News

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 7, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the prison sentence handed down to a Syrian online journalist by a military court for articles advocating rights for Syria's Kurdish minority, and criticizing the ruling Baath Party. Muhammad Ghanem, editor of the news Web site Surion, was found guilty Tuesday of insulting the president, undermining...

The Guardian will become the first British national newspaper to offer a "web first" service that will see major news by foreign correspondents and business journalists put online before it appears in the paper. The shift in strategy marks a significant departure from the established routine of newspaper publishing where stories are held for "once-a-day" publishing. The move aims to strengthen and...

New York, June 7, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the ongoing criminal prosecution of journalists in Turkey. Three journalists are before the courts in Istanbul this week for their work. Perihan Magden, a columnist for the weekly magazine Yeni Aktuel, went on trial today charged with discouraging Turks from performing military service by defending conscientious objectors...

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Companies such as Yahoo! and Google are well known for quickly putting vast amounts of information at the fingertips of computer users. But these two Internet companies, along with the computer software giant Microsoft, have faced sharp criticism for compromising with Beijing by accepting restrictions on what information they can provide to users in China. To...

Police yesterday raided the New Times office in Kampala looking for information pertaining the publication of the scanned copies of passports belonging to Ignace Murwanashyaka and other Rwandan dissidents. The two senior investigative officers, Moses Sakira and Moses Binoga from Criminal investigations department arrived at The New Times office seeking information on how the publication obtained...

MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti) - Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday he had bought a 49% stake in an independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, but pledged to put no pressure on editorial policy. The architect of perestroika and the Soviet Union's sole president announced the acquisition of the bi-weekly edition at a news conference on the sidelines of a World Newspaper Congress in Moscow. "We are against...

Moscow, June 7, Interfax - The authors of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and triggered Muslims' angry protests worldwide are still getting death threats, Jyllands-Posten Editor-in-Chief Jorn Mikkelsen said at the 13th World Editors Forum organized by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Moscow on Tuesday. "Twelve of our...

7 June 2006 – With yet one more Iraqi journalist murdered, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today yet again stressed the vital role of a free press plays in establishing democracy, voicing the hoped that “the authorities will be able to stop this wave of assassinations which is as tragic as it is senseless.” Ali Jaafar 24, a well-known...

New York, June 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arson attack on an investigative reporter and his family in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Attackers set fire June 3 to the apartment of Sergei Yanovsky, correspondent of the Kyiv-based newspaper Kievskiye Vedomosti. The newspaper reported that unidentified assailants poured gasoline through the kitchen window of...

A prominent Turkish journalist went on trial on Wednesday charged with undermining the authority of the armed forces by writing in support of a young man who refused to do military service. Perihan Magden is one of several journalists and writers who face the courts this week as nationalist prosecutors inside the criminal justice system try to silence opinion and comment that, they argue, threaten...