As a college instructor, I taught Jonathan Kozol’s work, including his book, Illiterate America. One of the passages is telling about the foundation of America: “One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms: ‘I thank God,’ he said, that ‘there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them … God save us from both!’”

After decades teaching/mentoring students in the art of writing — composition, business writing, technical writing, fiction, poetry, news writing — I have arrived at a new baseline of absurdity and danger:

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a program that generates sophisticated text in response to any prompt a person can imagine. This artificial intelligent application signals the end of writing assignments altogether.

Again, writing is a way of gauging skills and understanding the fine art of whichever field one may end up in. If a student or specialist can explain the process of ocean acidification for both post-doctoral students and laypersons, then the author is ahead of the game. Literacy is key for cultures to both thrive and move ahead.

A deeply researched book on China, say Jeff J. Brown’s 44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013), is worth more than 44 days of watching mainstream news reporting on China.

Additionally, some of the best writing comes from scientists like Peter Ward, Under a Green Sky, or a seasoned journalist like Elizabeth Kolbert, who wrote The Sixth Extinction.

There is this belief in elite circles humanity in the future will be split into two major camps — those with power, money and connections, and then the rest of us, who will be dubbed as useless workers-eaters-humans. Yuval Noah Harari believes AI and robotics will render workers in the main unnecessary, useless. This is the philosophy of the World Economic Forum, Aspen Institute and others throughout industry and government.

We are now reading machine-generated (AI) “news” stories. We are in a great reset where data of every sort is collected and then sold to the digital gods who feed that information into computers to learn what it is to be, think, dream, hope, do as humans. And how to write!

We can feed ChatGPT software a writing prompt close to my heart — What does Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” mean to a young person in the 21st century? The program will produce a competent essay, even replicating the student’s level of articulation.

This is Cliff Notes and plagiarism on steroids. It is a slippery slope, one of a thousand deaths by ten million digital cuts. Nothing good comes from this smoke and mirrors and scamming technology. Having every nanosecond of our lives monitored, every survey we answer and bit of data we send out captured by big business will move us closer to that critical point of big brother everywhere pulling us farther away from what it is to be a thinker, doer, debater, creator and writer.

First Note: The Medford Mail Tribune has closed its door after 113 years in business. I will be writing about the death of newspapers and concomitant death of critical thinking/debate in America in another column.

Second Note: I did not know this piece was running today, “The Power of the Written Word.” I am not in the newsroom, as I am just the guy who pens these longish (for a small newspaper) columns discussing the issues of the day and the things on my mind. Again, I have many hats as a writer, and much on DV that is original to DV is all rant, polemics, humor, and flipping the scripts (more on that in another piece).

But the front page news for this rag is terrible:

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

On December 1, the Belarusian Ministry of Information ordered Belarusy y Rynok’s registration to be annulled, according to a December 12 statement by the outlet, media reports, and a copy of the decision, which CPJ reviewed.

Authorities accuse Belarusy y Rynok of violating a section of the country’s media law barring outlets from being more than 20 percent owned by non-Belarusians or by foreign entities, according to those reports and Belarusy y Rynok majority shareholder Dzmitry Novikau, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Novikau told CPJ that the outlet’s foreign founding members had already given up their shares after a law limiting foreign ownership was enacted in 2021, but said authorities refused to register the documents reflecting that change.

“By revoking the registration of Belarusy y Rynok, Belarusian authorities have put an end to the release of a historical newspaper that has courageously continued to provide independent reporting for over 30 years,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately reverse the cancellation of Belarusy y Rynok’s registration, and let all media outlets work freely.”

In its statement, Belarusy y Rynok said it would stop printing to comply with the order.

“For now, the outlet’s social media and YouTube are still being updated,” Belarusy y Rynok chief editor Andrei Aleksandrovich told CPJ in a phone interview. “No appeal against the order of the Belarusian Ministry of Information is planned.”

Belarusy y Rynok, which was founded in 1990, called itself the “oldest independent Belarusian newspaper” in its statement. It recently covered the country’s economic difficulties and Ukrainian authorities’ confiscation of Belarusian companies’ property.

In May 2022, authorities in Minsk searched Belarusy y Rynok’s editorial office and detained Aleksandrovich, the outlet’s director Kanstantsin Zalatykh, and an accountant, Yulia Kahno.

Zalatykh remains in detention and faces charges of inciting hatred, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in jail, according to Viasna, a banned human rights group that continues to operate unofficially.

The Ministry of Information blocked Belarusy y Rynok’s website in July, according to media reports.

CPJ emailed the Belarusian Ministry of Information for comment, but did not receive any reply.

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

On Sunday, November 6, an unknown individual from an email address with the name “threateningaccount” sent a message with the subject line “Charlie Hebdo of Belgrade” to Dragoljub Petrović, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Danas, threatening reporters, editors, and columnists with “barrages of bullets” because of its editorial policy, according to Danas, U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Ana Bellotti Družijanić, head of Danas’ digital development, who communicated with CPJ by email.

In January 2015, heavily armed and hooded shooters attacked the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, injuring 11 people and killing 12, including eight journalists.

The individual mentioned the newspaper’s coverage of Kosovo, Montenegro, and the Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, countries once belonging to the former Yugoslavia, according to these reports and the email, which was published by trade news site Cenzolovka. The email also listed specific journalists and columnists working for Danas (Snežana Čongradin, Aleksej Kišjuhas, Nenad Kulačin, Teofil Pančić, Nikola Samardžić, Marko Vidojković) and two journalists—Bosnia-based columnist Dragan Bursać and Serbian radio host Daško Milinović—who are not Danas staff members. The email called these journalists “enemy of the Serbian people” and “traitors.” In 2021, Bursać received a death threat and two unidentified men used pepper spray on Milinović while he walked to work.

The prosecutor’s office in Belgrade ordered an investigation, police promised to increase patrols around the newsroom, and police asked journalists to call if they notice anything suspicious, Danas reported.

“It is a welcome development that authorities in Serbia reacted quickly to the threats made by an unknown individual to the editorial staff of daily newspaper Danas and that they increased patrols around the newsroom,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Authorities must ensure the safety of the journalists working there, that the case is thoroughly investigated, and that threats against the press do not go unpunished.”

Bojan Cvejić, editor-in-chief of Danas’ website, said in an interview with the outlet that those who do not feel safe can work remotely. He also said the newspaper’s journalists often receive threatening messages, but this email was sent by someone who is familiar with their work.

In April 2022, Danas staff received a number of death threats via email, messaging app, and comments on their social media pages from both anonymous and named accounts. The messages referenced a quote from Mahatma Gandhi that Danas had published on Instagram, reading “Truth, not God.” The messages alleged that the Gandhi quote was an insult to Christians ahead of the Orthodox Easter on April 24.

