News

A Paris court has found Tahiti-Pacifique editor Alex du Prel guilty of defaming public prosecutor Jean Bianconi in an article criticising the judicial probe into the 1997 disappearance of Jean-Pascal “JPK” Couraud, a leading investigative journalist based in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The court on Tuesday fined Du Prel 1,000 euros and...

Kazakh legislators on Thursday passed an Internet Bill, pending before Parliament since April 29, which will drastically curb online freedom by making it possible to bring criminal prosecutions against bloggers over what they write, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Kazakh organisation Journalist In Danger have reported. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has not yet signed it into law. “There was a...

The Sri Lanka government has decided to restore the former Press Council, which will have the power to pass jail sentences on journalists and newspaper publishers. The decision comes amid continuing tension between the authorities and renewed threats against Jaffna-based Tamil newspapers. “A press council can be a useful tool for managing relations between the media and the public,” Paris-based...

The privately-owned Ecuadorian TV station Teleamazonas has just been told it is being fined 40 dollars for “broadcasting unverified information.” The notification came just a few weeks after it was fined 20 dollars on June 3 for “broadcasting a bullfight outside permitted viewing times.” The station, which is owned by banker Fidel Egas, could be shut down for 90 days if it receives a third...

Russia's Supreme Court has overturned the acquittals of three men accused of involvement in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A spokesman for the court said on Thursday that there were procedural violations during the trial, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In February, a 12-member jury in Moscow acquitted Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to end censorship of independent newspapers and to identify and prosecute those who assaulted Al-Jazeera journalists on two occasions in the south of the country. Yemen's popular daily, Al-Ayyam, the weeklies Al-Nida and Al-Watani, as well as five other independent newspapers, were banned...

Global advertising spend is expected to drop 5.5 percent in 2009, more than previously thought, before a mild recovery begins in 2010, Reuters has reported quoting a new forecast. WPP's GroupM said on Wednesday that spending on measured media was expected to drop to $417 billion in 2009 and to be down 1.4 percent to $411 billion in 2010, according to the forecast which looked at 70 countries. Its...

A Gambian reporter arrested on Monday while covering a pre-trial hearing in the sedition case of seven journalists jailed last week, was still being held without charge late Tuesday, according to local journalists and news reports. Augustine Kanjia of the daily, the Point, was being held at a police station in Serrekunda, Gambia's largest city, according to defence lawyer Assan Martin. A...

The Associated Press is adopting a stringent social-networking policy for its employees, informing them to police their Facebook profiles “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards," says a WIRED report. The policy comes weeks after an AP reporter, Richard Richtmyer, was reprimanded for posting a comment to his own Facebook profile criticizing the Sacramento-based...

Press freedom campaigner Robert Ménard has resigned as director-general of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, which he had headed since April 2008. Ménard stepped down on June 19 because the Qatari authorities wanted to restrict what Centre said. Other members of the staff have also resigned. “For several months we were an independent voice that condemned violations and had only one concern – the...