News

9 April 2010

Journalist missing in western Mexico

Mexican journalist Ramón Ángeles Zalpa, has been missing since Tuesday, according to his family and reports in the local press. Ángeles, a part-time correspondent for the newspaper Cambio de Michoacán in the municipality of Paracho, in western Michoacán, left home in his car around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, his son Romel Ángeles told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The...

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9 April 2010

Somali insurgents ban BBC

Al-Shabaab insurgents in Somalia have banned all BBC broadcasts from the areas they control and confiscated the corporation’s FM transmitters and satellite dishes. Local journalists told the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that Al-Shabaab issued a statement Friday announcing the immediate ban, claiming the BBC carried the “agenda of the crusaders” and “opposed an Islamic...

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8 April 2010

Blackstone buys stake in India paper as NY Times bets on Ipad

Blackstone Group LP, the largest private-equity firm, is investing in a Hindi-language newspaper to benefit from a surge in readership in India as print advertisement sales in the US fall to a 26-year low, says a Bloomberg News report. Blackstone Group plans to invest 2.25 billion rupees ($50 million) in Jagran Media Network Pvt., according to a joint statement on April 7. A unit of Jagran Media...

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7 April 2010

Fiji’s draft media decree threatens long-term restrictions

A draft decree in fiji proposes to regulate media ownership and news content, while authorising the imposition of fines and prison terms for violations, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who has maintained a supposedly temporary military rule since seizing power in a 2006 coup, announced the decree shortly before a compulsory three-day meeting...

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7 April 2010

In Egypt, journalists attacked while covering protests

Uniform and plainclothes Egyptian security forces assaulted and obstructed journalists trying to cover protests in Cairo on Tuesday, according to news accounts and interviews by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Several journalists reported that police prevented them from covering clashes between security forces and protesters calling for constitutional reforms and the end of the state...

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6 April 2010

In eastern DRC, soldiers suspected in cameraman’s murder

Following Monday’s murder of freelance cameraman Patient Chebeya in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for a renewed commitment from the government to solidly investigate and prosecute those who kill journalists. Armed men in military uniforms jumped Chebeya, around 10 p.m. as his wife let him in his house in the volatile eastern city of Beni...

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6 April 2010

Furloughs lower Iran prison count, but dozens still jailed

Thirty-five journalists were imprisoned in Iran as of April 1 as authorities continued their nearly year-long crackdown on the news media, according to CPJ’s latest monthly census. Another 18 journalists were free on short-term furloughs granted for the Iranian New Year and were expected to report back to prison. Many of the incarcerated journalists are under immense physical and psychological...

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6 April 2010

Israeli media forbidden to report case widely covered internationally

A court has banned Israeli media coverage of the case of Anat Kam, an online journalist and former soldier accused of leaking classified military information, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). An appeal by Channel 10 and the daily Haaretz against the gag order is due to be heard by a Tel Aviv court on April 12. Kam’s arrest has been widely reported internationally. A contributor to the...

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5 April 2010

Video shows US attack that killed Reuters staffers in Iraq

Disturbing video footage showing a 2007 US military airstrike that killed about a dozen Iraqis in eastern Baghdad, including a Reuters cameraman and assistant, was released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, a website that publishes sensitive leaked documents. The video raises questions about the actions of US military forces and the thoroughness and transparency of the investigation that followed, the...

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3 April 2010

Ukraine: In intimidating move, police question two journalists, search homes, seize files

The Kiev police interrogated online journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska and photographer Olexiy Furman of the Photolenta agency and searched their homes in the past few days in a bid to obtain information about participants in protests, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Bilozerska and Furman were summoned to a police station, respectively on March 30 and in early March. They were...

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