{
  "title": "Ladder: credential control, in Africa",
  "canonical_url": "https://thewaronnews.com/ladders/credential_control?continent=africa",
  "filters": {
    "continent": "africa"
  },
  "counts_caveat": "The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.",
  "tactic": {
    "slug": "credential_control",
    "name": "Credential control",
    "definition": "A government decides who counts as a journalist through passes, accreditation or licences issued to individual reporters. Officials may refuse, suspend or revoke these credentials, or attach new conditions to them. Because many press areas admit only accredited reporters, control of credentials works as control of access.",
    "url": "https://thewaronnews.com/tactics/credential_control"
  },
  "focal_case": "US",
  "count": 1,
  "stages": [
    {
      "stage": "punish",
      "name": "Punish",
      "definition": "Legal or physical action against individual journalists or sources: subpoenas and record seizures, prosecutions, arrests, detention, expulsions, visa denials, assault where a government actor is involved.",
      "rungs": [
        {
          "slug": "2005-zimbabwe-court-refuses-daily-news-accreditation",
          "title": "Zimbabwe: the High Court refuses to accredit Daily News journalists under the media registration law",
          "occurred_on": "2005-05-12",
          "occurred_on_precision": "day",
          "stage": "punish",
          "focal_case": false,
          "country": "ZW",
          "country_name": "Zimbabwe",
          "continent": "africa",
          "rsf": {
            "index": "RSF World Press Freedom Index",
            "year": 2026,
            "rank": 124,
            "of": 180,
            "label": "RSF 2026 rank: 124th of 180",
            "source_url": "https://rsf.org/en/index"
          },
          "leader_slug": "robert-mugabe",
          "leader_name": "Robert Mugabe",
          "what_was_done": "Zimbabwe's High Court ruled that Daily News journalists could not be accredited to work as reporters until their newspaper's publisher had itself been registered with the government's Media and Information Commission.",
          "outcome": "upheld",
          "outcome_on": "2005-05-12",
          "outcome_note": "The High Court upheld the requirement that the publisher be registered before its journalists could be accredited; the paper was not relicensed until 2010.",
          "ladder_note": "Journalists at a named newspaper were denied the individual credential needed to work at all, conditioned on a separate corporate registration the government withheld for years.",
          "sources_count": 2,
          "tactic_primary": "credential_control",
          "tactics": [
            "credential_control"
          ],
          "url": "https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2005-zimbabwe-court-refuses-daily-news-accreditation"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "downloads": {
    "csv": "https://thewaronnews.com/ladders/credential_control?continent=africa&format=csv",
    "json": "https://thewaronnews.com/ladders/credential_control.json?continent=africa",
    "md": "https://thewaronnews.com/ladders/credential_control.md?continent=africa"
  },
  "license": {
    "name": "CC BY 4.0",
    "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  }
}