CPJ emailed questions to the press department of Serbia’s Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the police, but did not receive any reply.

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

The Pike County Sheriff charged Myers, editor-in-chief of local news website the Scioto Valley Guardian, with wiretapping on October 31 after his outlet published audio leaked from a murder trial, according to a report by the outlet and Myers, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

On October 28, a Pike County Court judge signed a search warrant, valid for three days, for the Scioto Valley Guardian’s streaming equipment, including a computer, which Myers had used inside the courtroom to live-stream the trial, according to the document reviewed by CPJ. In Ohio, newsgathering and journalistic source material are protected by the state’s shield law and the federal Privacy Protection Act.

The Pike County Sheriff’s office confiscated the outlet’s live-streaming equipment from the murder trial courtroom on November 1 and Myers’ iPhone, which he used for work, on November 2, according to the court documents reviewed by CPJ. The equipment, none of which has been returned, was confiscated after the warrant expired, according to Myers and a copy of the item seizure report, which CPJ reviewed.

“The incompetency of local law enforcement to abide by basic legal proceedings would be comical if it were not so concerning,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “Not only have Pike County authorities confiscated journalist Derek Myers’ cellphone and the Scioto Valley Guardian’s laptop without presenting a valid warrant, but they have also lobbed wiretapping charges against Myers for keeping the community informed about an ongoing murder trial. Retaliating against a news outlet, especially a small local publication, for doing their jobs in matters of public interest is completely unacceptable.” 

Myers is accused of wiretapping, a fourth-degree felony, under 2933.51(A)(3) of the Ohio Revised Code, according to the charge document reviewed by CPJ. A fourth-degree felony carries a penalty of six to 18 months in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

On November 1, Myers turned himself in to authorities and posted a $20,000 bail in less than an hour, he said.

On November 3, a Pike County Court judge set bond conditions for Myers, including obeying all media rules when covering the murder trial; having no contact with the murder trial’s defendant; and refraining from consuming alcohol or frequenting establishments that serve alcohol, including steakhouses, according to pre-conviction release papers reviewed by CPJ.

Myers told CPJ that he estimates the Scioto Valley Guardian is losing $500 every day they are unable to live-stream the trial.

The Pike County Sheriff’s office did not respond to CPJ’s voicemail seeking comment.

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

Several newspaper boxes distributing Jewish publications in Queens, New York, were defaced with swastikas on Oct. 6, 2022, while the Jewish community observed Yom Kippur.

According to the Queens Chronicle, newspaper distributors discovered the vandalized boxes outside of Aron’s Kissena Farms around 2 a.m. on Oct. 7. Aron’s, the largest kosher grocery store in Queens, was closed at the time of the incident.

The targeted boxes contained Jewish newspapers including the Queens Jewish Link, the Bukharian Jewish Link and the Five Towns Jewish Times. Yaakov Serle, publisher for the Queens and Bukharian Jewish Links, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the newspapers were still able to publish normally that day.

“We were very fortunate,” Serle said. “Everybody came together, and – by shopping time — it was all gone.”

Serle said several community members teamed up to clean the newspaper boxes before Aron’s opened for the day. He credits Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal, newspaper distributor Steven Saphirstein and local Jewish groups Chaverim and Shmira with playing an instrumental role in the cleanup.

In a statement to the Chronicle, Rosenthal said that while no one was physically harmed by the attack, the antisemitism distressed residents who were fed up with the broken sense of security and seeking action.

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

Liberté has filed an appeal, which suspends the decision until the appeal ruling, and has continued to publish, Amétépé told CPJ.

The suspension and fine related to Liberté’s September 21 edition, which included an article that alleged a security officer in Togolese Prime Minister Victoire Dogbé’s automotive convoy shot and killed a young man, according to those sources.

According to Amétépé, on September 22, Dogbé’s office informed the High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication, Togo’s media regulator also known by its French acronym HAAC, that the prime minister was not in the area where the incident allegedly occurred. Dogbé’s office then filed a defamation complaint to the HAAC and the regulator asked the newspaper to publish a correction, which the paper did with an apology to Dogbé, Amétépé told CPJ. 

Amétépé said in spite of the correction and the apology, Dogbé’s office filed a separate defamation complaint in court against the author of the article, Géraud Afangnowou, Amétépé, and the newspaper. 

The court considered the correction and apology to be insincere and therefore inadmissible as rectification for damage caused by the September 21 article, according to Amétépé, adding that the court then suspended the outlet for three months and fined each of the three defendants —  Liberté, Amétépé, and Afangnowou — four million West African francs (US$5,928) each.

Reached by CPJ via messaging app, Adolphe Pakka, a communications officer with Dogbé’s office asked CPJ submit a request for comment “the normal way.”  When CPJ asked Pakka to clarify what he meant by “normal way,” he did not answer. 

HAAC spokesperson Diedier Atiota did not respond to an emailed request for comment from CPJ.

Togolese authorities previously suspended Liberté in 2020 in relation to a complaint filed by then French ambassador to Togo, Marc Vizy. 

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

The publisher of the New Hampshire-based weekly newspaper, the Londonderry Times, was arrested on Aug. 24, 2022, and charged with publishing political advertisements without correctly identifying them as ads.

According to a press release by Attorney General John M. Formella, publisher Debra Paul was charged with six misdemeanor counts of violating state laws on political advertisements. Paul had previously been investigated and warned by the state’s Election Law Unit for failing to comply with state election law in 2019 and 2021. According to the statement, Paul was issued a final warning letter about properly labeling the ads in September 2021.

In a statement emailed to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding partner of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Paul condemned the state’s actions against the newspaper.

“This is clearly a case of a small business needing to defend itself against overreaching government. To threaten a small business owner with jail time over something this insignificant is very heavy handed,” Paul wrote.

Paul’s lawyer, Tony Naro, told the Tracker in an emailed statement that he could not make public statements about pending matters but denied any wrongdoing by Paul. Naro also said Paul arrived at the police station after making arrangements to turn herself in for processing before being released.

“The Londonderry Times does their absolute best to put out a quality publication with limited staff and a limited budget. Ms. Paul acted with no criminal intent, denies the allegations, and is presumed innocent. It is our intention to handle this matter exclusively in the court system where it belongs and not in the press. While this matter plays out in court, we ask for the public, and the media, to keep an open mind and not prejudge this case.”

If convicted, Paul faces a maximum penalty of one year in county jail and a fine of up to $2,000. An arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 19, 2022.

