West Asia - North Africa

AMMAN, 13 Jun 2006 (IRIN) - Media in the Arab world operates in an environment that restricts freedom of opinion amid ongoing state control over major news organisations, according to a recent survey conducted by the Amman Human Rights Centre (AHRC). “Arab regimes are increasingly imposing restrictions on journalists to prevent them from exposing their practices, mostly in terms of corruption and...

It's been more than 16 months since CNN's former chief news executive Eason Jordan made what even he now regards as inarticulate comments about the U.S. military's role in the deaths of journalists working in Iraq. Inarticulate–and incendiary: Under fire from conservative bloggers and others for his suggestion at a forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the military may have targeted and killed a dozen...

With the recent deaths of two CBS employees, the Iraq war officially became the deadliest ever for journalists, with 71 killed. This is more journalists than died in World War II, Korea or Vietnam. CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was also badly injured in the May 29 attack that killed a cameraman and a soundman. Dozier graduated from St. Timothy's School in Baltimore County in 1984. The Sun and...

The deaths of two CBS crew members in Iraq and the wounding of a veteran correspondent have dealt yet another deadly blow to news organizations determined to cover a conflict increasingly perilous to journalists. For months, the killings and kidnappings of news professionals in Iraq have prompted a reappraisal of the need for large staffs there. While no major news organizations say they are...

7 June 2006 – With yet one more Iraqi journalist murdered, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today yet again stressed the vital role of a free press plays in establishing democracy, voicing the hoped that “the authorities will be able to stop this wave of assassinations which is as tragic as it is senseless.” Ali Jaafar 24, a well-known...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists, joined by the Iraqi Syndicate of Journalists and the Kurdish Association of Journalists, today launched a global campaign to end the terrifying ordeal of journalists in Iraq where at least 128 media staff have been killed and hundreds more injured or disabled in what has become the deadliest media war in modern history. The General...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 2, 2006 - An Iraqi cameraman for Reuters news agency was released Thursday after being held for 12 days by the U.S. military. Ali al-Mashhadani, 37, was arrested at a U.S. base in his home town of Ramadi on May 20 while trying to recover Reuters cell phones confiscated from him a week earlier, Reuters reported. It said U.S. officials deemed the cameraman a security...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi journalist working for Reuters was released from U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Thursday after 12 days in detention. Ali al-Mashhadani, 37, was arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi on May 20 when he went to a U.S. base to retrieve Reuters telephones taken from him earlier that week. He spent five months in U.S. custody last year...

By some reckonings, the death of two journalists working for CBS News on Monday firmly secured the Iraq war as the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times. Since the start of the war in 2003, 71 journalists have been killed in Iraq, a figure that does not even include the more than two dozen members of news media support staff who have also died, according to the Committee to Protect...

NEW YORK, May 30 (Reuters) - The number of journalists killed in Iraq is now similar to the total who died in World War Two, underscoring the risks reporters face in informing the public about the conflict, press advocates say. The deaths of CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan on Monday increased the number of journalists deaths in Iraq to 71, as listed by the New York-based...