Press Freedom
CPJ Updates
- In record year, China, Israel, and Myanmar are world’s leading jailers of journalists
- Haiti, Israel most likely to let journalists’ murders go unpunished, CPJ 2024 impunity index shows
- No justice for journalists targeted by Israel despite strong evidence of war crime
- On Edge: What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom
- Forced to flee: Exiled journalists face unsafe passage and transnational repression
- Israel-Gaza war brings 2023 journalist killings to devastating high
- 2023 prison census: Jailed journalist numbers near record high; Israel imprisonments spike
- Haiti joins list of countries where killers of journalists most likely to go unpunished
- Ecuador on edge: Political paralysis and spiking crime pose new threats to press freedom
Reporter Without Borders
CPJ Report Places China as Worst Jailer of 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 CPJ’s survey ranked China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as the top four jailers of journalists.
“China tightened its iron grip on the press and Turkey, having stamped out virtually all independent reporting, released journalists awaiting trial or appeal. Authoritarianism, instability, and protests in the Middle East led to a rise in the number of journalists locked up in the region — particularly in Saudi Arabia, which is now on par with Egypt as the third worst jailer worldwide.”
Last year, the number of jailed journalists worldwide was 255. The highest number of jailed journalists in a single year since CPJ started the reports crested at 273 in 2016.
The CPJ said the crackdown in Xinjiang against members of Muslim ethnic groups has led to arrests of “dozens of journalists” for charges that in some cases reference reporting that was done many years ago.