Conflict Journalism

A journalist who broke the story of a Russian cargo ship apparently hijacked by pirates has fled Russia fearing for his life, the Guardian has reported. Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the online maritime bulletin Sovfracht, said he had left the country after receiving a menacing late-night phone call. The newspaper reported: [ Link] Voitenko said an unidentified man called him on the night of...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned a police assault on radio reporter Dawa Khan Meenapal at the site of a bomb attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, in which at least 40 people were killed and 65 wounded on August 25. According to the Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association (AIJA), an IFJ affiliate, Meenapal was recording witness accounts of the attack in...

The US is still refusing to release Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam, who has begun his second year of detention by the US military in Iraq although he has never been formally charged. Jassam is currently the only journalist held in Iraq by the US forces. Jassam was arrested by US and Iraqi soldiers in the south Baghdad district of Mahmoudiyah on September 1, 2008. The Iraqi central criminal...

The Russian supreme court Thursday ordered that the case against three alleged accomplices to journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s murder should be returned to the prosecutor’s office for further investigation, overturning a lower court ruling on August 7 blocking this possibility. A representative of the prosecutor general said the investigation into the accomplices would be combined with the...

Five journalists and a TV station covering Gabon's disputed presidential election, which has already been marred by media censorship, have been attacked since Wednesday, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists. Official results announced Thursday declared Ali Ben Bongo—son of Omar Bongo, the late 41-year ruler of the oil-rich, equatorial...

The US military is cancelling a contract with a public relations firm after coming under flak for using the company to rate the output of journalists reporting on the Afghanistan war, a Pentagon spokesman has said. "The Bagram Regional Contracting Center intends to execute a termination of the media analyst contract ... for the convenience of the US government," military spokesperson Lieutenant...

Tamil journalist JS Tissainayagam has been sentenced to 20 years hard labour on charges of supporting terrorism and inciting racial hatred, becoming the first journalist to be convicted under Sri Lanka's draconian anti-terrorism law. An English-language columnist for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times and editor of the news website OutreachSL, Tissainayagam was arrested on March 7, 2008. He spent five...

An Istanbul criminal court has ordered the closure, for one month, of Günlük newspaper – which is known for raising issues related to Turkey’s Kurdish minority - over an article considered by the court to constitute propaganda for a terrorist organisation. The article was published earlier this month. The verdict, handed down on August 22, did not specify why the article was deemed to be of a...

Iraqi authorities prevented the news media from covering bombings in Baghdad and the southern province of Babil on last week, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “We wonder why the Iraqi authorities forbade journalists to approach the scenes of the bombings and interview victims,” RSF said. “Was it to reduce the broadcasting of shocking images? Was it to conceal successful terrorist...

Radio Bethlehem 2000, a radio station located near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, was shut down Tuesday evening by Israeli soldiers, who seized its equipment, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The summary closure of an independent Palestinian radio station and the arbitrary seizure of its equipment constitute outright censorship,” RSF said. “The station’s management was given no...