press freedom

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Tuesday that China has jailed Gu Wanming, a former bureau chief for the state-run Xinhua news service who dared to question the official account of Premier Li Keqiang’s death in 2023.

Media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was upbeat and defiant at his trial in Hong Kong on Wednesday, facing down a kangaroo court appointed by the Communist-controlled puppet government to prosecute him under the fascist “national security law” imposed by Beijing.

Legendary Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the “Merchant of Death” freed in President Joe Biden’s lopsided December 2022 prisoner exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner, claimed on Monday that U.S. media reports of him returning to the arms trade were “fake news” and clickbait.

Algerian election officials on Sunday declared incumbent President Abulmadjid Tebboune the winner of a dubious election with 95 percent of the vote.

A Russian court on Friday sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed American media for the delay in negotiations to swap captive American journalist Evan Gershkovich.

The office of Russia’s Prosecutor General announced on Thursday that American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been held for over a year without charges, has been formally accused of espionage and will be tried in Yekaterinburg. The date of the trial has not yet been announced.

A group of about a dozen activists physically shoved this reporter out of the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles, a public university, on Friday.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its annual census of imprisoned reporters this weekend, and found China was once again the world’s worst jailer of journalists, followed closely by Myanmar, with Belarus in third place.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power in a 2013 coup and won his first election in 2014, was “re-elected” for a third six-year term on Monday. Election officials said the 66.8-percent turnout was “the highest in the history of Egypt,” and Sisi “won” with 89.6 percent of the vote.

Ugandan security troops arrested 40 supporters of opposition leader Bobi Wine in a crackdown intended to thwart a “million-man march” of protesters.

New Delhi police arrested the editor of NewsClick, a website critical of President Narendra Modi’s administration.

A Swiss court sentenced polemicist Alain Soral to sixty days in jail for defamation, discrimination and incitement to hatred.

While President Biden begs for billions more in aid to Ukraine, an American citizen journalist is languishing in a Ukrainian prison.

American conservative journalist and political commentator Jack Posobiec has been included on a list of supposed enemies of Ukraine.

Canada’s conservative Rebel News won a lawsuit Monday against Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault for blocking Rebel News founder Ezra Levant on Twitter.

Indian police filed criminal charges against four journalists for allegedly “misrepresenting facts” about tribal conflicts in Manipur.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday that Afghan journalism is “still resisting after two years of Taliban persecution,” but that resistance is sadly muted.

The government of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appears to have found a temporary solution, at least, to the problem of his predecessor and rival Imran Khan: a directive requiring the media to screen out “hatemongers, rioters, their facilitators and perpetrators” has effectively blacked out news coverage of Khan and his political comeback campaign.

Far-left activists with the anti-American group Code Pink interrupted the beginning of a conversation on Wednesday between Washington Post journalist David Ignatius and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, demanding freedom for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Reporters Without Borders (commonly known by its French acronym RSF) published its annual World Press Freedom Index on Wednesday, which the United Nations observed as the 30th annual Press Freedom Day.

The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Index, published on Wednesday, ranked communist North Korea as the world’s worst place to be a journalist, concluding a list whose least prestigious spots are dominated by communist regimes.

Russia announced on Wednesday that 31-year-old American journalist Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), was arrested in Ekaterinburg and charged with espionage.

The 50th edition of the annual global survey by Freedom House found freedom declining again worldwide for the 17th year in a row, driven by events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, coups, and attacks on “democratic institutions.”

El Salvador on Friday moved the first 2,000 inmates to the new Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), a 40,000-bed “mega prison” larger than all 20 of the country’s existing prisons combined. Over 64,000 suspects have been arrested so far in President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gang violence.

A new index rating free speech across the globe has described the UK as only being “partially open” amid the government’s online censorship plans.

The website for French magazine Charlie Hebdo was reportedly hacked in the wake of publishing cartoons mocking the Islamist regime in Iran.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Europe’s largest journalist association, has expressed concern about a new Ukrainian law that could arbitrarily censor media in the country.

The Swedish parliament has approved a constitutional amendment to criminalise foreign espionage and disclosure of secret information, limiting what the press may report on certain subjects.

A suspect charged over an incident that saw the Queen’s coffin charged in Westminster Hall has been named as Muhammed Khan.

A group of about 40 women converged on the education ministry in Kabul on Saturday, chanting “bread, work, and freedom!” to protest the Taliban’s hideous treatment of women. The Taliban responded by beating the protesters with rifle butts and firing gunshots in the air to break up the rally.

Three homemade explosive devices were detonated at the building of a Greek media group on Wednesday, prompting condemnation from the government and opposition parties alike.

Police arrested Rohit Ranjan, a television anchorman for India’s Zee News, on Tuesday for allegedly spreading “fake news” by misquoting embattled opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) on Tuesday announced the Chinese Communist Party had barred at least ten local and international media organizations — including Reuters, Bloomberg News, AFP, and the South China Morning Post — from covering the 25th anniversary of the United Kingdom handing Hong Kong over to China.

President Joe Biden will exclude members of the press corps from his meeting Thursday afternoon with manufacturers of baby formula, according to reports on social media.

James O’Keefe’s investigative outlet, Project Veritas, reported Wednesday that a source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had revealed that the agency is targeting the “news media,” including Project Veritas itself.