News

LONDON — British tabloids typically send out paparazzi to poke into the lives of the royals, soccer coaches and supermodels. Lately, however, two free newspapers fighting a circulation battle on the streets of London have turned the cameras on each other. One of the papers, London Lite, sent a video recently to media buyers that showed distributors ostensibly dumping 2,900 copies of its rival, The...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 10, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists today called for a full and transparent investigation into the police beating on Tuesday of prominent Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, a 2005 recipient of CPJ's International Press Freedom Award, and three other attorneys. Mtetwa, president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, suffered bruises on her back, arms...

HAVANA -- (AP) -- Cuba has released an imprisoned journalist after he served most of his 22-month sentence for participating in an anti-government rally, a local activist and a foreign media watchdog group said Thursday. Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, who reported for U.S. Web sites, was released from Valle Grande prison outside Havana Tuesday, according to veteran dissident Martha Beatriz Roque...

New York, May 10, 2007— The Committee to Protect Journalists is troubled by the detention since Sunday of a private newspaper director in the capital, Kinshasa, after he sought comments from a government official. CPJ last week named DRC one of the world’s worst backsliders on press freedom. Jean Pierre Phambu Lutette, director of the private bi-weekly La Tolérance was arrested by police when he...

ACAPULCO — Five evenings a week, Amado Ramirez fielded complaints from his radio listeners on everything from corrupt public officials to the booming drug trade in this famous resort city. Then, on a Friday night, just blocks from a beach-side strip of bars where thousands of tourists were partying, a gunman ambushed Ramirez in his car as he attempted to leave his Radiorama office. Bleeding...

The Media Alliance has given evidence calling for greater uniform safety training for journalists at the NSW Coroner's inquest into the deaths of five Australian-based newsmen at Balibo, East Timor, in 1975. Deputy state coroner Dorelle Pinch is examining the murder of Brian Peters and four of his colleagues during the Indonesian invasion of Balibo. The official line has always been that the five...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced concern about gruesome threatening messages aimed at journalists and the fact that one of the latest messages, which are being blamed on drug traffickers, was followed four days later by an apparent attempt to kill a leading investigative journalist by sabotaging her car. On 3 May 2007, World Press Freedom Day, the head of a corpse was left on a street in...

Global newspaper circulation rose nearly 2 per cent in 2006 and the number of newspaper titles also increased significantly, according to provisional data revealed today by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). Paid-for newspaper circulation went up 1.9 per cent year-on-year to more than 510 million paid-for copies in 2006 and the number of new paid-for titles grew to more than 11,000 for the...

May 9, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Some Afghan journalists have expressed fears that media are facing new restrictions and increased government control. The Afghan parliament is currently debating an amended media law that critics warn could signal authorities' desire to tighten their grip on news outlets. Backers of the draft changes dismiss the criticism, arguing that limits are in place to prevent...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 9, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today's murder of an Iraqi journalist, his driver, and two passengers, who were gunned down outside the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Gunmen riding in an Opel without a license plate intercepted a vehicle carrying Raad al-Mutashar, 43, owner and director of a media company, on a road southwest of Kirkuk at around 2...