Defamation charges have been filed against a Moroccan editor by a group that represents close relatives of King Mohamed VI. A Casablanca court has summoned the editor to appear on Tuesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The charges against Driss Chahtan, managing editor of the independent weekly Al-Michaal, stem from a front-page story titled "The Scandals of the King's...
The Jerusalem District Court sentenced two journalists from East Jerusalem to two months' imprisonment for their report to Iranian television about the start of the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in January, Haaretz newspaper has reported. The Haaretz report said: [ Link] The two were sentenced as part of a plea bargain to charges that they violated military censorship restrictions by...
Iranian authorities have criticised international media reports and taken steps to control the flow of information from independent news sources as anti-government protests raged in the country for the third day on Monday. Opposition candidates Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have appealed to their supporters not to accept the “rigged results.” The British Broadcasting Co said that electronic...
There is a stark lack of balanced and independent electoral coverage in the Iranian media. And, 15 journalists have been threatened or summoned for questioning in the cities of Machhad, Ahvaz, Sanandaj, Khoram Abad, Khohdasht and Tabriz since the campaign for the June presidential 12 election began on May 21. They have been targetted for criticising President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is running
Rabah Lamouchi, the national Arabic-language daily Ennahar's correspondent in Tebessa (460 km east of Algiers), has been arrested on the grounds that he was not officially accredited by the newspaper. This is denied by the paper's editor, who told Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) it was just a pretext. Another Ennahar correspondent was held for three days last month. "This case is disturbing...
The Libyan government has decided to nationalise the country's few privately-owned news media, which until now were controlled by Al-Ghad, a company launched two years ago by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Seif Al-Islam, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “This is clearly a retrograde measure,” Paris-based RSF reacted. “The launch of several privately-owned media by Seif Al-Islam...
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the decision of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to withdraw legal action against a website after an IFJ call for restraint by Iraq's political leaders in their dealings with media. At a historic meeting of journalists' leaders from 30 countries in Baghdad ten days ago IFJ had called for more professionalism from Iraqi media...
It has been four years since the murder of Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir, but those behind the crime are still at large. Kassir, a prominent columnist for the daily Al-Nahar and an influential democracy advocate, was killed outside his home in East Beirut by a bomb placed in his car on June 2, 2005. His assassination occurred nearly six months before the murder, under similar circumstances, of
An Iraqi sports reporter, Alaa Abdel Wahab, was killed in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday by a car bomb that injured another journalist. Two journalists employed by Al-Iraqiya TV were also injured in a separate car bombing in Baghdad, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “We are saddened and appalled by these two bombings,” RSF said. “It is time the slaughter of...
Leaders of journalists unions from around the world travelled to Baghdad at the weekend for a conference on support for media in Iraq— the first international meeting of any kind in the city since the war began six years ago. The Iraqi Journalism Summit 2009 was organised by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate and was warmly welcomed by Iraqi Prime...