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

Since August 13, Barakat, managing editor of the privately owned news website Asas Media, has received threats following an interview he gave with the broadcaster Al-Jadeed TV in which he criticized a recent speech by Hasan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Hezbollah Shiite political party and militant group, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

After the interview, an anonymous Twitter account supportive of Hezbollah accused Barakat of inciting sedition; following that tweet, which was retweeted by the secretary-general’s son Jawad Nasrallah, other accounts posted tweets describing Barakat as “garbage that needs to be cleaned” and calling to silence him, saying his mouth needed to be “slammed” shut.

Separately, on August 15, Hussein Zeineddine, a cleric who has voiced support for Hezbollah, posted a video and a tweet criticizing the local daily Al-Akhbar newspaper over its coverage of the August 12 stabbing of the writer Salman Rushdie by a U.S.-Lebanese dual national in New York, saying that those opposed to the newspaper should “discipline them.”

“Lebanese authorities must ensure that journalists in the country can voice their opinions and do their work freely, without fear of harassment or intimidation,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, Sherif Mansour, in Washington, D.C. “Authorities should ensure the safety of journalist Mohamad Barakat and employees of the Al-Akhbar newspaper, and make it clear that members of the press should not be targeted with threats.”

Barakat told CPJ that he was not overly concerned about the online threats, but said that he had restricted his movements and did not often leave the Beirut area.

Asad AbuKhalil, a columnist at Al-Akhbar, wrote on Twitter in reaction to Zeineddine’s statements that he would “not deviate” from his work “no matter how many sermons and messages follow.”

CPJ messaged Al-Akhbar editor-in-chief Ibrahim Al-Amin for comment, but did not receive any response.

CPJ also contacted Hezbollah media liaison Rana Sahili messaging app but did not receive any reply. CPJ was unable to find contact information for Zeineddine.

Separately, photojournalist Hasan Shaaban, who previously received death threats on August 3 and 4 after his coverage of protests against a water shortage, told CPJ that a note was left on his car on August 14, demanding he leave his home village of Beit Yahoun.

Shaaban said he reported the threats to police, but his report “wasn’t taken seriously.” He said he fears those threats will be acted on if he returns to his hometown with no protection from authorities.

Shaaban told CPJ, “I know that there are dangerous assignments in my photojournalism, and I’m okay with that. But I’m not okay with dying because I demanded my rights or because I covered protests for people demanding their rights.”

A senior aide to Lebanese Minister of Interior Bassam al-Mawlawi told CPJ that his office was “following up” on Shaaban’s case and said al-Mawlawi had met with a delegation from the local Photographers’ Syndicate about it.

When CPJ contacted Elissar Naddaf, aide to the Lebanese Minister of Information Ziad Makary, via messaging app, he said he would respond to questions but had not done so at the time of publication.

Also, Dima Sadek, a journalist who has frequently criticized Hezbollah and is on leave from hosting a news program on the privately owned broadcaster MTV Lebanon, has received death and rape threats over a tweet she posted about Rushdie’s stabbing, according to news reports and Sadek, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.  

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

On Friday, August 12, police officers in the southern Akwa Ibom State detained the newspaper distributor, Chidi Ngadiuba, in lieu of Nseowo, publisher of TheMail, a privately owned local newspaper, according to another newspaper’s report, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) regional chapter chairman, Amos Etuk, and Nseowo, who spoke to CPJ by phone. Police held Ngadiuba, who distributed TheMail and other newspapers, for nearly one day at police headquarters in Uyo, the state capital; when NUJ intervened, police declined to explain why they wanted Nseowo, according to those sources.

Ngadiuba was released without charge only after NUJ agreed in writing that it would ensure that Nseowo would present himself at police headquarters on August 16, which did not happen because Nseowo went into hiding for fear he would be arrested and detained, according to the same sources.

A politician and a former state attorney general representing him accused TheMail of criminal libel and said they wanted Nseowo to disclose the source of a July article.

“Police should immediately drop the criminal libel investigation into Ifreke Nseowo and refuse to force a journalist to disclose his confidential sources because a politician has been left red-faced. When facts are in dispute about an act of journalism, alternative dispute resolution and not the criminal justice system should be used,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in New York.

“Police bosses must also ensure that those officers who abused their power by detaining newspaper distributor Chidi Ngadiuba are held to account. At the very least, Ngadiuba should be awarded appropriate damages for this egregious deprivation of his liberty.”

On August 16, NUJ officials—without Nseowo—met the state’s police commissioner, Olatoye Durosinmi, at police headquarters and were told that a former state attorney general, Uwemedimo Nwoko (representing Umo Bassey Eno, a state gubernatorial candidate of the ruling People’s Democratic Party) had accused TheMail of criminal libel, according to Etuk. Etuk said NUJ also asked police to suspend their summons of Nseowo and allow the union to resolve the matter with Nwoko, who wrote a criminal libel complaint on Eno’s behalf.

Eno was upset about a July 11 article in TheMail that quoted a letter purportedly by the Nigeria chapter of the West Africa Examination Council, saying that the council was unable to certify the gubernatorial candidate’s secondary school certificate allegedly obtained in 1983 as it had no record of it, according to Nwoko. Nwoko told CPJ he had a letter from the council denying the newspaper’s claims. 

Nwoko insisted that the complaint accusing TheMail of criminal libel would not be withdrawn until Nseowo appeared at police headquarters and reveal the sources of his reporting. 

Nseowo told CPJ that he received a call in mid-July from a source, whose identity he would not reveal for fear of reprisals, who said that Nseowo had been targeted for arrest over a series of publications by TheMail, on allegations of certificate forgery involving Eno. 

On August 12, Nseowo said he received a call from a woman asking to meet that day at his former office in Uyo, to place an advertisement on TheMail news site.

Nseowo was afraid for his own safety and not certain whether the proposed ad was real or a ploy to arrest him, so he said he decided to send Ngadiuba to the meeting instead. Nseowo said he later learned in a call from another journalist that Ngadiuba had been arrested in his place.

Nseowo said he immediately informed the NUJ’s state chapter and went into hiding. 

On August 15, CPJ contacted the state police spokesperson, Odiko Macdon, who declined to explain the reason police had summoned Nseowo and added that the journalist would find out when he visited the station. 

When contacted on August 16, Macdon told CPJ that police authorities would not proceed with their attempt to bring Nseowo to the police station pending further deliberations among Nwoko, NUJ, and Nseowo. Macdon added that NUJ was expected to bring Nseowo to police “when the time comes,” but did not elaborate further.

Nwoko told CPJ he would follow the matter until police concluded their investigations and those found culpable are charged.

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

The post The Fall Of A Great American Newspaper … and Democracy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Steven Higgs.

