2005-2014

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A member of the European Parliament said on Thursday that the White House has pressured journalists not to name certain European countries in their reports about CIA detention practices on the continent. Claudio Fava of Italy, charged with writing a European Parliament committee report on possible secret CIA prisons and detainee transfers in Europe, did not identify the...

The Media Institution of Southern Africa (Misa-SA) on Wednesday challenged institutions and individuals who have been criticising the media recently to substantiate their allegations. "Misa-SA challenges these critics to take their complaints - and they will have to be specific - to the ombuds institutions set up to regulate media editorial conduct, the Press Ombudsman and the Broadcasting...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A reporter who worked for a pro-Sunni Iraqi television station was gunned down in Baghdad, making him at least the fourth media worker killed in Iraq this month, Iraqi officials and the station said Thursday. Saud Muzahim al-Hadithi was found dead - shot repeatedly in the head - in Baghdad's notorious Dora neighborhood last week, said Iraqi army Capt. Ali Yaeen. News of his death...

THE outcry over the Islamic cartoons published by Denmark's leading newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, had escalated into the biggest Danish foreign policy crisis since World War II, Hans-Henrik Holm, the professor of international relations at the Danish School of Journalism and Aarhus University, said yesterday. Professor Holm said the crisis was completely unforeseen by the editors of the newspaper...

Denmark's most prominent Muslim leader, who led criticism of a Danish newspaper that published drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, has decided to leave the country, the daily reported Thursday. Imam Ahmed Abu Laban said he has felt humiliated in the aftermath of the cartoon controversy, which led to riots around the world, and that he would leave Denmark to return to Gaza with his family, the...

WASHINGTON, May 10 (UPI) -- Five journalists have been killed in recent days in Iraq, the most dangerous country in the world for news professionals according to a press freedom group. "The first few days of May have been exceptionally murderous for the Iraqi news media," Reporters Without Borders said in a Tuesday statement. "We can no longer find words to express our horror at the tragedies...

JOHANNESBURG, 10 May 2006 (IRIN) - The arrest of three journalists this week on criminal libel charges has been viewed by some commentators as yet another sign of the Malawi government's willingness to crack down on dissent. Robert Jamieson, owner of The Chronicle newspaper, its editor, Dickson Kashoti, and reporter Arnold Mlelemba were arrested on 8 May for allegedly defaming Malawi's Attorney...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is concerned about a Costa Rican Supreme Court decision on 3 May 2006 rejecting a newspaper lawyer's petition for article 7 of the Press Law to be struck down as unconstitutional. The article provides for prison sentences for those who use the media to "defame" or "insult". "We call on the government to reconsider the Press Law and to begin a debate on...

(Brussels, May 9, 2006) - Politically motivated prosecutions of independent newsweeklies are rolling back press freedom in Morocco, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released today. Today the Casablanca appeals court confirmed a fine and one-year suspended sentence against the director of al-Mash'al ("The Torch") weekly for "insulting" a foreign head of state. In the last year, the...

(APG/IFEX) - The APG has asked the attorney general's ministry (Ministerio Público) to file a special appeal of the court ruling which resulted in the release of two police (Policía National Civil) officers who assaulted and threatened two "Nuestro Diario" newspaper reporters. The assault had occurred on 31 August 2004, during a violent eviction of peasants, carried out by government security...