2005-2014

Omar Fekeiki, a 28-year-old Iraqi citizen studying journalism at UC Berkeley, was at his campus apartment when he received news that chilled his heart: His friend and Washington Post colleague Salih Saif Aldin had been murdered while on assignment in a Baghdad neighborhood. Just two weeks before, Aldin, 32, had called Fekeiki to thank him for being a good mentor. "He died for us to get the story,"...

New York, October 26, 2007—A Bangladeshi journalist arrested Tuesday has been beaten in jail, his wife told the Committee to Protect Journalists. Jahangir Alam Akash was arrested at his home in Rajshahi on extortion charges. Akash was taken to the prison hospital on Thursday with leg injuries, his wife told local journalist Shahriar Kabir and press freedom advocate Mainul Islam Khan. Akash, who...

KARACHI, Oct 26 (IPS) - When TV cameraman Arif Khan added to the list of over 140 people who died in the bombings that targeted the welcome procession for former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on Oct. 18, it highlighted the many risks that journalists in Pakistan now face. Bhutto took special notice of Khan in her press conference the following day, while paying homage to the 'shuhada' (martyrs)...

The Sri Lankan government has ordered the closure of five FM news radio stations run by a single company, ABC, for broadcasting a false report on Wednesday, saying that the LTTE's suicide squad had attacked a Sinhala village near Weerawila, the site for a major airport in South Sri Lanka. The government said that the broadcast had triggered panic in the entire Tissamaharama area, which is a...

(Media Institute/IFEX) - Rwanda's biggest independent private media group has suspended publication of its titles citing continued state blackmail and intimidation. The Rwanda Independent Media Group (RIMEG), publishers of "Newsline" (Wednesday), "Umuseso" (Monday vernacular) and "Rwanda Championi" (Friday), announced it would not be publishing for at least two weeks starting October 23. "With...

CHICAGO: There are no adult ads in this week's edition of the Orlando (Fla.) Weekly -- just a blank page where they would be -- and there might not be any in the alternative paper next week, either. Orlando Weekly Publisher Rick Schreiber, in a brief telephone conversation with E&P Friday, said no decision had been made about whether to run the ads for massage parlors, escort services, and other...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed its shock at the news that two volunteer radio announcers for Radio Ukay in Digos City narrowly escaped death after having shots fired at them. According to IFJ affiliate the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), Marlan Malnegro and Ruben Oliverio had just finished their morning program and were riding tandem on a...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The board of The Associated Press on Thursday approved a major overhaul of the way the AP prices and packages news for its member U.S. newspapers. Instead of offering news feeds defined largely by the volume of news delivered -- large, medium or small -- the new plan is centered on a core service of all national, state and international breaking news, with options for adding other...

New York, October 25, 2007—Sri Lankan authorities should immediately release Sunday Leader reporter Arthur Wamanan Sornalingam, who was detained in Colombo on Wednesday in connection with a story critical of a government minister, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Sornalingam and his mother, with whom he lives, were picked up by Criminal Investigation Division officers at 4:30 a.m...

MIAMI (AP) — A television reporter investigating a story on school violence was arrested after carrying a loaded gun onto school property, authorities said. Jeffrey Weinsier of WPLG-TV, an ABC network affiliate, was taken into custody Tuesday at Miami Central High School after ignoring several warnings not to walk on school property, Miami-Dade schools police said. "Kindly go across the street now...