Ethics and Freedom

A Canadian supreme court decision ordering the Toronto-based National Post newspaper to surrender documents pointing to a conflict of interest in a loan that a state-owned bank gave to a friend of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is being seen as a deterrent for confidentiality of sources. The ruling, issued on May 7, jeopardises the protection of sources, a fundamental principle without which...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has criticised a "highly surprising" court decision against Panamanian newspaper La Prensa that ordered payment of US$300,000 in damages to a former public prosecutor for libel after the newspaper published official reports on irregularities that took place under her watch. On April 30, Second Civil Circuit Court Judge Miriam Cheng de Aguilar ordered La...

The prosecutor-general in Kuwait has forbidden the Kuwaiti media to publish any more reports about the dismantling of an Iranian spy network, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The disbanding of the network, allegedly consisting of six Kuwaitis, two stateless Arabs employed by the army and various Arab citizens, was revealed by a media report on May 1. The spy ring dismantled by the...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two parties that control Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, have reached a “tacit strategic accord” to restrict the freedom of journalists as much as possible, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “Anything goes for the KDP and the PUK as far as muzzling the press is concerned,” RSF said. The security forces...

The government is mulling over the formation of a Broadcasting Authority of India, which would address broadcast related issues, agencies have reported. Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni said that, "While content regulation is a subject on which the government has been holding discussions with broadcasters, we are looking at setting up an authority for addressing issues related...

A sweeping new bill in Russia can return censorship rights to Russia’s KGB successor, the Federal Security Service, if passed, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Amendments to the country’s administrative code and the law on FSB activities would give the security agency the right to summon journalists for questioning and demand that editors remove articles that “aid extremists”...

Hang Chakra, editor and publisher of the opposition-aligned Khmer Machas Srok daily newspaper in Cambodia has been released from prison, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He was granted a royal pardon on April 13 after serving nine months of a one-year sentence on a “criminal disinformation” conviction over a series of critical articles on alleged high-level government...

A court in the western city of Ural ordered on April 21 a local newspaper, Uralskaya Nedela (Ural Week) and one of its reporters, Lukpan Akhmedyarov, to pay 20 million tenges (136,000 dollars) in damages to an oil industry company, especially as the size of the award could force the weekly to close, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In an article headlined “Hidden invitations to tender...

Moscow’s Savyolovsky district court on April 21 ordered French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) to pay 250,000 rubles (6,000 euros) in damages to the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi for a September 2009 article about Nashi’s activities, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Nashi has also sued the French daily Le Monde, the British daily The Independent, and other media. The youth...

Tunisian journalist Zuhair Makhlouf, contributor to Tunisian news website Assabil Online, was recently assaulted, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a telephone interview, Makhlouf told New York-based CPJ that eight plainclothes police officers arrived at his home at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and informed him that he was under arrest. Makhlouf said he asked them to show him an...