Jailing the messengers

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which conducts an annual Dec. 1 census, found one in six journalists are held without charges and an overall decline, with China still the leading jailer of journalists. An excerpt:

One in six journalists jailed worldwide are being held without any publicly disclosed charge, many for months or years at a time and some in secret locations, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in a new analysis.

CPJ’s annual worldwide census of imprisoned journalists found 127 behind bars on December 1, a decrease of seven from the 2006 tally. (Read detailed accounts of each imprisoned journalist.) The drop is due in large part to the release this year of 15 Ethiopian journalists who were either acquitted or pardoned of antistate charges stemming from a broad government crackdown on the press. CPJ and others had waged an intensive advocacy campaign on their behalf.