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The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed the release this week of five Turkish journalists who were imprisoned after being sentenced to jail in connection with the controversial Ergenekon case. Three of the journalists-- Yalçın Küçük, Deniz Yıldırım, and Merdan YanardaÄŸ--were convicted because of their work, according to CPJ research. In the cases of Tuncay Özkan and Hikmet ÇiÃ...

Reporters Without Borders has reiterated its dismay at the environment in which journalists have to operate in Libya. They fear for their safety, their integrity, and increasingly for their lives. Journalists continue to be exposed to intimidation, abduction, arbitrary arrest and physical violence without any sign that the Libyan authorities are taking any measures to curb these abuses. The media...

A Swedish journalist was shot and killed in Kabul on Tuesday, Reuters news agency reported. Nils Horner, 52, was gunned down in a neighborhood populated by western NGOs, embassies and journalists. It’s the same area where 21 people, mostly foreigners, were killed when a Lebanese restaurant was attacked in January. Horner had been waiting outside a Lebanese restaurant with his driver and...

Two journalists were killed over the weekend while covering the conflict in Syria, the deadliest country for the press. On Saturday, a cameraman working for the Beirut-based TV station Al-Mayadeen was killed while covering clashes between government and rebel forces in the eastern province of Deir Al-Zour, according to news reports. According to the pro-Syrian government outlet Al-Mayadeen, Omar...

Two employees of state-owned Al-Iraqiya TV, Muthanna Abdel Hussein and Khaled Abdel Thamer, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a police checkpoint at Hala, 70 km south of Baghdad, March 11 morning. “We offer our condolences to the friends and families of these two media workers and we condemn this attack with the utmost energy,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Journalists are among the...

Canadian freelance photographer Ali Mustafa was killed by a barrel bomb in the Aleppo district Al-Hadariyeh on March 9 while photographing the death and destruction cause by an earlier bomb. Seven other people were killed. Mustafa, 30, had gone to Syria to cover the suffering of the civilian population in Aleppo, of late the target of a wave of barrel bombs – barrels packed with explosives that...

The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan's threats to shut down YouTube and Facebook in order to, in the premier's words, prevent the negative impact of the Internet on society. "We call on the government of Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan to stop censoring or threatening to censor the media in an attempt to control the free flow of information," CPJ...

Following requests from both prosecutors and defense attorneys, yesterday the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas dismissed 11 felony counts against journalist Barrett Brown. The charges related to the reposting of a publicly-available hyperlink containing thousands of documents stolen from intelligence contractor Stratfor Forecasting. Brown was never accused of having a role in...

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the increasingly oppressive climate of censorship in Crimea, where news media have been closed, media premises are being surrounded and journalists have been harassed and threatened. “The media are being subjected to completely arbitrary actions and decisions,” said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire. “At a time when the...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Rayyip Erdogan’s declarations on March 7, during which he announced new Internet restrictions would be discussed, have been criticised by Reporters Without Borders. According to these new restrictions, local Facebook and Youtube pages could be completely shut down. “We are extemely worried by the fact that Erdogan would even consider such radical actions. The...