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Board votes to affirm CPJ’s existing definition of who is a journalist

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Board votes to affirm CPJ’s existing definition of who is a journalist

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The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) board of directors voted on Wednesday to affirm the organization’s existing definition of who is a journalist and rejected claims it planned to change its definition to exclude particular groups.

“CPJ frequently considers its definition of a journalist, including a review that took place in 2025 led by CPJ staff and the board’s Policy Task Force,” CPJ board Chair Jacob Weisberg said in a statement. “Board members asked for a vote on a plan to look again at this definition and today voted to affirm the existing definition.”

CPJ defines journalists as people who regularly cover news or comment on public affairs through any medium to report or share fact-based information with an audience.

CPJ’s longstanding policy has been to include journalists working for state-backed media and those working with media organizations affiliated with militant groups provided they are not engaging in combat or inciting violence in a manner likely to have imminent effect. This approach is anchored in international humanitarian law. CPJ has never included, and removes from its lists, anyone found to be engaging in combat or inciting imminent violence.

“It is not true that CPJ planned to change our definition of who is a journalist to exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese press killed in the Israel-Gaza war. Such unsubstantiated allegations undermine the rigorous documentation of our Middle East and North Africa program over many years, while endangering Palestinian and Lebanese journalists documenting events on the ground today,” Weisberg said.

“The board stands fully with the staff of CPJ, whose difficult daily work of documenting attacks on journalists is today more important than ever, and with all journalists wrongly smeared and maligned for doing their jobs.”

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They have also had threats from sections of the general public. By nightfall, the glass frontage of Prothom Alo’s offices had been smashed. Inside, smoke spread rapidly through the newsroom, curling around desks where reporters had been editing copy only hours earlier. Journalists and staff scrambled for exits as the fire took hold on the lower floors of the building. Across the city, at The Daily Star’s headquarters, a similar scene was unfolding: stones hurled through windows, vehicles torched, entrances blocked and journalists trapped inside as smoke filled stairwells. Videos posted online showed flames licking at the building’s interior as staff shouted for help from the upper floors. From a neighbouring high-rise, senior Prothom Alo reporter Galib Ashraf watched helplessly as the conflagration gutted the newsroom that had been his professional home for years. “This wasn’t just a building burning,” he told journalists later. “It was our history going up in smoke.” The acrid smell of burning paper was mixed with fear as glass crunched underfoot and sirens wailed in the distance. For journalists inside the buildings, the experience was visceral. For those watching from outside – fellow reporters, photographers, passers-by – the message was unmistakable. In Bangladesh, even the largest and most established newsrooms were vulnerable to attack. A month later, when Index visited the charred remains of the two offices, a yellow tape surrounded the building, marking the scene of a crime. Veteran journalist Matiur Rahman, editor of Prothom Alo, forced a smile. “We reached out to everyone that night for help,” he said. 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In 2020, cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, for example, spent 10 months in pre-trial detention under the DSA on account of his satirical work, drawing international condemnation for his treatment. The writer Mushtaq Ahmed died in jail in 2021. He had criticised the government’s handling of the pandemic and died of a heart attack, although his supporters and lawyers, including the co-accused, said he had been tortured in jail. Beyond arrests and lawsuits, the threat of violence hangs like Damocles’ sword over independent voices. One of the starkest and most haunting chapters in Bangladesh’s press freedom story is the disappearance of journalists – most notoriously that of Shafiqul Islam Kajol, a photojournalist and editor who vanished in March 2020. Kajol was last seen leaving his Dhaka home a day after being charged under the DSA with a defamation suit, filed by an Awami League politician. CCTV footage showed unidentified men tampering with his motorcycle before he disappeared. 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This was censorship by arson, carried out not by the state directly, but by crowds emboldened by years of official hostility. When governments describe journalists as enemies, traitors or foreign agents, they license others to act accordingly. When attacks on critics of the government are normalised, the moral fabric of society frays. Bengal is the culture of patrikas, pamphlets penned by intellectuals to defy orthodoxy. Shut them down, and it becomes a lesser Bengal. When voices are silenced or endangered, the very sense of a collective narrative – of what holds a diverse nation together – is weakened. READ MORE

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