Conflict Journalism

The Reuters news agency says Syrian authorities have freed one of its photographers after holding him for six days. Reuters said the 50-year-old Khaled al-Hariri was freed Sunday and told colleagues that he was well. Al-Hariri was one of four Reuters journalists held over the last week in Syria. The other three have already been released and ordered to leave the country. A fifth Reuters journalist...

Journalists in Somalia are getting caught in the crossfire of increased fighting between joint government and African Union forces against Al-Shabaab insurgents. Radio Simba sports reporter Ahmed Hassan was hit in a crossfire while covering a soccer game in Mogadishu on Wednesday, according to local journalists. Hassan was rushed to Medina Hospital, where doctors performed surgery on his stomach...

Dana Bakir, a cameraman working for Iraq's Naliya Radio and Television (NRT), has been missing since April 1, when security forces attacked journalists who were covering a demonstration in Freedom Square (Saray Azadi) in Sulaymaniyah. NRT director-general Twana Othman said he regarded his cameraman’s disappearance as a case of abduction. Othman told Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

Despite the government’s denials, the demands of Turkey’s Kurdish minority continue to be off-limits for the country’s media. Six people have been charged or convicted this month under Anti-Terrorist Law No. 3713 for writing about the subject. The Anti-Terrorist Law will be 20 years old on April 12. It quickly became a weapon that could be used relentlessly against journalists who dare to broach...

European regulators put pressure today on 16 of the EU’s 27 states in moves to ensure bloc-wide media law is implemented at national level. The European Commission has written to the 16, including major European Union television markets in Britain, France and Italy, seeking clarification on “a wide variety of issues” concerning the law’s implementation, says an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report...

A CNN crew was detained Wednesday in Manama while interviewing a prominent Bahraini human rights defender, according to a Twitter posting by the network and a CPJ interview. The detentions come amid a recent series of repressive actions by the Bahraini government, which included Wednesday's arrest of a well-known blogger. Anti-press actions were also reported in Egypt, Syria, and Libya, CPJ...

Two Iraqi journalists, Sabah al-Bazi and Muammar Khadir Abdelwahad, were among the fatal victims of Tuesday’s devastating insurgent attack on the Salahadin provincial council’s headquarter in the city of Tikrit (160 km north of Baghdad). Agence France-Presse quoted a police spokesman as putting the toll from the attack at least 65 dead and 100 wounded. Saad Khaled, a cameraman working for the...

Reuters television producer Ayat Basma and cameraman Ezzat Baltaji were released on March 28 after being held for two days but Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has meanwhile learnt that two other journalists were arrested on March 27. The London-based Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Centre identified them as Doha Hassan, who works for Orient TV and several websites...

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal supervisory agency for communications, information technology and mass media, has announced a contest for the design of software that it could use to monitor online media outlets for “extremist” content, according to Lenta.ru. The deadline for submitting designs is August 15 and the deadline the agency has set itself for testing submissions is December 15...

Security agents with Somalia's Interim Transitional Government arrested the director and news editor of Radio Shabelle on Sunday after the independent station aired a report saying the president was unable to visit areas recently captured by government and AU forces due to security concerns, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. The Ministry of Information deemed the March 22 report...