Europe - Central Asia

Britain's security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, the Independent newspaper has reported. The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce a...

It has been called one of the most serious attacks on press freedom in years in the entire South East European region, one that could seriously damage Croatia’s bid to join the European Union: two journalists were killed in a car bombing in Croatia. Ivo Pukanic, journalist and owner of the NCL Media Group in Zagreb, and Niko Franjic, marketing director of the leading investigative weekly newspaper

Civil society groups have urged the Council of Europe not to ignore calls by its Parliamentary Assembly to send the draft Convention on Access to Official Documents back for redrafting so that it provides strong recognition of the right of access to information. The Parliamentary Assembly's opinion is due to be considered on November 12 by representatives of the 47 European governments that make...

Authorities in Azerbaijan have decided to halt local broadcasts by foreign stations by the end of the year. The chairman of Azerbaijan's National Television and Radio Council, Nushiravan Meherremli, told independent news agency Turan that his country is not interested in granting local frequencies to foreign broadcasters. The policy change will affect the the British Broadcasting Corporation, and...

A car bomb killed Ivo Pukanic, a prominent Croatian journalist, and a colleague in downtown Zagreb on Thursday. State-run Croatian TV showed footage of Pukanic's burned out Lexus and two covered bodies outside his NCL Media Group office in the capital. The police identified the victims as Pukanic and his group's marketing director, Niko Franjic. They published the Zagreb-based political weekly...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed concern at the Slovenian government’s use of diplomatic pressure in response to corruption allegations made in an episode of the Finnish investigative documentary "MOT". According to IPI, the Slovenian government has been using diplomatic channels to exert pressure on the Finnish government following the broadcast on September 1, 2008 of an...

French President Nikolas Sarkozy's comments about the state of the print media in the country has drawn criticism from journalists. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European group of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), says it is worried about some proposals made by Sarkozy as he launched a national discussion on print media. After the launch of the "Etats généraux...

Russian lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, who represents the family of slain Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, has been the target of an apparent poisoning in Strasbourg, France, press freedom organisations have said. This has come days before she was due to appear in a Moscow court for pretrial proceedings for three suspects charged in Politkovskaya’s October 2006 slaying. “We are shocked by...

As Azerbaijan gears up for the forthcoming elections in October, President Ilham Aliyev continues to dominate the state-owned media landscape. The president’s visits to various regions of the country and the government’s diplomatic activities continued to be the leading stories in state-owned media. Election coverage has also been plentiful, but it focused mainly on the preparations being carried

The Russian prosecutor-general's office has completed its investigation into the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and sent the case to court, Interfax news agency reported Thursday. It was not immediately clear Thursday which court will hear the case. Politkovskaya, an award-winning reporter for the Novaya Gazeta, was one of the strongest critics in the Russian media of the...