2005-2014

England may no longer be an empire in the classic sense, with colonies about the world, but it's still very much an empire in the new virtual world, truly a global media empire to which the rest of the world still turns. Indeed, for all the power of The New York Times, for example, it's the British newspapers that draw the biggest share of traffic from nations outside its borders, and by huge...

(PEN/IFEX) - Washington, DC, September 25, 2007-The Campaign for Reader Privacy, a coalition of organizations representing librarians, booksellers, publishers, and authors, cheered the introduction on 25 September 2007 of legislation to safeguard the privacy of ordinary Americans and curb the FBI's abuse of the National Security Letter power granted under the USA Patriot Act. National Security...

The prosecutor in Hrodna, eastern Belarus, has summoned two independent journalists and threatened them with legal action for “working without accreditation” and for “bringing the international image of Belarus into disrepute”, following the publication of articles on local police negligence. A warning received by Ivan Roman, correspondent for Polish-based Radio Racyja, on 3 September 2007...

Reporters Without Borders called today on the central government in Baku to order the release of Hakim Eldostu Mehdiyev, a reporter for the opposition newspaper Yeni Musavat in the autonomous republic of Nakhchivan, who was arrested on 23 September in the village de Jalilli and was sentenced the same day by a local court to 15 days in prison for resisting arrest. “We also call on the national...

When Al-Jazeera Intl. finally launched in November of last year following a series of delays, expectations were high for the English-language newscaster. With $1 billion reportedly spent on building four interconnected global news centers in London, Washington, Kuala Lumpur and Doha, in addition to some 30 international news bureaus and a splashy lineup of reporters including David Frost, Riz Khan...

At a demonstration close to the Burmese embassy in Paris on 27 September 2007, Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association launched an appeal to the UN Security Council to stop the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations within the country. The actor Jane Birkin also joined the rally to condemn the brutal policies of the Burmese regime towards the democracy movement and the...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), regional group of the International Federation of Journalists, today condemned the adoption by the Portuguese Parliament of a law that strips journalists of their right to protect their confidential sources and to be fairly paid for the use of their work. "We are flabbergasted by Portuguese lawmakers' lack of consideration for the...

(FLIP/IPYS/IFEX) - Samit Linero, a journalist with the newspaper "Al Día", reported having been threatened by telephone and harassed, apparently in retaliation for his 18 September 2007 report about a case of alleged corruption. According to Linero, he received the first threatening calls at home on 18 September. He attributed these threats to supporters of council members implicated in the...

(CJES/IFEX) - The Federal Service for the Supervision of Mass Media, Communication and Protection of Cultural Heritage (Rossvyazokhrankultura) in the Saratov region filed a lawsuit against the region's newspaper "Saratovsky Reporter" on 19 September 2007. The paper is charged with "dissemination of extremist materials." In late August, the paper ran a cartoon portraying President Vladimir Putin as...

(CMFR/IFEX) - A columnist claims that he received a death threat on 20 September 2007, after writing about a high-ranking election official involved in an anomalous deal on the installation of broadband networks in the country. Jarius Bondoc, a columnist for the Manila daily "The Philippine Star", said he received the threat following the Senate hearing on the US$329 million National Broadband...