Ethics and Freedom

Amer Abu Arfa, a correspondent for the Shihab news agency, has been convicted and imprisoned in connection with his news coverage. The agency, based in the Gaza Strip, is perceived by the Palestinian Authority as being pro-Hamas. Abu Arfa was arrested on May 11 by Palestinian security forces, according to his father, who told Shihab that his son was taken from their home by the Palestinian...

Two employees were injured in an arson attack Friday on the offices of the Voice of Asia Network in the heart of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo. The fire destroyed the studios of the group’s Siyatha TV station, but the network’s three radio stations have been able to remain on the air. The Associated Press, quoting a spokesman for the company, said a dozen men, armed with assault rifles and gasoline...

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Nasser AlAhmad AlSabah has filed a complaint against Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Egyptian daily Al-Dustour and Kuwaiti journalist Mohammed Alweshaihi accusing them of insult and libel. Lately, Al-Dustour had reported on the trials of Kuwaiti journalist Mohamed AlJassim, and slammed the Kuwaiti PM for being behind them, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has...

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the bill to decriminalise defamation in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The approval of the bill on July 22 by the local Congress, actively promoted by ARTICLE 19, significantly advances efforts to persuade the Mexican government to fully decriminalise defamation nationwide, in accordance with Human Rights Committee’s observations. Mexico is one of the most restrictive and...

The police of Suichang County in east China's Zhejiang Province cancelled a detention warrant for a journalist who was accused by a public company of defamation Thursday morning, state-owned Xinhua news agency has reported. The police of Lishui City, which administers Suichang, ordered the county's public security bureau to cancel the detention warrant for Qiu Ziming, a reporter of Economic...

Journalists employed by two radio stations in Yopal, the capital of the northeastern department of Casanare, stopped work today Thursday and demonstrated silently, with their mouths gagged, in the city's main square to protest against a lawsuit targeting eight of their colleagues and to demand respect for freedom of information. Eight journalists who work for Violeta Stéreo or La Voz de Yopal are...

Authorities arrested a journalist on Tuesday on criminal defamation charges in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hours earlier, in an unrelated incident, armed men briefly forced the city’s three main opposition broadcasters off the air, according to local journalists and news reports. Pascal Mulunda, editor of weekly Le Monitor, has been held in Kinshasa's Penitentiary and...

Russian editor Pyotr Lipatov has been exonerated of charges that he fomented extremism by publishing articles that created “negative stereotypes and negative images of members of the security forces,” among other faults. A court on Tuesday threw out the case against Lipatov saying that the the expert testimony that prosecutors had relied upon to prove that the articles were extremist was...

A teaching assistant at the London School of Economics accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages over claims that he had "groomed" a suicide bomber, the Press Association has reported. Reza Pankhurst brought proceedings at London's High Court over stories which appeared in the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard in January. His counsel, Lucy Moorman, told Justice Tugendhat that they falsely...

The US State Department has reversed its decision to deny a visa to a leading Colombian journalist whose reporting has been highly critical of the country's US-allied president. Morris, his wife and their two children can now travel to Harvard for a yearlong Nieman Foundation fellowship for mid-career journalists. "Happy, happy! This was terrible," a relieved Hollman Morris, an independent TV...