Conflict Journalism

Many embedded journalists are being screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the US military in a positive light, the Stars and Stripes newspaper has reported. Stars and Stripes, a military newspaper partly funded by the Pentagon but editorially independent, said private contractors had been...

An Urdu-languge daily Asaap has closed down after it came under “tremendous pressure” from the Pakistan government and the security forces which were controlling its offices both inside and out. Editor, Abid Mir, speaking on the telephone from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan told Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) that he had “published the last edition on August 18” as a result of the...

Following the brutal murder on Sunday of radio journalist Bruno Koko Chirambiza in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo—the third journalist to be slain in the restive region since 2007—the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Congolese authorities to end the alarming pattern of impunity in journalist murders. Eight unidentified assailants in civilian clothing attacked Chirambiza...

Masked assailants on Monday stormed a radio station and a television outlet critical of the country's interim government, forcing the broadcasters off the air in the latest attack on the Honduran media, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. At 8 p.m., eight individuals wearing ski masks forced their way into the Tegucigalpa offices shared by Radio Globo and Canal 36, local press...

Two foreign freelance journalists have complete a year in captivity in Somalia. Canadian reporter Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were taken hostage by an armed group as they were returning to Mogadishu from Afgoye refugee camp, 20 km west of the Somali capital, on August 23, 2008. At the time of their abduction, Lindhout and Brennan were being accompanied by Abdifatah

Gunmen shot dead an Afghan television journalist and severely wounded his colleague Monday in northwestern Pakistan. Janullah Hashim Zada was gunned down as he travelled on a public minibus from Torkham on the Afghan border to the main northwestern city of Peshawar, a Khyber Agency official told the Associated Press. Zada's colleague, Ali Khan, was seriously hurt with a gunshot wound to the neck...

The Hamas interior ministry has decided to deny Palestinian and foreign journalists access to the southern city of Rafah and to all hospitals in the Gaza Strip until further notice. The ban was issued on August 14, after fighting broke out in Rafah between the Hamas government and a radical Islamist group. "The Hamas-led government's interior ministry has again demonstrated a desire to control...

The Afghanistan government has imposed a media blackout on election-related violence during Thursday's presidential polls. Afghanistan's National Security Council released a statement through the Foreign Ministry Tuesday and official spokesmen contacted news bureaus by telephone to discourage reporting on violent incidents from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, according to local and international...

U.S. immigration officials have released a Pakistani journalist who reports for Voice of America's Deewa Radio and whose home was destroyed by Taliban militants last month in northwestern Pakistan. Rahman Bunairee was freed Wednesday, more than one week after he arrived in the United States and was taken into custody at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, VOA reported. The Department...

The violence that threatens journalists working for Afghanistan’s news media has created a climate that does not favour free and impartial coverage of the August 20 crucial presidential election, now just a day away. Media coverage is also affected by the fact that political obstruction has prevented the adoption of a new press law, a situation that Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has