Category: Violation of journalists’ rights

Opinion | The Underground Historians Keeping the Truth Alive in China

In 1959, a group of university students in the northwestern Chinese city of Tianshui embarked on a quixotic plan. China was in the midst of the Great Famine, a catastrophe caused by government policies that would kill as many as 45 million. These young people had witnessed farmers starving to death and cannibalism; they also…
Read more

Joan Meyer, Longtime Editor of a Besieged Newspaper, Dies at 98

Joan Meyer, who spent nearly 60 years as a reporter, columnist, editor and associate publisher at The Marion County Record in Kansas, died on Saturday at her home, a day after the police searched the newspaper’s offices. She was 98. Her son, Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher, confirmed the death. He said that the cause…
Read more

Maria Ressa, Philippine Journalist, Is Acquitted of Last Tax Charge

The Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa on Tuesday was acquitted by a Philippine court of tax fraud, the latest legal victory in her fight for the survival of her news site Rappler, which has come to represent the precariousness of the nation’s press freedoms. A regional trial court in Pasig City, near Manila, found that…
Read more

A Crackdown on Free Speech in Jordan

The lavish wedding of Jordan’s crown prince this spring was breathlessly anticipated for months in the kingdom’s state media, and when it arrived, it did not disappoint. After days of public festivities, celebrities and royalty decked out in designer clothing swanned about an opulent palace. The writers at AlHudood, a satirical website that is the…
Read more

Kansas Newspaper Is Talk of Town, and Not Just for Getting Raided

One person said The Marion County Record covered two recent deaths insensitively. Another said a handful of articles focused needlessly on a simple paperwork error that led to tax credits getting rejected. A third thought an opinion column harped too harshly on the poor quality of children’s letters to Santa Claus. The Marion County Record,…
Read more

Opinion | A Kansas Newspaper Is Raided by Police. Will Judges Protect the Press?

Small-town newspapers are vanishing from the American landscape, crushed by economic pressures from online media and corporate consolidation. In some cases, governments have piled on, seeking to sink or undermine the papers that remain. Those papers should be able to rely on courts to protect them from government abuses. Too often, however, courts fail to…
Read more

Opinion | Social Media Algorithms Control Us. It’s Time To Push Back.

Social media can feel like a giant newsstand, with more choices than any newsstand ever. It contains news not only from journalism outlets, but also from your grandma, your friends, celebrities and people in countries you have never visited. It is a bountiful feast. But so often you don’t get to pick from the buffet.…
Read more

Kansas Newspaper Raid: Seized Items to Be Returned to Marion County Record

The top prosecutor in Marion County, Kan., said on Wednesday that there was not sufficient evidence to support a raid on a local newspaper last week, and that all the devices and materials obtained in the search would be returned. Joel Ensey, the Marion County attorney, said in a statement that, in light of the…
Read more

Report on Anti-Gay Slur Could Put Wisconsin News Site Out of Business

The county board meeting in Wausau, Wis., on Aug. 12, 2021, got contentious fast. Nobody disputes that. But what happened about 12 minutes in, as members of the north-central Wisconsin community squabbled over a resolution intended to promote diversity and inclusion, has become the subject of a bitter legal fight that threatens to bankrupt one…
Read more

Prince Harry Wages War Against Tabloids Forced to Change, if Not Retreat

In his hacking lawsuit being heard in a British court, Prince Harry aims to land another blow against a tabloid industry that has long been accused of widespread privacy abuses but that has been forced in recent years to rein in its excesses. So even if Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, wins his…
Read more