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Dear Friend,

In the last several days, as demonstrations exploded across the United States, journalists have been assaulted, pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, and arrested on live television. The scale of abuses is unprecedented in recent American history, and CPJ has swung into action to support journalists covering the protests and to hold accountable those who abuse their authority and violate press freedom.

As an organization of journalists, CPJ's first order of business is always to gather the facts and fully report events. There have been as many as 90 separate incidents involving attacks on journalists covering the protests. In partnership with the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, an online database and resource which CPJ helped establish at the beginning of 2017, we are investigating every single case. Over the weekend, we were in touch with 30 journalists who said they experienced abuse. Most shocking were the accounts from journalists who said they were deliberately targeted by police. A journalist for Minnesota Public Radio had a gun pointed at her head by police who refused to lower their weapons after she identified herself as a member of the press. Another journalist, who was tear-gassed and targeted with rubber bullets, said police "were specifically shooting at head level." 

In interviews with The Washington Post, Reuters, BBC, NPR, USA Today, The New York Times, and many, many others, we shared our outrage at this frontal assault on press freedom. Our statement condemning the assaults was issued on Saturday, and shared widely on social media.

While we are pushing for greater restraint and accountability from police across the country, we are also putting events in context, based on CPJ research and reporting, which shows that covering protests in the United States has been a dangerous assignment for some time due to the adoption of aggressive, military-style policing, and the mounting hostility of protesters towards journalists. 

CPJ Emergencies, established in 2016 with a mandate to help keep journalists safe, has been pushing out detailed safety advisories, with information about everything from responding to aggressive protesters to dealing with tear gas. Recognizing that journalists are dealing with the additional risk of COVID-19, we also provided updated guidance on Sunday about covering the protests while social distancing. The Emergencies team is coordinating legal and safety support with organizations on the ground as well as with media outlets to make sure that all journalists have access to the support they need. We have also added an "Ask an Expert" feature on our website, which allows journalists or newsrooms to speak directly with our safety team.

CPJ is working with our press freedom partners to engage police departments, mayors, and other local officials across the country to improve practices, ensure accountability, and launch investigations into police misconduct when necessary. We are engaging with local and national leaders, urging them to express support for press freedom and the work of the media. And we will continue to work with journalists and media organizations to provide the resources and guidance they need to cover the protests safely. 

All of this work is made possible by your support, for which we are most grateful. 

All the best,

Joel Simon

Dear Friend of CPJ,

We at the Committee to Protect Journalists are grateful for your incredible support in the fight for a free press. We stay in this fight because of your help.

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CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal. Read our latest coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. protests and check out your impact here.

Sincerely,

Committee to Protect Journalists

CPJ announces 2020 International Press Freedom awardees

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Clockwise from top left: Svetlana Prokopyeva (Artiom Avanesov); Dapo Olorunyomi (Dapo Olorunyomi); Shahidul Alam (Shahidul Alam); Mohammad Mosaed (Farid Kamran Nia)

New York, July 13, 2020--The Committee to Protect Journalists will honor four courageous journalists from Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, and Russia with the 2020 International Press Freedom Awards. All four have been arrested or faced criminal prosecution in reprisal for their reporting. CPJ will also honor lawyer Amal Clooney with the Gwen Ifill Award. 

"Like brave and committed journalists everywhere, CPJ's honorees set out to report the news without fear or favor for the benefit of their communities, their country, and the world," said Joel Simon, CPJ executive director. "They understood that they would confront powerful forces, enemies of the truth, who would try to stop them from doing their work. What they did not foresee was COVID-19. The global pandemic has not only made their jobs more difficult and dangerous, it has fueled a ferocious press freedom crackdown as autocratic leaders around the world suppress unwelcome news under the guise of protecting public health."

CPJ's 2020 awardees are:

Shahidul Alam (Bangladesh): Alam is a renowned photojournalist and commenter, and the founder of the Bangladeshi multimedia training organization the Pathshala Media Institute and the Drik photo library. In August 2018, Alam was detained after posting a video to social media about student protests in Dhaka. He spent 102 days behind bars, and said he was beaten in custody, before being freed in November 2018.

Mohammad Mosaed (Iran): Mosaed is a freelance economic reporter who investigates corruption, embezzlement, labor issues, economic sanctions, and popular protests. Forced to resign from a reformist newspaper under government pressure, he publishes news on social media platforms. Mosaed was arrested in late 2019 in relation to a tweet, and released in early 2020. He was briefly arrested again in February after criticizing the government's handling of COVID-19.

