John Greyson is an award-winning Canadian director who was not even planning to cover events in Egypt; he was merely at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The following is a CPJ blog post by Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator:
Egypt is going through a tough transition and journalists are paying a considerable toll. Since the July 3 removal of President Mohamed Morsi, at least five journalists have been killed, 30 assaulted, and 11 news outlets raided. CPJ has documented a total of 44 cases of detention, and at least five journalists remain behind bars. The attacks on the press come amid a broad campaign by the interim military-led government to limit coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood and force the media to toe the official line.
Most of those affected belong to critical or independent outlets viewed by the government as sympathetic to the Brotherhood, or they work for outlets from countries which criticized Morsi’s ouster, such as Al-Jazeera and Turkish channels. Turkish journalist Metin Turan, who has been behind bars for nearly two months, appealed to the Turkish Foreign Ministry last week from jail via Twitter for mediation in his case by the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the Egyptian interim government.
The case of Canadian filmmaker John Greyson stands somewhat at odds with this trend. Greyson is an award-winning director who was not even planning to cover events in Egypt; he was merely at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Read the full story on CPJ’s site.