Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

https://cpj.org/reports/2021/12/number-of-journalists-behind-bars-reaches-global-high/

by samizdis • 5 years ago

323 108 5 years ago

1cvmask6• 5 years ago

So we don’t classify jailed and tortured Julian Assange as a journalist even though he broke amongst some of the biggest news stories over the last 20 years. Or that the Trump administration planned on assasinating him. Or that Joe Biden is trying to extradite him on trumped up charges (pun not intended).

Or the Black TV reporter Bilal Abdul Kareem from Chicago that Obama tried to kill multiple times:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-off...

bombcar• 5 years ago

But we do classify others who wrote a few blog articles as “journalist” when they were/are much more obviously engaged in other activities.

1cvmask6• 5 years ago

We also classify people who are spies, publish fake news or lie all the time as journalists as well.

During the Church Committee it got public that the publishers of Time Henry Luce, New York Times’ Sulzberger and so many journalists worked for the CIA:

“Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.“

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hear...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2015/05/06/40-y...

ineedasername3• 5 years ago

Your right about Assange, and the really frustrating thing is that if he was a US citizen and did the exact same thing but published in a traditional media outlet then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. US journalists have received all kinds of awful leaked information and not been subjected to this.

Although discussion on assassination? Wow, wasn't aware of that.

I'll grant that his organization might have stepped into a gray area (apparently the US witness has credibility issues) if they provided Manning with a bit of guidance on how to get more information (unsuccessfully I think) but I don't think that materially changes things all that much.

pydry8• 5 years ago

If Assange did precisely the same thing and exposed Russian or Chinese war crimes the idea that he was justly imprisoned for espionage because of the methods by which he did it would be universally mocked and condemned in the west.

Conversely Roman Protasevich's airplane would be downed and he would already be in prison on charges of "fighting on the front line alongside neonazis" (evidence is that he did neonazi azov PR but probably did not fight), while the Russians condemned us for imprisoning a valiant journalist.

pydry8• 5 years ago

The absence of assange et al is notable but it's not a bad thing to be campaigning for the release of journalists in other countries.

enriquto• 5 years ago

The conspicuous absence of Assange is indeed very bad for the purported campaign for the release of journalists "in other countries". Such other countries can now rightfully point to the hypocrisy of this campaign.

What the CPJ is doing (omitting Assange in its list) is effectively harmful for the journalists jailed in other countries.

sleepysysadmin2• 5 years ago

So we don’t classify jailed and tortured Julian Assange as a journalist even though he broke amongst some of the biggest news stories over the last 20 years.

I do believe he is considered a journalist but he's in prison for multiple reasons. False and retracted sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Which technically had nothing to do with journalism and far more to do with Sweden's considerable problem with rape in their country. Sweden went to the extent that it's rape if you don't have written consent for sex. They also removed all the intent/threats/violence as being part of it as well. Effectively they made sex illegal.

Or that the Trump administration planned on assasinating him.

Woah, never heard this before. Trump directly benefitted from assange and even praised him. Though never actually helped him in any way. I believe he kinda disavowed knowing anything about him. I do believe that was a big political mistake by Trump. If Trump gave Assange a pardon... that would have been huge.

As for CIA making plans under Trump... clearly didnt happen.

Or that Joe Biden is trying to extradite him on trumped up charges (pun not intended).

It is afterall the democrat email servers assange leaked. Biden's going all in for sure.

Or the Black TV reporter Bilal Abdul Kareem from Chicago that Obama tried to kill multiple times:

woah, thats another i never heard. nobel peace prize obama took his attention away from his 7 wars to try to kill some journalist from his home city?

This seems more like the CIA isn't under control.

1cvmask6• 5 years ago

Glad you noticed the Chicago reference. There are many more such examples. My favorite doublespeak is the fancy name for killing Obama administration used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

pell2• 5 years ago

The following is not so much an attempt at arguing with the poster but to correct falsehoods and blatant misrepresentations in their post.

I do believe he is considered a journalist but he's in prison for multiple reasons.

Right now he’s only in prison due to the extradition trial. The reason he isn’t out on bail is because he skipped bail in the past.

