2005-2014

The variety of perspectives offered by the online international news environment is limited. It offers little real information diversity, a situation sharply at odds with a decade and a half of fervour for the democratising potential of new media, a study by the University of Ulster's Centre for Media Research has concluded. Online news websites have improved access to international news but since...

New York, September 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the jail sentences given to two journalists in Senegal for defamation. A court in the capital Dakar on Tuesday handed down six-month suspended prison sentences to Alioune Ndiaye and Saliou Sambe, respectively director and reporter with the private daily L’Observateur, according to local news reports and CPJ sources. They...

Bianet-Turkish courts are geared up to hear 45 press and freedom of expression cases until the end of the year. First case starts with the Kirandi trial on September 8 while eight journalists, writers and publishers are to face judges on October 5. With the judiciary recess ending on September 6, bianet has established that Turkish courts are to hear 45 press and freedom of expression cases until...

Media organisations and activists in Fiji are joining hands to fight a bill currently before the country's parliament for the creation of a Broadcast Licensing Authority (BLA) that will provide the government with a way to control the news media. REMOTE CONTROL: Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, however, has defended the bill saying its aim was not to control the media, and that a legal framework

The recent cases of prosecution of journalists in Azerbaijan has press freedom advocates worried the world over. HAWKING FREE SPEECH: A newspaper-seller in Azerbaijan capital Baku. Five journalists and a number of newspapers are facing criminal and civil defamation cases. Some of them, including Shahin Agabayli, Editor-in-Chief of Milli Yol, and Fikret Faramazoglu, Editor-in-Chief of 24 Saat, have

CHINA is planning to bring more honesty and transparency in reporting newspaper circulation data as it launches an inspection on the circulation figures in newspapers from 11 cities, Xinhua news agency reported. These cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Chengdu, said a circular released ahead of the 2007 newspaper circulation season by the General Administration of...

(IPYS/IFEX) - During the second week of August 2006, all unsold copies of the ninth edition of the Social Observatory's magazine, "Revista del Observatorio Social", were seized. The order was issued by Ouro Preto's ordinary court in the state of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil, because of a report with the title "The Stone Age", published on 9 February, which had denounced the use of child...

The Telegraph Group is believed to be looking to axe about 70 journalists as part of its project to create a digital newsroom. Production staff such as subeditors and designers are expected to bear the brunt of the cull, designed to streamline the Telegraph's print and online operations. However, reporters and commissioning editors are likely to emerge virtually unscathed, once the Daily Telegraph...

(JED/IFEX) - The National Police's Kinshasa Provincial Criminal Investigation Unit (Inspection provinciale de la police nationale ville de Kinshasa, IPK) has released the names of journalist Bapuwa Mwamba's three presumed killers. Mwamba was killed at his Kinshasa/Matete home on the night of 7 to 8 July 2006. The suspects are soldier Vungu Mbembo, also known as Manassé, who is a deserter from the...

Since his accession to the throne in 1999, Bahrain's King Hamad bin 'Issa Al Khalifa has vowed to bring about reforms and freedoms to the Persian Gulf island-state; reforms that were celebrated by some, while others questioned the intentions behind them. Critics of the ruling family accused Al Khalifa of drafting and passing laws aimed at restricting civil and political rights in Bahrain and...