News

An Indonesian search team on July 30 recovered the body of reporter Ardiansyah Matra’is in a river in the small town of Merauke, on the southern tip of Papua province, according to news reports and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AIJ). Matra’is, who had been missing for two days, worked as a stringer for the national television broadcaster Anteve, before joining local broadcaster Merauke...

Two employees were injured in an arson attack Friday on the offices of the Voice of Asia Network in the heart of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo. The fire destroyed the studios of the group’s Siyatha TV station, but the network’s three radio stations have been able to remain on the air. The Associated Press, quoting a spokesman for the company, said a dozen men, armed with assault rifles and gasoline...

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Nasser AlAhmad AlSabah has filed a complaint against Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Egyptian daily Al-Dustour and Kuwaiti journalist Mohammed Alweshaihi accusing them of insult and libel. Lately, Al-Dustour had reported on the trials of Kuwaiti journalist Mohamed AlJassim, and slammed the Kuwaiti PM for being behind them, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has...

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the bill to decriminalise defamation in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The approval of the bill on July 22 by the local Congress, actively promoted by ARTICLE 19, significantly advances efforts to persuade the Mexican government to fully decriminalise defamation nationwide, in accordance with Human Rights Committee’s observations. Mexico is one of the most restrictive and...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has accused the authorities in Tunisia of engaging in a "relentless campaign" of intimidation and harassment of a journalists' leader. IFJ says Zied-el-Heni, a member of the leadership of the Syndicat national des journalistes tunisiens (SNJT) and of the steering committee of the African Federation of Journalistes (FAJ), the IFJ regional group, is...

The BBC's news coverage of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has almost doubled in the last two years, a report released by the BBC Trust has said. The broadcaster, however, was also found to still show a bias in favour of stories about England in some areas including health and education, where only eight out of 112 stories related to the three other countries. The latest research, which was...

The police of Suichang County in east China's Zhejiang Province cancelled a detention warrant for a journalist who was accused by a public company of defamation Thursday morning, state-owned Xinhua news agency has reported. The police of Lishui City, which administers Suichang, ordered the county's public security bureau to cancel the detention warrant for Qiu Ziming, a reporter of Economic...

There has been an escalation of violence against journalists in Pakistan during the past few weeks with three murder attempts (two in Bajaur, in the Tribal Areas, and one in Hyderabad) and a severe beating in Hyderabad. The home of Din New TV reporter Imran Khan in Bajaur was the target of a Taliban grenade attack on July 7 that injured eight members of his family including his mother. Khan...

Journalists employed by two radio stations in Yopal, the capital of the northeastern department of Casanare, stopped work today Thursday and demonstrated silently, with their mouths gagged, in the city's main square to protest against a lawsuit targeting eight of their colleagues and to demand respect for freedom of information. Eight journalists who work for Violeta Stéreo or La Voz de Yopal are...

Control of media that are affiliated to or support the Red Shirt movement has been reinforced considerably since a state of emergency was imposed in Bangkok and many other provinces. A TV station, radio stations, websites and newspapers have been censored, banned, forcibly closed or prosecuted. Most of these media supported the Red Shirt demonstrations, sometimes issuing forceful calls for...