News

(CJES/IFEX) - On 1 January 2007 in the city of Pskov, at about 7:00 pm (local time), an unidentified individual or individuals set fire to the door of the apartment of Irina Tikhonova, the editor-in-chief of "The Bulletin" of the news agency Pskov News Bureau. Tikhonova is convinced that the incident is directly related to her professional work. Tikhonova informed CJES that the incident took place...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned raids on two newspapers by the State Security Service, a domestic intelligence agency, on 9 January 2007 in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. The two newspapers targeted were "Leadership", a daily, and "The Abuja Inquirer", a weekly. "It seems the election campaign will be a trying time for Nigeria's journalists, who are repeatedly the targets of...

(Freedom House/IFEX) - Washington, D.C., and Budapest, Hungary - Following the death of long-time dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, and prior to upcoming presidential elections, Freedom House today called on the government of Turkmenistan to initiate steps that can at long last put Turkmenistan on a path toward greater openness and democracy. President Niyazov died suddenly on December 21, 2006...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, January 11, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by orders from the Bangladeshi Information Ministry that private broadcast outlets suspend news programs and print outlets halt critical news coverage during a state of emergency announced this evening. "It's essential that at this very sensitive moment Bangladeshi citizens have unfettered access to...

(CJFE/IFEX) - (Toronto, January 11, 2007) - President Iajuddin Ahmed of Bangladesh declared a nationwide state of emergency on Thursday evening, suspending fundamental rights including the right to free expression. He then stepped down as leader of the interim government. CJFE has seen the large impact that a state of emergency can have on press freedom. Already, private satellite television...

The nation's three largest newspaper publishers are gearing up to sell advertising jointly on their newspapers' Web sites, believing their survival depends on seizing new online revenue. Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. are planning to offer advertisers one-stop shopping for display ads on Internet sites. The goal is to attract big advertisers such as car makers and phone companies that...

MONTERREY, Mexico – Police in the northern state of Durango have found the body of a Web site editor who had been missing since October, officials said Wednesday. The body of Guevara Guevara, 54, and the motorcycle he was riding were found by officers Saturday at the bottom of ravine in Durango, said Ruben Lopez, a spokesman for Durango state investigators. Lopez said an autopsy found that the...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- When one of Atlanta's most notorious criminals held journalist Don O'Briant at gunpoint, the incident changed his life. Brian Nichols had just killed three people that March morning at a downtown Atlanta courthouse where he was to be retried for rape and false imprisonment, police say. The 33-year-old was looking for another getaway car when he came across O'Briant, who...

MUMBAI: Hold your horses, everyone. The NRS (National Readership Survey) and IRS (Indian Readership Survey) are not coming together as a single survey or currency. Not for a long while, anyway-the hurdles are too many, so we can expect some more heated face-offs in the meanwhile as to who provides the most authentic readership data. But should the two ultimately unite, most of the ad, media and...

Reporters Without Borders has voiced dismay at the sentences of three to five years in prison and bans on working as journalists that the state prosecutor requested on 8 January 2007 in Casablanca at the start of the trial of Driss Ksikes, editor of the Arabic-language weekly “Nichane”, and one of his journalists, Sanaa Elaji, on charges of “damaging Islam” and “publishing and distributing...