News

New York, June 1, 2006 - Gambian security officers arrested a local journalist working for the BBC on Tuesday, a local source told the Committee to Protect Journalists. A BBC source in London confirmed that Lamin Cham had been detained. His whereabouts are unknown. His arrest comes amid a government crackdown on a critical U.S.-hosted Web site, Freedom Newspaper. On May 25, police summoned...

Explosive college basketball coach Bobby Knight once summed up his views on journalists, and in doing so may have unintentionally explained why newspapers are struggling to deal with Internet bloggers. "All of us learn to write in the second grade," Knight said while the coach at Indiana University, according to a 1983 story in the Washington Post. "Most of us go on to greater things." Blogs...

SHANGHAI: It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of China's most popular Internet bulletin boards, from a husband denouncing a student he suspected of carrying on an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack. "Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," as one person wrote, "to chop out the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of...

Guwahati: The Assam Assembly witnessed a walkout by reporters from the Press Reporters' Gallery on the last day of the three-day session over a ruling of the Speaker Tanka Bahadur Rai on the authenticity of newspaper reports. The reporters took strong exception to the ruling of the Speaker, in which, he said, "all newspaper reports are not authentic." Trouble began when Bharatiya Janata Party...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi journalist working for Reuters was released from U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Thursday after 12 days in detention. Ali al-Mashhadani, 37, was arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi on May 20 when he went to a U.S. base to retrieve Reuters telephones taken from him earlier that week. He spent five months in U.S. custody last year...

(MISA/IFEX) - On 28 May 2006, a senior government official lambasted the Swazi media for publishing articles he deemed insulting to the new Minister for Health, Njabulo Mabuza, who was appointed last week in a mini Cabinet reshuffle. The media criticized the Prime Minister for appointing someone with limited education to an important portfolio such as health. The media published stories that...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders is protesting against two-month jail sentences imposed on 30 May 2006 by a Jordanian court on two journalists, Jihad Momani and Hisham Al-Khalidi, for reprinting cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that appeared in a Danish paper last year and expressed concern about journalists being harshly punished for doing so. "This is the first time journalists have been...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 31, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is appalled by attacks on journalists and a newspaper in the town of Kushtia in western Bangladesh. Witnesses told local media that about 20 men, whom they recognized as activists from the ruling Bangladesh National Party (BNP), attacked the offices of Quality Press on Wednesday, damaging a printing press, threatening...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 17 May 2006, the Liberian Broadcasting System (LBS), the state-owned broadcaster, ordered its journalists to seek clearance prior to broadcasting "corruption allegations" against government officials and other top personalities. A memorandum signed by Benjamin N.Tangay, Assistant Director General for News and Public Affairs (ADG), warned that editorial staff had to channel all...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 31, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Tuesday's attacks by local police against six Chilean reporters covering clashes between security forces and high school students during a massive strike demanding reforms in Chile's education laws. Nearly 600,000 high school students protested in Chile's capital, Santiago, calling for a reduction in public...