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Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has described as baseless and unacceptable a claim by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid that Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, two French TV journalists who have been held hostage for the past year in northwestern Afghanistan, were “engaged in gathering information that has the nature of intelligence gathering.” “These grave...

Alfrets Mirulewan, the editor of Pelangi Weekly, a newspaper published in the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku, has been killed. His body was found on a beach on December 17, three days after he disappeared while investigating illegal gasoline trading in the Maluku archipelago, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Many of his colleagues believe he was...

Online censorship has ben reinforced amid a wave of protests and rioting in Tunisia that began two weeks when a young man set himself on fire outside a police station in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid. “Online social networks have played a key role in transmitting news and information about the situation in Sidi Bouzid and other regions while the government-controlled traditional media have...

It is becoming increasingly a trend in India -- the act of rightwing Hindu ultranationalists targeting journalists who expose their misdeeds. The journalist who reported about a mass grave in Panderwada village in Panchmahal district of Gujarat is now being hounded by the state police. A six-member police team landed up in Bhopal on Wednesday to serve summons to Rahul Singh in connection with the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned that journalists and media personnel remain prime targets for political extremists, gangsters and terrorists as it announced that 94 journalists and media personnel who were killed in 2010, victims of targeted killings, bomb attacks and crossfire incidents. Three other journalists lost their lives in accidents this year. The IFJ list was...

The Wage Boards for working journalists and non-journalists and other newspaper employees in India have recommended 2.5 to 3 times hike in basic pay and fixing the retirement age at 65. To be implemented retrospectively from January 8, 2008, the revised basic pay has been computed after merging the existing basic pay, the dearness allowance and the 30 per cent interim relief that had been already...

Fifty-seven journalists were killed in connection with their work in 2010, 25 per cent fewer than in 2009, when the total was 76. The number of journalists killed in war zones has fallen in recent years. Significantly, it is becoming more and more difficult to identify those responsible in cases in which journalists were killed by criminal gangs, armed groups, religious organisations or state...

New forms of censorship and obstruction being used by government to prevent diverse and freely-reported media coverage of the situation in Sri Lanka. The fall in the number of physical attacks, threats and cases of imprisonment is to be welcomed, but it is worrying that the authorities are blocking the return of real editorial freedom, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF...

Since the beginning of the Sidi Bouzid riots on December 17, which followed the burning of a new and unemployed graduate, the police have banned any access to the city. Most journalists who tried to cover the incidents have faced police violence, according to Observatoire pour la liberté de presse, d'édition et de création (OLPEC). On the afternoon of December 17, Zouhayr Makhlouf, a correspondent...

The Cambodian government's use of its new penal code against a man who shared web articles with his co-workers is a huge step backward for free expression in Cambodia, Human Rights Watch has said. The man was quickly convicted on incitement charges and sentenced to prison. Human Rights Watch called on the Cambodian government to amend the penal code, which went into effect on December 10, to...