Ethics and Freedom

KABUL: Afghanistan’s government, competing with the Taliban for public support and trying to fend off accusations that it is corrupt and ineffective, is moving to curb one of its own most impressive achievements: the country’s flourishing independent news media. Under President Hamid Karzai, a 1960s media law was updated and has been considered the most liberal in the region. Six independent...

New Delhi: In a one-off case, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government has the power to ban or forfeit any publication that endangers public order, even if it means restricting the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. “Government has the power to confiscate material, which contain references that could spark violence,” the Bench comprising Justices B P Singh and H S...

Abu Dhabi: A court fined an Arabic newspaper's editor-in-chief Dh20,000 for maligning two dignitaries by publishing an article on how their horse was stripped of an award for taking a banned substance. The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of First Instance acquitted the chief executive of the Dubai-based newspaper 'because he wasn't liable for the editorial content'. The UAE national editor-in-chief and...

Three nations in sub-Saharan Africa are among the places worldwide where press freedom has deteriorated the most over the last five years, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found. Ethiopia, where the government launched a massive crackdown on the private press by shutting newspapers and jailing editors, leads CPJ’s dishonor roll. The African nations of the Gambia and...

AMMAN, Jordan: Jordanian authorities lifted a ban on a local newspaper's edition confiscated last week because it carried an article deemed "harmful" to Palestinians, the head of Jordanian Press Association said Friday. Tareq al-Monami told The Associated Press that the April 30 edition of the semimonthly newspaper Al-Majd which was seized during printing can be reprinted. Al-Monami said his...

New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) On World Press Freedom Day, Thursday, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi announced that All India Radio and Doordarshan would have a 50:50 ratio of men and women for anchoring, reporting and all other news-related work from August 15, India's Independence Day. While addressing a seminar here jointly organised by the ministry of women and child...

New York, May 3, 2007—Jose Miguel Arroyo, husband of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has withdrawn 46 criminal libel suits he had filed against 11 journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed today’s news but said the suits should never have been brought. Withdrawal of the cases—which came because Arroyo was “grateful for surviving a delicate open-heart surgery with a...

May 2, 2007 · The California Supreme Court ruled last week that it is constitutional for courts to issue limited injunctions prohibiting defendants from repeating statements that were determined at trial to be defamatory. The ruling arose from a case where the defendant, Anne Lemen, vocally criticized and protested the noise and activities occurring at a bar, the Balboa Island Village Inn, close...

AMMAN, Jordan: Jordanian authorities confiscated an edition of a local newspaper after it tried to print a front page article containing material authorities claimed harmed relations with the Palestinian government, its chief editor said Monday. Fahd Al-Rimawi, editor of Al-Majd, told the Associated Press that the April 30 edition of the semimonthly newspaper was confiscated during its printing...

Liberian information minister Laurence Bropleh continues to make a stalwart but surprising defence of his government’s targeting of the Monrovia Independent newspaper for publishing an obscene photograph of another cabinet minister. Disgraced Minister of Presidential Affairs Willis Knuckles tendered his resignation on February 25 after a picture of him in a sex act with two young girls surfaced on...