A hardline Iranian newspaper has called the French first lady a "prostitute" and recommended she be put to death for supporting a woman sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for adultery. Under the headline "French prostitutes enter the human rights uproar," the Kayhan daily newspaper referred Saturday to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as a "prostitute" after she released an open letter in support of Sakineh...
A Twitter experiment that went awry has landed a sportswriter for the Washington Post with a one-month suspension. Mike Wise, a respected Post columnist, was suspended by the newspaper on Tuesday, a day after he posted a fake report on his Twitter account. "Roethlisberger will get five games, I'm told," Wise wrote on his Twitter feed, @MikeWiseguy, on Monday in a reference to the length of the...
An attempt has been made on the life of Dunya TV reporter Hafiz Muhammad Imran Shehzad in Sialkot, in the northeastern Pakistan province of Punjab. This followed his coverage of the lynching of two brothers in the presence of police officers in Sialkot, which shocked Pakistani public opinion. Aged 27, Imran has been hospitalised with the injuries he received when he was attacked and badly beaten...
Bahrainian prosecutors have banned journalists from reporting on the detentions of dozens of opposition activists. Authorities detained Shiite opposition activists in a series of arrests that began on August 13, according to Bloomberg and other news reports. The New York Times reported Thursday that as many as 159 people had been detained, and that later detainees included people not known as...
Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika last week threatened to shut down newspapers that “tarnish” his government’s image. The president, who was speaking at an agriculture show in the capital city of Liongwe, seemed to be referring to a story in the privately-owned Malawi News Daily, reports said. The story quoted a report from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an economic...
The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed grave concern for the state of media freedom in Ukraine after a court ruling forced one TV station off the air and limited the licences of another. At a hearing in Kiev on Monday, August 30, the two privately-run TV channels, TVi and 5 Kanal, were told their broadcast frequencies would be cancelled after the court found in favour of allegations...
It was the phrase "with opprobrious underworld connotations" that Viktor Biryukov, chief press spokesman for the Moscow police, used to explain the reasons for a business reputation protection claim lodged against the newspaper Noviye Izvestia (NI). The claim filing followed a January 2010 series of NI articles citing complaints by residents of the (now partially destroyed) village of Rechnik, on...
The judge for the Specialized Interdistrict Economic Court of Almaty, Gulnar Meyrzhanova, has dismissed the charges in a lawsuit filed against the independent Kazakh newspaper Central Asia Monitor for "protection of honour, dignity and business reputation". The judge on August 23 also ordered the release of the newspaper's seized property, Almaty-based press freedom group Adil Soz has reported. On...
A government accusation that an Ecuadoran journalist "committed terrorism" is being described as retaliation for his harsh criticism of local authorities. On July 19, an unidentified individual tossed a tear gas canister to disperse a crowd during a visit of President Rafael Correa in the northern town of La Concordia, the Guayaquil-based newspaper El Universo reported. Gas reached the stage where...
Uganda's Constitutional Court has declared the country's criminal sedition offence, which has been used to prosecute journalists, unconstitutional. The ruling was based on a 2005 constitutional review petition filed by the East African Media Institute and CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Andrew Mwenda over political radio commentary critical of the government. Mwenda told New York...
