A few days ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists released the results from its annual worldwide census on media censorship in 2006. Print media tops the chart for the most number of journalists imprisoned by medium followed closely by the internet. The total number of journalists in prison annually has its ups and downs over the last ten years but the number of imprisoned internet journalists alone is rising steadily. As of December 1st, China tops the chart as the country to jail the most number of journalists followed by Cuba, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Another highlight of the findings is that about 10% of the cases were given charges unrelated to journalism. For the cases included in the census, CPJ believed that the charges were a form of retaliation against journalists whose works were critical of their government.

CPJ also reported that China has the longest-serving journalists. Chen Renjie and Lin Youping were jailed since 1983 for publishing and distributing a pamphlet titled, Freedom Report. Co-defendant Chen Biling was executed. The other Chinese journalists included in the census had their imprisonment started in the 1990’s with the latest case of Zhang Jianhong, founder and editor of news and literary Web site Aiqinhai (Aegean Sea), imprisoned since September 2006.

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