Joel Simon

Brooke speaks with Joel Simon about his almost 25 year journey with the Committee to Protect Journalists.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 199 journalists were jailed in 2015 and at least 71 were killed. The digital era has also ushered in a new era of online surveillance.

The Committee to Protect Journalists' Joel Simon says many media organizations are putting readers in danger by publishing without encryption. 

Authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to silence journalists around the world. 

Although the murders of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley has been a major story for weeks, there are many journalist kidnappings that go unreported.

Dmitry Kiselyov is a Russian television host and head of Russia's state news agency, a role he was appointed to by Vladimir Putin himself in December. That role has prompted the EU to issue sanctions against Kiselyov for being a "central figure of the government propaganda supporting the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine." Bob speaks with the Committee to Protect Journalists' Joel Simon about the dangerous precedent set by punishing propagandists.

Four journalists covering clashes between opposition fighters and the government forces in eastern Libya for The New York Times were reported missing, Wednesday. According to the paper, the journalists — photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, videographer Stephen Farrell and Pulitzer Prize-winning Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid — were last in contact with their editors on the morning of March 15, as rebels fled from the town of Ajdabiya, where they were stationed.

A systemic crackdown on journalists by the Egyptian government has threatened reporters and news anchors - and in some cases, sent them fleeing for safety. Joel Simon, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, explains what's at stake if the news media are no longer there to bear witness to the increasingly volatile uprisings.