Ethics and Freedom

Ethiopia's High Court today convicted four editors and three publishers of now-defunct weeklies of anti-state charges linked to their coverage of the government’s handling of disputed parliamentary elections in 2005, according to local journalists. Two of the editors were convicted of charges carrying life imprisonment or death. The journalists were arrested after a massive government crackdown on...

Sami al-Haj spends his days alone, thinking of his wife and the son he barely knows. He spends his time thinking of the world beyond the razor wire, of the world away from the walls and bars, the orange jumpsuit he is forced to wear and the military guards that oversee him. He thinks too of his fellow prisoners incarcerated along with him at Guantanamo Bay and the anguish they endure. And when he...

(MEAA/IFEX) - The Media Alliance welcomes the Prime Minister's intervention to prevent journalists being subjected to police checks as a victory for common sense. The Alliance and Press Gallery Committee strongly objected to the proposal, which vested the discretionary power to knock back gallery licence applications with the Department of Parliamentary Services. Such a precedent would have...

New York, June 6, 2007—A court in the capital, Banjul, on Tuesday fined a reporter for a now-banned newspaper in connection with a March 2006 story reporting the arrest of several suspects in the aftermath of a purported coup attempt, according to local journalists and news reports. Lamin Fatty of the private bi-weekly The Independent was fined 50,000 dalasi (US$1,850) on charges of publishing...

An obscure Islamist group has threatened to behead female television broadcasters if they do not wear strict Islamic dress. The threat to "cut throats from vein to vein" was delivered by the Righteous Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops. The new threat was the first time the organisation targeted a specific group...

Hundreds of protestors took to the streets after the Pakistan government blocked three private television news channels. Geo TV, Ary one TV, and Aaj TV said they had been kept off air because of their coverage of the political crisis over Musharraf's March 9 ouster of the country's chief justice, according to news reports. President Pervez Musharraf Monday imposed fresh curbs on the electronic...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hustler magazine is looking for some scandalous sex in Washington again -- and willing to pay for it. "Have you had a sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?" read a full-page advertisement taken out by Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine in Sunday's Washington Post. It offered $1 million for documented...

The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Iranian authorities to drop criminal charges against an Iranian-American journalist working for U.S.-backed Radio Farda, to return the journalist’s seized passport, and to allow her to travel freely. On May 15, the Special Security Bureau of the Revolutionary Court Public Prosecutor’s office charged Parnaz Azima with disseminating propaganda...

NEW DELHI: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a defamation complaint against Aroon Purie, Editor-in-Chief of India Today, Prabhu Chawla, Editor, and Mohini Bhullar, Publishing Director, for publishing a news item on `Gandhiji's assassination' referring to Nathuram Godse as an RSS worker. Acting on the complaint filed by Mukesh Garg, the trial court by an order dated October 13, 2004...

Reporters Without Borders today strongly condemned the British parliament’s approval of amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, including one that would bar access to details of MPs’ expenses. “If these measures become law, it would be a setback,” the press freedom organisation said. “Access to information is a basic principle of democracy and for MPs to hide details of their spending is a...