News

A number of Turkish journalists are facing sentences for doing their job. Since an amendment to the anti-terrorism law took effect in 2006, media personnel have been exposed to the possibility of long spells in jail just for covering ordinary news developments including judicial proceedings, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. One of the latest victims is photographer Nurettin Kurt of the...

The conviction on Saturday of four men, including three members of the military police, in the 2007 murder of Brazilian journalist Luiz Carlos Barbon Filho is an important step forward in the global campaign to combat impunity in journalists’ murders, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A court in Sao Paulo sentenced Captain Adelcio Carlos Avelino, Sergeant Edson Luiz Ronceiro...

Igor Larra, a correspondent for the Almaty-based independent weekly Svoboda Slova (Freedom of Speech), was attacked in the city of Aktobe that left him with a concussion and other head injuries, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Larra (a pen name for the journalist Igor Kim) had extensively covered a strike by workers for the national oil producer KazMunayGas in the southwestern...

An Ecuadoran appellate court should overturn the libel conviction of editor Enrique Palacio, and the country’s legislators should reform archaic defamation laws that do not meet international standards for freedom of expression, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Palacio was sentenced Friday to three years in prison in connection with a commentary about a senior government...

Grenade attacks were launched against two state-owned television news stations in Thailand on Saturday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The attacks—one against army-run Channel 5, the other against the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand (NBT)—took place Saturday night in the capital, Bangkok. “We call upon both sides of Thailand’s political conflict to exercise...

Tunisian authorities banned journalists from attending two press conferences for the launch of local and international human rights reports this week, and is stepping up harassment of journalists overall, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. On Wednesday, police ordered journalists not to attend a press conference at a law office in Tunis where Human Rights Watch was planning to...

An assassination attempt was made Sunday against Muaid al-Lami, head of the Iraqi Journalists’ Syndicate, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Four unidentified gunmen in a car intercepted and opened fire in Baghdad’s Al-Qadisiyya district on a two-car convoy carrying al-Lami and four other individuals, according to news reports. Al-Lami told New York-based CPJ that he was not...

Newspaper advertising revenue in the US plunged 27 per cent last year to its lowest level since 1986, according to figures released Wednesday, reflecting the toll of the recession and a media shift that's driving more marketing dollars to the Internet. Newspapers sold $27.6 billion worth of ads in 2009, a figure that includes both print and online revenue. That's down from $37.8 billion the year...

A Bishkek court has ordered the temporary closure of two newspapers, Achyk Sayasat and Nazar, and fined them 5 million som (82,000 euros) for publishing an opinion piece by a government opponent in exile accusing President Kurmanbek Bakiev, who became president after a coup d’état, of lacking legitimacy, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In a ruling issued on March 18, the court found...

The Belarusian Supreme Court has upheld a government order that will obstruct the work of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), the country’s most prominent press freedom and media support organisation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The court backed a directive issued in January by the Ministry of Justice that orders the association, known as BAJ, to halt...