Ethics and Freedom

A Dakar court Thursday gave Abdou Latif Coulibaly, the editor of the weekly La Gazette, a three-month suspended jail sentenced and fined him 10 million CFA francs (15,267 euros) for allegedly defaming a Senegalese businessman close to President Wade by accusing him of acting fraudulently in his dealings with the government. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) condemned...

Belarusian authorities must drop politicized libel and insult charges against Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno-based correspondent for Poland's largest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, and release him immediately, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Prosecutors in Grodno opened a criminal investigation against Poczobut on March 28 and charged him with insulting...

A criminal defamation case has been filed by Pradel Henriquez, the director-general of state-owned Télévision Nationale d’Haïti (TNH), in Port-au-Prince against three TNH journalists – Eddy Jackson Alexis, Josias Pierre and Jacques Innocent – who say they were fired for being critical of President-Elect Michel Martelly. Alexis was TNH’s news editor. Henriquez, who also heads state-owned Radio...

Cuba's not the only one accusing journalists of being moles for U.S. intelligence. Investigations of FBI memos indicate journalists from ABC News and Fox News broke the sacred bonds of the reporter-confidential source relationship, acting as informants for the FBI in the 1990s. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) revealed earlier this week that a senior ABC News journalist was treated as a...

Severe harassment by Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces targeting Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza has had a pronounced chilling effect on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. In a new report, Human Rights Watch called on Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza to hold their security forces to account for systematic, severe abuses and...

The South and East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has launched a specialised website dedicated to press freedom-related developments in Hungary. The website www.hungarypressfreedom.org contains news, exclusive monthly reports, legal and political analyses, as well as expert opinions on the Hungarian Media Constitution and Media Act (Media Law) and its subsequent amendments. The website follows...

The Reuters news agency on Tuesday vehemently denied an accusation made on Cuban state television that one of its journalists helped arrange a meeting between an undercover Cuban agent and a US diplomat who the programme described as a CIA operative, Canadian Press has reported. The allegations against former Reuters bureau chief Anthony Boadle were made on a Monday evening program called "Cuba's...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the closure of a provincial Ecuadoran radio station and called on local regulators to allow the station to resume broadcasting. Voz de la Selva Esmeralda Oriental Canela radio, known for its critical coverage of local authorities, had appealed an order to close the station on bogus administrate violations, according to CPJ research. The...

Beijing’s reach does not stop at China’s borders. The Chinese government successfully pressured the Vietnamese authorities to arrest two people, Vu Duc Trung and Le Van Thanh, for operating an unauthorised short-wave radio station that was broadcasting in Chinese from a farm outside Hanoi, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The organisation is worried by...

Two new Israeli laws affecting Israel's Palestinian Arab residents would promote discrimination and stifle free expression, Human Rights Watch said today. One would authorize rural, Jewish-majority communities to reject Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and other "unsuitable" applicants for residency, and the other would chill expression regarding a key moment in the history of Palestinian...