Ethics and Freedom

A reporting team of "SAMAA TV", a private news channel, was attacked by unknown armed individuals who detained the crew for over two hours on January 1 in the industrial town of Faisalabad in Pakistan's largest Punjab province, according to delayed reports. The reporting team included reporter Mannan Ashraf, cameraman Salman Ashraf, trainees Muhammad Sajid and Muhammad Saeed, satellite engineer...

Britain's ITV News was on Wednesday banned from a police press conference after running a report criticising the police's handling of an investigation into the murder of Joanna Yeates, a landscape architect whose body was found on the outskirts of Bristol last month, the Guardian newspaper reported. Avon & Somerset police have complained to Britain's broadcast media regulator, Ofcom, about what...

Hungary's newly-instituted media council (NMHH) took over an inquiry into Tilos radio station launched in September, according to a letter from the council on the station's website. The inquiry relates to the station's broadcast of two songs by American rapper Ice-T in its 17:30 programme. According to the letter from the NMHH, the songs' lyrics were objectionable, and violated sections 5/B. (3)...

The former editorial manager and concessionaire of the Kurdish newspaper Azadiya Welat, Emine Demir, received a prison sentence of 138 years on charges of "spreading propaganda for the PKK", the militant Kurdistan Workers Party. The sentence is based on articles Demir accepted for publication in the paper, according to IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET). The 24-year-old journalist was convicted...

The Broadcasting Council (BC) of Uganda has blocked privately-owned radio stations from live broadcasting a conference organised by the Buganda Kingdom, according to the Human Rights Network for Journalists. The Ttabamiruka is an annual conference organised by the Buganda Kingdom to review and discuss the social, cultural, economic and developmental issues of the kingdom. The theme for the 2010...

A Cambodian man who shared web articles with two of his colleagues was convicted on incitement charges and sentenced to six months in jail under a new penal code, reports Human Rights Watch, which called the use of the law "a huge step backward for free expression in Cambodia." On December 17, Seng Kunnaka, a Cambodian employee with the United Nations World Food Programme in Phnom Penh, was...

A prosecutor in Rwanda has requested long prison sentences for two newspaper journalists who, after six months in pre-trial detention, are being tried before a Kigali high court on a range of charges including genocide denial and inciting public disorder, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The prosecution on Wednesday requested 33 years in prison and a...

President of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud Barzani has announced in an interview with the pro-KDP daily Khebat that he is to withdraw a complaint made by his party against two columnists on the non partisan newspaper Awene, Marwan Wrya Qani’ and Aras Fatah, over their article that appeared in June 2010, “What did the president of the autonomous region of Kurdistan say?” Paris-based press...

The LambdaIstanbul Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Solidarity Association has protested against a fine issued by the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) to the HabertUrk television station after the station broadcast a discussion on homosexuality. The members of the association called on RTUK president Davut Dursun to apologise for putting forward that the programme on the subject...

The misdemeanors appeals court in Egypt fined Abdel Halim Kandil, former editor of the Sout elUmmah newspaper, EGP 10,000 (approx. US$1,700) and Ahmed Abulkheir, a journalist at the same paper, EGP 15,000 (approx. US$2,600). They were both convicted on December 25 of insult and libel in relation to their coverage of filmmaker Akram elSobky's wedding party, according to the Arabic Network for Human...