2005-2014

The first six months of 2008 have been marked inMorocco by an avalanche of trials and repressive judicial and administrative decisions. At the same time, promises by Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi’s government to reform the press law have still not materialised. No bill has yet been submitted to the chamber of deputies. Journalists were stunned when reporter Mostapha Hurmatallah of the weekly Al

Cartoonists Rights Network International has announced the winner of its 2008 Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award: Bahaa Boukhari, a Palestinian. CRNI, the only international organisation devoted to defending the human rights of cartoonists imperiled because of their work, will present the award to Boukhari at its annual dinner on June 26. The dinner is to be held at the Hotel Contessa in San...

The trial of the alleged killers of Carlos Quispe Quispe, a journalist on Radio Municipal Pucarani opened Wednesday. The journalist died in Pucarani, in La Paz department, western Bolivia on March 29 after being beaten up by opponents of the mayor. The six defendants, charged with "homicide" and "association to commit a crime", were all in court for the opening of the trial: four municipal...

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) has expressed concern at the court decision allowing police to use photographs belonging to the Hamilton Spectator. Officers executed a search warrant on May 6, 2008, in order to obtain photos of a highway blockade in Caledonia. Brian Rogers, representing the Hamilton Spectator, was in court on June 12 to fight the issuing of the warrant, but his...

The joint trial of independent newspaper, the Standard, its editor Davison Maruziva, and Professor Arthur Mutambara, leader of a faction of opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been postponed to July 10. The Standard newspaper, Maruziva and Mutambara stand charged under Section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act following the publication of an opinion...

A journalist won a legal test case over the confidentiality of reporters' contacts after judges ruled against a court order seeking all his notes for a biography of a former Islamist radical. The order had required London reporter Shiv Malik to give police all his notes and source material for a book he was writing on Hassan Butt, a British-born Muslim who spent 10 years inside radical Islamist...

Veteran journalist and founding editor of Bengali daily Bartaman Barun Sengupta died at a nursing home here on Thursday after a prolonged illness. A bachelor, Sengupta was 74. He is survived by two sisters. Sengupta, admitted to the nursing home on Sunday with multiple complications, was on a ventilator for the last two days. He died this afternoon following multi-organ failure. Sengupta, who...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed for charges to be dropped against Mazen Darwish, the president of its partner organisation, the Syrian Centre for Media & Freedom of Expression, two days ahead of the verdict in his defamation trial on June 18. Darwish, a journalist and human rights activist, was arrested on January 12 while covering violent clashes in the Damascus suburb of Adra and...

For more than 40 years, the Mafia has been targeting journalists who try to expose the organisation's criminal activities, says an Italian media watchdog. In a new report, the Italian-based rights group Information Safety and Freedom (ISF) says that nine journalists have been murdered by the mafia since 1960, from Cosimo Cristina who was killed in Sicily in 1960 to Beppe Alfano in 1993. Many other

Javier García, news anchor for the Caracas-based television station Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV), was found dead in his Caracas apartment on Sunday. García, 37, was last seen by friends and family on Friday night, according to local and international news reports. On Sunday afternoon, García’s brother entered the anchor’s Caracas apartment and called the local fire department when...