Press Freedom
CPJ Updates
- Police raid Cairo offices of Turkish Anadolu News Agency, arrest at least 4
- Ugandan police harass and detain journalists covering opposition politician Bobi Wine
- Journalist Patricia Kayuni assaulted while covering protest in Malawi
- Missing radio anchor found dead in Mexico’s Michoacán state
- Sudan suspends four news outlets over alleged financial link to Bashir regime
- Colombian magazine Semana alleges military spied on its journalists
- Montenegro reporters Živković and Raičević charged with criminal incitement
- Malawi detains, charges 3 journalists seeking to cover EU delegation’s return
- Journalists threatened, assaulted while covering local politician in Sierra Leone
Reporter Without Borders
- US – RSF calls on the Senate to reverse unprecedented restrictions on the press
- Two reporters arrested in Comoros, placed under judicial control
- Reporters Without Borders, Index on Censorship and Transparency International UK urge Azerbaijan to lift journalist’s travel ban
- Sudan closes four media outlets that supported former regime
- Does crisis at leading daily mean end to investigative journalism in Estonia?
- Reporter beaten and left for dead in northern Bangladesh
- Two Iraqi journalists shot dead after covering protests in Basra
- Constitutional Court hears case against controversial snooping law
Palestinian National Authority August 17, 2006
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
Palestinian National Authority
c/o Ambassador Hasan Abdel Rahman
Embassy of the Palestinian National Authority
1730 K Street, NW
Washington , DC 20006
Your Excellency:
We welcome the public support your government has given the family and colleagues of the Fox News journalists who were abducted two days ago by unknown kidnappers.
Since their disappearance outside the headquarters of the Palestinian security services on August 15, there has been no word of the whereabouts of reporter, Steve Centanni, or cameraman, Olaf Wiig. There is little doubt their abductors knew that the pair were legitimate journalists. From what we’ve been told, at the moment they were kidnapped Centanni was seated at the wheel of a car belonging to Fox and plainly marked “TV”.
We know Centanni and Wiig are not the first foreigners to be kidnapped in Gaza by extortionists of one stripe or another. Only last March, armed men from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine abducted Caroline Laurent, a reporter for ELLE; Alfred Yaghobzadeh, a photographer from the photo agency, SIPA; and Yong Tae-young, a correspondent for South Korea’s public broadcaster, KBS. Thankfully, they were released after several days. We hope that will be the case with our Fox colleagues, and we welcome the special mention of journalists by your Interior Ministry spokesman, Khaled Abu Hilal, yesterday in his plea to all Palestinians to cooperate in their investigation of the our colleagues’ disappearance.
What can unite us all, Your Excellency, is a shared commitment to protection of a free press and free expression as a necessary condition of modern democracy.
Respectfully yours,
Kevin McDermott
Norman A. Schorr
Co-chairmen – OPC Freedom of the Press Committee
cc:
Hon. Khaled Abu Hilal
Minister of Interior
Ministry of Interior
Ramallah
Palestinian National Authority
Fax: (011.972.7) 286-2500/ 8809 or 282-1661
Hasan Abdel Rahman
Ambassador of the Palestinian National Authority
to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Palestinian National Authority
1730 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Mr. John Moody
Senior V.P. – News Editorial
FOX News Corporation
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York , NY 10036
Fax: (212) 301-8588
john.moody@foxnews.com
Mr. Roger Ailes
Chairman & CEO
FOX News Corporation
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York , NY 10036
Fax: (212) 301-8588 or 556-8219
roger.ailes@foxnews.com