2005-2014

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned condemns the murder of reporter Soran Mama Hama of the fortnightly magazine Leven, who was gunned down on July 21 outside his home in Kirkuk, in the northern region of Kurdistan. His colleagues said he had received threats about articles he had written on sensitive subjects. "We call on the Kurdistan authorities to carry out a thorough investigation...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has criticised Turkish authorities over censorship of Hayat TV, a Turkish satellite television network supporting workers' rights. The network was suspended from broadcasting last week on the orders of the High Council for Turkish Broadcasting (RTUK) for allegedly providing film of the Kurdish New Year celebrations to Roj TV, a station based in...

A UK-based Arabic newspaper has apologised to the prime minister of Qatar after it admitted printing three "wholly untrue" articles about him secretly visiting Israel, the Guardian has reported. Some details: The daily Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat made the apology to Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani on July 21 at the high court in London after admitting it should not have published the articles in...

California Judge Cormac Carney has ordered William Gertz, a national security reporter for the Washington Times, to appear in court for open-ended questioning on his reporting techniques. The order comes regarding Gertz's article discussing supposed espionage attempts by China in the United States. "Confidentiality of sources is essential to the news-gathering process. The judge's decision to have...

US human rights lawyers charged Sunday that US military prisons are "legal black holes" and the force is detaining journalists to "shut people up" about activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. A vast detention camp planned for the main US base in Afghanistan will be a "second Guantanamo" where laws do not apply, they said at a press conference about an...

A photojournalist of a Hindi daily was beaten up by the police and arrested in Allahabad on Sunday night. Hemant Chaudhary, however, termed the police action arbitrary, the Indian Express has reported. Chaudhary claimed that he was trying to take photographs of the Allahabad Museum on Sunday evening, when the museum guards objected and snatched his camera and mobile phone. They dragged him inside...

The Supreme Court of Tajikistan has postponed a trial of two suspects in the murder of Russian TV reporter Ilyas Shurpayev until July 22, a defence lawyer said on Friday, according to a RIA-Novosti report. Shurpayev, a reporter from Russia's volatile North Caucasus republic of Daghestan, who worked for Russia's state-run Channel One, was found stabbed and strangled in his rented Moscow apartment...

Journalists on Friday were caught between the opposing factions while covering the Ahmedabad Bandh called in memory of the two minor boys who had died under mysterious circumstances at the Asaram Ashram gurukul, the Indian Express has reported. Half-a-dozen reporters and cameramen from the national and the local media, including a woman journalist for a national TV channel were attacked by angry...

An Afghan journalist, Rahmatullah Naikzad, has been freed after his pictures and video footage of 2 women brazenly executed by the Taliban led intelligence officials to hold him for questioning for two days, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The pictures and footage of the slain women were aired internationally and in Afghanistan, prompting widespread anger in Afghanistan over the killings...

Fuhara Mugisha, the deputy managing editor of Rwanda's leading independent weekly, Umuseso has been deported from the country. Despite having a Rwandan mother, Mugisha is a citizen of neighbouring Tanzania. "This is an unacceptable act of intimidation that yet again highlights the Rwandan government's inability to tolerate the few independent publications," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières...