West Asia - North Africa

The Iranian government has shut down four publications, including a major reformist newspaper, according to reports. The reformist daily, Shargh, or East, was shut down Monday indefinitely because it had refused to replace its managing director apart from publishing a cartoon in a recent edition that was considered insulting to the government, state television said, citing a statement from the...

NEW YORK/LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) - The news, when it came to CBS News in New York early on Memorial Day, May 29, was horrifying. A car bomb had exploded in a relatively quiet Baghdad neighborhood as a CBS News crew was following a U.S. Army Fourth Infantry Division unit on a routine patrol. Cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were killed instantly, along with the soldier they were...

New York, September 11, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of an editor of Iraq’s state-run daily Al-Sabah. Abdel Karim al-Rubai, 40, a design editor for the newspaper, was shot Saturday morning while traveling to work in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood known as Camp Sara by several gunmen. The driver of the car was seriously wounded, media sources told CPJ. “We deplore...

The attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, started a new kind of conflict, one that President Bush calls a war on terror. As the months and years pass, the war fades into the background of many Americans’ daily lives. But the cost is very real, and it’s constantly escalating. It’s the duty of journalists to keep the American public aware of this cost. In its pages of...

BAGHDAD -- A month-long ban imposed by Iraq's government on Dubai-based satellite channel Al Arabiya highlights the delicate path that media in Iraq must tread between dangerous insurgents and prickly authorities. More than 100 journalists have been killed in Iraq in the past three years while others have been imprisoned by the US-led coalition, and Iraqi officials have had a difficult...

American journalist Paul Salopek was released Saturday from a prison in the war-torn Darfur region where he was held for more than a month on espionage charges, news agencies reported. A judge in the North Darfur capital of al-Fasher released the Chicago Tribune journalist and his Chadian driver and interpreter after a 13-minute hearing. FREE AND BACK: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, right...

The use of embedded reporters by major newspapers in the United States (US) did affect the number and the type of stories published, resulting in more articles about the US soldiers' personal lives and fewer articles about the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians. THE MA'AM FACTOR: Ann Scott Tyson, who says she encountered "a lot of fighting" while reporting for the Christian Science Monitor from...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government on Friday defended its decision to close the Baghdad bureau of Al Arabiya television for "sectarian" reporting, despite criticism from media bodies which called the ban an assault on press freedom. "If al Qaeda wanted reporters to work for it, it could do no better than the reporters for Arabiya," Yasseen Majeed, media advisor to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al...

New York, September 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by reports that an Iraqi journalist on trial for defamation has been missing since Sunday morning. A source told CPJ that Ahmed Mutair Abbas, managing editor of the defunct daily Sada Wasit in the southern city of Kut, called Sunday morning to say that he was on his way from Kut to Baghdad to attend his trial hearing...

New York, September 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the decision of the Iraqi government today to close the Baghdad bureau of the Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabiya for one month. The station reported that police entered its Baghdad offices to halt operations after the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the suspension. Al-Arabiya Executive Editor...