News

A contributing reporter for the Turkmen Service of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) who was forcibly held for two weeks in two different psychiatric facilities has now had his phone disabled, according to RFE/RL. Bowing to international pressure, authorities freed Sazak Durdymuradov on July 3. A security officer warned him to "go and tell the truth" about his treatment in...

The pending Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation, passed by the Ethiopian House of Peoples’ Representatives on July 1, does not fully incorporate public input, including that of local journalists and legal experts. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says the bill is flawed and has urged Ethiopian President Girma Woldegiorgis to reject it and send it back to...

Reuters has urged the US military to hand over video footage from US attack helicopters and other materials relating to the killing of two Iraqi staff in Baghdad a year ago. Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in a US helicopter air strike in eastern Baghdad on July 12, 2007. Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh had gone to the area after hearing of a military raid on a...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the reopening of Afaq TV, a Palestinian commercial TV station based in the West Bank city of Nablus which Israeli soldiers closed on July 10 for one year on the grounds that it was a "terrorist" media outlet. The station has stopped broadcasting and seals have been place over its entrance. "Palestinian journalists must be allowed to enjoy the same...

A Rabat court Friday fined Al-Jazeera's Rabat bureau chief, Hassan Rachidi, 50,000 dirhams (approx. 4,500 euros) under article 42 of the press law because the Qatar-based satellite TV station wrongly reported in June that people were killed in clashes between police and protesters in the southern port city of Sidi Ifni. "We welcome the fact that the judges had the good sense not to impose a jail...

Guardian News & Media has acquired ContentNext, publisher of media and technology business blog paidContent.org, a sign of the growing importance of such sites to traditional media companies, says a Reuters report. ContentNext's founder and editor, Rafat Ali, and Chief Executive Nathan Richardson would continue to run the company as a standalone business, said the privately held Guardian, which...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has regretted the seizure of three privately-owned broadcast media outlets on July 8 - two Quito-based TV stations (Gamavisión and TC Televisión) and a radio station based in the western city of Guayaquil (Radio Sucre) - which resulted in a few changes to their programming but not in any interruption in their broadcasts. Regardless of the grounds for the state's...

Hundreds of Afghan journalists and writers took part in demonstrations on July 8 in 15 provinces to call for the release of Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, a young journalist under sentence of death. This exemplary show of solidarity came as Kambakhsh's appeal against his conviction has ground to a halt in Kabul and no date has been set for the next hearing. "The appeal court should have quashed Kambakhsh...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called for vigilance to protect journalists' safety in Pakistan after the latest alarming spike in abductions of journalists which has ended with the release of Wiqar Kiyani, a journalist working for the Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom, after his mysterious disappearance on July 6 from his home in Islamabad. Kiyani's case represents...

One month before the start of the Beijing Olympics, China needs to make enormous progress to ensure the free access it promised journalists when the Games were awarded, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Tuesday. Twenty-six Chinese journalists remain in prison and heavy government censorship remains in place despite Beijing's broad assurances—made in its 2001 bid to host the event...