French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, which helped launch the 1950s New Wave, has been sold by Le Monde to international arts publishing house Phaidon Press. Founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca and edited by Eric Rohmer, Cahiers du Cinéma was a crucible for writers-turned-New Wave directors like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and a vocal...
Seven people were arrested on Sunday after taking part in a tribute to slain human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasia Baburova in which flowers were lain at the spot where they were gunned down in the centre of Moscow on January 29. Interior ministry Omon anti-riot police arrested them on the grounds that they were holding an “unauthorised” demonstration. Human...
The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has expressed concern over recent death threats made against journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to information received by SEEMO, Bakir Hedziomerovic, editor-in-chief of the programme "60 Minutes", broadcast by the television channel FBiH, and one of the country's leading investigative journalists, received multiple death threats in...
The International Press Institute (IPI) and the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) have reiterated earlier calls for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to refrain from verbal attacks on the media. This latest call follows the January 30 assault on journalists during a public speech in which the prime minister condemned the press for being biased in their coverage of the recent...
The International Press Institute (IPI) has welcomed a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) resolution urging Ukraine to do more to capture those behind the gruesome 2000 killing of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. The resolution, approved on January 27, applauded the recent convictions of three former police officers, but expressed its deep concern at the lack of progress in...
The press freedom situation in Bulgaria has worsened considerably in the past two years. The murder of columnist and author Georgy Stoev in the centre of Sofia in April 2008 and a savage attack on Ognyan Stefanov, the editor of the Frog News website, by men using hammers in September recall the dark days of 1990-95 when gangland “mutris†(thugs) made it clear to journalists they were not to
Baku appeal court judge Rizvan Safarov on Thursday rejected a request for the conditional release of Azadlig reporter Sakit Zahidov, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) had reported. The request was submitted by his lawyer, Isakhan Ashurov, on December 19 on the grounds that Zahidov has served half of his three-year jail sentence and, under Azerbaijani law, qualifies for early release. “We regret that...
The trial of four people accused of journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s murder resumed Tuesday last before a military court in Moscow after the latest of many adjournments. Marked by many irregularities, the trial has exposed gaps in the investigation and has raised the question why the case was handed over to a court so soon, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. “This trial has seen major...
The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for the immediate release of Ramazan Yesergepov, editor of the independent Almaty-based weekly Alma-Ata Info, who was seized by security agents from his hospital bed a month ago. The Kazakhstan Security Committee (KNB) took Yesergepov on January 6 from an Almaty hospital where he was being treated for high blood pressure, and put him in a KNB...
A 72-year-old Russian journalist, critical of local authorities, has been severely assaulted. Authorities must launch a serious investigation into the attack on Yuri Grachev, editor of pro-opposition weekly Solnechnogorsky Forum, who is hospitalized with a concussion, broken nose, and lacerated cheek, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Friday. An initial statement from authorities, which...
