Carrying a makeshift headstone with “Independent Media” written on it, a small group of journalists protested on Friday against a new media law, which they see as unconstitutional, further limiting independent journalism and violating human rights.

Authorities in the West African country of Togo arrested three journalists for taking part in a discussion broadcasted end of November live on YouTube about the alleged involvement of two ministers in corruption, the CPJ reported on Monday.

Media in Pakistan cited police investigators on Monday saying that an amateur video reporter, who posted videos of Arab dignitaries from the Middle East on illegal hunting trips in Pakistan, was killed two weeks ago while trying to escape from the house of a local lawmaker in the southern port city of Karachi, where he was forcefully kept and tortured.

After the temporary shut down and gutting of Ukraine’s English-language weekly newspaper, its former staffers are hoping to start a new outlet that will have the editorial independence the Kyiv Post had.

Leaked text files revealing widespread surveillance and wiretaps by the State Security Service of Georgia are roiling the media and the internet in Georgia, featuring details about the personal lives of journalists, civil activists, politicians and clerics.

Belarus authorities continue to keep the editor of the country’s oldest weekly and one of the last independent news outlets in the country incarcerated and have closed down the national journalist association in what is being seen as part of an ongoing crackdown on media.

Russia’s government on Friday named IStories Media a “foreign agent,” ramping up a campaign that has seen some of the country’s top independent media outlets effectively blacklisted this year.

The staff of IStories. Credit: Istories.

Polish lawmakers voted to pass a contentious bill last week, which has been seen by many to be a step toward suppressing press freedom. Now, it awaits the approval of the Senate and President Andrzej Duda.

A close associate of the incarcerated Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, said on Wednesday that Russian state prosecutors have urged a court to declare her guilty of violating COVID-19 safety standards and impose two years of limitations on her.

The reverberations from an international media investigation into Israeli spyware firm the NSO Group continue, with Amazon saying it will shut down cloud service infrastructure and accounts linked to the surveillance vendor. As Vice reported Monday, Amazon made the call after a global backlash to the firm’s methods.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Brazilian officials and their representatives to refrain from harassing members of the press who cover them and rather encourage free reporting. The appeal came after President Jair Bolsonaro’s personal lawyer sent a lengthy and menacing message to a journalist reporting on alleged government corruption.

U.S. federal prosecutors charged an Iranian intelligence official and three members of his network for a plot to kidnap a New York-based Iranian-American journalist, author and human rights activist critical of Iran, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

Vietnamese authorities should immediately release journalist Dung Le Van and drop any charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Monday after police arrested the freelance reporter who covers corruption and land confiscations in his country.

It has never been more dangerous to be a journalist in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime is trying to silence and suppress the independent media, reporters said at an online press conference in Minsk on Tuesday.

Thousands of Georgians protestedon Monday against the government, requesting the resignation of the prime minister over the death of a journalist who was beaten by an anti-LGBTQ mob last week.

Angolan authorities should drop criminal defamation charges against anti-corruption journalists Coque Mukuta and Escrivão José and stop trying to silence those who are exposing corruption, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement on Thursday.

Police in Moscow on Tuesday raided employees of Proekt (Project), an independent media outlet, on the same day the media published its investigation about Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev.

The semi-independent government of the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq has since March 2020 been harshly cracking down on critics, arresting and even disappearing journalists and activists, Amnesty International claimed in a report last week.  

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) in Mexico condemned the recent murders of two local journalists who were gunned down in separate attacks last week.

Police in Nicaragua raided the home of President Daniel Ortega’s main challenger and placed her under house arrest on Wednesday, a day after prosecutors brought money laundering charges against her and requested that she be banned from running for or holding public office.