News

The Salvadoran Congress ratified the Public Information Access Law on Thursday, March 3, after accepting some of the changes proposed by President Mauricio Funes, reported news agency EFE, according to the Knight Centre for Journalism in the Americas. The details: [ Link] However while the law will go into effect until 30 days after its official publication, Salvadorans will have to wait a year...

Nearly a dozen gunmen stormed an independent radio station in Sulaimaniya's Kalar district on Sunday, vandalising the office, breaking most of the equipment, and confiscating the rest, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists has reported. It is the second armed assault on an independent radio station in Sulaimaniya in a less than a month, according to news reports...

A special five-judge panel named by the Philippines Court of Appeal in Manila may free the suspected mastermind behind the Maguindanao massacre, or release him on a technicality. Lawyers for Zaldy Ampatuan, the former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, have entered a plea for the charges against their client to be dropped, according to New York-based Press freedom group...

Gannett Co, the owner of 82 US newspapers including USA Today, is considering charging for its online content, Chief Executive Officer Craig Dubow said, according to a Bloomberg News report. The company, which also owns television stations, is trying a paid-content model at three newspaper websites, and is likely to experiment more before making a decision about the broad use of paywalls, Dubow...

Despite positive movement on some of the worst aspects of Hungary’s controversial media, the core of the problem remains, since the composition and attributions of the all-powerful Media Council remain unchanged, says Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). European governments should make it clear to their Hungarian partner that this vote does not in any way absolve it of...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the attack on the Peruvian news daily Voces, which was hit with homemade explosive devices on Saturday. The daily's editor recently received threats following critical reporting on a national congressional candidate, he told CPJ. According to CPJ interviews and local press freedom groups, around 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, three unknown assailants on...

A reporter has been sentenced to a year in prison in Angola and several media and journalists have been threatened, roughed up or censored in the past two weeks, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “It is a disgrace for Angola that a journalist has been given a jail sentence for an alleged case of defamation that has not been proved,” RSF said. “We call...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Wednesday’s decision by a court in Tual, in the eastern province of Maluku, to acquit three men of the murder of Sun TV cameraman Ridwan Salamun, who was killed on August 21, 2010 while covering a clash between the inhabitants of neighbouring villages. The press freedom organisation called for a judicial review of the...

Investigative journalist Suzanne Breen has won libel damages from UK's National Union of Journalists over an article about her which appeared in union magazine – The Journalist. Union member Breen was backed by the NUJ in a legal battle with the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2009 which had sought to force her to disclose information which could lead to exposing the identity of sources in...

The unparalleled recent events in the Middle East have offered newspapers a chance to make use of their youth pages and supplements to explain a complex situation. The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) have gathered some examples from around the world. "Newspapers – yes newspapers – are playing a leading role in providing explanatory journalism for children, who are...