Sweden went to the extent that it's rape if you don't have written consent for sex. They also removed all the intent/threats/violence as being part of it as well. Effectively they made sex illegal.

This is an incredibly absurd recount of Swedish law. It’s evident you do not know much about it. Swedish law defines rape as sex without consent. This definition was passed in 2018. The accusations against Assange were made in 2010. The conviction rates do not reflect your assumption that sex itself is deemed illegal in Sweden. The charges against Assange were also dropped.

By the way, one accusation against him was that he penetrated a woman without a condom while she was sleeping. That is considered rape in most countries around the world. So even if we were to take your incorrect description of Sweden’s rape laws seriously they wouldn’t fit the bill here.

It is afterall the democrat email servers assange leaked. Biden's going all in for sure.

The US case against Assanges originated in the Obama era. However his administration decided to not go forward with it. It was Trump’s administration who decided to make the extradition request. Assange was forced out of the Ecuadorian embassy during Trump’s tenure. So this had nothing to do with DNC leaks, nor was this a Democrat endeavor.

Whatever one thinks of Assange or his work with Wikileaks, the way he is being treated by the US and the UK is entirely absurd and does not show any signs of fair trial at this point. News outlets in the US have done a poor job at holding the government accountable here. If Assange does get extradited and convicted it will break journalism in the United States fundamentally.

gadders7• 5 years ago

Project Veritas was recently raided by the FBI and had material taken as well.

long_time_gone4• 5 years ago

I think this is where the question of "what is a journalist?" comes into play. What legitimate journalism has Project Veritas done?

Wikipedia makes them seem more like a political hit squad than legitimate journalists:

== Project Veritas unsuccessfully attempted to mislead The Washington Post into publishing false information about the Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations in 2017; the Post won a Pulitzer Prize after uncovering the operation.==

== In 2020, The New York Times published an exposé detailing Project Veritas' use of spies recruited by Erik Prince, to infiltrate "Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda".==

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas

- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/politics/erik-prince-p...

koheripbal3• 5 years ago

It discredits the entire effort to omit journalists who don't support your agenda.

It really speaks to the heavy handed bias of the western main stream journalism industry.

smackay2• 5 years ago

Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly.

So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third world countries. But then again, maybe it is.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

pydry8• 5 years ago

What's crazy about his case is that he was sentenced to more time than somebody who just outright named an accuser on twitter.

Leonna Dorrian should be disbarred. What she did was a blatant abuse of her power.

gadders7• 5 years ago

I'm English, and pretty far from Murray politically, but from what I've read in other places as well the Scottish Government, the SNP, and the Scottish judiciary seem very close - probably too close.

ajb• 5 years ago

Yeah that judgement was crazy. It has been spun as being about protecting the identity of victims of sexual offences, but I don't believe that for a moment because the judgement contained a detailed account of how you could find the accusers from Murray's articles. So I personally had no idea who they were when I read his article originally, but it was easy to figure out from the judgement. If what they cared about was protecting the identities, the judgement would never have been written that way.

gampleman• 5 years ago

Sadly looking at the map in the OP, the UK is reported as 0 journalists imprisoned.

Between Julian Assange and Craig Murray that seems low.

chrisseaton3• 5 years ago

Usual problem - how do you define a journalist and how do you say whether they've been jailed for being a journalist or not.

koheripbal3• 5 years ago

Wait, it's doxxing a witness a bad thing?

This seems like a legitimate crime.

pjc504• 5 years ago

Accusers, who in Scotland are afforded legal protection from being named in the press in cases of sexual assault.

laydn• 5 years ago

Well a journalist -a US citizen- (Jamal Khashoggi) was killed in a foreign (Saudi) embassy; evidence (including, Audio evidence) was presented of the killing and was found to be credible, CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.... then.... what happened? Nothing.

In a world where you can kill a US journalist so brazenly without any repercussions, would you be surprised journalists being jailed for $reasons ?

tc313• 5 years ago

Not to notpick, but while Khashoggi was a US resident, he was not a US citizen.

finiteseries2• 5 years ago

A “US journalist” whose grandfather was the personal physician to the house of Saudi’s founder, whose billionaire arms dealing uncle was involved in Iran Contra, whose first cousin was in that car with Princess Diana…

He was hilariously Saudi!