Dapo Olorunyomi (Nigeria): Olorunyomi is the co-founder, CEO, and publisher of the Nigerian newspaper Premium Times, and during his decades-long career as a journalist has been a fierce defender of press freedom in Nigeria despite repeated government harassment. He was arrested twice before having to go into hiding in 1995, and more recently he was arrested alongside a colleague in 2017 when police raided the Premium Times' office on allegations of defamation.

Svetlana Prokopyeva (Russia): Prokopyeva is a regional correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, known as Radio Svoboda. In early 2019, authorities raided her home, seized her equipment and personal belongings, and interrogated her. She was charged with "justifying terrorism" and her bank accounts were frozen in relation to comments she made on liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy in 2018, when she discussed a suicide bombing attack. This month she was convicted and ordered to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles (US$6,980). The prosecutor had sought a six-year prison term.

The Gwen Ifill Award is given annually by CPJ's board of directors to recognize extraordinary and sustained commitment to press freedom. This year's awardee, lawyer Amal Clooney, has represented embattled reporters around the world, including Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo of Reuters, who were imprisoned in Myanmar for 17 months. She promotes freedom of speech and journalism through the Clooney Foundation for Justice's TrialWatch initiative, which monitors the trials of journalists worldwide and provides free legal representation for those in need.

"Journalists in trouble have no better champion than Amal Clooney, which is why we are so delighted to honor her with the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. A talented barrister, gifted negotiator, and powerful speaker, Clooney works tirelessly to free journalists unjustly targeted by despotic leaders using increasingly punitive laws to stifle reporting," said Kathleen Carroll, CPJ board chair.

The winners will be honored on November 19, 2020, at CPJ's annual benefit gala, to be chaired this year by Patrick Gaspard, President of Open Society Foundations, and hosted by veteran broadcast journalist Lester Holt.

Due to health and safety restrictions related to COVID-19, this year's gala will be virtual, with video profiles, compelling press freedom stories, award presentations, and acceptance speeches streamed online and shared around the world.

For more information on the gala, call Buckley Hall Events at (914) 579-1000 or CPJ's development office at (212) 300-9021, or email CPJdinner@buckleyhallevents.com.

Note to Editors:

CPJ International Press Freedom Award winners are available for interviews upon request. Contact press@cpj.org.

CPJ executive director on the violence against journalists covering U.S. protests

New York, June 2, 2020--In a column today for the Columbia Journalism Review, CPJ executive director Joel Simon responded to the spate of attacks on journalists covering protests across the U.S. this past weekend. In the piece, "Journalists, attacked by police and rioters alike, must build local bridges," Simon argues that while President Donald Trump's anti-press rhetoric has been harmful, the combination of highly militarized policing across much of the country and a growing number of protesters hostile toward the media has made covering protests a dangerous assignment well before this administration.

To learn more about threats to journalists in the U.S., visit CPJ's website and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan website of which CPJ is a founding partner. Journalists can find up-to-date advice on safely covering the protests here.

Dear Friend,

As I'm sure you've read, police in Minneapolis detained four CNN journalists who were reporting on protests in the city early this morning. The police took the journalists into custody during a live broadcast, which clearly showed the reporter, Omar Jimenez, displaying his press badge and offering to move the crew to a different location.

The journalists were simply doing their job. That job helps keep all of us informed.

CPJ continues to provide journalists with safety information, including for reporting on protests. We have added an "Ask an Expert" feature on our website, which allows journalists or newsrooms to speak with our safety team on issues they face. For more of our safety work, especially during the COVID-19 crisis, click here.

While we are relieved that Omar Jimenez and his team were released within an hour, we are concerned that this violation of a free press occurred in the United States, once a beacon for press freedom.

So today, we are asking for your support, if you are able, to help ensure that journalists-anywhere-do not face these kinds of consequences for their reporting. You can help us in several ways:

• Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and, if you haven't already, tweet your support for keeping journalists safe, like the CNN crew 
• Invite your friends, family, and colleagues to do the same-or to sign up to receive our updates and learn how you can make a difference
• Consider making a donation in support of our work

Thank you. We could not be more grateful to have you in this fight with us. Let's make some noise.

Sincerely,

John D. Weis

Director of Development and Outreach