Index on Censorship joins international call for release of Nabeel Rajab
Groups urge Bahrain to release prominent human rights defender
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CATEGORY: United States
Chelsea Manning and the price US whistleblowers pay for revealing secrets
Although the US is considered to have relatively generous freedoms of speech and the press protected under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, these freedoms have their limits
Jason Nichols: Debunking “old tropes” through hip hop
Some say you can trace the origins of hip hop to a single room in New York City on 11 August 1973. At 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, the Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc threw a party
8-9 July: The power of hip hop
A conference followed by a day of performance to consider hip hop’s role in revolutionary social, political and economic movements across the world.
Parental advisory: revisiting the filthiest songs from Tipper Gore’s hotlist
In the late 1980s, US author and activist Mary Elizabeth “Tipper” Gore claimed, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, that she was not a “raunchy, inflexible prude”.
Erica Jong: Literature’s sexual rebels
Erica Jong, who shocked readers with her novel about women’s sexuality in the 1970s, explains why she’s ready to do it again
Kunle Olulode: No place for the real Hollywood story
Ahead of the Battle of Ideas 2015, film historian Kunle Olulode explores why Birth of a Nation is no ordinary film
Parents petition to remove Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden from school reading lists
Parents and students at a high school in New Jersey have launched a petition to have books, including the play Death and the Maiden by Chilean playwright
Muira McCammon: GiTMO’s linguistic isolation
Index on Censorship youth advisory board member Muira McCammon discusses linguistic isolation at Guantanamo Bay
Remembering E.L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, a supporter of Index on Censorship, passed away on 21 July 2015 at 84.
Smears about the media made by US President Donald Trump have obscured a wider problem with press freedom in the United States: namely widespread and low-level animosity that feeds into the everyday working lives of the nation’s journalists, bloggers and media professionals. This study examines documented reports from across the country in the six months leading up to the presidential inauguration and the months after. It clearly shows that threats to US press freedom go well beyond the Oval Office.
“Animosity toward the press comes in many forms. Journalists are targeted in several ways: from social media trolling to harassment by law enforcement to over-the-top public criticism by those in the highest office. The negative atmosphere for journalists is damaging for the public and their right to information,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO at Index on Censorship, which documented the cases using an approach undertaken by the organization to monitor press freedom in Europe over the past three years. Learn more.