As a Syrian freelance journalist living in Damascus, Joudy Boulos' ability to report is severely limited by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The following is an excerpt of a 12 November 2018 CPJ blog post by By Lucy Westcott/CPJ James W. Foley Fellow.
Joudy Boulos has a million stories she wants to write. But as a Syrian freelance journalist living in Damascus, her ability to report is severely limited by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is so dangerous that “Joudy Boulos” is a pseudonym the journalist sometimes uses when reporting and to protect her safety. Her work is published in local and Arabic media, as well as Liberated T, a campaign run by the international non-profit Institute For War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) to improve and broaden the portrayal of Syrian women in the media.
Syria is regularly ranked among the deadliest countries in the world to be a journalist. CPJ documented in July how at least 70 journalists were trapped in southwestern Syria, where they faced the encroaching threat of forces loyal to Assad. Since the outbreak of the war in 2011, 123 journalists have been killed, the majority of them local. The country also ranks second on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index of countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free.
Read the full blog post and the interview with Joudy Boulos on CPJ’s site.