Writer Ashok Kumar Pandey tweeted the cutting of the newspaper and wrote, “Count the zeros and tell me, in how many days will the ED raid on The Times?” (Archive link)

Congress leader Pankhuri Pathak also tweeted the picture and called it the ‘5G scam.’ (Archive link)

RLD leader and former journalist Prashant Kanojia also made the same claim. (Archive link)

This cutting of the newspaper was tweeted by many social media users including Uttar Pradesh Congress, Bihar Youth Congress, NSUI Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh Congress Sevadal, Daman and Diu Congress Sevadal, Congress leader Vinay Kumar Dokania, and DMK leader T R B Rajaa.

Fact-check

We observed the newspaper cutting carefully and noticed that there was a mismatch between the figures given in words and the figures written in digits. The figure provided in digits has fourteen zeros after ’28’, which means 2800 lakh crores, while the figures given in words are written as ‘2.8 lakh crores’.

Next, we noticed that the viral newspaper cutting had the byline of The Times of India’s National Editor Pankaj Doval. Taking this clue, we checked Pankaj Doval’s Twitter account and found that he had tweeted the page of Times Business on August 2. It is worth noting that the picture tweeted by him is similar to the viral image, however, it does not have the headline seen in the viral cutting.

That’s how the Business Page looks like when you start the day with record spectrum auctions, and end the day with record auto sales… pic.twitter.com/R9Qee59Zfi

— Pankaj Doval (@pankajdoval) August 2, 2022

To probe further, we matched the viral cutting with the news published in The Times of India (Chennai edition) dated August 2, 2022, and found that it is edited. In fact, the newspaper did not print anything about “a loss of 2.8 lakh crores” in the 5G spectrum auction. The original paper had written about the earning of 1.5 lakh crores in the auction of 5G spectrum by the government.

To sum it up, several politicians, accounts associated with the Congress party and social media users tweeted an edited image of the ‘Times Business’ page claiming the 5G spectrum auction to be a record-breaking scam. Whereas in reality, the original cutting of the newspaper had written about the earning of 1.5 lakh crores during the auction of the 5G spectrum.

The post Morphed cutting of The Times of India newspaper viral amidst 5G spectrum auction appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

On July 15, Russian forces shelled the editorial office of Zorya, a newspaper in the eastern village of Zolochiv, in the Kharkiv region, according to a report by the Ukrainian National Union of Journalists (NUJU), a local trade group, and Zorya chief editor Vasily Miroshnik, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

Russian forces also shelled homes in the area on July 15, and damaged the village’s power grid, according to news reports. No one was injured in the shelling of Zorya’s office, according to Miroshnik and the NUJU.

“We are deeply concerned by the shelling the office of Ukrainian newspaper Zorya during the Russian artillery attack on the village of Zolochiv,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in Madrid. “Media covering the war must be assured that they can continue to do so without fear of attack, and Russian and Ukrainian authorities have a responsibility to ensure their protection.”

Zorya’s office was previously hit by shelling in early April, the NUJU reported at the time.

Miroshnik was quoted in that NUJU report as saying that Zorya staffers “are convinced that they [Russian forces] deliberately fire at the editorial office. Miroshnik told CPJ that the area had been repeatedly shelled while other buildings in the town, including the local police department and administrative office buildings, had not.

He added that “neighbors are afraid to live next to [the office]” because it had been repeatedly attacked.

“We just finished repairs after the first shelling. The windows were blown out again, and now we decided to just cover them with plywood. The roof was also demolished, and the armored door was blown out,” Miroshnik told the NUJU.

Zorya stopped printing when the war started and now publishes news in a Facebook group with about 11,600 members, Miroshnik told CPJ. The outlet also airs live Facebook broadcasts of military actions in the area and has published criticism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Miroshnik and CPJ’s review of the outlet’s content.

Separately, Miroshnik told CPJ that pro-Russian locals had repeatedly sent complaints to Facebook to block Zorya’s Facebook group, which he saw as retaliation for the outlet’s reporting.

“We make it difficult for the Russians to tell lies about what is happening on the Ukrainian territory,” Miroshnik told CPJ. “We are proving with facts that the Russian artillery and aviation are shelling Zolochiv, killing civilians, and it bothers the [pro-Russian] collaborators. I conduct live broadcasts from the places that were shelled, report on where the shells come from, and on whom they are killing.”

In May 2022, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published a video where a man presented as a Ukrainian refugee accused Miroshnik and Zorya of spreading false information about the Russian army shelling the Kharkiv village of Udy in April.

“They are waging war on our newsroom at the level of centralized Russian state media, they are waging war on us at the level of Facebook… and they are trying to destroy our office in order to prevent us from working as a print newspaper,” Miroshnik told CPJ.

CPJ emailed the Russian and Ukrainian Ministries of Defense 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.

Missouri's second-largest newspaper by circulation derided home-state Sen. Josh Hawley in a scathing editorial on Saturday, calling him a "laughingstock" and a "coward" after the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack showed previously unseen security footage of the GOP lawmaker fleeing the violent right-wing insurrectionists that he helped embolden.

"Hawley has become one of the defining figures of that day," notes The Kansas City Star's editorial board. "A famous photo captured by Francis Chung shows him raising a fist in solidarity with the crowds that would soon break through doors, loot offices, and assault law enforcement."

During its latest public hearing on Thursday, the House January 6 committee played a video clip showing Hawley running away after armed Trump supporters breached the Capitol.

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who presided over Thursday's hearing, quoted a Capitol police officer as saying Hawley's supportive gesture to the mob just ahead of the attack "riled up the crowd."

"It bothered her greatly," Luria added, "because he was doing it in a safe space protected by the officers and the barriers."

The Kansas City Star's editorial goes on to recount that "when the Senate reconvened after the halls of the Capitol had been cleared and secured, Hawley took to the floor as the very first voice calling to throw out millions of Americans' votes cast fairly and legally for the rightful winner in a presidential election."

"We said that day Hawley has blood on his hands for his role in perpetuating the lies that drove thousands of people to violence," the editorial reads. "That remains true. Beyond the physical toll, though, is the damage Jan. 6 continues to inflict on our democracy and our shared sense of truth. The House committee is systematically demonstrating how too many Republicans in Donald Trump's orbit allowed him to incite the riot, which he had promised in advance 'will be wild,' and were then unable to get him to call his fans off until unimaginable damage had already been done."

"Hawley has never apologized for attempting to reinstall a man who everyone around him knew had lost the election, as witness testimony continues to confirm," the editorial continues. "Saluting the Trump posse was politically expeditious for him before the siege began. Yet once he realized his own safety was in real danger from the angry revolutionists swarming the building, he hotfooted it away from 'his' people to the protection of the security forces charged with protecting him. Where's that fist in the air now?"

