Early in the morning of 17 December 2004, I woke up to a phone call from a Western diplomat. She asked me what I had heard about Deyda Hydara, a journalist and a mutual friend. “No, I am just back from an overseas trip and I have not yet spoken to him,” I replied. “Anything the… Read More How I remember my friend, the brave journalist Deyda Hydara
Our board member Sravya Tadepalli moderated the briefing and opened with the words, “As a Hindu and part of a religious tradition that believes all human beings are inherently divine, I believe it is my religious duty to speak out when oppressed people face atrocities. As an Indian American, I feel a special obligation to… Read More Sunita Viswanath: Why is the Indian Media Erasing 'Hindus for Human Rights' from the Republic Day Story?
A Turkish court has detained well-known journalist Sedef Kabas for allegedly insulting the country’s president. Ms Kabas was arrested on Saturday in Istanbul and a court ordered her to be jailed ahead of a trial. She is accused of targeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a proverb which she quoted on live television on an opposition-linked… Read More Sedef Kabas: Turkish journalist jailed for reciting proverb
Gauri Lankesh, a high-profile journalist and activist who spoke out against the rise of right-wing extremism and stood up for India’s marginalised people, was shot to death on 5 September 2017. Gauri was posthumously awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award for her work. The trial of the 17 people being held in remand for her murder… Read More Killing the Truth: the case of Gauri Lankesh
On 15 January an unprecedented scene was witnessed in the Kashmir Press Club (KPC) when a few journalists accompanied by government forces entered into the premises and appointed themselves as the new “interim body” to look after the club affairs. Many journalists termed the incident a “coup” and condemned the arbitrary takeover of the club… Read More Junaid Kathju: Lockdown of Kashmir Press Club
Hundreds of journalists killed or arrested, rising numbers of female media workers targeted, floods of misinformation and hate speech and ineffectual or hostile governments unable or unwilling to protect the public’s right to know. The 2021 press freedom index released recently by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) makes for grim reading. The report reveals that 488… Read More Dina Matar – 2021: a grim year for Free Speech as hundreds of Journalists are arrested in an increasingly authoritarian World
Gospel, a word from Old English, is a compound that means “good news.” And it’s gospel that’s been in short-supply as we head into the Christmas season. Whenever this fact gets me down, I remember that finding evil, malfeasance, and even suffering in the headlines is just a sign that the press is doing its… Read More Edward Snowden – Everything Going Great: Bad Faith, Worse News and Julian Assange
Assange committed empire’s greatest sin. He exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, callous disregard for human life, rampant corruption and innumerable war crimes. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Labour. Trump or Biden. It does not matter. The goons who oversee the empire sing from the same Satanic songbook… The execution of… Read More CHRIS HEDGES – The execution of Julian Assange: He exposed the crimes of empire; and that can't be tolerated
The plea said that “if the quest for truth and reporting thereof itself is criminalized then the victim in the process is the idea of justice” and that “such circumstances strike at the very foundations of a participative democratic society as it curbs the ‘free flow of information and ideas’… The Supreme Court Wednesday asked… Read More SC restrains Tripura Police from arresting 2 lawyers, journalist booked under UAPA
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is being investigated by the Turkish state for “insulting” the founder of modern Turkey and ridiculing the Turkish flag in his new novel Nights of Plague. Pamuk, who denies the accusations, published the book in Turkey in March. Set on a fictional Ottoman island during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the early 1900s,… Read More Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk charged again with ‘insulting Turkishness’ / Complaint filed against Indian comedian Vir Das for his allegedly anti-India show
After the truth-shower 