(CPJ) - Attacks on the Press: Journalism on the Worlds Front Lines

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, defending the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal. CPJ ensures the free flow of news and commentary by taking action wherever journalists are attacked, imprisoned, killed, kidnapped, threatened, censored, or harassed.

Cover photo: An armed pro-Russian separatist orders a journalist to leave near the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in the region of Donetsk on July 20, 2014. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Courtesy of Getty Images)

Cover design: Committee to Protect Journalists

Editor: Alan Huffman
Editorial Director: Elana Beiser
Copy Editor: Kerry Bailey

Copyright 2015 by Committee to Protect Journalists, New York. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
The first edition of Attacks on the Press was published by Bloomberg Press in 2013.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 9781119088424 (paper)
ISBN 9781119107125 (ebk)
ISBN 9781119107132 (ebk)

By Christiane Amanpour

In Pakistan, an unknown gunman shoots a news anchor multiple times. No one is arrested for the crime, though the journalist isfor his reporting.

In Paraguay, a journalist goes into hiding, with bodyguards armed with submachine guns, because of threats to his life made by a smuggling cartel unhappy with his reporting.

In Egypt, three journalists spend a year in prison after being arrested in their Cairo hotel room by a government that disapproves of their coverage of the militarys seizing power.

In Greece, two photojournalists are attacked by right-wing militants outside an Athens courthouse, simply for being there, covering the news.

Somewhere in the Syrian desert, two journalists are brutally executed, not for their reporting but to gain attention for the terrorists who kill them.

And in Paris, eight journalists with the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are murdered in a terrorist attack by two gunmen who were reportedly angry over the magazines portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

Such are the kinds of dangers journalists face around the globe. From government surveillance and censorship to computer hacking, from physical attacks to imprisonment, kidnapping, and murder, the aim is to limit or otherwise control the flow of informationan increasingly complicated effort, with higher and higher stakes.

In November 2014, when the Committee to Protect Journalists held its annual International Press Freedom Awards event in New York City, which I had the honor of hosting, John and Diane Foley took to the podium to address the beheading of their son, journalist Jim Foley, by ISIS the preceding August. The Foleys voiced the shared anguish of family, friends, and journalists over one of the most horrific and visible crimes against journalists in a year that brought far too many of them. As if we needed a reminder that true evil exists in the world, ISIS provided one. Along with Jim and fellow journalist Steven Sotloff, ISIS also beheaded countless civilians, children, and captive soldiers. Other journalists were murdered, killed, or kidnapped elsewhere, in many cases without news coverage or publicity.

It would be terrible enough if the tragedies that befell journalists in 2014 had been isolated episodesif we could write the year off as a nightmare and move on. But with well over 1,000 journalists having been killed since 1992, and with the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo early in 2015, it is clear that the threats are not limited to bad years, nor are they going away. The dangers the Foleys addressed, like those explored in these pages, transcend calendar years and international boundaries. They are expanding in seemingly every direction, morphing in new and disturbing ways. At stake are not only journalists lives but also the publics ability to know whats going on around them.

Conflict reporting has always been a risky endeavor, and it is becoming more so in an era of widespread political turmoil and rapid transmission of information through electronic technology, particularly social media. One reason the ISIS murders strike a chord is their high visibility: The group has repurposed one of the most archaic and gruesome forms of execution for the Internet age, with videos of its beheadings distributed like news releases on the Web.

Though the highly publicized beheadings of Western journalists have brought the risks home to a public that may not have fully grasped what is at stake, countless other journalists have been compromised, attacked, harassed, kidnapped, imprisoned, or killed, often with scant public awareness. The majority are freelancers, who tend to have limited funding and training and, often, no established media outlet to fully support them. Freelancers are increasingly crucial to global reporting, and the broadest array of threats is aimed at them.

From cybersecurity to physical safety, the challenges facing journalists today are more complex than ever, and they come from familiar hot spots such as the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America as well as from comparatively stable countries in Europe, Asia, and North America. In some cases, such as in South Africa, hard-won press freedoms are under siege by an establishment that seeks to shield itself from the gaze of a thriving investigative press, which is the subject of an essay in this anthology by Ferial Haffajee, who, along with three fellow journalistsIranian Siamak Ghaderi, Russian Mikhail Zygar, and Burmese Aung Zawreceived CPJs 2014 International Press Freedom Award.