2005-2014

Jubilation would be premature. The fragmented, multimedia world in which quality newspapers must fight for attention is too new and confusing for that. But the initial evidence contradicts every doom-laden forecast by rivals. The Independent on Sunday's June relaunch has been rewarded with a 17 per cent year-on-year sales rise and a month-on-month increase of 17.45 per cent. Following the move to...

Most journalists in Canada feel the conditions that they work in are dangerous. More than 80 per cent of TV camera operators and half of broadcast reporters have been assaulted or threatened with injury at least once while doing their current job. In the print sector, more than 75 per cent of photographers and almost 30 per cent of reporters have been assaulted or threatened with injury. Of those...

The leader of a nationalist party has been acquitted of calling Islamic leaders traitors after they had sought support in the Middle East against a Danish newspaper, which first published controversial cartoons of prophet Mohammed. In December 2005 and January 2006, nine imams from Denmark travelled to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon to seek support from religious and political leaders to protest the...

(MFWA/IFEX) - Seedy Bojang, a journalist working for the Banjul-based, pro-government "Daily Observer" newspaper, was on July 9, 2007 dismissed by the newspaper's management. The reasons for his dismissal are not clear. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources attributed it to some changes he allegedly made to the caption of a recent editorial in the paper. The sources quoted the newspaper...

(Adil Soz/IFEX) - Journalist Gennady Benditskiy and the newspaper he works for, "Vremya", have to pay a total of 1.7 million tenge (approx.US$14,000) to Justice Ministry officer Raikhan Useyev and lawyer Valeriy Alefirenko, following the courts' affirmation of their lawsuits. On 29 June 2007, the Zhetesu district court in Almaty ordered "Vremya" and Benditskiy to pay 200,000 tenge (approx. US$1...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today welcomed the launch in Morocco of an observatory on press and media freedom to monitor the state of press freedom and document the social and professional conditions of journalists throughout the Arab world. The observatory was opened yesterday in Rabat by the Federation of Arab Journalists' (FAJ), with a keynote address by IFJ...

(RSF/IFEX) - On 12 July 2007 Reporters Without Borders wrote to Prime Minister Driss Jettou voicing concern that a proposed overhaul of the press law currently being discussed by the government does not decriminalize press offences. The organisation called for significant changes in the current draft, which appears not to be the final version that will be submitted to parliament. "Your government...

(BIANET/IFEX) - A software company in Turkey recently blocked the BIANET website, http://www.bianet.com , acting not on a court order but instead from a list of "forbidden websites" allegedly based on a police list. The discovery was made following readers' complaints of not being able to access the BIANET website. BIANET is concerned that a software application designed to protect children from...

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today about threats and advertising boycotts against journalists and media during the past few days in the states of Puebla, Guanajuato and Yucatán, which were reported by the Centre for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET). These press freedom violations by local politicians and criminal gangs are typical of the kind of pressure to which the Mexican media...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a purge of staff last week at Minzhu yu Fazhi Shibao (Democracy and Legal Times), a weekly specialising in legal news that is considered to be one of China’s ten most influential newspapers. "Censorship takes different forms in China," the press freedom organisation said. "Closures of websites, blogs or newspapers are the most visible of the many press...