I WAS reading an online discussion between early board members and former directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) regarding the challenges facing the press today. One of the best comments I read was an extract by Ann Cooper, executive director of the committee, in which she gives an accurate description of how threatening it is to be a professional journalist and how the principles of journalism are being undermined.

“The vague, ongoing ‘War on Terror’ continues to take a sorry toll on press freedom,” she said. “Leaders around the world have seized on terrorism as an excuse to muzzle reporting in the name of preserving national security. They have succeeded in creating a chilly new climate for journalists, where public officials and the public itself engage in rhetorical attacks and legal threats to intimidate or punish media that dare report on sensitive topics, such as human rights abuses and the erosion of civil liberties. Journalists must understand this threat is a global one and unite as never before to protect independent reporting.”

Ann Cooper is an award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent with more than 25 years of radio and print reporting experience. Her courageous words underscore her well-deserved position as executive director of CPJ, one of the world’s leading press freedom advocacy groups.

The CPJ also includes prominent and active journalists on its board of directors, such as Christiane Amanpour, Tom Brokaw and others. It is the only American organization with a full-time staff dedicated to monitoring and exposing attacks on the media and freedom of the press.

The outspoken members of CPJ play an important global role defending journalists in emergency situations and acting on behalf of jailed journalists — lobbying for their release. Journalism is under constant criticism, and the task of journalists covering the news in war zones is becoming a much more dangerous business. More and more, journalists are being killed or subjected to violence, illegal detention, threats or intimidation.

As part of a journalistic study mission, organized by the National Democratic Institute, our group met with Frank Smyth, Washington CPJ representative. Naturally, as an Arab group, we asked him about Taysir Allouni, the Al-Jazeera reporter jailed in Spain in 2003 on charges of terrorism; and Sami Al-Hajj, the Al-Jazeera photographer held at Guantanamo for five years without charge or trial. Their cases have been widely publicized in the Arab and Muslim world, and many protests and petitions continue to demand their release. Both maintain their innocence, and they are known among their colleagues and friends as dedicated journalists who would not be involved in any terrorist act as claimed by the US government. Al-Hajj is held at Guantanamo as a so-called “enemy combatant” on the basis of “secret evidence.” He neither has been convicted nor charged with a crime.

Moreover, Taysir and Sami are not the only innocent individuals held at Guantanamo. According to a January 2005 report in The Wall Street Journal, US commanders acknowledged that many Guantanamo detainees are not a threat and likely have no valuable intelligence about Al-Qaeda or the Taleban.

Al-Hajj’s lawyer is Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, a London-based human rights group that took up Al-Hajj’s case in 2005. He called the judicial system at Guantanamo a shame, and he contends that continued detention of Al-Hajj is political and the main focus of US interrogators has not been alleged terrorist activities but obtaining intelligence on Al-Jazeera and its staff.

When our group discussed the case with Smyth, he expressed his support and explained that CPJ in September 2002 wrote to then Secretary of Defense Ronald Rumsfeld, calling on the Pentagon to detail the basis of Al-Hajj’s detention. Smyth talked about the role of CPJ, which maintains programs to help journalists i