Press Freedom

Cameroon sports journalist Eyong Macdella Bessong assaulted over accreditation card dispute

Dakar, May 26, 2022–Cameroonian authorities must identify and hold to account the policeman who assaulted journalist Eyong Macdella Bessong while she was covering a May 18 football match in Buea, the capital of the Southwest Region, and should hold accountable the stadium official who manhandled her and asked police to remove her from the property, […]

As World Cup nears, Qatar and FIFA face fresh scrutiny on press freedom commitments

Exactly one year before the scheduled start of the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar, plainclothes officers from the Gulf state’s Criminal Investigations Department arrested Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani, a sports reporter and cameraman respectively for Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, as they were leaving their hotel in the capital of Doha. The NRK journalists […]

China: Censorship Mars Beijing Olympics

IOC, Sponsors’ Inaction Enables Restrictions on Athletes, Journalists (New York) – Chinese government censorship seriously marred the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which close on February 20, 2022, Human Rights Watch said today. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and corporate sponsors have not spoken out about the government’s human rights record or used their leverage to press for rights […]

Journalists at the Beijing Winter Olympics may test China’s tolerance for critical coverage

Can China and the International Olympic Committee maintain a “bubble” of total press freedom inside China’s vast sea of repression? That’s the question facing thousands of journalists as they arrive in the coming weeks to cover the Beijing Winter Olympics, which kick off on February 4. (CPJ’s safety advisory for those attending addresses coronavirus restrictions and […]

CPJ Safety Advisory: Covering the Beijing Olympic Winter Games 2022

The Olympic Winter Games take place in Beijing, China from February 4-20, 2022. Journalists covering the event are likely to face a range of challenges from coronavirus restrictions to digital surveillance. The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed concern about the ability of the press to work freely during the event. China has been the world’s worst jailer of […]

China’s Olympic Press Freedom Pledges: Worthless in 2008, Absent in 2022

Prospects for free-wheeling media coverage of the February Beijing Winter Olympics seem increasingly dim, not least because of the attitude of the International Olympic Committee. On October 13, John Coates, vice president of the International Olympic Committee, dismissed out of hand calls from CPJ, human rights groups, and US lawmakers to pressure Beijing over its abysmal […]