2005-2014

Two independent journalists have arrested on trumped-up charges in Uzbekistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Sunday, prosecutors in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, detained Dilmurod Saiid on charges of extortion, the independent news website Uznews reported. Saiid writes for a number of independent and pro-opposition websites, local CPJ sources said. In a separate case...

San Francisco may become the largest US city to lose its main daily newspaper after Hearst Corp threatened to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle unless it can push through more job cuts, Bllomberg News has reported. The publisher, already trying to sell the Seattle Post- Intelligencer, said Tuesday that it would seek voluntary buyouts for a “significant” number of its 1,500 employees after...

The cost of legal fees in defamation cases should be controlled, the British government has announced, according to BBC. The proposals for England and Wales follow claims that high fees are having an effect on freedom of expression. Newspaper lawyers have said that some stories are simply ignored—to avoid the possible expense of a libel case. Justice Minister Bridget Prentice expressed concern...

A Dakar appeal court has upheld the three-year jail sentence passed on El Malick Seck, the editor of the Dakar-based daily 24 Heures Chrono, on September 12 last year for a vaguely-sourced report claiming the president and his son Karim were involved in money laundering in Côte d’Ivoire. Arrested on August 28, Seck was convicted of “disseminating false news.” The sentence was upheld on February 23...

Mexican radio reporter Luis Daniel Méndez Hernández’s was murdered on February 23 while he was attending the carnival in Huayacocotla, in the southeastern state of Veracruz. The correspondent of “Enlaces Noticias,” a news programme broadcast on several frequencies by the Radiorama Tuxpan news agency, Méndez was shot four times in the back, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “There are...

Progress has been made in the investigation into last month’s murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Zambrano, the editor of the political weekly ABC, in Valencia, in the central state of Carabobo. One of the two suspected killers, former Carabobo state policeman Rafael Segundo Pérez, was arrested on February 17, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Zambrano, 62, was gunned down at around 3...

An attempt to murder was made on Pakistani editor and civil servant Jan Muhammad Dashti on February 23 in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has reported. The owner and editor of the Quetta-based daily Asaap, Dashti was flown to Karachi for treatment after being shot in the head and arm. The attack has been claimed by a radical Sunni...

Ernesto Rollin, a presenter on local radio DxSY-AM in Ozamiz City, in Misamis Occidental province (on the southern island of Mindanao) was killed on February 23. He was the first journalist to be killed this year in the Philippines, but the 99th since the return to democracy in 1986. Aged about 40, Rollin was gunned down at close range at about 5:30 a.m. in a service station in nearby Oroquieta...

Australian writer Harry Nicolaides has flown back home from Thailand after being granted a royal pardon on February 19. Press freedom groups have called upon authorities to reform the draconian lese majeste laws under which he was sentenced. On his arrival at Melbourne airport on February 21, a moved Nicolaides thanked his fellow Australians for their support during the more than five months in...

A journalist who went to interview the minister of the Ministry of National Security (MNB) in Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on February 20 was blindfolded and interrogated for hours, according to local news reports. The Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) has called for an immediate investigation into the incident by the central Azerbaijani government. Security service agents...