2005-2014

Journalists have launched a Europewide campaign to confront a growing economic and professional crisis in media which they say threatens to weaken democracy across the region. The annual meeting of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), bringing together leaders of unions and associations from 25 European countries, ended their meeting in Varna, Bulgaria on May 17 with the adoption of a...

Leaders of journalists unions from around the world travelled to Baghdad at the weekend for a conference on support for media in Iraq— the first international meeting of any kind in the city since the war began six years ago. The Iraqi Journalism Summit 2009 was organised by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate and was warmly welcomed by Iraqi Prime...

Spanish investigating judge Santiago Pedraz has decided to reinstate murder charges against the three US soldiers responsible for shelling the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad on April 8, 2003, killing two cameramen, one of them the Spanish. The order came on Thursday. Spain’s National Court had ordered the withdrawal of the charges for lack of evidence in May 2008. José Couso, a Spanish cameraman...

Radio Mada reporter Evariste Ramanantsoavina has been released in Madagascar after being held since May 5, when soldiers arrested him in order to force him to reveal the location from which the station was broadcasting in defiance of a closure order. “We are relieved to learn that Ramanantsoavina is free at last,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “It is nonetheless deplorable that...

Radio Shabelle journalist Abdirisak Mohamed Warsame on Friday became the third Somali journalist to be killed in the line of duty this year. Warsame, 24, was shot in crossfire as government forces launched an assault against Islamist guerrilla fighters in Somalia's war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu. Warsame, a producer for the leading independent broadcaster Shabelle Media Network, was scheduled to...

The Philippines government must address a series of shootings that have targeted journalists on the southern island of Mindanao, the latest coming on Wednesday when gunmen critically wounded a local radio broadcaster, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. One of two men riding a motorcycle fired once at Harrison Manalac at about 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, according to local news...

A district court judge in Baku has sentenced Nazim Guliyev, an editor and the founder of the pro-government newspaper Ideal, to six months in prison on defamation charges, the Azeri Press Agency (APA) reported. Guliyev was jailed immediately. Judge Elman Akhmedov imposed the sentence on Wednesday, although the accuser, Sabira Makhmudova, said she wanted to withdraw her complaint, APA reported...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned journalist Elena Maglevannaya’s conviction by a court in the southern city of Volgograd of defaming the prison service in articles about torture in Russian prisons that she wrote for the website Vestnikcivitas. Some of the articles were about the case of Zubayr Zubayrayev, a young Chechen imprisoned in Volgograd. In a May 13 ruling, the court found...

The Kenyan government has finally published amendments to the Communications Act, which will delete a controversial clause that allows the government to raid broadcasting stations. The Kenya Communications (Amendment) Law 2008, which President Mwai Kibaki signed into law in January 2009, enables the state to raid broadcasting houses and destroy or confiscate equipment in the name of "public safety

An increasing number of lawsuits are being filed in Algeria against journalists for alleged defamation, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has eported. On May 11, Nedjar El Hadj Daoud, editor of the Al-Waha newspaper, was sentenced to six months in prison by the Ghardaïa court, confirming the 2007 and 2008 rulings. The sentence stemmed from the publication of a May 21, 2006 article...