News

A journalist in Sierra Leone has been imprisoned after criticising President Ernest Bai Koroma's handling of the Ebola outbreak, according to news reports and local journalists. David Tam Baryoh was arrested on Monday. Baryoh, host of the popular weekly "Monologue" radio programme aired on the independent Citizen FM, was arrested in his office by police who did not have a warrant, according to...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Kenyan police to stop harassing and threatening a journalist in Kisumu city, western Kenya. Last month, police threatened and briefly detained Justus Ochieng, a reporter for the privately owned daily The Star, in connection with a story he wrote that alleged criminal activity by police officers in the region, the journalist told CPJ. Ochieng told...

Freedom of information has made important progress in Brazil during the past 12 years under President Lula da Silva and (since 2011) his successor Dilma Rousseff, who was reelected on 26 October, winning a fourth consecutive term for the Workers’ Party (PT), but much remains to be done. Reporters Without Borders takes this opportunity to highlight the two major challenges facing the government...

Authorities in the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland arrested two journalists from privately owned television stations last week after they each aired coverage of a protest in the northwest town of Gabiley, local journalists told CPJ. Authorities arrested Horn Cable TV reporter Mukhtar Nouh Ibrahim on October 30 and SomSat TV reporter Mohamed Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud the following day, news...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm over a news report that law enforcement authorities in Ferguson, Missouri, sought a no-fly zone during unrest in August with the intent of blocking access for the press. In an article published Sunday, The Associated Press reported on recorded telephone conversations between officials with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed Facebook's move to enable access via a Tor hidden service, which came into effect on Friday. The step protects journalists and other users who are at risk of surveillance, censorship, or online attack. "Facebook's decision to enable access via a dedicated Tor hidden service provides journalists with substantial additional protection against network...

Two journalists in Cameroon accused of withholding information from the state have been interrogated by a military court and ordered not to leave the country, according to news reports. A closed military court in Yaounde on Tuesday questioned for several hours Félix Cyriaque Ebolé Bola, a senior reporter for the privately owned daily newspaper Mutations and the president of Cameroon's National...

A court in Azerbaijan on Thursday last sentenced Khalid Garayev, a reporter for the embattled opposition newspaper Azadliq and the technical director of "Azerbaijani Hour," Azadliq's online TV programme, to almost a month in prison on charges of hooliganism and disobeying the police, according to news reports. The Binagadi District Court in Baku found Garayev guilty and sentenced him to 25 days...

Gustavo Rugeles, the editor of the Bogotá-based news website Las 2 Orillas, has been receiving threats from neo-Nazi groups for the past two years and is still getting them, although the protection he receives from the state was recently reduced after a risk evaluation. In the latest instance, Alberto Acosta, a member of the far-right group Restauración Nacional, called Rugeles on October 29 to...

Vehbi Kajtazi, an investigative journalist with the Kosovan newspaper Koha Ditore, says he was directly threatened by members of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (Eulex) over his reports that senior mission officials were suspected of corruption. Earlier last week, Koha Ditore began running a series of articles on suspected corruption on the part of senior Eulex officials in the...