News

Violence in Somalia has been escalating, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says and this has put enormous pressure on journalists reporting on the conflict for both Somali news organisations and international media. “Journalists themselves have become targets,” said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White in a letter to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations. “This year...

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about a broadside on the media which the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, delivered during a speech to the Assembly of Experts on 5 September. “What is left of press freedom now in Iran?” the organisation asked. “Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments have reinforced the climate of censorship that oppresses all journalists who...

New York, September 7, 2007—An Argentine Supreme Court ruling condemning the province of Neuquén for the withdrawal of state advertising from a critical daily will help protect the media from government manipulation, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On Wednesday, Argentina’s highest tribunal ruled the government cannot suppress or substantially reduce official advertising to the...

Reporters Without Borders is relieved to learn that imprisoned journalists Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed Hiva Botimar have ended the hunger strike they began on 14 July. When he received a visit from relatives on 4 September, Botimar announced that he and Hassanpour had resumed eating after more than 50 days of consuming nothing but sweetened water. “We now call on the judicial authorities to...

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by a wave of threats and attacks on journalists by supporters of the two candidates in Sierra Leone’s presidential election run-off tomorrow. Many cases of violence involving members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the opposition All People’s Congress (APC) have been reported in the past two months. “The run-up to the second round of the...

Leading international news agencies Thursday launched a boycott of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, plunging the event into controversy on the eve of its opening game. Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters, the Associated Press (AP), Getty Pictures and German agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) said no text, photo or video news on the World Cup would be sent for 24 hours in protest at restrictions imposed...

New York, September 6, 2007—Azerbaijani authorities must stop the persecution of Eynulla Fatullayev, an imprisoned editor who has been hit with a series of politically inspired criminal charges since he began investigating alleged government wrongdoing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On Tuesday, the National Security Ministry (MNB) charged Fatullayev with tax evasion, which...

Manama: The legal stand-off in Bahrain between liberal media and Islamists has intensified after the Arab Federation of Journalists said it was backing Al Ayam Editor-in-Chief Eisa Al Shayji, who is under fire from religious preacher Wajdi Ghunaim. "We express our full solidarity with Eisa Al Shayji and we put all our technical, legislative and logistic potential at his service so that rights...

Almost half of the articles published by daily newspapers in the US contain one or more factual errors, and less than two per cent end up being corrected. The findings are from a forthcoming research paper by Scott R Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. The findings challenge how well journalism’s "corrections box" sets the record...

A Swedish Muslim group is planning to sue a local newspaper for publishing a drawing of the prophet Mohammed with a dog's body. The Nerikes Allehanda newspaper in Orebro printed the cartoon made by artist Lars Vilks in an August editorial that criticised Swedish art galleries for not displaying Vilks' art. Mahmoud Aldebe, chairman of the Swedish Muslim Federation, told the Associated Press (AP)...