2005-2014

In 2005, when Silicon Valley entrepreneur Michael Arrington started TechCrunch, his popular blog on Internet startups, he saw it mainly as a chance to indulge his obsession with young technology companies. But it turned out that Arrington had latched onto something big. TechCrunch became the go-to site for the scoop on new Web companies. And, as technophiles flocked to TechCrunch, advertisers...

Reporters Without Borders issued an urgent appeal today to the international community for energetic measures towards the Somali government on behalf of the country’s journalists after yesterday’s murder in Mogadishu of Bashir Nur Gedi, the head of the Shabelle press group. Gedi is the eighth journalist to be slain this year in Somalia and the third leading media owner to be killed by unidentified...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Unknown attackers shot dead the acting head of an independent radio station at his home on Friday in the latest attack on a journalist in the Somali capital, the victim's employer said. The killing of Bashir Nur Gedi brings to eight the number of journalists murdered this year in the Horn of Africa country, where reporters routinely face harassment, imprisonment and mortal...

Until recently, there were two types of newspaper website: those that made you pay to read many of the articles (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times) and those that didn’t. That is changing. The New York Times recently announced that almost all its online material would now be free. FT.com has just moved to a system of free access for occasional visitors. And Rupert...

(FLIP/IFEX) - On 11 October 2007, a group of students from Santa Marta University, protesting a court ruling against the university's former rector, attacked the offices of the newspaper "Hoy Diario del Magdalena". They stoned the building and wrote denunciatory graffiti on its walls. Later, the editor of the newspaper, Ulilo Acevedo Silva, received a new death threat. The students marched on the...

(NUSOJ/IFEX) - The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) is deeply shocked by the ssassination of a media executive of a prominent and popular radio station in Mogadishu. Bashir Nor Gedi, Acting Chairperson and the vice chairperson of Shabelle Media Network, was assassinated at his home in the Wardhigley district of Hamarjadid neighbourhood, on 19 October 2007, by unknown gunmen, according...

(BIANET/IFEX) - Despite pressure from the EU and human rights activists internationally and domestically, the prosecution of journalists, writers and activists under the infamous Article 301 continues. Before the Progress Report of the European Union, EU authorities had called for the abolition of Article 301, and Turkish government officials had signaled that changes were on the way. However...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - The case against two Internet users who were the first to be charged under Thailand's new Computer-Related Offences Commission Act continue to be shrouded in secrecy as the state prosecutors did not proceed with charges upon the deadline for filing them on 12 October 2007. Despite the apparent good news, local free expression watchdogs fear that the charges may be filed anew as the...

Reporters Without Borders called today for the release of Jerome Imeime, the editor of Events, a privately-owned weekly based in Uyo, the capital of the southeastern state of Akwa Ibom. Imeime was arrested on 10 October by members of the State Security Service, the main domestic intelligence agency, for criticising the state’s governor and was charged six days later with “sedition” by an Uyo court...

As leading journalist Moussa Kaka is about to begin his second month in detention, Reporters Without Borders today appealed to President Mamadou Tandja for a conciliatory gesture after the imprisonment of two journalists. “The pressure will not let up as long as he continues to display this level of intransigence, so President Tandja should listen to those who have been saying for the past month...