1cvmask6• 5 years ago

And Obama has killed and droned US citizens who were journalists and even his US citizen children with a great Orwellian response by the White House spokesman.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-tea...

pydry8• 5 years ago

Killing Khashoggi definitely cooled the US's relationship with Saudi Arabia - a relationship they are critically reliant upon.

I would be surprised if bin Salman didn't regret his decision.

pandaman• 5 years ago

Unless there was some other Jamal Khashoggi killed in a Saudi embassy, he was not a US citizen. Judging by the Tim Kaine's letter [1], he was not even a permanent resident of the US but a temporary worker on O-1 visa.

1. https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/connolly-kaine-l...

pjc504• 5 years ago

I think it's quite a serious problem that people only want to talk about one or two very specific journalists that fit into the pre-existing culture war, rather than look at this more broadly.

thr0wawayf00• 5 years ago

This is very intentional. Attacking specific journalists and broadly claiming that the entire space is corrupt and manipulated is what increases the tolerance for things like this.

koheripbal3• 5 years ago

There's also an issue with defining "journalist".

Some people being described as "journalists" are really activists who are actively taking part in the movement that's being targeted by the government.

It doesn't excuse imprisoning them, but it muddies the water when it comes to defending them, and bloats the numbers in a way that make the problem more easy to dismiss.

On the other hand - certifying journalists is a non-trivial problem.

rodolphoarruda2• 5 years ago

Dated number for Brazil, which counts 3 imprisoned journalists in 2021, not 1.

frozenlettuce• 5 years ago

And most people would be surprised to know that the jailed journalists (downgraded as "bloggers" by traditional media) are aligned with the right-wing government (but prosecuted by the supreme court members from the previous leftist government)

rodolphoarruda2• 5 years ago

A supreme court whose members are engaged political activists is "jaw dropping" by itself.

game_the0ry• 5 years ago

What I am wondering is - how much corruption would be uncovered if journalists investigating corruption did not fear going to prison or dying?

VictorPath• 5 years ago

A satellite dish salesman with a storefront in Brooklyn, New York, was jailed in 2009 because he turned on the ability to watch al-Manar, a station associated with a political party that has made up 10+% of Lebanon's parliament since 2005 (both associated with the Shia organizational group in Lebanon, Hezbollah).

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/nyregion/24cable.html

Germany, France and other European countries have banned the channel as well.

thriftwy• 5 years ago

I don't see how it is different from what Iran or China is doing! Wow

hansvm3• 5 years ago

The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence. The evidence is:

- A small increase in total jailed journalists (roughly matching world population growth, and the delta is a small discrete count which would yield large error bounds)

- Specific examples of horrific events (matching atrocities that governments have been more than willing to commit in 2020, 2019, 2018, ...)

Without looking at longer time scales (e.g., over the last 10-20 years journalist jailings significantly outpace population growth) or providing some justification for why circumstances have changed and we would expect journalist jailings to not pace population growth (e.g., if there are significantly fewer journalists per capita (not sure if that's true, just hypothetically)), a story that matches the evidence better is that lots of countries were horrible to journalists in years past and they're repeating that bad behavior now.

To be clear, that's not saying that the overall problem shouldn't be fixed or even that their framing isn't correct, but...it's not exactly hard to provide evidence that _actually_ backs up their claim; why wouldn't they?

d232• 5 years ago

The first sentence in the article compares 2021 to 2020 and reflects a 4% increase in jailed journalists. This is 4x larger than the typical 1% population growth.

Sure, more numbers would help. I'm not sure what sort of mindset would make someone immediately jump to defending the jailing of journalists though.

The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence.

I think democratic backslide / the rise of authoritarianism globally is broadly recognized at this point. It's not my area of expertise though.

kbenson2• 5 years ago

> > The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence.
I think democratic backslide / the rise of authoritarianism globally is broadly recognized at this point.