Far from showing contrition for helping provoke a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and then fleeing the scene, Hawley has doubled down on his election lies and attempted to fundraise off the backlash, hawking a mug emblazoned with the raised-fist photo that he does not have permission to use.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Common Dreams staff.

A judge ordered the editor of the Everett Leader Herald to release names of confidential sources and unpublished reporting materials on June 30, 2022, as part of a defamation case filed by the mayor of Everett, Massachusetts.

According to UniversalHub, a news and information site for the Boston area, Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria sued Joshua Resnek on Oct. 7, 2021, claiming Resnek published “defamatory falsehoods” in three separate articles in the weeks leading up to the mayoral primary.

The official complaint states that Resnek published an article on Sept. 8, claiming that DeMaria had “extorted the City Clerk into paying him $96,000” as part of a real estate transaction. DeMaria, who did not respond to a request for comment by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, is also suing the city clerk, who was a source for the article, and the publishers of the Leader.

In his ruling, Superior Court Associate Justice James Budreau wrote that the First Amendment did not allow the defendant in a libel case to refuse to identify sources on the grounds of reporter’s privilege, but that some protection was provided. The court would “weigh the relevant public interests for each source to determine whether their identities need to be revealed.”

Budreau granted a partial motion to compel Resnek to reveal the identities of 10 out of 12 sources.

After the ruling, Resnek, who did not respond to a request for comment, agreed to reveal the names and contact information of confidential sources, unpublished notes and emails and will not object to any depositions of sources.

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

On June 3, the Kirovsky District Court in the central city of Yekaterinburg fined the independent Vecherniye Vedomosti newspaper 150,000 rubles (US$2,415) for “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces” in its reporting on Telegram, according to the outlet, media reports, and Vecherniye Vedomosti director Guzela Aitkulova, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Separately, on June 5, the Svetlogorsk City Court in the western Kaliningrad region ruled that a list of soldiers killed in Ukraine, published by the privately-owned Pskov-based news website 60.ru, constituted “classified information,” leading the website to take the list down to avoid facing criminal charges, according to multiple media reports. 60.ru’s list had been compiled from information openly published by official sources, according to those reports.

“Russian authorities, after criminalizing the publication of so-called false information about the war in Ukraine, prosecuting journalists, and blocking dozens of news websites, are continuing their effort to silence outlets that report on military casualties and anti-war protests in Russia,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must overturn the fine imposed on Vecherniye Vedomosti, allow 60.ru to publish freely, and allow journalists to do their jobs.”

The fine of Vecherniye Vedomosti, issued to the newspaper’s parent company Technotorg, stemmed from a March 18 Telegram post by the outlet covering the detention of an artist who allegedly distributed anti-war stickers in the streets of Yekaterinburg, according to Aitkulova and the news reports on that case.

Vecherniye Vedomosti’s Telegram post featured a blurred picture of those stickers, Aitkulova told CPJ, saying there were “no words about the Russian army” in the post.

On June 6, authorities also informed Aitkulova that they were investigating another 54 Telegram posts by the outlet that also allegedly discredited the armed forces, she said. 

“We are outraged that we are, in fact, being punished precisely for our journalistic activities,” Aitkulova told CPJ. “It all looks like revenge for our independent position. And an attempt to destroy us without blocking us – by crushing us financially.”

She said Technotorg intended to appeal the June 3 ruling, and that no hearings concerning the other posts had been scheduled. CPJ emailed the Kirovsky District Court for comment, but did not receive any response.

In its ruling against 60.ru, sparked by a complaint filed by a military prosecutor, the Svetlogorsk City Court said that listing the names of Svetlogorsk residents who died as soldiers in Ukraine constituted the unlawful publishing of classified information, which could be punished by up to seven years in a penal colony, according to the Russian criminal code and media reports.

The state media regulator Roskomnadzor is also authorized by law to block outlets found to have shared such information.

After the court’s decision, a number of online publications associated with the Shkulev Media Holding media network, including 60.ru and 74.ru, removed webpages in memory of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine citing “the safety of journalists,” according to the nongovernmental group Roskomsvoboda.

When CPJ emailed the Svetlogorsk City Court, a representative sent a press release published on June 8 which stated that an unnamed website published “information revealing losses of personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation during a special operation, names, and personal details of those killed.”

CPJ emailed 60.ru and 74.ru for comment, but did not receive any response.

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

"If the HKJA thinks that it can continue to destroy Hong Kong with the support of foreign forces, then it's on a fool's errand," the paper said.

The association has previously been a vocal critic of police restrictions on journalists, particularly during the 2019 protest movement, which culminated in the police force refusing to tolerate the presence of anyone it decided was a "fake journalist."

Leung said city officials have demanded the HKJA "provide relevant information on activities not conforming to its articles of association," but the organization hadn't immediately complied, suggesting it had "ghosts" it was avoiding.

Dwindling freedom

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Cheryl Tung, Raymond Chung and Hoi Man Wu.

On April 18, the independent broadcaster N1TV received an anonymous email threatening that the outlet’s employees would be “slaughtered,” according to news reports, a report by the outlet, and N1TV news director Igor Božić, who communicated with CPJ via email.

Separately, on April 22, employees of the independent daily Danas received a number of death threats via email, messaging app, and comments on their social media pages from both anonymous and named accounts, according to news reports and Bojan Cvejić, editor-in-chief of the outlet’s website, who communicated with CPJ via email.

Both outlets filed complaints to authorities, according to Božić and Cvejić, who said that as of Monday, the Belgrade prosecutor’s office confirmed that it had opened an investigation into the message sent to N1TV.

“It is a welcome development that Serbian authorities responded quickly to a threatening message sent to the broadcaster N1TV. Authorities must also investigate threats sent to the Danas newspaper, and ensure that those responsible in both cases are held to account,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “It is completely unacceptable to threaten journalists because of their work, and Serbian authorities must show that such actions have consequences.”

Božić told CPJ that he did not know what could have prompted the threatening email, as N1TV covers a wide range of international and domestic topics. The email also called employees of the outlet “mercenary Americans,” Božić said. N1TV is affiliated with the U.S. broadcaster CNN.

In February 2019, the outlet received a letter threatening to kill its staff and blow up their office in Belgrade, as CPJ documented at the time. That March, a man pleaded guilty to having sent that threat and was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The messages sent to Danas, samples of which were posted in those news reports and shared with CPJ by Cvejić, also threatened to “slaughter” employees of the outlet. The messages referenced a quote from Mahatma Gandhi that Danas had recently published on its Instagram feed, reading “Truth, not God.” The messages alleged that the Gandhi quote was an insult to Christians ahead of the Orthodox Easter on April 24.

CPJ emailed the Belgrade prosecutor’s office for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Lyudmila Makey.

