2005-2014

KUALA LUMPUR: A Chinese daily’s report on the alleged auction of a Vietnamese woman at a market in Rawang, which created an international stir, appears to be false. Police have ascertained that the report was based on hearsay and two sources quoted in the report yesterday denied that they had spoken to the reporter. Selangor CID chief Datuk Hadi Ho Abdullah said police, accompanied by the reporter...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned a Casablanca appeal court ruling on 9 May 2006 upholding a suspended sentence of a year in prison and a fine of 100,000 dirhams (9,000 euros) for Driss Chahtane, the editor of the Arabic-language weekly "Al Michaâl", for allegedly libelling Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The sentence is yet another reminder of the need to decriminalize...

(PROBIDAD/IFEX) - Journalist Wendy Guerra, dismissed 24 April 2006 by the owner of Canal 49 television station in Santa Rosa de Copán in western Honduras, has been reinstated in her position after an alert concerning her case was issued nationally and internationally. The journalist had been dismissed due to political pressures from the local government. Guerra told the Committee for Free...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the physical attacks which five Chinese journalists sustained at the hands of mine employees and security guards on 7 and 8 May 2006 while trying to cover an accident in the Meihe coal mine in the northeastern province of Jilin. "As well as having to cope with government censorship, China's journalists are increasingly subject to physical...

(IPYS/IFEX) - Daniel Santoro, a journalist for the daily newspaper "Clarín" and president of the Argentinean Journalism Forum (Foro de Periodismo Argentino, FOPEA), has denounced that his e-mail was surreptitiously monitored and copied by unknown persons who did the same to that of Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas. An account of the event appeared in the newspaper on 11 May 2006. According to...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on leaders attending the 11 - 13 May 2006 European Union - Latin America and Caribbean summit in Vienna to do more for press freedom, which has taken a beating in the western hemisphere in 2005 and the early months of 2006. "Seven journalists were murdered in connection with their work in the Americas in 2005 and five more have been killed since the start of...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders condemned an assault on cameraman Omid Yakmanish, of Tolo TV, the 2005 laureate of its press freedom award, who was beaten up by two parliamentarians while covering a debate in parliament. He had gone to parliament on 7 May 2006 for a controversial debate on media coverage of the day of commemoration of the Mujahideen victory over Russia. One deputy, Malalai...

12 May 2006 – With seven more media workers killed in Iraq in recent days, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) yet again stressed the indispensable role a free press plays in establishing a democratic country and called for full security for journalists. "Everything possible must be done to improve their security and ensure that media...

NEW YORK -- The United Nations is proposing a voluntary code of ethics for journalists that would ban interviews with terrorists and discourage press and broadcast reports that generate sympathy for terrorist causes. The code would be part of a U.N. global strategy against terrorism, which member nations began debating in the General Assembly yesterday. Secretary-General Kofi Annan earlier...

While many journalists were embedded with U.S. military units during the initial invasion of Iraq, today such deployments are few and far between. Today instead, what is often portrayed as reports from "on the ground" are more often what we veterans call "balcony reporting." The embed program allowed journalists to live, eat, sleep and patrol with a company- or platoon-size unit for an extended...