May 26, 2020
More than four decades ago, Saudi Arabia stepped up its soft-power campaign of influence across the Muslim world and permanently shaped the geopolitical landscape, with the campaign’s fruits now taking on a life of their own. On May 14, journalist Krithika Varagur, OPC member and 2019 Sally Jacobsen Fellowship winner, shared insights and discussed her new book about the Saudi fundamentalist program, titled The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project.
World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the annual event organized by the United Nations in 1993, kicks off a weeklong series of observances. The commemorations will take place amid the ongoing battle against the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought some unfortunate side effects for journalism...
During the OPC’s first post-quarantine event online last week, author and club member Dexter “Tiff” Roberts said during a Zoom discussion that fallout from China’s COVID-19 outbreak will likely threaten the country’s ability to transform its economy and worsen an already precarious rural-urban divide. On April 23, Roberts discussed how the pandemic might shape the country’s future, as well as a host of issues raised in his new book “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism,” which was published on March 10 just as the U.S. was starting its lockdown...
In March, China expelled more than a dozen U.S. journalists in retaliation against tightened controls on Chinese journalists imposed in the month before. Among them was Gerry Shih of The Washington Post, the recipient of the OPC’s Citation for Excellence in the Hal Boyle category this year. Shih had served as China correspondent for the Post since September 2018, most recently following the coronavirus outbreak from the beginning of the crisis...
OPC Past President William J. Holstein and his longtime friend and colleague, Toshio Aritake, wrote a blog post from self-quarantine on the tradition of bowing in Japan, and its possible use as a replacement for handshakes in a world threatened by current and future pandemics...
The plight of immigrant populations fleeing violence across several continents and the state of ISIS after the caliphate emerged as the leading storylines among the 22 winners of the 81st Annual Overseas Press Club Awards...
The Trump Administration’s methods of undermining press freedom and media credibility have been “dangerously effective,” according to a special report prepared for The Committee to Protect Journalists. The CPJ has formally requested a meeting with President Trump to discuss its concerns...
Ivan Flores is an American multimedia journalist based in Afghanistan covering conflict, political and cultural issues. He has filed for a range of media organizations, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, CBS Radio, CBC, The Guardian, The National, Al Jazeera, NPR, La Repubblica, VOX Media, and others...
The Overseas Press Club is offering members a special deal on the large OPC press ID cards as one of the measures the club is taking to help journalists cover breaking news amidst the danger and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic...
OPC member Marcy McGinnis writes a tribute about her friend and colleague, Maria Mercader, CBS network veteran who died on Sunday, March 29...
The Overseas Press Club of America has made the sad but inevitable decision to cancel the club’s annual awards dinner this year, originally scheduled for April 23...
On Feb. 20, New York Times op-ed columnist and OPC member Nicholas Kristof, along with his wife and co-author, business executive Sheryl WuDunn, joined the OPC to talk about their new book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, which focuses on the crisis facing America’s working class...
The OPC is saddened to learn that OPC Foundation board member Maria Mercader, CBS network veteran who covered breaking news for nearly three decades, died from COVID-19 in a New York hospital...
Clare Baldwin, award-winning special correspondent for Reuters based in Hong Kong, urged journalists embarking on new careers to balance hard data with ground-level human stories during the OPC Foundation’s Scholar Awards Luncheon on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020...
Every time you shop on Amazon, you can support the Overseas Press Club Foundation...
The Overseas Press Club condemns the Chinese government’s retaliatory decision to revoke the media credentials of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The OPC hopes that U.S. and China officials can find a solution that would allow more media coverage and greater transparency,..
Harriett Sloan Corporon, wife of OPC Past President John Corporon (1996 – 1998) passed away on Sunday, Jan. 26 in hospice care at home in Park Slope, Brooklyn...
Jim Lehrer Longtime PBS NewsHour anchor and recipient of the OPC's President's Award in 2009, died on January 23rd, at age 85...
As the New York Times correspondent covering Iran, OPC Governor Farnaz Fassihi has been in extra high gear since before the new year, keeping up with assassinations, attacks, mass protests, the tragedy of a downed jetliner, and volatile Iran-US brinksmanship...
The culture of Safety alliance (ACOS) is expanding its geographic reach and the range of support it is providing to help editors, producers and freelance journalists of all stripes as they seek to cover an increasingly dangerous world...
The ACOS Alliance, the coalition that came together following the murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, is working with insurers and stakeholders to facilitate access to affordable insurance for all journalists...
Online harassment of journalists, particularly women and minorities, is at an all-time high and only going to get worse. That’s the warning delivered by an expert panel of press freedom defenders who conducted an Editors’ Safety Workshop at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism...
OPC President Pancho Bernasconi participated in a panel titled “The Power of the Image in Foreign Coverage” at the 7th Foreign Editors Circle at the New York headquarters of The Associated Press on Nov. 15. The day-long gathering was hosted by AP and the International Press Institute’s North American Committee...
The OPC donated $950 from its freelance safety training fund to cover the fees for psychosocial and digital security trainers at a hostile environment awareness training course in Nairobi and Limuru, Kenya on Nov. 30...
The number of journalists killed for their reporting dropped to a 17-year low in 2019, according to the annual report by The Committee to Protect Journalists...
The Committee to Protect Journalists found in its annual press freedom survey that at least 250 journalists are imprisoned around the world, and declared China as the top jailer of journalists in the world, overtaking Turkey for the first time in four years...
The world observed a seismic shift of history when the Berlin Wall opened on Nov. 9, 1989, as images and reporting from journalists on the ground showed throngs of residents celebrating the end of a divided city, sparking hope and optimism across the East and West...
