News

Burmese exiled media groups are calling for international support in ending cyber attacks that have crippled two news websites over the past week. The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) and The Irrawaddy magazine, which provide independent coverage of current affairs in Burma, have been the target of intense attacks which it is believed originate from the Burmese government. The two websites are...

Freelance cameraman Tahrir Kadhim Jawad, 27, was killed Monday in a rising trend of fatal attacks on journalists in Iraq, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Jawad died instantly after a bomb attached to his car exploded in Garma, 50 miles west of Baghdad in volatile Anbar province, according to local press freedom groups and online news reports. Jawad was...

Turkish reporter Ismail Saymaz faces 79 years in prison due to the publication of critical articles for the Turkish daily newspaper Radikal, IPI's National Committee in Turkey has reported. Saymaz, accused of "violating the secrecy of an investigation" in relation to the Ergenekon trials and events in the city of Erzincan, has previously been charged with no less than eight other criminal cases...

As a police rebellion threw Ecuador into chaos on Thursday, the government of President Rafael Correa ordered local radio and TV stations to interrupt programming and carry state news broadcasts. A dozen reporters were injured covering the police revolt. On Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the government's censorship of broadcast media and called on local authorities to...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the unprecedented harassment of Chiranuch Premchaipoen, the editor of the Prachatai news website. Detained at Bangkok airport on September 24, on her return from an international conference, she has been told she was arrested on a warrant issued in the northeastern city of Khon Kaen in September 2009 in...

Molly Norris, a political cartoonist for Seattle Weekly, went into hiding in September because of threats made after her tongue-in-cheek call for an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day," according to Seattle Weekly. The call was included in a cartoon Norris drew to protest a decision by the cable television network Comedy Central not to broadcast an episode of "South Park" that tested the Islamic taboo...

Top Russian investigators have pledged to pursue 19 cases of murdered journalists presented to them by a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists, reopening several closed cases and pursuing new leads in a number of other probes. The CPJ delegation, led by board member Kati Marton and CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger, met Tuesday with Aleksandr Bastrykin, chairman of the Investigative...

The issue of editorial confidentiality has been dominating media discussions in recent days in Austria, after the Vienna Higher Regional Court (OLG) ordered Austrian Public Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) to release the unedited tapes of an episode of a documentary series called “Am Schauplatz” (“On the scene”) that was filmed in March this year. The documentary became the subject of controversy...

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has condemned the second bomb attack at the house of Caslav Milisavljevic, editor-in-chief of Radio Kosovska Mitrovica, in the Kosovo municipality of Zvecan. According to information received by SEEMO, during the early morning hours of September 27, an explosive device was thrown in the courtyard of Milisavljevic's house. During this attack, the car...

Víctor Hugo Juárez, a journalist and businessman who owned two online media, Wanima News and Guatemala Empresarial, was found murdered on September 27 at the home of a friend, Byron Dávila Díaz, who was also killed. The news agency Cerigua said both men appeared to have been tortured and strangled. The motive is not yet known. Juárez had worked for two dailies, Siglo XXI and Nuestro Diario, in the...