Europe - Central Asia

The Italian editor whose newspaper is being sued for defamation by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday likened the situation to attacks on the American press during the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. “Like the American journalists, our journalists were doing their work and were publishing information that had to be published,” said...

Russian online journalist Aleksandr Podrabinek, 56, known for his sharp commentary on political and social issues, has gone into hiding after receiving a series of threats stemming from a September 21 commentary on the news website Yezhednevny Zhurnal that pointed out the human rights abuses of the Soviet government. Angered by Podrabinek’s piece, members of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi (Ours...

The crew of an opposition Russian-language news channel has been attacked by miscreants in Odessa, Ukraine, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Tuesday, several unidentified men attacked ATV cameraman Dmitry Dokunov and reporter Olesya Klintsova when they approached a group for an interview at a protest rally outside a local court that was hearing a case against the station...

Four days after a joint international press freedom mission to Belarus, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Tuesday called on the Belarusian government to stop obstructing the work of journalists working for foreign news media. The press freedom organisation has signed a statement issued by the mission at the end of its five-day visit noting that: “Accreditation of journalists working for Belarus...

There has been a lot of debate about the French government’s decision to give free, one-day-a-week newspaper subscriptions to every 18- to 24-year old in the country as a way to encourage newspaper reading and civic participation. But those who have dismissed the idea ought to consider that 41 French regional newspapers have been experimenting with the concept since 2006 - and the publishers say...

Turkish investigators have secretly listened into telephone calls to and from popular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, the Turkish Justice Ministry has confirmed, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News newspaper. The wiretapping took place without the necessary approval of the Turkish courts. Investigators undertook the controversial eavesdropping as part of an ongoing police probe — known as the...

Georgian authorities have pressed criminal charges against the Tbilisi bureau chief for the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. According to RIA Novosti, Besik Pipia is facing up to three years in prison if convicted on a criminal charge of document forgery. Georgian police opened a criminal probe against Pipia on September 3, claiming he had forged his Georgian driver’s licence, which they issued to...

Press freedom groups have condemned the seizure of the print run of one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Kazakhstan, which is set to take control of a leading security and human rights organization. The country will become chair of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe in 2010. On Friday last, court officers in the financial capital Almaty confiscated the entire...

Turkey’s tax ministry has imposed an unprecedented TL 3.75 billion, or €1.74 billion fine on a media group, Dogan Yayin, a conglomerate of newspapers and television stations that has been extremely critical of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The huge penalty, handed down earlier this week following examinations of tax reports from 2005, 2006 and 2007, follows a €345 million fine against...

Finnish photojournalist Markus Pentikäinen, convicted in 2007 for ignoring a police order to stop reporting at the scene of a 2006 demonstration in Helsinki, is to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights, according to the International Press Institute (IPI. The move comes after a Finnish Supreme Court decision of September 1 which gave him "no leave to appeal," according to weekly...