2005-2014

The Afghanistan government has imposed a media blackout on election-related violence during Thursday's presidential polls. Afghanistan's National Security Council released a statement through the Foreign Ministry Tuesday and official spokesmen contacted news bureaus by telephone to discourage reporting on violent incidents from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, according to local and international...

U.S. immigration officials have released a Pakistani journalist who reports for Voice of America's Deewa Radio and whose home was destroyed by Taliban militants last month in northwestern Pakistan. Rahman Bunairee was freed Wednesday, more than one week after he arrived in the United States and was taken into custody at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, VOA reported. The Department...

A Ljubljana district court on August 6 banned the daily Dnevnik from mentioning Italian businessman Pierpaolo Cerani as controversial or involved in corruption scandals, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Dnevnik can report about him only in positive way, without mentioning his involvement in former scandals until there has been an outcome to the libel suit he has brought against the...

Russia's Orthodox Church has cursed and excommunicated a journalist for "satanic lies" in accusing the abbess of a monastery of intimidating locals into selling their homes for "peanuts." Says a Reuters report: [ Link] The Russian Orthodox Church used excommunication and the anathema ecclesiastical curse as powerful weapons against its enemies under the tsars, but rarely imposes the sanctions...

The violence that threatens journalists working for Afghanistan’s news media has created a climate that does not favour free and impartial coverage of the August 20 crucial presidential election, now just a day away. Media coverage is also affected by the fact that political obstruction has prevented the adoption of a new press law, a situation that Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has

More serious charges have been brought against three bloggers and activists who have been held since June 26 in the southwestern China province of Fujian for reporting that a young woman died after being gangraped in February 2008 and that some of the rape participants had links with local officials, according to Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF). The three detainees – Fan Yanqiong, Wu Huaying and...

There has been rapid progress in the investigation into an attack on 12 journalists employed by the Cadena Capriles press group in Venezuela capital Caracas on August 13. The employee of a parastatal foundation was arrested two days later and the prosecutor-general’s office said nine other people were being sought on the basis of statements by victims and video and photos taken during the attack...

A new wave of violence hit the media in Honduras last week, even as the country appeared to be farther than ever from resolving the crisis resulting from President Manuel Zelaya’s removal in a coup on June 28. “The de facto government has again illustrated its concept of press freedom by pitting soldiers and police against news media that are critical of the coup,” Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)...

The National Intelligence Agency has issued a warning to the managers of three local radio stations in the eastern DRC province of Nord-Kivu saying that their stations will be closed down unless they stop retransmitting the programmes of French public broadcaster Radio France Internationale (RFI). “This threat is unacceptable,” Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) reacted. "It confirms that...

A three-month jail sentence has been passed by a Niamey court on Abdoulaye Tiémogo, the publisher of the independent weekly Le Canard Déchaîné, on a charge of “discrediting a judicial decision.” “It is the decision (on Tuesday) to sentence a journalist to imprisonment that discredits Niger’s judicial system,” Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) said. “This comes just two weeks after eight newspaper...