2005-2014

The kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC's Gaza reporter, has shocked the community of foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also having a devastating impact on the coverage of the story. In the month since he was abducted from the street outside his office, I have not been to Gaza once. The same is true for many of my colleagues who are members of the Foreign Press...

A US soldier facing trial in absentia next week in Italy for shooting dead an Italian hostage negotiator and wounding a journalist at a road block in Baghdad has justified the shooting. Mario Lozano of the US Army’s 69th Infantry Regiment told the New York Post in his first major interview since the 2005 incident that when confronted with the vehicle moving at speed towards his checkpoint he did...

The Afghanistan government has ordered a TV station to suspend broadcasts of Al-Jazeera’s English-language programmes, the station’s director said Tuesday. A statement from Lemar TV said the Ministry of Information and Culture, which oversees media in Afghanistan, did not provide reasons for the order. The station complied, but contested the order before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the...

Reporters Without Borders condemned a hand-grenade attack early today on the Belgrade home of journalist Dejan Anastasijevic, who covers war crimes and underworld activity for the independent weekly paper Vreme. The journalist and his wife, who were sleeping in the house, were not hurt but windows were smashed and cars parked outside were damaged. “He and his family could have been harmed,” the...

Carlos Sanchez and his newsroom at the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald faced an interesting challenge: how to sell the paper in three seconds or less. That was how Publisher Dan Savage's call to push single-copy sales evolved, said Sanchez, editor of the 39,000-circulation daily. Savage originally challenged the staff to pretend a row of newsboxes stood across the street from the newspaper office. How...

April 12, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese authorities has expelled the BBC Correspondent from the country. The ministry of interior accused him of hostile reporting, described as part of the western media propaganda against Khartoum. The BBC correspondent in Sudan, Jonah Fisher, was served with an expulsion letter from the Sudan’s ministry of interior on March 25 indicating that he should leave the...

April 13, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Prominent Iranian journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi has challenged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in an open letter in which he questioned why criticism of the supreme leader's actions and decisions is banned in Iran. Zeidabadi also asked Khamenei why Iranians should share his view on the nuclear issue. The journalist also expressed regret that those who favor flexibility on that...

Reporters Without Borders called today on the Somali and Ethiopian governments to explain why two Eritrean state TV journalists had been held in secret after being arrested late last year along with several Somalis and foreigners near the border with Kenya. “Like many other foreign journalists, they were reporting on the situation in Somalia and were not foreign fighters, as those arrested with...

Reporters Without Borders today strongly deplored a fire that swept through the offices of the fortnightly newspaper Tribuna do Povo, in Várzea da Palma (300 km north of Belo Horizonte, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais) on 9 April and called for those responsible to be arrested and punished. It said the blaze resembled one that destroyed the offices of a newspaper and two radio stations...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Radio host Don Imus was dumped by CBS Radio on Thursday in an inglorious end to a 30-year career that erupted in controversy over racist and sexist comments about a women's college basketball team. CBS's decision to nix the popular "Imus in the Morning" show, which mixed locker-room humor with interviews with top stars and politicians, followed days of uproar after he called...