The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s 2021 prison census found that the number of reporters jailed for their work hit a new global record of 293, up from a revised total of 280 in 2020. At least 24 journalists were killed because of their coverage so far this year; 18 others died in circumstances too murky to determine whether they were specific targets. (CPJ)
For the third straight year, China remains the world’s most frequent jailer of journalists, putting at least 50 journalists behind bars, per CPJ. Myanmar, Egypt, Vietnam, Belarus and Turkey round out the list of top offenders. (Axios)
CPJ said this year’s census includes Hong Kong for the first time. That is where Jimmy Lai, founder of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was sentenced to 14 months in prison earlier this year. China’s National Security Law, implemented in 2020 after months of anti-government protests, broadened Beijing’s power over the special administrative region. (CNN Business)
No journalist has been imprisoned in North America as of Dec. 1, the group said, but it noted that the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a collaboration of the group and other press advocacy organizations, reported at least 56 arrests and detentions of journalists across the United States this year, 86 percent of them during protests. That total nearly equals the totals for 2017, 2018 and 2019 combined. (NYT)
The journalists who were killed in 2021 include Danish Siddiqui, a Reuters photographer who died in a Taliban attack in Afghanistan in July, and Gustavo Sanchez Cabrera, who was shot and killed in Mexico in June. Furthermore, the report tracked that since 1992 and as of December 1, 2021, at least 1,440 journalists have been killed globally. (Al Jazeera)