Media - Internet

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the attack by Tunisian security forces on a television crew that was reporting from Tunis on the eve of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which began today. "The summit will descend into chaos unless the security forces back off and allow journalists to work" said Aidan White, IFJ general secretary. "The Tunisian...

As the World Summit on the Information Society gets under way in its capital, Tunisia continues to jail individuals for expressing their opinions on the Internet and suppress websites critical of the government, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a comprehensive new report on the repression of Internet users in the Middle East and North Africa. The 144-page report, "False Freedom: Online...

WHEN YOUR CLIENTS ARE MILLIONS of bloggers, you don't want to get on their bad side. Just ask Six Apart, owner of blogging service TypePad. Users of the paid service started seeing outages and slowdowns about one month ago, triggering a wave of very public complaints. This week, CEO Barak Berkowitz finally attempted to appease his clients by offering them up to 45 days of free service and an...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has voiced outrage at the assault on a French reporter in Tunis and the failure of police nearby to intervene. Reporter Christophe Boltanski of the French daily Libération was beaten and stabbed by four men late last Friday near his hotel in the capital's diplomatic quarter, which is heavily patrolled by police. He needed several stitches in a stab wound...

The second stage of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis from 16 to 18 November will be a showy United Nations event where countries will try to agree on the legal and technical future of the Internet. How the Web is administered and regulated worldwide will be the hottest topic on the agenda. The United States currently controls the main bodies that run the Internet...

Reporters sans Frontières has said it was "appalled" by Monday's attack by plain-clothes police on a Belgian TV crew as it was accompanying lawyer and human rights activist Radhia Nasraoui to a meeting of non-governmental organisations at the German "Goethe Institute" cultural centre in Tunis. "This new act of intimidation proves that a campaign is being deliberately organised against the foreign...

Overnight the international press publicized the crude efforts of the Tunisian government to thwart Tunisian and international civil society organizations’ plans to hold an alternate meeting to discuss Internet issues in Tunisia alongside the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The international and local reaction continued today, as diplomats fumed, some civil society organizations...

The much-hyped World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) event suffered a setback even before it could begin. International Freedom of Expression Exchange's Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 14 organisations, has pulled out of the event. In a statement last night, IFEX said "There has been a series of serious incidents against journalists and human rights activists. Most shocking...

Newspaper websites grew 11 per cent year-over-year to 39.3 million unique visitors in October 2005, comprising 26 per cent of the active US Internet population, or one out of every four Internet users. The 11 per cent increase exceeds the growth of the active Internet universe as a whole, which rose three percent year-over-year, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings research. This research...

An Egyptian blog, Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket, has won a special prize at the Deutsche Welle Best of Blogs 2005. In light of current events in China and Tunisia, the BOBs international jury members unanimously decided to announce the winner of the Special Reporters sans Frontières Award a week early to draw attention to weblogs that work to promote freedom of expression, often under the most...