Ethics and Freedom

Moroccan journalist Yahya Bentahar was deported last week, shortly after he landed at Algiers airport, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Bentahar, who works for the Rabat-based weekly Assahrae Al Ousbouiya, had planned to do a report on the political situation in Algeria in the wake of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's reelection. The Algerian embassy in Rabat had told Assahrae Al...

Media representatives are frequently being prevented by Moldovan authorities from reporting freely, especially following parliamentary elections in April this year, the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) has said. According to SEEMO, on July 12 two journalists, Ivan Melnic and Vladimir Thorik from the Moldovan newspaper Moldavskie Vedomosti, were forcefully prevented from entering a...

After reporting 10 claims of women being raped since a new police chief came to the Turkish town of Diyarbakır, an issue of the Azadiya Welat newspaper was confiscated, IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. The Diyarbakır 1st Criminal Court of Peace confiscated the July 8, 2009 issue of Azadiya Welat because it reported the claims of a 23-year-old woman who said she had been raped by...

Six bloggers based in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian were arrested at the end of last month on charges of defamation and high treason, according to delayed reports received by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Lawyers have told the Paris-based press freedom organisation they are being held for reporting that a young woman died after being gangraped in February 2008. “Reporting a woman...

The Propaganda Department to Chinese news media and news websites has censored reports about a corruption case with links to President Hu Jintao’s son and about the closure of a human rights law centre, according to Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The Propaganda Department’s readiness to suppress news is an insult to the rights of Chinese citizens to be informed about matters of...

The Sri Lankan government has refused to renew the press visa of the Associated Press (AP) bureau chief in the country, Ravi Nessman. Nessman, an American national who has been based in Sri Lanka since 2007, was forced to leave the country on July 20 after his visa was not renewed. Advisor to the head of state, Lucien Rajakarunanayake, said the refusal was because foreign correspondents were not...

An iconic Spanish Civil War photo that shows a Republican soldier at the apparent moment he was fatally hit in the back by a bullet was in fact staged, a Spanish newspaper claimed on Friday. "(Robert) Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting," wrote Barcelona-based newspaper El Periodico which carried out a study of the photograph taken in September 1936, the third...

The Madras High Court has dismissed Union Minister A Raja’s plea for extension of stay restraining Tamil magazine Junior Vikatan from publishing articles relating to him and his family over allegations of irregularities in allocation of spectrum to telecom players, according to news reports. The Hindu had details on the case: [ Link] Dismissing an application in a civil suit, with costs of Rs.10...

The media has been criticised by the Delhi High Court, which asked it to remain within the “Lakshman Rekha” or limits while reporting on criminal trials and not “go overboard”. While ruling on the infamous BMW hit-and-run case, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported, Justice Kailash Gambhir said: “No doubt the media has an important role in disseminating information, creating public opinion...

Niger's privately owned press on Monday started a week-long strike to protest a presidential decree that allows sanctions against the media without warning, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. "The strike is on and it is being well followed," Boubacar Diallo of the Niger Association of Independent Press Editors (ANEPI) told AFP. The three main dailies — L'Enqueteur, Le Canard Dechaine and la...