Joel Simon New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom. New York: Columbia University Press. 236 pp.I had just started reading Chapter 3-titled The Terror Dynamic-of Joel Simon's insightful New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom in early January when news of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris flashed across my screen. Eleven people, most of them journalists for the satirical newspaper, were slaughtered execution-style by Islamist commandos who burst in on an editorial meeting to avenge what they considered to be an insult to the prophet Mohammad.The Charlie Hebdo incident was a sobering reminder that threats to journalistic freedom come in many forms in many places. Simon's slim volume offers a useful categorization of the ways that journalists around the globe are under attack-often quite literally.Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) since 2006, writes as an activist. He recounts several instances in which CPJ has intervened with foreign governments in attempts (some more successful than others) to improve the environment for journalistic work. Overall, Simon is not optimistic about the future: Repression and violence against journalists (are) at record levels, and press freedom is in decline (p. 31).Simon, a former journalist, is a good writer with a knack for telling interesting stories. A chapter titled The Democratators displays his talents well. A democratator is a popularly elected leader who, while embracing the trappings of democracy, actually rules as an autocrat. chapter tells the story of how three democratators- Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela-have engaged in repression against the media, often with public support. fact reminds readers that public opinion in a country with free elections is hardly a guarantor of freedom of the press.And that's only in peacetime. In times of armed strife, insurrectionists have kidnapped journalists, an often-lucrative practice because of the ransom payments that ensue. On the battlefield, military forces have sometimes targeted journalists.The United States does not escape criticism in New Censorship. During the Iraq War, American forces killed at least 16 non-American journalists. None of the killings was adequately investigated, Simon writes, and most were not investigated at all. American forces also detained dozens of foreign journalists during the war. Most were released fairly quickly, according to Simon, but at least 14 were held in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Guantanamo for extended periods. Some were tortured-subjected to horrific abuse (p. 78), in the words of Simon.Simon is an American, with stereotypically American ideas about freedom of the press. …