News

A South African company, Globecast Satellite, which saw two of its employees acquitted of practicing journalism without accreditation in April 2008 by a Harare magistrate, is now being charged with illegal importation of broadcasting equipment in violation of the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA), according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). At the commencement of the trial on July 15...

Tunisian journalist Slim Boukhdir has been released from prison four months before the end of his sentence. The freelance journalist, set free on July 21, was held since November 26, 2007 in very harsh prison conditions at the civil jail in Sfax, 230 km south of the capital. Boukhdir, 39, is correspondent for the pan-Arab London-based newspaper al Quds al Arabi and for the website of satellite...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Iranian authorities to release journalist Mahboubeh Karami of the government news agency ISNA at once. She has not seen a lawyer since her arrest in Tehran on June 13 after criticising the police for beating up demonstrators. The organisation is also concerned about the suspension of two weekly newspapers in the west of the country. "Mahboubeh Karami's...

A journalist of a Hindi daily in Sonepat has alleged that he was threatened by a BSP leader to stop filing stories against him and his party, the Indian Express has reported. Former MLA Dev Raj Dewan, however, denied that he had threatened Jatinder Saharan in his office on Sunday evening. "Allegations levelled against me are baseless and even mischievous and politically motivated to malign me in...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned condemns the murder of reporter Soran Mama Hama of the fortnightly magazine Leven, who was gunned down on July 21 outside his home in Kirkuk, in the northern region of Kurdistan. His colleagues said he had received threats about articles he had written on sensitive subjects. "We call on the Kurdistan authorities to carry out a thorough investigation...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has criticised Turkish authorities over censorship of Hayat TV, a Turkish satellite television network supporting workers' rights. The network was suspended from broadcasting last week on the orders of the High Council for Turkish Broadcasting (RTUK) for allegedly providing film of the Kurdish New Year celebrations to Roj TV, a station based in...

A UK-based Arabic newspaper has apologised to the prime minister of Qatar after it admitted printing three "wholly untrue" articles about him secretly visiting Israel, the Guardian has reported. Some details: The daily Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat made the apology to Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani on July 21 at the high court in London after admitting it should not have published the articles in...

California Judge Cormac Carney has ordered William Gertz, a national security reporter for the Washington Times, to appear in court for open-ended questioning on his reporting techniques. The order comes regarding Gertz's article discussing supposed espionage attempts by China in the United States. "Confidentiality of sources is essential to the news-gathering process. The judge's decision to have...

US human rights lawyers charged Sunday that US military prisons are "legal black holes" and the force is detaining journalists to "shut people up" about activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. A vast detention camp planned for the main US base in Afghanistan will be a "second Guantanamo" where laws do not apply, they said at a press conference about an...

A photojournalist of a Hindi daily was beaten up by the police and arrested in Allahabad on Sunday night. Hemant Chaudhary, however, termed the police action arbitrary, the Indian Express has reported. Chaudhary claimed that he was trying to take photographs of the Allahabad Museum on Sunday evening, when the museum guards objected and snatched his camera and mobile phone. They dragged him inside...