2005-2014

Severe harassment by Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces targeting Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza has had a pronounced chilling effect on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. In a new report, Human Rights Watch called on Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza to hold their security forces to account for systematic, severe abuses and...

The South and East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has launched a specialised website dedicated to press freedom-related developments in Hungary. The website www.hungarypressfreedom.org contains news, exclusive monthly reports, legal and political analyses, as well as expert opinions on the Hungarian Media Constitution and Media Act (Media Law) and its subsequent amendments. The website follows...

The future of New Zealand's national news agency was thrown into doubt today when major subscriber and shareholder Fairfax Media announced it was pulling out of the cooperative, the Press Association has reported. New Zealand Press Association Chairman Michael Muir said the board of the 131-year-old agency had ordered a review to determine whether it could keep operating. A union representative...

The Reuters news agency on Tuesday vehemently denied an accusation made on Cuban state television that one of its journalists helped arrange a meeting between an undercover Cuban agent and a US diplomat who the programme described as a CIA operative, Canadian Press has reported. The allegations against former Reuters bureau chief Anthony Boadle were made on a Monday evening program called "Cuba's...

Algerian state radio has stripped top news officials of their duties after an illegal demonstration by about 30 employees, mainly journalists, its director general Tewfik Khelladi said Tuesday, according to Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The National Union of Journalists (SNJ) announced in a statement that the news director of the news channel Chaîne 2, Mohand Said Bensekhria, “has been sacked” and...

Al-Jazeera staffers in Jordan have received anonymous threatening phone calls warning that their office and correspondents would be attacked, Al-Jazeera's Amman bureau chief told New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Journalists in Jordan have been facing mounting dangers while covering pro-reform demonstrations, CPJ research has found. "Jordanian authorities...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the closure of a provincial Ecuadoran radio station and called on local regulators to allow the station to resume broadcasting. Voz de la Selva Esmeralda Oriental Canela radio, known for its critical coverage of local authorities, had appealed an order to close the station on bogus administrate violations, according to CPJ research. The...

Beijing’s reach does not stop at China’s borders. The Chinese government successfully pressured the Vietnamese authorities to arrest two people, Vu Duc Trung and Le Van Thanh, for operating an unauthorised short-wave radio station that was broadcasting in Chinese from a farm outside Hanoi, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The organisation is worried by...

The two big international stories that have recently dominated the headlines remained at the top of the US news agenda last week. But there were signs that media attention to both of them was beginning to plateau as the US economy re-emerged as a bigger story. Unrest in the Middle East, driven by the volatile Libyan civil war, accounted for 38 per cent of the newshole during the week of March 28...

Two new Israeli laws affecting Israel's Palestinian Arab residents would promote discrimination and stifle free expression, Human Rights Watch said today. One would authorize rural, Jewish-majority communities to reject Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and other "unsuitable" applicants for residency, and the other would chill expression regarding a key moment in the history of Palestinian...