Ethics and Freedom

A Welsh councillor has been ordered to pay what is believed to be the first libel damages to a political rival as a result of comments posted to Twitter, says a Press Gazette report. Caerphilly county councillor Colin Elsbury was ordered to pay £3,000 damages plus costs after using the social network to wrongly claim Eddie Talbot had been removed from a polling station by police during a by...

A judge's instruction backing the fair use of photos snapped by landowners at a controversial mining project in Madang, Papua New Guinea, is being welcomed by the Pacific Freedom Forum. "The judiciary in Papua New Guinea deserves praise for refusing to gag the use of photos," said PFF chair Susuve Laumaea, of Papua New Guinea. PFF has reviewed the background into the case brought by the...

The Salvadoran Congress ratified the Public Information Access Law on Thursday, March 3, after accepting some of the changes proposed by President Mauricio Funes, reported news agency EFE, according to the Knight Centre for Journalism in the Americas. The details: [ Link] However while the law will go into effect until 30 days after its official publication, Salvadorans will have to wait a year...

Investigative journalist Suzanne Breen has won libel damages from UK's National Union of Journalists over an article about her which appeared in union magazine – The Journalist. Union member Breen was backed by the NUJ in a legal battle with the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2009 which had sought to force her to disclose information which could lead to exposing the identity of sources in...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has deplored the decision by the police in the Republic of the Maldives to summon two journalists for interrogation after their newspaper carried news of a pornographic video racket operating in parts of the country. Ahmed Hamdhoon and Ismail Naseer, who researched and wrote the story in the Dhivehi-language edition of the daily Haveeru, were...

The 6th Judicial Circuit Civil Law Court at the Temple of Justice in Liberia has denied a motion for retrial filed by legal counsellors representing the Frontpage Africa newspaper and its editor-in-chief, Rodney Sieh, in a US$2 million libel suit filed by former agriculture minister Chris Toe. In his final ruling on February 23, Judge Yussif Kaba said the court is of the opinion that the jury...

Golden Maunganidze, the editor of the privately owned weekly, The Masvingo Mirror, accused of defaming ZANU PF Masvingo provincial chairman Lovemore Matuke, was freed by the courts after the state declined to prosecute him on February 24. The State said there was no evidence warranting prosecution. Maunganidze was arrested on February 23 in the southern town of Masvingo on allegations of...

US ambassador to Kosovo Christopher Dell has written an open letter to the country's Independent Media Commission criticising Express, Koha Ditore and Koha Vision TV for using blown-up photos of text messages on a smartphone screen to show that he provided the country's new president with last-minute advice in parliament before a vote that secured him the presidency. It was clear from the photos...

Kabul Weekly claims it has been put out of business after daring to criticise President Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday staff met with their editor, Mohammad Faheem Dashty, for the final time after producing the last edition of a newspaper that has been a regular sight on the streets of the capital since 2002, according to a report in the Guardian. Dashty said he had no choice but to shut down after...

A court in Angola's southwestern province of Namibe sent a journalist to prison on Thursday without due process over his coverage of a sexual harassment scandal that implicated the province's top judicial official, according to local journalists and news reports. Judge Manuel Araujo sentenced Armando José Chicoca, a freelancer who reports for US government-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA)...