News

Reporters Without Borders deplores the fact that Giovanni Alvarez, a community radio journalist who had criticised political corruption in the northern department of Atlántico, was forced to flee the country on 19 October after getting death threats. His departure brings the number of Colombian journalists who have fled their region or the country since the start of the year to four. “The forced...

Reporters Without Borders welcomes today’s decision by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to approve the proposed Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA). Drafted in February 2006 by Republican Representative of New Jersey, Christopher Smith, this bipartisan bill would prevent US Internet sector companies from collaborating with repressive governments. It will now go before the House...

New York, October 23, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today’s release of Khin Mar Lar, the wife of award-winning Burmese journalist and documentary filmmaker Thaung Tun (also known as Nyein Thit), who is still in hiding. Khin Mar Lar was detained on September 25, when security agents raided her home in the central city of Mandalay. “The news of Khin Mar Lar’s release is welcome...

(MENAFN - The Peninsula) AMMAN - Government Spokesperson Nasser Judeh on Monday reiterated Jordan's "strong commitment" to increasing the level of press freedoms in the country in reference to an index on the state of press freedom around the world released last week by an international press watchdog. According to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RWB) Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007...

NEW YORK As many papers have done in the past two years, the Los Angeles Times delivered breaking, and diverse, news about a major local story -- in this case, the California wildfires -- to millions of online readers in blog-like fashion, with brief dispatches from correspondents, added at the top. Many were in the human interest vein. A box near the top of the Web site's home page held changing...

The Guardian today launched its US website with an exclusive interview with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The site, Guardianamerica.com, has been designed for the Guardian's growing US audience, which now accounts for nearly a third of Guardian Unlimited's readership. In the latest audited ABCe figures for August, Guardian Unlimited had 15.9 million unique users, of which the company...

Disgruntled fans of Sheffield Wednesday who vented their dissatisfaction with the football club's bigwigs in anonymous internet postings may face expensive libel claims after the chairman, chief executive and five directors won a high-court ruling last week forcing the owner of a website to reveal their identity. The case, featuring the website owlstalk.co.uk, is the second within days to...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders issued an urgent appeal to the international community for energetic measures towards the Somali government on behalf of the country's journalists after the murder in Mogadishu of Bashir Nur Gedi, the head of the Shabelle press group on 19 October 2007. Gedi is the eighth journalist to be slain this year in Somalia and the third leading media owner to be...

Reporters Without Borders today called on the Iraqi authorities to urgently establish a programme for protecting journalists after an armed group put a price on the head of public TV station Al-Iraqiya’s correspondent in Diyala, an eastern province where at least six journalists have been murdered. “It is vital that the Iraqi authorities at least try to guarantee the safety of journalists,” the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed its concern over the worsening situation for journalists working in Afghanistan. Ariana Radio presenter Mohammad Hanif Elam has received several threats over the past five months as a result of his programme “Emroze Der Tarekh” (Today In History). According to IFJ associate the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA)...