State Control

Severe restrictions have been placed by the Propaganda Department on media coverage of the high-speed train crash on July 23 in the southeastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, in which 39 people were killed, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Wang Qinglei, a producer with state-owned China Central Television, was fired on July 27 because of his investigative...

Security officials in Nakhchivan – an autonomous Azerbaijani exclave between Armenia and Iran – have been harassing journalists in an attempt to impose a news blackout on a death in detention and the disappearance of four other young people who had been summoned for questioning, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “After eliminating almost all the sources...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the closure of the investigations unit at the daily China Economic Times at the behest of the newspaper’s management on July 18 and is concerned about the fate of Wang Keqin, the respected journalist who had run the unit for years, and the five other people in his team. The unit’s closure, which defies all editorial...

The Belarus information ministry has withdrawn two complaints against independent dailies Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya under which they had been threatened with closure since April 25. The complaints were withdrawn during hearings before the Supreme Economic Court on July 12 and 13, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The move was a “rare example of good...

A Hong Kong journalists' group warned Sunday freedom of expression in the city had deteriorated, saying it had become intolerant of dissent as Beijing strengthened its grip on the territory, Agence-France-Presse (AFP) has reported. The former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but retains a semi-autonomous status under the "one country, two systems" model with civil liberties...

Tunisia’s new authorities have failed to to issue any broadcast licences in the six months since President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster. They are supposed to be building a new, free and democratic Tunisia, but no democracy will be possible without truly independent media, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reacted. The Tunisian broadcast media landscape has not...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the detention of a German television crew and the destruction of their footage by authorities in Equatorial Guinea. On Saturday, plainclothes state security agents led by Teobaldo Nchaso Matomba, the director of the state-controlled broadcaster TVGE, arrested reporter Jorg Brase, cameraman Michael Berger...

Authorities in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region restricted domestic reporting on the student-led protests, which were sparked after Chinese coal mine employees killed two ethnic Mongolians who voiced complaints about the environmental impact of mining in mid-May, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting international news reports...

Press freedom and online freedom of information are still being flouted in Burma, three months after Thein Sein’s election as a civilian president. He promised to “respect the role of the media” but heavy jail sentences for journalists, suspension of newspapers and police raids on Internet cafés show that there has been no let-up in controls and intimidation. And now a string of new measures have...

Amid a harsh media crackdown, Chinese authorities censored discussion of the May 12, 2008, Sichuan earthquake anniversary that referenced independent investigations into the damage, according to international news reports. New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) interviewed filmmaker Alison Klayman about activists imprisoned for documenting official negligence...