The Jericho Church, an indigenous Christian denomination, has moved an application at the High Court of Swaziland to ban the media from reporting on the split that has rocked the Church as a result of a leadership dispute, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. The Church wants to gag the country's two daily newspapers, the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer, as well as...
The publisher and editor of the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Ayam were arrested and questioned for wanting to do a report about the king’s mother, a subject regarded as off-limits in Morocco, delayed reports said. “Police measures of this kind result in abuses that we find very disturbing,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “Political and judicial harassment of the Moroccan news media is...
The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifah Bin Zayid Al-Nahyan, has suspended implementation of a media law which was adopted last month by the National Council, described by press freedom groups as worrying. The president intends to set up a special commission to carry out an exhaustive study of the law, taking account of opinion in the UAE, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has...
Malaysian authorities have seized the latest editions of two opposition newspapers. Tempers have flared since last week when the National Front government took over the northern Perak state from the opposition after several of its lawmakers switched allegiance, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Details: [ Link] Tian Chua, information chief of the People's Justice Party, said at least 20,000...
A Czech court has upheld a fine against reporter Sabina Slonkova for refusing to disclose the names of confidential sources to the state prosecutor. The case dates to February 2008, when online news portal Aktualne.cz posted video surveillance footage taken at Prague’s Hotel Savoy and leaked to Slonkova. The footage shows a clandestine meeting shortly before last year’s Czech presidential election...
The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Russian authorities to immediately investigate a death threat that was sent to a human rights research center. In an email, a neo-Nazi group threatened to murder a number of journalists and intellectuals in the next year, according to the recipient of the threat. The sender told Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the human rights research center...
Press freedom groups in the Philippines have called on the Senate to withdraw its invitation to a reporter to appear before the inquiry into the alleged corruption in World Bank (WB)-funded road projects, saying doing so might be “undue interference” in his work as a journalist. The Senate Committee on Economic Affairs headed by Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago has summoned Newsbreak senior writer...
The police in Gabon arrested two European journalists on Tuesday, accusing them of posing as tourists to dig up a story on French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. "They arrived on February 5 as tourists.... They must answer (charges of) bypassing procedure," Gabon Communication Minister Laure Olga Gondjout told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The two were named on Gabon television as French...
Shepard Fairey, the artist whose “Hope” image of President Barack Obama was added to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, sued the Associated Press over the news company’s copyright challenge to the artwork. The lawsuit Monday in US District Court in Manhattan said Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey did not violate the copyright of the April 2006 photograph because he dramatically...
Four female journalists were in a state of shock on Monday after reportedly being attacked, forced to strip and marched through a Sierra Leonean town by a pro-female genital mutilation (FGM) group, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. Witnesses said the four were accused of reporting on an anti-FGM campaign last Friday, which marked the international day of zero tolerance to female...
