2005-2014

Blackstone Group LP, the largest private-equity firm, is investing in a Hindi-language newspaper to benefit from a surge in readership in India as print advertisement sales in the US fall to a 26-year low, says a Bloomberg News report. Blackstone Group plans to invest 2.25 billion rupees ($50 million) in Jagran Media Network Pvt., according to a joint statement on April 7. A unit of Jagran Media...

A draft decree in fiji proposes to regulate media ownership and news content, while authorising the imposition of fines and prison terms for violations, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who has maintained a supposedly temporary military rule since seizing power in a 2006 coup, announced the decree shortly before a compulsory three-day meeting...

Uniform and plainclothes Egyptian security forces assaulted and obstructed journalists trying to cover protests in Cairo on Tuesday, according to news accounts and interviews by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Several journalists reported that police prevented them from covering clashes between security forces and protesters calling for constitutional reforms and the end of the state...

Following Monday’s murder of freelance cameraman Patient Chebeya in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for a renewed commitment from the government to solidly investigate and prosecute those who kill journalists. Armed men in military uniforms jumped Chebeya, around 10 p.m. as his wife let him in his house in the volatile eastern city of Beni...

Thirty-five journalists were imprisoned in Iran as of April 1 as authorities continued their nearly year-long crackdown on the news media, according to CPJ’s latest monthly census. Another 18 journalists were free on short-term furloughs granted for the Iranian New Year and were expected to report back to prison. Many of the incarcerated journalists are under immense physical and psychological...

A court has banned Israeli media coverage of the case of Anat Kam, an online journalist and former soldier accused of leaking classified military information, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). An appeal by Channel 10 and the daily Haaretz against the gag order is due to be heard by a Tel Aviv court on April 12. Kam’s arrest has been widely reported internationally. A contributor to the...

Disturbing video footage showing a 2007 US military airstrike that killed about a dozen Iraqis in eastern Baghdad, including a Reuters cameraman and assistant, was released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, a website that publishes sensitive leaked documents. The video raises questions about the actions of US military forces and the thoroughness and transparency of the investigation that followed, the...

The Kiev police interrogated online journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska and photographer Olexiy Furman of the Photolenta agency and searched their homes in the past few days in a bid to obtain information about participants in protests, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Bilozerska and Furman were summoned to a police station, respectively on March 30 and in early March. They were...

Authorities in Kyrgyzstan should halt their ongoing crackdown on independent and opposition news outlets, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A Bishkek court suspended a pro-opposition newspaper on Wednesday—the third such suspension in March—while financial police confiscated newsroom computers belonging to an independent Web-based television channel on Thursday, effectively...

Freelance Japanese journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka had apparently been abducted in northern Afghanistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said quoting a Japanese official. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told journalists he was aware of Japanese media reports about the abduction, according to Tokyo-based agency Kyodo News and international news reports, but declined to comment...