ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The most famous television journalist in Pakistan lives like a fugitive. Hamid Mir tells no one where he is going, how he will get there or where he will spend the night. At Mir’s office, his curtains are always drawn. He uses at least two cellphones and, until recently, he rotated among…
MANAMA, Bahrain — Just three miles from the gleaming center of town, a local journalist in a rusted, old compact car swerves around trash dumpsters set on fire to deter police cars from entering the impoverished, restive Shiite neighborhoods. The car stops at a cafe with a view of a small group of protesters, the…
KABUL — The U.S.-funded media development institute is located in a large two-story house behind an armored steel door, guarded by armed security guards who gain access only through a computerized fingerprint scanner. The safety measures were installed in the spring after the Nai Institute was accused by the Taliban of being “the center of…
The U.S. government spends millions each year on programs to improve the skills of foreign reporters, but rarely have its efforts helped produce such a media superstar as Khadija Ismayilova in Azerbaijan. Ismayilova was 27 when she enrolled in her first U.S.-funded investigative workshop in Baku in 2003. At 30, she moved to Washington to…
REYNOSA, Mexico — As deadline descended on El Mañana’s newsroom and reporters rushed to file their stories, someone in the employ of a local drug cartel called with a demand from his crime boss. The caller was a journalist for another newspaper, known here as an enlace, or “link” to the cartel. The compromised journalist…
Pressuncuffed.org seeks to encourage and promote rigorous student reporting, scholarly research and debate on the role of, and obstacles to, independent journalism in the United States and abroad. Our website features reporting by University of Maryland students about press freedom in the United States and abroad. It also offers resources to instructors elsewhere who may want to teach classes or hold workshops on this theme. In the near future, this site will become a place for student work from around the country and abroad.
Dana Priest, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post and Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland.