Bulgaria's Parliament has adopted changes to the penal code that have introduced jail time for journalists and writers who instigate hatred, discrimination or violence - and could be used to impose controls on the media, says the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI). While the previous law covered only racial discrimination, the...
Journalists Federico Rosaldo, Jesús Coa and Jorge Álvarez chose to resign from their positions at the Líder radio station on April 27, rather than comply with an order issued by the station's owner, Santiago Ortiz. Ortiz had instructed the journalists to stop criticising presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori. The incident occurred in Arequipa, southern Peru. The journalists co-presented a morning...
A total of 68 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, while another 13 remain missing, says a new report by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), El Universal reports. In addition, the CNDH report catalogs 21 attacks on media facilities and says that since 2005, the organization has received 473 general grievance complaints from journalists and human rights defenders...
Chinese authorities should clarify the whereabouts of two Chinese journalists who reported on detained artist and social commentator Ai Weiwei, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Family and colleagues have been unable to reach Caijing magazine journalist Zhang Jialong since the evening of April 28, according to Radio France Internationale. He...
Pakistan's president committed to pursue justice for journalists killed in the line of duty, pledging to take steps to reverse the country's rising record of impunity. A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists met President Asif Ali Zardari Tuesday to discuss the growing number of targeted attacks on journalists in Pakistan and urged him to ensure that journalists are free to report...
Staff at two of Australia's biggest broadsheet newspapers are considering strike action after their management announced another round of cost cuts, ABC has reported. Fairfax Media has announced that in-house sub-editors at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will no longer proof-read, fact-check and rewrite stories before they go to print. The details: [ Link] The company's chief executive...
Valério Nascimento, a journalist involved in local politics, was gunned down Tuesday at the entrance to his home in Rio Claro, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. As a journalist, he had covered an alleged corruption case just a few days before the shooting, but the motive is not yet known. “Nascimento’s murder, which took place on World Press Freedom Day, is a reminder that Brazil is still a...
Officials in Ethiopia hijacked a local UNESCO-sponsored World Press Freedom Day event, installing government-backed journalists as speakers and nixing independent journalists slated to speak. There was no discussion, as originally planned, of this year's global theme on new media and the Internet at the Tuesday forum, according to local sources and news reports. The programme for the event at...
Bui Chat, the head of the independent publishing house Giay Vun (“Recycled Paper), was released on May 2 after being held for three days on his return from Argentina but was briefly detained again on May 3 for more questioning, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The authorities have also kept the “Freedom to Publish Prize” which he received from the...
Radio Victoria and the rural community that operates it, located in the northern Salvadorian department of Cabañas, have been the victim of threats and harassment for the past five years and it is time this stopped, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. A new wave of warnings and death threats were received by four of the community radio station’s journalists –...