In 2002, Mohsin Abbas was a reporter at the Daily Pakistan when he said he was arrested and abused during then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s campaign of surveillance and harassment of the press. (Abbas did not share further details out of concerns for the security of family members who remain in the country.)

He fled Pakistan for Canada, where he continued to work in journalism, including for the BBC. Fast forward 20 years, and Abbas took on a new journalistic project this year as publisher of the Tilbury Times, a Tilbury, Ontario, newspaper that was closed in 2020 after its parent company shed several publications due to COVID-19 revenue woes.

The 136-year-old newspaper, which Abbas transformed from a print weekly to a news site, publishes local crime and business news, and international news with a local angle, such as a recent interview with a Canadian family with ties to Ukraine. 

“If newspapers disappear, the well-being of the community decreases,” Mohsin, 47, said. 

In addition to the Tilbury Times, Abbas has also relaunched two other local Canadian news publications that shuttered in recent years: the LaSalle Post Reporter, previously the LaSalle Post, and Lakeshore News Reporter, previously Lakeshore News.

In a phone interview, Abbas spoke to CPJ about restarting the Tilbury Times and the importance of community reporting. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to restart the Tilbury Times? 

I heard a program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC] about a local newspaper going out of circulation. I felt a [kindred spirit] with the people in the community who wanted their stories to be told. It reminded me of when I was a child in Pakistan and didn’t see my own community reflected in stories from larger publications. Local stories were being lost and so I decided to step in and try to help.

How did you go about reopening it and hiring a staff?

When I first came up with the idea, it felt like nobody believed it would work out: an outsider coming into a small community to revive a paper. We started from scratch. I remortgaged my home to pay for startup costs. I also connected with local non-profits that archived all the previous editions of the Tilbury Times, so we have a sense of legacy. After the CBC published an article about my efforts, more people began reaching out to help: former employees, people from across Canada, and even people overseas.

Have Tilbury residents been welcoming of your initiative?

People have been very supportive. The more we publish, the more engagement we get from locals. People want to see their stories, their concerns reflected in their local paper. I’m learning so many things I never knew— for example, I never realized what a big issue internet connectivity is in rural areas. If we want to stay a strong democracy, we need to have local newspapers. Local news is an important pillar of society.

It’s about telling people’s stories. We’re not making a lot of money, but we’re making an impact. We’re able to inform people outside of Tilbury about the town. We’re getting clicks on the newspaper’s website from people in Toronto and the United States. We’re opening people’s eyes about the town and new opportunities in it. The local community has also [rallied behind] the paper. The more we publish, the more locals who are writing in with questions and things they want us to look into. It’s very satisfying experience.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Katherine Jacobsen/CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator.

“In their attempt to quash all independent coverage of the war in Ukraine, Russian authorities have closed down or otherwise silenced independent media outlets, and have forced journalists to flee from prosecution. Novaya Gazeta has been one of the last bastions of Russia’s free press,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said. “Russia’s draconian censorship tactics must stop. Now more than ever, it is critical that Russian news outlets be allowed to provide unbiased coverage. Novaya Gazeta must be allowed to operate freely.”

In its March 28 statement, Novaya Gazeta said the state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, had issued a warning over the newspaper’s coverage, and that it would cease publishing in print and online until the end of Russia’s so-called “special operation” in Ukraine.

According to reports by Russian state news agencies, authorities alleged that Novaya Gazeta published material from a group classified by the Russian government as a “foreign agent” without labeling it as such. The regulator previously sent Novaya Gazeta a warning for allegedly failing to mark foreign agent material on March 22, according to those reports.

Under Russia’s foreign agent law, a third warning for such an offense could result in the government closure of the news outlet.

Novaya Gazeta often publishes reporting critical of the Russian government, including the invasion of Ukraine, and recently covered an interview Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave to a group of independent Russian journalists.

Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief and founder of Novaya Gazeta and 2007 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for his work amid government repression.

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

On March 5, officers with the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Center for Combating Extremism and the OMON special riot police raided the office of Pskovskaya Guberniya, an independent newspaper in the western region of Pskov, according to news reports and posts on the outlet’s Telegram channel.

Separately, on March 18, law enforcement officers also searched the homes of Pskovskaya Guberniya chief editor Denis Kamalyagin and journalist Viktor Agafonov, as well as Pskov-based journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva, according to news reports, a police document posted online by human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov, and Kamalyagin, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

“Russian authorities’ harassment of journalists in Pskov is a blatant effort to stifle their reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must cease fabricating cases aimed at hindering the work of media outlets, which are essential to keeping independent regional journalism alive.”

The March 5 raid was conducted as part of an investigation into the liberal opposition Yabloko political party in Pskov, which shares an office building with Pskovskaya Guberniya, after an anonymous woman filed a complaint alleging that the party had violated new legislation barring actions that are “discrediting” to the military, according to news reports and a post on Telegram by the party’s regional head, Lev Shlosberg. Officers also raided the party’s headquarters that day, Shlosberg wrote.

Shlosberg’s post states that the anonymous woman alleged that the Yabloko party was connected to anti-war email she received, and that the woman named Kamalyagin as one of the party’s heads. Kamalyagin told CPJ that he was not affiliated with that party.

During that raid, officers seized computers and journalists’ phones, and later that day authorities blocked the outlet’s website, according to additional news reports and Telegram posts. The following day, Pskovskaya Guberniya announced that it was suspending activity because it was impossible to work without technical equipment.

The March 18 raids on Kamalyagin, Agafonov, and Prokopyeva’s homes were conducted as part of an unrelated defamation investigation stemming from a post in an anonymous Telegram channel criticizing statements by Pskov Governor Mikhail Vedernikov about Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, according to news reports.

Kamalyagin told CPJ that he and Prokopyeva were identified as witnesses in the defamation case. He told the independent outlet Mediazona that he believed the case was authorities’ attempt to “find a reason” to search independent journalists’ homes.

In that interview, Prokopyeva, a reporter at the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster RFE/RL’s project Sibir.Realii and 2020 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, also said that she was not responsible for the anonymous Telegram post.

She also said that police handcuffed her and threw her to the floor during the search, and then seized her phone, e-reader, modem, and her husband’s laptop.

Authorities also searched Kamalyagin’s parents’ home on March 18, and raided a total of seven locations that day, according to a press release issued by the Yabloko party.

Prokopyeva and Kamalyagin have fled Russia and are in Riga, Latvia; Pskovskaya Guberniya journalists Maksim Bartylev and Pavel Dmitriyev are planning to leave the country soon, Kamalyagin told CPJ. According to Pskovskaya Guberniya, Kamalyagin left Russia the day before the search.

On Monday, a Pskov court ruled that the searches of Kamalyagin and Prokopyeva’s homes were “lawful and justified,” according to reports.

