News

The BBC has confirmed plans to close five of its 32 World Service language services. Staff have been informed that up to 650 jobs will be lost from a workforce of 2,400 over the next three years. The Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services will be axed, as will English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa, in a bid to save £46m a year. The BBC estimates audiences will fall by more than 30...

Al-Jazeera has launched a new Transparency Unit website parallelly to the release of almost 1,700 leaked documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, according to journalism.co.uk. The new platform enables the public to submit content to the broadcaster such as documents, photos, audio and video clips, and story tip-offs, to be reviewed by its editorial team for potential coverage...

A television studio in the Palestinian Territories used by the satellite television station Al-Jazeera was attacked Wednesday, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Al-Jazeera recently broadcast confidential documents on the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians between 1999 and 2010. The studio, in Nablus in the north of the West Bank, belongs to...

There has been a wave of harassment of news media and journalists critical of a proposed referendum that would allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled since 1989, to continue in office until 2020 without having to run for reelection in 2012, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “This attempt to perpetuate a dictatorial regime in flagrant...

A three-year jail sentence and a fine of 6 million Somaliland shillings (around 1,000 dollars) has been imposed by a court in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway northwestern territory of Somaliland, on Mohamud Abdi Jama, the editor of the independent newspaper Waheen, for allegedly libelling local officials. “This sentence (on Sunday) has all the hallmarks of summary and punitive justice,”...

Yemeni journalist and activist Tawakkol Karman was released Monday, two days after her arbitrary arrest in Sana'a. Charged with “inciting disorder and chaos” and organizing unauthorised demonstrations and marches, she was freed on condition that she does not violate “public order and the law” again. Karman has been a leading figure in a three-week-old wave of protests demanding political reform in...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed its deep concern in respect of the conditions in which journalists and political opponents have been held since the demonstrations of December 19, 2010. “The pressures exerted on them and their defence teams, and the efforts to limit dissemination of news about them, recall the repression campaigns of the Soviet era,”...

Targeted physical attacks were carried out Tuesday on journalists in several Lebanese cities including Beirut, the northern city of Tripoli and the southern city of Sidon, during violent protests that followed the announcement that a Hezbollah-backed candidate has been appointed prime minister, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The press freedom...

Journalists were arrested and attacked physically while covering demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday in various Egyptian cities. The authorities have been doing everything possible to keep the media at a distance in order prevent the circulation of images of protesters demanding President Hosni Mubarak’s departure, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

A local radio presenter with a reputation for outspokenness was shot in the head and killed January 24 on the island of Palawan in the west of the Philippines. Gerardo Ortega hosted a daily programme "Ramatak", on the station Radio Mindanao Network (RMN) dwAR. A man, identified as Marvin Alcaraz and said to be resident in Manila, is reported to have been arrested at the scene of the crime carrying...