On 10 March, Benin's media regulatory body, the Higher Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAAC) suspended, for one week, nine privately-owned newspapers in the country over what they alleged were false and abusive publications. The newspapers which include Le Clairon, Le Béninois, L'Engagement, Les Scoops du jour, L'Audace Info, La Suite, La Nouvelle Tribune, Actu Express and Le Béninois...
Prince Prah, editor of the Daybreak, an Accra-based weekly newspaper, who was detained on March 16 by Ghana's intelligence agency, the Bureau of National Investigations, (BNI) was released unconditionally at about 21:30 hours GMT on the same day. Prah told the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) that during his six-hour illegal detention, he was interrogated on a wide range of issues including...
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed the March 17 release of Mahmudur Rahman, the editor of the opposition daily Amar Desh, on completion of an arbitrary jail sentence for contempt of court. Held for a total of nine months and 17 days, Rahman was greeted as he left prison by family members, opposition leaders and fellow journalists. The press freedom...
Togolese authorities on March 16 closed down Radio Carré Jeunes, a community entertainment station, for an alleged "non-adherence to professional standards". The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported that the regulatory body, the Post and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (ART&P), which closed the station down, said it had given Radio Carré Jeunes until July 2011...
Newspaper advertising in the U.S. has sunk to a 25-year low as marketing budgets followed readers to the Internet, where advertising is far cheaper than what publishers have been able to command in print, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Advertisers spent $25.8 billion on newspapers' print and digital editions last year, according to figures released Tuesday by the Newspaper Association of...
The Washington Post suspended one of its most seasoned reporters Wednesday after editors determined that “substantial” parts of two recent news articles were taken without attribution from another newspaper. Sari Horwitz, a longtime Post investigative reporter, was suspended for three months for plagiarizing sections of stories that first appeared in the Arizona Republic. The stories concerned the...
Four New York Times journalists – Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid, reporter and videographer Stephen Farrell and photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario – went missing on March 15 while reporting in the Libyan port city of Ajdabiya. In a report posted on its website Wednesday, the New York Times said it had received no news of the four since the previous day. It added that it was in...
Thirteen journalists killed in the past 13 months. The world’s deadliest country for media personnel in 2010, with 11 killed, Pakistan continues to be one of the most dangerous in 2011. As well as being very badly paid, its journalists are exposed to every kind of danger. With its tribal northwest, its border with Afghanistan, its tension with India and its chaotic political history, Pakistan is...
Mazen Darwich, the founder of the Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression, was arrested Wednesday while he attended a peaceful sit-in outside the interior ministry in Damascus as an observer. Around 30 of the demonstrators were also arrested, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The Syrian government has been controlling news and information for years...
Armenia has refused to allow four reporters with the Finnish public broadcaster YLE to enter the country, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Thursday, immigration authorities at the Zvartnots International Airport in the capital, Yerevan, refused to issue visas to the four reporters, and forced them to leave the country, according to local...
