News

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today welcomed the launch in Morocco of an observatory on press and media freedom to monitor the state of press freedom and document the social and professional conditions of journalists throughout the Arab world. The observatory was opened yesterday in Rabat by the Federation of Arab Journalists' (FAJ), with a keynote address by IFJ...

(RSF/IFEX) - On 12 July 2007 Reporters Without Borders wrote to Prime Minister Driss Jettou voicing concern that a proposed overhaul of the press law currently being discussed by the government does not decriminalize press offences. The organisation called for significant changes in the current draft, which appears not to be the final version that will be submitted to parliament. "Your government...

(BIANET/IFEX) - A software company in Turkey recently blocked the BIANET website, http://www.bianet.com , acting not on a court order but instead from a list of "forbidden websites" allegedly based on a police list. The discovery was made following readers' complaints of not being able to access the BIANET website. BIANET is concerned that a software application designed to protect children from...

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today about threats and advertising boycotts against journalists and media during the past few days in the states of Puebla, Guanajuato and Yucatán, which were reported by the Centre for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET). These press freedom violations by local politicians and criminal gangs are typical of the kind of pressure to which the Mexican media...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a purge of staff last week at Minzhu yu Fazhi Shibao (Democracy and Legal Times), a weekly specialising in legal news that is considered to be one of China’s ten most influential newspapers. "Censorship takes different forms in China," the press freedom organisation said. "Closures of websites, blogs or newspapers are the most visible of the many press...

Baku appeal court judge Rasul Safarov issued a ruling on 11 July confirming the Sabail district court’s decision to keep newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev in the national security ministry’s detention centre. Fatullayev is serving a 30-month sentence for libel but new terrorism charges were recently brought against him. Four employees of Gundelik Azerbaijan (one of the two newspapers he edits) -...

A previously unknown group calling itself the National Republican Army, Nepal (NRA) has claimed to have killed a freelance reporter abducted a week ago from his home in the western district of Kanchanpur. On Monday, the group claimed in an email that it had killed reporter Prakash Thakuri and accused him of “propaganda in support of the monarchy.” “We are concerned about the safety of Prakash...

(Reuters) - Key events in former press baron Conrad Black's life and legal saga: August 25, 1944 - Conrad Moffat Black is born in Montreal to a wealthy brewing family. At age 14, he is expelled from a prestigious Toronto school for stealing and selling exams. He later earns a law degree and a master's in history. 1967 - Black buys a half interest in two Quebec weeklies for C$500. In 1969, he and...

TORONTO (Reuters) - Fallen newspaper tycoon Conrad Black has rarely backed away from a fight, locking horns with powerful adversaries including fellow media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. On Friday he lost perhaps the most important battle of his life when a jury in Chicago found him guilty of multiple counts of criminal fraud, related to allegations that he...

The US army and the Iraqi police have been urged to investigate the deaths of a photographer and a driver employed by Reuters Thursday in Baghdad because of the contradictory accounts about the circumstances. Their deaths bring to six the number of Reuters employees killed since the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003. Relatives of Saeed Chmagh, an Iraqi driver working with Reuters, mourn...