Ethics and Freedom

Tweeting will be allowed from hearings in the UK Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, it was announced Thurday last week. Supreme Court justices are "content" for journalists, members of the public and legal teams to use "live text based communications" to let the outside world know what is happening in the courtroom, according to Press Gazette. The move came in guidance published by the...

Harsh prison sentences given to two journalists Friday under Rwanda's vague and sweeping laws against "genocide ideology" and "divisionism" will have a chilling effect on the Rwandan press, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A panel of three High Court judges in the capital, Kigali, sentenced Agnès Uwimana, former editor of the now-defunct private weekly Umurabyo, to 17 years in...

Ecuadoran authorities interrupted a news program critical of the Ecuadoran government on Monday to air an official rebuttal, a practice that has become standard in the administration of President Rafael Correa, according to research by the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ called on Ecuadoran authorities to stop this practice, which has a chilling effect on public discourse. Last week during...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has joined the Union of Journalists in Tajikistan (TUJ) and the National Association of Independent Media in Tajikistan (NANSMIT) in condemning the prosecution of the independent weekly Asia-Plus, undertaken by the head of the Organised Crime Control Department (UBOP), Anvar Tagaimurodov, in violation of international and Tajik law...

A Zagreb criminal court’s decision on Monday dismissed the charges that prosecutors had brought against the journalist Zeljko Peratovic at interior minister Tomislav Karamarko’s request, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). For the past two years, Peratovic has been target of several prosecutions initiated by Karamarko accusing him variously of defamation...

Chinese journalists are to undergo six-month training courses that will teach them how to “eradicate false news, improve the feeling of social responsibility and reinforce journalistic ethics.” The initiative comes from the Propaganda Department, directly linked to the Communist Party, and follows its announcement of 10 directives relating to the press in 2011. “In short, to make journalists...

Two newspaper journalists based in the eastern city of Port Sudan have been accused of trying to overthrow the constitution, a charge punishable by hanging, just for raising the possibility of eastern Sudan’s secession in an article, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The press freedom organization calls on the judicial authorities to see reason. It is...

The Kiev administrative supreme court on Wednesday decided to uphold a lower court’s decision to withdraw the over-the-air broadcast frequencies that were assigned to two privately-owned TV stations, TVi and 5 Kanal, in January 2010, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The lower court’s decision was issued on June 8, 2010 in response to a complaint by...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed a lawsuit against writer Ahmet Altan and Taraf newspaper. According to IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET), the prime minister recently launched a case against the Beyoglu Troupe of Actors and prior to that, against writers Ataol Behramoglu and Oktay Eksi. Erdogan is now claiming TL50,000 (€ 25,000) in compensation from Altan and Taraf, on...

The Mae Sot Immigration office in Thailand freed John San Lin, a Burmese freelance journalist, and his colleague Pascal Schatterman, a Belgian national, on the evening of January 24, after they paid a fine of THB500 (US$16). The pair were fined for violating the Immigration Act and were released soon after, John San Lin told Mizzima. They were detained on January 20 in Mae Sot after returning to...