2005-2014

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has categorised as "confusing" the manner in which a new warrant was issued on 7 February 2007 for the arrest of Freddy Muñoz, the Colombian correspondent of the pan-Latin American television station Telesur, who was freed on 9 January after being held for 50 days. Charged with providing logistical support for a 2002 bombing by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of...

A journalist has been stabbed to death in northern Nicaragua, police in the country said today. Police spokesman Omar Flores told The Associated Press that Danilo Torres Rodriguez was found dead yesterday in his home in Esteli, 65 miles north of Managua, the capital. Police believe the 54-year-old’s killers stole his vehicle and then abandoned it in another part of the city, but they have no...

A newspaper editor was shot dead by an unidentified man in the southern Philippines town of Mindanao this morning. Reports said Hernani Pastolero, 64, editor of the weekly paper Lightning Courier was sipping coffee in front of his house in Sultan Kudarat town on Mindanao island when gunmen shot him twice in the back of his head on Monday morning. Volunteers carry the body of Hernani Pastolero, 64...

February 18, 2007 -- The magazine publishing world was abuzz last week as the latest circulation numbers showed continued weakness - meaning more editors are surely on the hot seat. Magazines - like television and other Old-Guard media - are seeing readers and advertising dollars follow consumers online. "What's hurting magazines the most is the loss of readers of its printed pages to the Internet...

At a party to celebrate the launch of its latest title Look last week, IPC chief executive Sylvia Auton told staff: 'This year will be our biggest ever.' Such occasions are not renowned for plain speaking, but there was some substance behind Auton's corporate platitudes. 'The UK market has simply never been tougher,' she said, adding that the internet is about to make life even harder. Hours...

February 18, 2007 -- A war between old and new media has begun. After peaceably co-existing for years, the analog and digital media worlds have swapped the first salvos over content in what could be a very messy - and costly - battle. Earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs squeezed off a shot over the bow of the music industry by posting a 1,800-word missive seeking to abolish copyright...

On a mid-November day in 2006, a cleaning lady found the bloodied, lifeless corpse of journalist José Manuel Nava in his Mexico City flat located on Warsaw Street in the Juarez district of the capital. He died, according to police reports, from a savage knife attack by an unknown assailant. This occurred a week after he published a book very critical of the outgoing president, Vicente Fox, and...

When I think back on the most momentous events of my professional life, they include scenes of both devastation and deliverance. The boulevards of Manila, flooded with peaceful demonstrators chanting for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos to abandon power. The slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where a joyful, gyrating mob of slum-dwellers is celebrating the election of populist priest Jean...

European publishers have offered an olive branch to Google in a bid to end copycat copyright challenges to the internet search engine's news service. Google lost a court battle with a Belgian newspaper association Copiepresse in a landmark ruling on Monday and was ordered was ordered to remove content or face daily fines. Belgium's ruling came as other lawsuits loom for the popular search engine...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has backed new calls from Sudanese and Arab world journalists for the release of Sami al-Haj, a cameraman working for Al-Jazeera, who has been held for five years, tortured and accused of terrorism offences at the notorious Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba. He has never been charged or brought to trial. According to Reporters sans Frontières...