2005-2014

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is backing a proposed directive which Dutch MEP Jules Maaten was expected to submit to the European Parliament on July 17 and which would prevent Europe's Internet companies from being forced to cooperate with repressive regimes in censoring and monitoring the Internet. Inspired by America's proposed Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA), it would allow these companies...

Spanish authorities have decided to reactivate the investigation into the 2004 murder of Antena 3 correspondent Ricardo Ortega, who was fatally shot in Haiti while covering the ouster of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. As part of this process, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) European consultant Borja Bergareche was one of several journalists who briefed Judge Pablo Ruz of the...

A French magistrate placed a journalist under formal investigation on Thursday over the unauthorised publication of pictures of a new model of car, drawing protests from press freedom campaigners, says a Reuters report. Prosecutors raided the offices of specialist magazine Auto Plus on Tuesday, seizing computers and documents and arresting journalist Bruno Thomas, the author of the scoop last year...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has voiced its protest against the detention without charge of an Associated Press (AP) journalist who was seized by US and Iraqi forces last month in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Ahmed Nouri Raziak, a 38-year-old cameraman who has worked with AP Television News since 2003, was detained at his home in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on June 4, AP reported, and is...

In many countries, media workers such as journalists, camera/sound operators and translators are being killed due to their jobs, according to just published research by the University of Otago, Wellington. The study in the international journal 'Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health', examined five authoritative data bases to find the number and risk factors for all media worker homicides...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported an 8 percent reduction in its workforce, cutting 189 jobs, according to the Atlata Business Chronicle website. The staff cuts among its 2,300 full-timers will come between August and October and will include a combination of voluntary buyouts, involuntary layoffs and position eliminations, AJC said in a press release. AJC spokesperson Jennifer Morrow...

The Kuwaiti government's issuing of a resolution to prevent official staff from writing in newspapers is a harsh blow to press freedom and freedom of expression, taking Kuwait back decades and violating several constitutional articles that ensure the freedoms of opinion and expression. Al Qabas newspaper revealed a governmental document, which has been under preparation since February 2008, that...

Simone Gbagbo, wife of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, and former Ivorian economy minister Paul-Antoine Bohoun Bouabré failed to respond to a summons from French investigating judge Patrick Ramaël for questioning on July 10 in Paris as witnesses in his probe into the disappearance of journalist Guy-André Kieffer, a dual French-Canadian national, in Côte d'Ivoire in 2004. Paris-based Reporters...

Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's government has ordered Forum magazine be denied government advertising contracts in retaliation for its critical stance, the magazine's director, Eduardo Ibarra Aguirre, has alleged. In a July 2008 editorial, Ibarra Aguirre said that members of the presidential press team have instructed all government agencies to not place announcements in Forum/...

Aaj Kal, an Urdu-language daily published from Lahore, has been threatened by Islamic activists angered by the publication of a cartoon about Umme Hassaan, wife of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz and also an editorial criticizing the religious militancy. The Lal Masjid, located in Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, was the centre of a stand-off between the mosque...