OPC member Suzanne Sataline has witnessed turmoil in Hong Kong from close range while covering protests, and experienced firsthand how police are targeting and intimidating journalists. She wrote an extensive piece for The Atlantic recounting how over the last five months, “police tactics have grown more sudden, more violent, and more arbitrary against civilian demonstrators and the press.”
OPC past president William J. Holstein wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal warning that the recent arrest of a California tour guide on espionage charges is only a symptom of Beijing’s wider tech espionage campaign...
OPC second Vice President Christopher Dickey has blasted President Donald Trump’s decision to green-light a massive Turkish incursion, which he wrote would “open the way to ethnic cleansing,” calling it a betrayal of the Kurds who led the fight against ISIS...
The OPC is pleased to be able to offer OPC press IDs labeled with “PRESS” in Chinese characters. This new option is in addition to IDs that are available with “PRESS” in Arabic script. Both options are available for the larger government-style badges for $40, as well as the credit-card sized press IDs...
OPC member and former governor Rukmini Callimachi has closely followed escalating conflict in northern Syria after President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops. She is a New York Times foreign correspondent covering Al Qaeda and ISIS, currently at home on maternity leave. Callimachi warned of a growing humanitarian crisis, and expressed dismay that Turkey’s invasion of Syria could revive ISIS and reverse hard-fought gains against the group...
Since the passage of Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill in June, the country has seen massive protests against the government. The bill was withdrawn, but demonstrations aren’t stopping anytime soon, and their methods are only growing more sophisticated. On Sept. 19, author and journalist Philip Bowring joined New York-based activist Anna Yeung-Cheung to discuss the future of Hong Kong in a panel moderated by OPC governor Pete Engardio, called “Can Hong Kong Survive?”
In late 2018, a caravan of migrants embarked on a journey that would span more than 2,500 miles from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. On Sept. 16, the OPC and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism co-sponsored a program with two journalists who were in the ground and followed the story closely...
The opc announced results of this year’s election for the Board of Governors at the club’s Annual Meeting on Sept. 3. The slate this year included 10 newly elected or reelected Active board members and two Associate board members, each elected for two-year terms...
The mastheads of Cambodia’s two storied English news outlets look the same as they did when I arrived in the country, but for those of us working covering the swiftly developing Southeast Asian country, the last two years have been a sea change...
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote an op-ed about a relentless global campaign targeting journalists because of the "fundamental role they play in ensuring a free and informed society.”
August 14 will mark the seventh anniversary of freelance journalist Austin Tice’s disappearance while reporting on the civil war in Syria. In an open letter published in the Washington Post, Marc and Debra Tice (Austin’s parents) call on journalists, political leaders and readers to take action...
This article is reprinted with permission from the online magazine Witness, where it first appeared. Co-authors are Jason Reich, ACOS Alliance Board Member, and Elisabet Cantenys, Executive Director, ACOS Alliance...
The OPC is pleased to announce it is donating $5,500 to pay the cost of one of three trainers at a hostile environment and first aid training course (HEFAT) in Beirut for freelance and local journalists during the last week of November. The program is run by the ACOS Alliance in partnership with International Women’s Media Foundation, Samir Kassir Eyes Center, Golf Center for Human Rights, Frontline Freelance Register, Rory Peck Trust and the Maries Colvin Journalists’ Network.
Chateau Vouilly has loomed large in my mind ever since OPC member John Morris and I worked together to present several events, most notably introducing his book Quelque Part en France in Bayeux, Normandy...
Thirty years have passed since the world witnessed China’s brutal attacks against pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, but the country’s campaign against critics and dissidents has returned with renewed intensity, using more subtle tactics and new technology to carry out oppression. On May 9, the OPC gathered a small army of activists, survivors, experts and foreign correspondents to explore the legacy of Tiananmen, discuss the state of China’s escalating crackdown, and illuminate the road ahead for democracy advocates...
See photos and video from the OPC Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, 2019, with links to award pages and more...
Watch video clips from the April 24 book night with Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who spent almost two years in Tehran’s Evin prison. He discussed his experiences as well as foreign policy concerns, and the contents of his book "Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison–Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out"...
Bill Gentile, a veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker who teaches journalism at American University in Washington, DC, has launched a new documentary TV series to explore the lives and challenges of freelance journalists on the front lines around the world.,,
I had no idea my new OPC press badges would give me unlimited access to covering one of the most horrific mass shootings of Jewish people in U.S. history. On a rainy October day in Pittsburgh, Pa., I walked quickly to the first of several press conferences that would unveil the somber and tragic acts of Robert Bowers...
Over the last two decades, newspapers and other traditional print media have been under increasing pressure to provide video and multimedia content. But in today’s era of ubiquitous cell phone cameras, viral distribution, and manipulated content, video storytelling comes with many pitfalls. On Oct. 18, a panel of experts gathered for a panel to present a “Video 101” seminar on perils and best practices of using video footage...
On sept. 20, several OPC members attended a performance of the play “Intractable Woman, A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya,” which covered the interrogation, trial and assassination of the Russian journalist and human rights activist. Politkovskaya reported extensively on the Second Chechen War for the independent daily Novaya Gazeta and was killed in her Moscow apartment building in 2006...
Please consider supporting the work of international freelance journalists by donating to the Membership Fund of the Overseas Press Club of America. Accurate, unbiased reporting is more important now than ever. But much of the work is being done by freelancers who have little institutional support from news organization...
In the winter of 2013, I heard a story about U.S.-backed forces burying a child alive in a remote village in Kandahar, Afghanistan. While investigating, I was arrested by forces loyal to the brutal police chief Abdul Raziq, America’s man in Kandahar. I was expelled from Kandahar and barred from ever returning...