CPJ called the Pskov prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Pskov region, but no one answered.

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

On December 30, 2021, police arrested Augias Ray Malonga, acting director of the privately owned newspaper Sel-Piment, at his home in Brazzaville, the capital, according to Malonga and Edouard Atzotsa, the secretary-general of the Trade Union Federation of Communication Workers of Congo-Brazzaville (FESYTRAC), both of whom spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Authorities held Malonga for seven days and then released him without charge, he told CPJ.

On January 20, 2022, the country’s state-run media regulator, the Superior Council for Freedom of Communication (CSLC), suspended Sel-Piment for six months over its republication of an article from a website run by government critics in exile, according to Malonga and news reports.

“Authorities in the Republic of Congo should immediately lift the suspension of Sel-Piment and refrain from arresting journalists for their work,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in New York. “Journalists should be free to re-publish and report on issues of public interest without fearing that they may be detained or face sanction.”

On December 30, Malonga received a summons to appear the following day at the Brazzaville headquarters of the DGST, the country’s domestic security agency, he told CPJ; police then arrested him before he had a chance to comply.

The arrest was sparked by the paper’s December 27 republication of a report on alleged corruption by the country’s treasurer originally published by Congo-Liberty.com, a website run outside of the country that advocates for political change in the Republic of Congo, as well as another article also published in the December 27 edition criticizing management of the country’s economy, Malonga said.

During his detention, DGST head Phillipe Obara questioned Malonga about the source of the Congo-Liberty.com report and said that authorities did not appreciate that he was in contact with critics outside the country. Malonga told CPJ that he refused to answer questions about that report.

CPJ emailed the DGST for comment, but did not receive any reply.

Malonga was released on January 6, 2022, after CSLC President Philippe Mvouo intervened in his case, Malonga told CPJ. He said authorities did not tell him the exact reason for his release. CPJ emailed Mvouo and contacted him via messaging app for comment, but did not receive any response.

Atzotsa told CPJ that Malonga “was released under pressure from many press organizations” including the journalists’ union.

According to those news reports, the CSLC alleged that the republished article defamed the country’s treasurer, and therefore the newspaper would be suspended. CPJ sent questions to the Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Finances, Budget, and Public Portfolio for comment via email and through a contact form on its website, but received no response.

Sel-Piment is a satirical weekly newspaper known for its criticism of President Denis Sassou Nguesso and the ruling Congolese Party of Labor, according to news reports. Authorities previously suspended Sel-Piment in 2013 and 2021, and repeatedly arrested its editor, Malonga’s father Raymond Malonga.

Malonga became interim director of the newspaper after his father’s arrest in February 2021, he told CPJ.

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

The ban was only supposed to last two years, but it stretched on as officials failed to lift it even after a court found it “illegal” and “irrational.” Then, in February, the government took a U-turn. Nape Nnauye, Tanzania’s recently appointed information minister, announced that he was restoring the licenses of Mawio, as well as newspapers MwanaHALISI, Mseto, and Tanzania Daima, just a handful of the outlets that were banned or suspended from publishing online and in print under former President John Pombe Magafuli. 

“If I have come saying that our intentions are good, let’s begin by turning a new page,” Nnauye said in a February 10 meeting with editors in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian commercial capital. Nnauye said he was acting on orders of the new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, who succeeded Magafuli after his death a year ago. The new government, which has also suspended newspapers, aims to work in concert with members of the press to reform Tanzania’s media laws, said Nnauye. Reached by CPJ for comment about details of the reforms, government spokesperson Gerson Msigwa said that they would be announced at a later date.  

CPJ spoke to Mkina about his plans for restarting his publication, and what the lifting of the ban means for press freedom in Tanzania. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your reaction to learning that Mawio’s license was restored?

Simon Mkina: I heard the breaking news from social media. I felt a rush of relief at the possibility of being able to go back into publishing and to do what I love the most. It feels like freedom was restored after almost five years’ delay.

What was the impact of the years-long ban on Mawio?

The biggest impact [was] to the public. Their rightful freedom of information was infringed. [In 2017], a lot of people came to our office [to express their concerns]. Some institutions, including lawyers’ organizations and human rights organizations, wrote in protest of the banning of the newspaper. On social media there were many stories from our readers who were just blaming the government for this decision. The public, from the country and outside, were crying for the newspaper to get back on the street.

When the paper was banned, did the staff continue working as journalists?

We had to close the office because there was no other business we were doing apart from writing. Reporters, editors, designers, proofreaders, and all other support staff, including drivers, were forced into redundancy.In the main office in Dar es Salaam, we were 27 [staffers]. And we had reporters in all regions, including Zanzibar. So in total about 57 people were made redundant because the newspaper was closed. The impact is multiplied beyond these 57, because they have families. Very few of the reporters were able to continue working in journalism, it was difficult finding other jobs. 

You continued to work as a journalist, publishing in places like South African weekly The Mail & Guardian. What was it like going from being an editor to a freelancer?

It was not very easy. The thing is: you have to survive. You have to raise your kids. There is no other business I know that I can do better than journalism. But it was not only about surviving, I love the profession.

Can we expect to see Mawio back in circulation soon or are there any remaining hurdles?

It will take some time for Mawio to go back into publishing, as it needs huge capital. We need to start afresh. We need a printing budget, which is more than 100 million Tanzanian shillings [US$43,300] for a few months, before the newspaper even stands on its own feet financially and generates revenue. We need equipment and to hire the team. So there is hard work to be done. We have already started doing some of this work– looking for a team and new offices.

What will be Mawio‘s place in the Tanzanian news market once it reopens?

If we get back, Mawio will continue uncovering news that is not covered elsewhere in the mainstream media. We will do forensic journalism, investigative journalism. I can’t say what specific subjects right now—but in every story there is always an investigative aspect if you want to dig deeper, whether it is social, financial, or governance issues.

How would you characterize the press freedom environment since Samia became president almost a year ago?

President Samia has taken a great drift from what I can call the dark ages for media freedom in Tanzania. She has started to show good signs towards freedom of the media and there is a clear flow of information to the general public. But much work remains to be done.

Our country still has some controversial media laws which in an actual sense would hinder our working environment. Still, I hope President Samia will work to rectify them. It is crucial now that relevant legislation, including the Media Services Act [a 2016 law found inimical to press freedom by a regional court] be transformed.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Muthoki Mumo/CPJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative.

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper today contrasted the “reckless self-expression” of anti-covid mandates protesters and the dangers confronting the people of Ukraine fighting for their survival as an independent nation in the face of a brutal four-day-old invasion by its neighbour Russia.

