Asia

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the administration's increasing pressure on the Republic of Korea's media. The arrest on April 28 of four staff members with the country's second-largest broadcaster, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), is only the most recent step in what appears to be a broader effort to stifle independent reporting critical of government...

Journalists in Pakistan have come under rapidly escalating pressure as the military confronts Taliban militants in the northwest region of the country. Threats and attacks from both sides have made reporting from Taliban-controlled areas more dangerous, according to Bob Dietz, Asia Prorgamme Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Wednesday, the military harassed and fired

The media have become part and parcel of Thailand's intensifying political conflict: Two privately held satellite television news stations are openly aligned with competing political street movements, and state-controlled outlets are under opposition fire for allegedly misrepresenting recent crucial news events, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). As the conflict escalates and

North Korea has announced that it would try American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee on unspecified criminal charges, according to international news reports. The Associated Press (AP) reported that a dispatch from the country said the pair would be tried for "confirmed charges" without specifying the nature of those charges or a timetable for the legal proceedings. "The relevant agencies of...

Park Dae-sung, who blogs under the name Minerva, was acquitted of charges in South Korea on April 20, 2009, under a rarely used law of "spreading false information with the intent of harming the public interest." The Seoul court that heard his case ruled that Park wrote without malicious intent, even if his articles were misleading his articles, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has...

A high court judge in Singapore ruled on March 19, 2009, that Melanie Kirkpatrick, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, was in contempt of court for two articles and a letter to the editor published by the Dow Jones-owned Wall Street Journal Asia last year, according to international news reports. Kirkpatrick was ordered to pay SG$10,000 (US$6,549), according to the...

Indonesia's Supreme Court reversed its own 2007 ruling on April 16, 2009, and dismissed a $106 million case against the Hong Kong-based Time Warner publication that had been filed by the country's late President Suharto and continued by his heirs, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The decision marked the end of a lawsuit launched shortly before Suharto's death in 1999, a few...

The office of Uthayan, a Tamil-language daily, in Jaffna was hit with an explosive device around 11 p.m. on March 24, 2009. Most Sri Lankan media reports identified the weapon as a hand grenade. It was the fifth time in three years that the office had been attacked, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. There were no injures to the small number of staff still working at the...

Amid Thailand's continuing political chaos, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has strongly condemned the assassination attempt against media owner, television commentator, and political activist Sondhi Limthongkul on Friday and called on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government to ensure a quick investigation. According to local and international news reports, at around 5:30 a.m...

As part of its declaration of a state of emergency on Sunday, the Thai government issued a decree that empowered officials to censor news considered a threat to national security, according to international and local news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the government to immediately rescind this order of censorship. On Monday, the government ordered the blocking...