2005-2014

Brazil’s Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo says he wants to “comb through” the omnibus bill dealing telecommunications and broadcast regulation, O Estado de S. Paulo reports. The goal is to clarify the languages and provisions in the controversial bill that was initially proposed by Bernardo’s predecessor, Franklin Martins, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas...

Kabul Weekly claims it has been put out of business after daring to criticise President Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday staff met with their editor, Mohammad Faheem Dashty, for the final time after producing the last edition of a newspaper that has been a regular sight on the streets of the capital since 2002, according to a report in the Guardian. Dashty said he had no choice but to shut down after...

Deaths tied to drug violence and grave human rights violations have increased significantly since President Felipe Calderón deployed the military in 2007 to combat Mexico's drug cartels, says Human Rights Watch. An estimated 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence during the Calderón administration, including more than 15,000 in 2010. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has...

Authorities in Libya on Friday prevented foreign journalists invited to report in the country from covering the crackdown on protesters in the capital, according to news reports. In southern Iraq, anti-riot police attacked at least five local journalists covering protests in Basra, according to news reports. Hundreds of anti-Qaddafi protesters gathered in Tajoura, a suburb of Tripoli, after Muslim...

Argentina's Supreme Court has called for the omission of discriminatory criteria and "reasonable balance" in the allocation of state advertising. The ruling stems from a 2006 injunction filed by Editorial Perfil, the country's largest magazine publisher, claiming arbitrary distribution of official advertising, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported...

The largest US newspaper and local TV companies have created a new system to sell online advertising in a private exchange, part of a growing shift by publishers to take control over the digital ad-buying process in an attempt to raise ad rates, says an Adage report. Excerpts: [ Link] The New York Times Co, Hearst, Tribune and Gannett will start selling the bulk of ad inventory for its newspapers...

Spain's biggest media group Prisa, which publishes the leading daily El Pais, said Monday it had slumped into the red in 2010 as sales dropped and it cut heavy debt, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. Prisa reported a net loss of 72.9 million euros ($101 million) in 2010 after making a net profit of 50.5 million euros in 2009. Revenue tumbled 14.8 percent to 2.69 billion euros. The details:...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on journalists in Bahrain to put their unity above political wrangling that has divided journalists in the wake of protests movement for political changes in the kingdom. The Federation's call comes after revelations that some journalists have been blacklisted over their alleged links with the ruling royal family. "We urge journalists to...

A court in Angola's southwestern province of Namibe sent a journalist to prison on Thursday without due process over his coverage of a sexual harassment scandal that implicated the province's top judicial official, according to local journalists and news reports. Judge Manuel Araujo sentenced Armando José Chicoca, a freelancer who reports for US government-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA)...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the safety of a Cameroonian editor who is being prosecuted in connection with a leaked official document, according to local journalists and news reports. On February 24, a public prosecutor in Yaoundé charged Raphaël Nkamtchuen, editor of the periodical La Boussole, with "unauthorised communication with a detainee" and...