Committee to Protect Journalists

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Edwar Herman describes CPJ:
 * There has long been a strong tendency on the part of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to serve as did the Christian missionaries in the years of colonial expansion and occupation, who followed in the wake of the empire builders to convert the heathens to the true religion and to heal the sick and wounded--large numbers produced by imperialism itself. Even when the NGOs have functions that should bring them into sharp conflict with the dominant powers, like human rights agencies, they often struggle to look at the bright side of imperial action and inflate the evil of the indigenous resistance to imperialism. This results from a shared imperial ideology, their dependence on largesse from governments and elite members of the dominant powers, and from pressures exerted by officials and agents of the powerful states. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has long specialized in compiling lists of journalists abused and killed in various parts of the world, and it has generally done this without compromising political discrimination. It cannot be said, however, that its compilations have been given much publicity by the Western media, despite the fact that murdered journalists would seem to be a topic that should excite the media. Perhaps too many of those journalists were killed in Western-friendly states like El Salvador and Guatemala to make this subject highly newsworthy. But the CPJ has broken new ground in 2000: despite the fact that on April 23, 1999, CPJ issued a statement condemning the NATO bombing of Radio and Television Serbia (RTS) as "a threat to all journalists covering the Yugoslav conflict," its list of 33 journalists killed worldwide in 1999, released on January 6, excluded the 16 workers killed in that bombing attack. The Times of India's veteran journalist Siddarth Varadarajan queried the CPJ on this exclusion, and got a reply from Judy Blank, the CPJ's director of communications. She stated that although the CPJ "has an extremely broad definition of who is a journalist" their analysis of RTS broadcasts, "particularly prior to the NATO bombing campaign, leads us to the conclusion that by any definition it would not be considered journalism." (CPJ is allegedly preparing a report on the research that led to this conclusion.) In his reply to Judy Blank, Siddharth Varadarajan noted that hers was "precisely the logic of Mr. Jamie Shea and other apologists for Nato, who insisted that what they bombed was a legitimate military target because RTS was not purveying journalism but propaganda." This seems to have been the first time that the CPJ has declined to include journalists as legitimate based on an evaluation of their (or their organization's) work, and it is hardly a coincidence that this has occurred in the wake of a war in which the Western propaganda apparatus was working at a new and higher level of efficiency in demonization and self-righteous claims of virtue.

Principals and Staff: 2012

 * CPJ: Former Principals or Staff

Individuals

 * Terry Anderson
 * James Cramer
 * David Laventhol
 * Norman Pearlstine
 * Jean Stein

Corporations & Foundations
Source
 * The Belo Foundation
 * Bloomberg
 * Brokaw Family Foundation
 * Citigroup Foundation
 * CNN
 * Copley Newspapers
 * Cox Newspapers, Inc.
 * Dow Jones Company
 * Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation
 * Forbes Inc.
 * The Ford Foundation
 * Goldman Sachs & Co.
 * Herb Block Foundation
 * John S. & James L. Knight Foundation
 * Knight Ridder Newspapers
 * Los Angeles Times
 * Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation
 * MediaNews Group Inc.
 * Newsday
 * Oak Foundation USA
 * Open Society Institute
 * Philip L. Graham Fund
 * PR Newswire
 * RealNetworks Foundation
 * Reuters Group PLC
 * Sony Corporation of America Foundation
 * St. Petersburg Times
 * Star-Ledger
 * Time Warner Inc.
 * Tribune Company
 * UBS
 * Vira I. Heinz Endowment

Contact

 * 330 7th Avenue, 11th Floor, New York NY, 10001
 * Web: www.cpj.org

Critical Resources

 * Edward Herman, Real Journalism Versus Propaganda, Znet, 3 February 2000.