Ethics and Freedom

A Paris court has found Tahiti-Pacifique editor Alex du Prel guilty of defaming public prosecutor Jean Bianconi in an article criticising the judicial probe into the 1997 disappearance of Jean-Pascal “JPK” Couraud, a leading investigative journalist based in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The court on Tuesday fined Du Prel 1,000 euros and...

Kazakh legislators on Thursday passed an Internet Bill, pending before Parliament since April 29, which will drastically curb online freedom by making it possible to bring criminal prosecutions against bloggers over what they write, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Kazakh organisation Journalist In Danger have reported. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has not yet signed it into law. “There was a...

The privately-owned Ecuadorian TV station Teleamazonas has just been told it is being fined 40 dollars for “broadcasting unverified information.” The notification came just a few weeks after it was fined 20 dollars on June 3 for “broadcasting a bullfight outside permitted viewing times.” The station, which is owned by banker Fidel Egas, could be shut down for 90 days if it receives a third...

A Gambian reporter arrested on Monday while covering a pre-trial hearing in the sedition case of seven journalists jailed last week, was still being held without charge late Tuesday, according to local journalists and news reports. Augustine Kanjia of the daily, the Point, was being held at a police station in Serrekunda, Gambia's largest city, according to defence lawyer Assan Martin. A...

The Associated Press is adopting a stringent social-networking policy for its employees, informing them to police their Facebook profiles “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards," says a WIRED report. The policy comes weeks after an AP reporter, Richard Richtmyer, was reprimanded for posting a comment to his own Facebook profile criticizing the Sacramento-based...

Press freedom campaigner Robert Ménard has resigned as director-general of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, which he had headed since April 2008. Ménard stepped down on June 19 because the Qatari authorities wanted to restrict what Centre said. Other members of the staff have also resigned. “For several months we were an independent voice that condemned violations and had only one concern – the...

The director of the Mauritanian news website Taqadoumy ( http://www.taqadoumy.com), Hanevy Ould Dehah, has been arrested on the orders of the prosecutor’s office in the capital Nouakchott, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) . The arrest followed a defamation complaint by presidential election candidate, Ibrahima Moctar Sarr, president of the opposition party Alliance for Justice and...

Seven Gambian journalists charged with sedition last week for criticising the president have been freed on bail, while two other detainees were released without charge, local journalists and the press union told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday. Magistrate Sainabou Wadda, presiding in Kanifing Court, outside the capital, Banjul, Monday granted bail of 200,000 dalasi, (US$7,547)...

A crackdown against journalists and cyber-dissidents is continuing in Iran with both Iranian and foreign journalists caught in the eye of the post-election storm, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. Among the latest arrests was that of a correspondent for the US magazine Newsweek, Maziar Bahari, picked up at his home in Tehran on June 21. “The authorities are using all possible methods to...

Iranian security agents arrested about 25 employees of Kalameh Sabz, the reformist newspaper owned by presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, after raiding the paper's offices on Monday evening, according to local and international news reports. Alireza Beheshti, the paper's editor-in-chief, told the Farsi-language service of Deutsche-Welle that the agents, in plain clothes but armed, rounded...