News

The Singapore government has announced, as part of the nation's annual budget, that the radio and TV licence has been abolished effective January 1, 2011, according to the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. The licences were first introduced in 1963. Premises with TV or radio sets, owners of vehicles with radios and dealers selling broadcast apparatus, paid for these licences. The fees collected...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has been awarded $2.7 million by Google Inc, to sponsor the ‘IPI News Innovation Contest’, a project aimed at advancing the future of digital news by funding new ways to inform communities in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The IPI News Innovation Contest aims to encourage breakthrough ideas with the potential to create lasting impact. Grants will be awarded...

Against a backdrop of historic political change for the region that has brought the country to the brink of its own revolution, The International Partnership for Yemen has released findings from its joint mission that expose the critical situation facing the media. The Partnership, a coalition of press freedom and human rights organisations including ARTICLE 19: Global Campaign for Free Expression...

There were physical attacks on seven journalists in two separate incidents during Tuesday’s municipal and district elections as well as the attacks on two other journalists during February 18’s general election, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The violence against journalists during these two elections reached alarming proportions and seems to have...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the Philippines government to move quickly to protect journalists from increasing death threats against those reporting on corruption and environmental abuses, a month after the murder of Radio Mindanao Network (RMN) dwAR commentator Gerardo Ortega. It urged President Benigno Aquino III to keep his promise to fight...

The police say journalist Le Hoang Hung’s wife, Tran Thuy Lieu, came to them on February 20 and confessed to causing his death by spraying him with a chemical as he slept and setting him on fire, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Lieu told the police she deliberately misled them by making it look as though an intruder was responsible. Her motives were...

The climate for the media has been continuously deteriorating in Côte d’Ivoire. Harassed, threatened and exposed to physical violence, journalists are now finding it virtually impossible to work freely, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). It urged civil society and the two rival camps led by Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara to respect freedom of...

An armed raid was carried out Wednesday morning on the Baghdad headquarters of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), partner organisation of Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) in Iraq, in which all of the JFO’s computers and archives were stolen “A dozen gunmen belonging to private security forces burst into our office near Al-Fardous Square in central Baghdad...

The offices of the "People's Daily" ( Halkin Gunlugu) newspaper, the Democratic Peoples Association and the home of members of the Democratic Peoples Federation (DHF) in seven provinces and counties were raided by the police. Twenty-three people were taken into custody, among them two journalists - the paper's editor-in-chief, Hidir Gurz, and the paper's representative in Mersin, Deniz Kismetli...

Newspaper editor Raphaël Nkamtcheun has been detained for the past week for receiving allegedly confidential government documents from former finance minister Polycarpe Abah Abah when he visited Abah in Yaoundé prison on February 17. Abah has been jailed since 2008 on an embezzlement charge. “This is an arbitrary act designed to silence the press,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...