News

Assailants on motorbikes attacked a Sri Lankan newspaper editor and his wife as they drove to work Friday morning, stabbing them repeatedly, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting authorities. The couple received minor wounds and both were expected to recover. Four people on motorbikes blocked Upali Tennakoon's car outside of Colombo as he and his wife were heading to work at the...

A former military chief of the Basque separatist group ETA, Javier Garcia Gaztelu, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday for ordering the assassination of a journalist in 2000, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has eported. The National Court found Garcia Gaztelu guilty of "a terrorist crime consisting in an attack against a person resulting in a painful death" and sentenced him to 30 years in...

The investigation into the murder of Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, journalist on the privately-owned daily Thisday, and member of its editorial committee, has been handed to the judicial police, regional authorities in Lagos State said on January 20, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The journalist was shot dead in the Dopemu district of the capital Lagos on August 17, 2008 as he was...

Nazari Paryani, the news editor of the daily Payman, has been released after eight days of detention in Kabul because of an allegedly blasphemous article that was published by mistake. Paryani was freed provisionally and still faces possible prosecution. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for all charges to be dropped. Exhausted by the ordeal, Paryani on Thursday told Paris-based RSF: “I...

Francisco Farinango, a journalist on indigenous community radio, Inti Pacha, who was arrested during protests against a new mining law in the Pichincha region, northern Ecuador on January 20, was released the next day but still faces charges of “rebellion” along with two other community members arrested with him. “Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) welcomes the release of the journalist but once...

A Colombian judge has sentenced a former mayor to 28 years in prison for ordering the April 2003 killing of a journalist who had repeatedly denounced the politician as corrupt. The convictions of three former public officials on charges of plotting the murder of Colombian radio commentator José Emeterio Rivas represent a historic step forward in the campaign to end impunity in the killings of...

A broadcast journalist was killed by two unidentified gunmen in a southern Philippine city, according to news reports. Badrodin Abas, 38, was shot in the head by two motorcycle-riding gunmen late Wednesday in Cotabato City, 930km south of Manila, according to the city's police chief, Senior Superintendent Willie Dangane. Dangane said the victim, a broadcaster for a radio station in Cotabato, was...

Google plans to halt its Print Ads programme on February 28 because the initiative to help newspapers make more money in online advertising sales is not working. The programme, first announced in late 2006, was designed to help newspapers find more ways to make money from Internet ad sales at a time when their print ad sales were falling. "We weren't providing a meaningful revenue impact to our...

Trust in the media apparently promotes health. A study of people from 29 Asian countries has shown that individuals with high levels of trust in the mass media tend to be healthier. A team of researchers led by Yasuharu Tokuda from St. Luke's International Hospital and Takashi Inoguchi from Chuo University, both in Tokyo, used data from a survey of 39,000 people to investigate the relationships...

The shocking murders of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and young journalist Anastasia Barburova on Monday brings Russia's human rights record to a new low, press freedom groups have said. The crime is compounded by the knowledge that Russia has a culture where impunity reigns and murderers are rarely brought to justice, ARTICLE 19 and Index on Censorship have said. Even in the case of a journalist as...