News

New York, June 15, 2007— A state prosecutor in Mali jailed a journalist for an article about a high school essay assignment in which the students were asked to write about a fictional sex scandal involving a president and his mistress. Seydina Oumar Diarra, an editor for the private daily newspaper Info-Matin, was questioned for more than three hours, charged with offense to a head of state, and...

On 23 May 2007, regional UHF channel Llanovisión's news programme, "La Entrevista de Hoy", was suspended after it commented on the Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) case. The programme was hosted by sociologist Laure Nicotra and was broadcast in the state of Barinas, southern Venezuela. Nicotra said that the measure was the result of an interview with lawyer Pedro Gonzáles, broadcast on 22 May...

THE Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones & Co. — publisher of the Wall Street Journal — on Thursday rejected a plan designed to preserve the paper's independence and integrity if the company is sold to Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born head of News Corp. has long coveted the Journal and recently offered $60 a share for its publicly traded parent company, which the sprawling Bancroft clan...

The mother of a Chinese journalist thrown in jail after US Internet giant Yahoo provided user information to the Chinese government arrived in Washington Thursday to campaign for her son’s release. “There is a lot of international concern, it is not an isolated case now,” Gao Qinsheng told AFP after meeting her American lawyer and the Washington representative of Reporters Without Borders, a press...

(IPA/IFEX) - Geneva, Cape Town, 15 June 2007 - Publisher Trevor Ncube of Zimbabwe today received the 2007 IPA Freedom Prize for his exemplary courage in upholding freedom of expression. The murdered authors and journalists Hrant Dink of Turkey and Anna Politkovskaya of Russia also received a special prize. Rahil Dink, Hrant Dink's widow, spoke in Cape Town in memory of her late husband at the...

Yahoo shareholders have vetoed with an overwhelming majority the company's proposed Chinese anti-censorship policy. This comes close on the heels of the mother of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao announcing plans to continue with the lawsuit against Yahoo. Proposals to set up a human rights committee with the task of reviewing Yahoo’s policies around the world, specifically in China, were also...

A controversial private members' bill to exempt MPs and peers from freedom of information laws has failed to win the support of a single member of the House of Lords. Tory former chief whip David Maclean's Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill needed a peer to come forward to sponsor it by 5pm last night, but the support was not forthcoming. Opponents have hailed the news as a triumph for...

The new proposals set forth by the Swedish Department of Culture favor smaller, local papers. This could translate to an income loss of 5.5 million kronor ($763,000) for the major papers, Senska Dagbladet and Skånska Dagbladet. “…Control mechanisms will be introduced and support will be provided at a more local level,” said department secretary Martin Persson of the proposals. One such mechanism...

The BBC is to release a series of behind-the-scenes videos detailing how it compiles its news packages. The multi-media experiment will chart BBC reporter Ben Hammersley’s coverage of the run-up to the Turkish elections. Hammersley will post unedited footage of interviews shot for the reports on the internet along with pages of his research notes. The former Guardian journalist introduced the...

Prague- Czech courts will probably deal with the alleged discrimination against some employees of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) seated in Prague, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes, referring to the case of Armenian reporter Anna Karapetian who complaints against her dismissal from the radio after 12 years.Karapetian claims that the notice is invalid and wants the...