Critising the rhetoric by protesters against the so-called “draconian” and “authoritarian” covid-19 rules in this country, the New Zealand Herald today mocked the anti-mandates protest in the Parliament grounds in the capital Wellington entering its third week, saying “attacks on people and their freedom are real and dangerous in a country under Russian assault”.

The newspaper said public gatherings carried extra risk in a pandemic. However, while a rally to draw attention to a desperate invasion far away was “at least understandable, the anti-mandate protests [in Wellington and Auckland] seem to be more about reckless self-expression”.

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In an editorial, the paper said “noticing contrasts between two different situations” could provide clarity.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has instantly put claims from a minority of people opposed to covid-19 restrictions around the world in perspective.

“These people have argued that common coronavirus health requirements during the pandemic are attacks on their personal freedom.

“They have talked and written about oppression, coercion and risks over complying with health measures meant to help people survive a frequently deadly and dangerous coronavirus.”

‘Particularly unpersuasive’
Now, said the Herald, these views “sound particularly unpersuasive”.

“As footage and reporting from Ukraine shows, oppression is having armoured vehicles from a neighbouring country roll down your roads.

“Loss of freedom is having to hide in shelters to avoid military strikes from the air or having to walk with your belongings to the border for safety.

“Risk is potentially dying or being injured when your apartment building is hit by a missile.”

What was happening in Ukraine was also what happened in less publicised conflicts around the globe, said The Herald.

“Its harrowing pictures and eyewitness accounts, its timing in the third year of the pandemic, and its unfolding impact, [have] shaken the world.

“Civilians, who if they were elsewhere might be only fighting off a covid infection, are having to handle improvised weapons in Kyiv or join 120,000 others who have already fled to neighbouring countries, according to United Nations estimates.”

Protests against Moscow’s aggression
Protests condemning Moscow’s aggression and expressing support for Ukrainians have taken place in New Zealand and in different countries, including in Russia where almost 3000 people have been arrested.

“In New Zealand, there have been protests against the war at the same time as ongoing demonstrations by people who see vaccination mandates, social distancing, vaccine passports and mask-wearing as an imposition on their rights,” said The Herald.

“There’s been a lot of rhetoric with covid-19 of ‘draconian” and ”authoritarian” rules,” said the newspaper.

“In reality, complying with some restrictions for a period of time, which have involved adjusting goals and behaviours and dealing with economic issues, has meant this country has survived a challenging situation pretty well so far compared with others.

“It has hit harder for some groups in society than others. Yet a lot of people are still finding it fairly easy to cope, with vaccination shots, boosters and masks, even with omicron case numbers soaring to dizzying heights and New Zealand’s death toll rising again.”

“Russian citizens know about authoritarianism. On Friday thousands of Russians bravely took to the streets to denounce their government’s invasion.

“Those citizens in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities knew the risk they were taking and at least 2700 have reportedly been arrested.

Mass displays of dissent not tolerated
“President Vladimir Putin’s government does not tolerate mass displays of dissent. Opponents of the regime have been poisoned and killed. The country’s main opposition leader Alexei Navalny is imprisoned.”

“These rebels on Friday had a cause: objecting to war, the violation of a country’s sovereignty and the deaths, hardship, and displacement being inflicted.”

The newspaper said that anti-war rallies and anti-mandate protests took place in New Zealand on Saturday despite omicron cases hitting 13,000 and deaths from the pandemic reaching 56 — far lower than in most other countries.

“Police said officers outside Parliament were spat on. Protesters have been seen ignoring social distancing and avoiding masks and the Ministry of Health said people attending are coming down with covid.

“Hospitals around the country were reporting visits from people who had been at the Parliament site,” said the newspaper.

• The Herald’s editorial

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

The publisher of the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star and dozens of other newspapers across the country has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The newspaper industry has been devastated by changing technology that has sent the vast majority of people online in search of news. While McClatchy and others have pushed digital operations aggressively, advertising dollars have continued to flow toward internet giants like Facebook and Google.

McClatchy Co.’s 30 newsrooms, including The Charlotte Observer, The News & Observer in Raleigh, and The Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, will continue to operate as usual as the publisher reorganizes under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The publisher’s origins date to 1857 when it first began publishing a four-page paper in Sacramento, California, following the California Gold Rush. That paper became The Sacramento Bee.

McClatchy has received $50 million in financing from Encina Business Credit that will enable it to maintain current operations for the company, which is still based in Sacramento.

“When local media suffers in the face of industry challenges, communities suffer: polarization grows, civic connections fray and borrowing costs rise for local governments,” said CEO Craig Forman. “We are moving with speed and focus to benefit all our stakeholders and our communities.”

McClatchy expects fourth-quarter revenues of $183.9 million, down 14% from a year earlier. Its 2019 revenue is anticipated to be down 12.1% from the previous year. That would mean that the publisher’s revenue will have slid for six consecutive years.

The company expects to pull its listing from the New York Stock Exchange as a publicly traded company, and go private.

McClatchy filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Its restructuring plan needs approval from its secured lenders, bondholders and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

McClatchy has suffered as readers give up traditional subscriptions and get news online and like other publishers, it’s tried to follow them there.

Digital-only subscriptions have increased by almost 50% year over year, McClatchy said. The company has more than 200,000 digital-only subscribers and over 500,000 paid digital customer relationships.

Yet the migration to digital publications has not offset the loss of advertisers that once relied on newspapers.

The estimated total U.S. daily newspaper circulation including both print and digital in 2018 fell 8% from the prior year to 28.6 million for weekday. Sunday circulation fell 9% to 30.8 million, according to the Pew Research Center for Journalism and Media.

Last year, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet bleakly predicted the demise of “most local newspapers in America” within five years, except for ones bought by billionaires. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, both national publications, are thriving after being bought by billionaires. The Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal are among other major American newspapers that appear to have steadied themselves after being sold to local wealthy individuals.

Even the arrival of moneyed interests can prove fleeting.

Two weeks ago, billionaire Warren Buffett said he was selling all of Berkshire Hathaway’s publications; 31 daily newspapers in 10 states as well as 49 paid weekly publications with digital sites. Buffett is a lifelong booster of newspapers but he has said for several years that he expects most of them to continue on their declining trajectory, save for a handful of national papers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

“McClatchy remains a strong operating company with an enduring commitment to independent journalism that spans five generations of my family,” said Chairman Kevin McClatchy, the great-great grandson of the company founder, James McClatchy.

The company has also worked on its financials, trimming operating expenses by $186.9 million for the three-year period ended in December. It’s also paid off about $153.5 million in debt in the same period.

Forman said McClatchy doesn’t anticipate any adverse impact on qualified pension benefits for substantially all of the plan’s participants and beneficiaries.

Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha, Nebraska.