Assuming people agree on things like that is part of the problem. Different groups of people often have wildly different ideas about what the problems their countries are currently facing are, and if you make assumptions and statements that seem to align with one set of views more than another all you're doing is limiting your audience and pre-seeding a group that will discount your argument.

The way around this is the same as it's ever been (even if people seem somewhat more resistant to it). Make well reasoned arguments backed by publicly available evidence, and reference that evidence so people can verify it.

This is the bar. Not hitting it because of assumptions you're making which the bar is specifically meant to guard against is a shame. We should encourage people to do better, not excuse them when they fail.

hansvm3• 5 years ago

4x vs 1%

Very true, but the _discrete_ counts of journalists involved are also miniscule, presenting (the aforementioned) large error bounds on exactly how great the driving force is on journalist incarcerations. 4% isn't meaningfully distinct from 1% given the actual data. It's not that unlike a fun xkcd [0]

[0] https://xkcd.com/1102/

tootie3• 5 years ago

I'd also argue that at least some percentage of them deserve jail time. I don't feel any sympathy for someone like Judith Miller nor would I shed a tear for James O'Keefe if he is ever brought to justice. I'm sure the overwhelming number of journalists in jail are in jail for offending a despot rather than committing a real crime, but not 100%.

I would actually wager that the biggest problem with this statistic is the meta problem of underreporting of jailed journalists. I would not be surprised if there are dozens or hundreds of journalists in jail in China that we just don't even know about.

treeman79• 5 years ago

So jail is fine for people you disagree with?

abecedarius2• 5 years ago

Miller deserves censure, but what do you think makes her reporting criminal?

farss• 5 years ago

I'm not sure that per capita is a very useful rubric to measure over time. Like I'm not saying there's no relation to population size, if you compare a tiny country to a large one, but it's not clear to me that there's a strong relationship - why a government would be expected to lock up 5% more journalists if the population grew by 5%. Or why if a country of 30 million jailed 100 journalists it should be necessarily be considered less repressive than if a country of 40 million jailed 100.

hansvm3• 5 years ago

Per capita naturally maps to the idea that people's behaviors are innate in aggregate -- given a particular context you would expect the same distribution of people to behave in a particular fashion (become journalists, become journalists who question authoritarianism at the wrong place and wrong time, have a fetish for murdering journalists, ...).

That isn't always a relevant idea, but it's a useful model that adequately describes a wide variety of phenomena. On the surface it seems applicable to journalist jailings; the count of journalists increases per capita, and if their behavior is independent of world population then you would expect (absent other information or constraining factors) for behaviors leading to imprisonment (not assigning blame -- this could be as simple as wrong-place-wrong-time "behaviors") to also increase per capita.

Spivak2• 5 years ago

My hot take is that is actually a good thing, not because I want to see journalists in jail but because it means that journalists are actually doing things that upset the established order enough for them to be thrown in jail. It’s a huge improvement from the typical corporate journalist writing listicles and rewording press releases off newswires.

Investigative journalism isn’t a legally protected activity and the nature of the job involves running afoul of the law if you want to uncover anything worthwhile.

cblconfederate3• 5 years ago

this is in no way a good thing, the world is supposed to be moving forward towards greater freedoms

Spivak2• 5 years ago

Legal lawbreaking is still an oxymoron though. Any investigative journalist that operates completely within the law will uncover nothing the current powers don’t wish to allow them to know.

The whole point of civil disobedience is to break the law for the greater good knowing full well you might suffer consequences for it.

kakkan• 5 years ago

I think this is a misleading title. Journalism as a profession shot up the last couple of years due to internet and media so the count should be normalized. What ratio of journalists are persecuted compared to total number of journalists out there?

cblconfederate3• 5 years ago

what's your data for that? If anything, with most 'journalists' being professional retweeters, there are fewer correspondents in dangerous places. How many journalists were in afghanistan?

Reporters sans frontieres tracks journalism persecution worldwide: https://rsf.org/en/barometer

taneq• 5 years ago

Yeah, I would expect the number of journalists in jail to be at an all time high if the number of journalists (and, in fact, the number of humans) is at an all time high.

Not that it's good, of course.

Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

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