An aggressive smear campaign has been launched by the Kosovo Liberation Army’s Veterans Association against respected journalist Halil Matoshi in the last few days, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The attacks seem to have been prompted by an article by Matoshi in the daily Koha Ditore on January 6 about the challenges facing Kosovo in 2011, in which he...
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged the National Assembly of Panama to reject a draft law under which anyone insulting the president or an elected official could be sentenced to between two and four years in prison, as it would represent major step backwards for freedom of expression in Panama. The National Assembly is due to resume examining it Tuesday...
Assadolah Vahidi, editor of daily Sarnewesht, was arrested Sunday on the orders of Afghanistan’s chief prosecutor based on a complaint from President Hamid Karzai’s national security advisor, without any consultation with the Commission for Media Complaints, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). This arrest was illegal, in terms of the way it was carried out...
US-Nigerian professor and journalist Okey Ndibe was on January 8 questioned for several hours by the internal intelligence agency, the State Security Service (SSS), after arriving at Muritala Muhammed international airport in Lagos, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both his American and Nigerian passports were confiscated without any explanation and...
For the most part, women in Indonesia only ever seem to make the headlines for their role as a famous person’s relative, a victim or a criminal, a reporters’ guild says. In a study carried out between July and September last year, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) looked for mention of female news sources in seven Indonesian-language dailies. “These are the three types of women who...
A reporting team of "SAMAA TV", a private news channel, was attacked by unknown armed individuals who detained the crew for over two hours on January 1 in the industrial town of Faisalabad in Pakistan's largest Punjab province, according to delayed reports. The reporting team included reporter Mannan Ashraf, cameraman Salman Ashraf, trainees Muhammad Sajid and Muhammad Saeed, satellite engineer...
Freedom Forum has expressed concern over the treatment suffered by journalists in Sarlahi Sarlahi, Mid-Terai district, on January 2. Earlier in the day, sugarcane farmers had organised a protest across the East-West highway to demand a non-reduction in the minimum price of sugarcane over the previous year. The farmers had erected barriers on the highway to prevent entry of any vehicle during the...
Esdras Amado López, the editor of the Canal 36 news programme "Así se informa", reported that a member of the Honduran Armed Forces threatened to kill him on January 5, near the Honduran Institute for Social Security (Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social), just south of the capital Tegucigalpa, according to Comité por la Libre Expresión (C-Libre). In a phone interview with Radio Globo, López...
Britain's ITV News was on Wednesday banned from a police press conference after running a report criticising the police's handling of an investigation into the murder of Joanna Yeates, a landscape architect whose body was found on the outskirts of Bristol last month, the Guardian newspaper reported. Avon & Somerset police have complained to Britain's broadcast media regulator, Ofcom, about what...
Hungary's newly-instituted media council (NMHH) took over an inquiry into Tilos radio station launched in September, according to a letter from the council on the station's website. The inquiry relates to the station's broadcast of two songs by American rapper Ice-T in its 17:30 programme. According to the letter from the NMHH, the songs' lyrics were objectionable, and violated sections 5/B. (3)...
