2005-2014

On the eve of Indonesia's Independence Day, the country's Constitutional Court has dealt a serious blow to Indonesia's press freedom with a decision upholding the constitutionality of criminal defamation, the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) has said. The August 15 court decision effectively dismisses a petition filed by journalist Risang Bima Wijaya and columnist Bersihar Lubis, who were...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for more police to investigate the killings of five journalists in the Philippines since the beginning of 2008, including the latest victim, former radio presenter Rolando Anjo Julia, in the central province of Camarines Sur. "Until the motives for these crimes have been discovered and their authors punished, people will continue to doubt the ability of...

Three journalists - Giga Chikhladze, correspondent of Russian Newsweek and head of Alania TV, Alexander Klimchuk, head of the photo agency Caucasus Press Images and correspondent for the news agency Itar-Tass, and Stan Storimans, cameraman for the Dutch TV station RTL-4 - have been killed since fighting began in Georgia on August 8. The death of a fourth journalist, a Georgian, and his driver...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the sentence of four years in prison or a fine of 250,000 dalasis (approx. 8,000 euros), which a Banjul court passed on August 18 on Fatou Jaw Manneh, a contributor to the AllGambian.net website, after convicting her of "sedition" for criticising President Yahya Jammeh in a 2005 article. "This verdict was not the outcome of due process, it was the...

The government of South Korea has ordered home documentary filmmaker Kim Young Me from Iraq, where she was on assignment, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has eported. Kim returned to Seoul on August 9, after leaving Iraq on August 3. She had been embedded with American forces in Iraq's dangerous Diyala province, when US military authorities were told she did not have her...

Fatou Jaw Manneh, a US-based Gambian journalist, faces a possible prison sentence if found guilty of sedition charges following an interview highly critical of President Yahya Jammeh and his administration, which she granted to the media in 2004. The Kanifing Magistrate court trying her has fixed August 18 as the day it will give its ruling on the case. Manneh has been charged on three counts of...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the murder of Mohammad Azim Leghari of the newspaper Halchal and the Sindh-language television station Dharti TV, who was gunned down in Dadu City, in the southern province of Sindh, while covering story of a young couple trying to "marry for love." The couple was the target of fierce criticism from conservative clans, who could have been responsible...

Gannett Co Inc plans to eliminate 1,000 positions from its local newspapers around the US because of declining advertising and circulation revenue, and may cut more if those conditions persist, says a Reuters report. The largest US newspaper publisher said the cuts equal about 3 per cent of the positions in its Community Publishing unit, according to a memo obtained by Reuters on Thursday. The...

Being at the helm of power seems to have given the Congress an edge over other parties in getting more coverage on the front page of newspapers, with a new study claiming that the grand old party got almost three times more space than their co unterparts. While a total of 377 reports on Congress appeared in the Delhi edition of four leading English newspapers - Indian Express, Times of India...

A senior reporter of a national Hindi daily and his associate were brutally murdered in Bhopal on Tuesday, the Telegraph has reported. The bodies of Shahdeo Pandey (43) and his associate Mohammad Sabir were recovered after several hours of search Wednesday morning. Details from the report: It is believed they were throttled to death and their heads smashed with stones. They were heading towards...