This Is the Country With the Most Journalists in Prison

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Dec 13, 12:10PM EST · Published Dec 11, 1:02PM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is the Country With the Most Journalists in Prison — © zhaojiankang / iStock via Getty Images

Journalism can be a dangerous profession. Sixty-three journalists died in Vietnam. And, most years in regions of the world involved in violent conflict a journalist dies. Among the other substantial dangers are arrest and prison. Repressive regimes controlled by a single party or person have little reason to abide by standards that might be normal in many free countries that protect freedom of the press.

The Committee to Protect Journalists publishes a study each year titled CPJ’s annual prison census. It counts the number of journalists jailed for their work. The resulting database includes journalist names, their organizations, the date each was arrested, and where. The data also included the number of journalists who were killed. This year, that figure was at least 24.

CPJ’s Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney told CNN Business: “Governments are becoming more and more intolerant of independent reporting, criticism, journalists unearthing dirty little secrets like corruption, and are using a variety of means to stop that and one of them is imprisonment.”

In 2021, 293 journalists were imprisoned. That was up from 280 the year before.

[nativounit]

Journalists on the list include those imprisoned before 2021 as long as they remained in jail this year. For example, Adel Benaimah, a freelance journalist has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since. September 12, 2017

The country with the most journalists in prison is China where the count is 50.

Many of the journalists on the list work freelance. However, some are from major news organizations. Haze Fan of the Bloomberg Beijing Bureau was last seen on Monday, Dec. 7, 2020. John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News commented: “Twelve months of detention is a long time for anybody to endure, even someone as smart and strong as Haze. We are all very worried about her well-being and we will continue to do everything we can to help her and her
family.”

Based on the trend of journalism arrested and jailings, it does not seem the situation will improve during the foreseeable future.

[recirclink id=959784][wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.