Journalists are being used to an unprecedented degree by the main political factions in the Palestinian Territories. Around 10 have been arrested since the start of the year, acording to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The media is at the centre of the dispute between the Islamist party Hamas, controlling the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas’ party, Fatah, in the West Bank. “Relations...
Reporters Without Borders deplores A Kuwait City criminal court has withdrawn the licences of two weekly newspapers, Al-Abraj and Al-Shaab. The court in separate cases on March 8 fined Al-Abraj editor Mansur Ahmad Muhareb Al-Hayni and Al-Shaab editor Hamed Turki Abu Yabes 9,000 dinars (21,000 euros) each. Hayni was convicted of besmirching the prime minister’s reputation while Yabes was convicted...
An Egyptian court sentenced a journalist to one year in jail on Monday for libelling imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour and his wife, Reuters has reported. But Nour, who is serving a five-year sentence on what he says are baseless fraud charges, asked the court to drop the custodial sentence because he does not approve of jailing journalists for publishing offences. The journalist, Taher...
A French reporter was stabbed Saturday last at a hotel in Iraq's northern Kurdish city of Irbil, police said. The reporter was hospitalised with minor injuries to her arm, according to Irbil police chief Brig Gen Abdul-Khaliq Talat. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemned the attack on Cécile Hennion, a reporter working for Le Monde. “This brazen attack shows how dangerous the...
The news editor of a prominent Shiite-run television station in Iraq was released Friday afternoon from US custody, two weeks after a raid aimed at disrupting Iranian-backed militia groups, a producer for the station told the Associated Press. The AP report said: Hafidh al-Beshara, the news editor and manager of political programming for Al-Forat TV, and his son were taken into custody after...
Nine years after King Hamad bin-Issa al-Khalifa’s installation as head of state of Bahrain, the Gulf island nation is yet to implement the legislative reforms that it has been promising for several years. While Bahraini journalists are able to speak out a bit more than their colleagues in many other Gulf countries, the press freedom situation is far from satisfactory. No journalist has been
It is an irony of sorts. BBC is launching its Arabic TV, says a Guardian report, at a time when Arab governments are seeking to censor existing satellite TV channels that "negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order, and public morals" or "defame leaders, or national and religious symbols". Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Lebanon's Al-Manar TV, owned by Hezbollah, are seen as the main...
The last fortnight has been a mix of good and bad news for journalists in Iran. Maybe, more of the latter. Abolfazl Abedini Nasr of the weekly Bahar Khozestan was released on February 18, followed by that of Said Matinpour, a contributor to the weekly Yarpagh, eight days later. That's where the good streak ended. Prison sentences were passed two days ago on journalists Bahaman Ahamadi Amoee and...
Iraqi authorities have vowed to hunt down the killers of journalists, days after the head of the country's biggest journalist organisation became the latest media worker to meet a violent death, Reuters has reported. The interior ministry said 270 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called...
The Iraqi press has once again paid dearly for its commitment to more freedom — the head of the country's largest journalists organisation died on Wednesday, four days after being seriously wounded by gunmen who fired at his car in Baghdad. Jabbar Tarrad al-Shimmari, deputy head of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that al-Tamimi, 74
