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Police briefly detained journalists at a rare protest Monday in Beijing, after they covered a news conference featuring an advocacy group demanding greater press freedom in China. A plainclothes officer at right tries to prevent a photographer from taking a photo of a Chinese police officer questioning two journalists near the headquarters of the Beijing Olympics planning committee seen in the...

One year before the 2008 Olympics open in Beijing, the Chinese government is violating commitments on media freedom it made to the International Olympics Committee by continuing to harass, intimidate and detain foreign journalists and their local colleagues, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In this video image released by Students for a Free Tibet, Canadian Tibet supporters...

Seventeen German journalists are under investigation in the alleged leak of classified documents given to a parliamentary committee. The documents related to a parliamentary inquiry into possible German government complicity in CIA prisoner flights and the detention of two men. German opposition parties have condemned a criminal investigation into journalists accused of quoting from classified...

Ethiopia's High Court has imposed heavy prison sentences on four journalists jailed in connection with their coverage of deadly post-election unrest in 2005, after the journalists waived their defence and pleaded guilty in anticipation of a pardon, according to the Comittee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). All of them worked for now-defunct Amharic-language weeklies. Editors Dawit Kebede of Hadar and...

The Manipur government has banned publication of any propaganda of unlawful organisations or terrorist groups. Newspapers, books or printed documents would be forfeited if they contain news items which were considered to be subversive and a threat to the integrity of the country, the government decreed in an official order issued by Principal Secretary (Home) PBO Warjri. The state home department...

August 6, 2007—Mexican journalist Alberto Fernández Portilla was shot and wounded early Sunday morning as he arrived at his home in Salina Cruz, a Pacific port city in the southern state of Oaxaca. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Mexican authorities to investigate the attack. Fernández told CPJ that the shooting occurred around 1:50 a.m. as he returned alone from a dinner at a...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. A newspaper reluctantly turned over 144 unpublished photographs taken during a State Street gang fight that resulted in the stabbing death of a teenager. Santa Barbara Daily Sound editor and publisher Jeramy Gordon, calling it "a sad day for journalism and for our rights as Americans," turned over the March 14 gang fight photos to Superior Court. Judge Brian Hill ordered...

A US congressional committee plans to investigate whether Yahoo Inc lied during testimony over its role in a human rights case in China that sent journalist Shi Tao to jail for 10 years. Announcing the investigation, House of Representatives foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, Friday last it would be shameful if it was confirmed that Yahoo had known why the...

Iran has closed down prominent pro-reform daily Shargh (East) three months after it was allowed to resume publicaiton following a ban, its director said on Monday. Shargh is the second publication critical of the government to be shut down since July. The closure of Shargh coincides with what rights groups and diplomats say is a broad crackdown on dissenting voices in the Islamic state, which is...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Times is moving to a smaller format starting Monday, cutting 1.5 inches from its width and moving to what is becoming a newspaper industry standard of 12 inches. The change, which the company originally announced a year ago, will result in cost savings of about $10 million per year, spokeswoman Diane McNulty said. Several other major newspapers have already adopted...