News

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has accused the judicial authorities of a “crude manipulation” in the case of reporter Agil Khalil’s stabbing on March 13. A Sergey Strekalin appeared before a Baku court Thursday on charges of stabbing Khalil and consuming drugs. “Despite international criticism, the Azerbaijani authorities are still trying to discredit Khalil by turning this stabbing into a vice...

NTV and other Turkish media have for the past four days been airing footage of the surveillance cameras of a bank and a shop near the Istanbul-based weekly Agos that was recorded on January 19, 2007, the day the newspaper’s editor, Hrant Dink, was gunned down outside. The footage shows other people with the alleged killer, Ogün Samast, and proves that the Dink family’s lawyers were right to...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has applauded a regional court’s ruling on Thursday declaring the 2006 arrest of Gambian journalist “Chief” Ebrima Manneh to be illegal and ordering his immediate release. The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States also ordered the Gambian government to pay US$100,000 in damages to Manneh’s family, according to Funmi...

China has begun to restrict local and foreign coverage of the aftermath of the May 12 earthquake. Several international media outlets have reported the harassment and temporary detention of reporters at the hands of local officials, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The moves come after a brief period in which the government appeared to relax its normally...

A high-ranking police official has filed two separate criminal complaints alleging that a BBC correspondent insulted the monarchy—charges that the journalist and the BBC have called unfounded. The police official, Lt Col Wattanasak Mungkandee, reportedly brought the complaints in a personal capacity against BBC correspondent Jonathan Head. Violations of lese majeste laws are a criminal offence...

(Reuters) - Suspected Islamist insurgents shot dead a local journalist working for the BBC in southern Somalia on Saturday, witnesses said. A Reuters witness said gunmen confronted Nasteh Dahir outside his home in the port of Kismayu before shooting him in the chest and stomach. He died soon afterwards in hospital. Here is a chronology of journalists who have been attacked in Somalia since a...

Suspected Islamist insurgents shot dead a leading local journalist working for the BBC in southern Somalia on Saturday. A Reuters witness said gunmen confronted Nasteh Dahir Farah outside his home in the port of Kismayu before shooting him in the chest and stomach. He died soon afterwards in hospital. A group of armed men fired several shots at Farah as he made his way home from work, Paris-based...

The Washington Post Co is launching a new unit that will develop and manage a family of Web-based magazines, according to a Reuters report. The Slate Group plans to get into other new media ventures that it develops on its own or through acquisitions, the company said in a statement. "The rationale is that you can build an audience beyond Slate's existing audience in certain vertical or...

The BBC has dropped plans to create a "licence fee" option for users of its international news website who were outraged by the introduction of advertising last year, says a Guardian report. "We did look into it, but all the evidence from commercial operators is that what ever people say about wanting a subscription, it is not the case," BBC World managing director, Anne Barnard, said Thursday. "A...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the attack by political activists on the home of Kumar Ketkar, editor of the Marathi language daily Loksatta, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra on June 5. The All-India Newspaper Employees’ Federation (AINEF), an affiliate of the IFJ, joined this call for action. The attack in Thane, a city adjoining the greater Mumbai...