News

(SEAPA/IFEX) - On 7 March 2007, the military-installed government reversed its earlier decision to suspend broadcast of Thailand's sole private station, which was declared bankrupt and due to be taken over by the state, allowing it to continue on-air pending legal settlement of the takeover and liquidation of the station's assets. Bowing to mounting public pressure orchestrated by a defiant iTV...

If there's any good news about the businesses of newspapering these days, it can be found at the industry's littlest papers, which are doing well even as their bigger brothers founder. The average daily circulation of all U.S. newspapers has declined since 1987. The smallest papers, however -- community weeklies and dailies with circulation of less than 50,000 -- have been a bright spot in a...

The CIA leak trial and I Lewis Libby’s conviction has not been good news for US journalists. There is widespread apprehension that reporters and their editors must now more than ever balance their pursuit of news with an increased risk of landing in court. Journalist Matthew Cooper, right, and his attorney, Richard Sauber leave federal court in Washington, in this Jan. 31, 2007 file photo. Ten out...

Karachi, 8 March (AKI) - For Syed Saleem Shahzad, correspondent for Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI), the news of the capture of Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo in southern Afghanistan brings back vivid memories. Last November Shahzad along with another Pakistani reporter, Qamar Yousafzai, was seized in the restive Helmand province by Taliban fighters who accused the two...

A new French law criminalises the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of websites publishing the images, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) warned Wednesday. The French the law came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating...

(MISA/IFEX) - Zimbabwean E-TV reporter Peter Moyo, who is based in South Africa, has been fined Z$40,000 (approx. US$160) under the controversial Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) for practising journalism in Zimbabwe without accreditation. Moyo was convicted and fined together with Trymore Zvidzai, who is based in Zimbabwe, when they appeared before Mutare magistrate...

Reporters Without Borders today called for the immediate release of 25 women journalists and feminist activists held in Tehran’s Evin prison, who, on the eve of International Women’s Day, began a hunger strike to protest against their continued detention. Thirty-three women were arrested on 4 March while demonstrating outside the Revolutionary Islamic Tribunal in Tehran in protest against criminal...

(RSF/IFEX) - Detained journalist and writer Michel Kilo was taken before a military prosecutor in Damascus on 6 March 2007 and accused of inciting fellow inmates in Adra prison, near Damascus, to sign the "Beirut-Damascus, Damascus-Beirut" joint statement, which he himself signed in May 2006 and for which he is being prosecuted by a criminal court. "The Syrian regime is hounding Kilo while trying...

The Taliban has claimed to have “captured” an Italian journalist and his Afghan translator and driver in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a veteran reporter for the daily La Repubblica based in Afghanistan, has been out of contact with his newspaper since Sunday. The Taliban Tuesday said it had seized a man it alleged was a spy posing as a...

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has come in for trenchant criticism from press freedom organisations for endangering the life of an editor by accusing him of harbouring links with the militant Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), train near La Macarena, a town in a rebel-controlled zone in south Colombia. President Alvaro...