State Control

An appeals court in the Philippines has decided to curb outside scrutiny of legal proceedings against suspects in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, in which 32 journalists and media practitioners were systematically shot and murdered, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On April 12, Manila Court of Appeals Justice Danton Bueger ordered Monette...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned daily Utusan Malaysia’s decision on 21 April to fire one of its journalists, Hata Wahari, because he accused it of failing to provide the public with objective news coverage in the run-up to last year’s elections. “By firing Wahari, Utusan Malaysia’s management has just confirmed the correctness of his criticism,” RSF...

Pakistan's decision on May 8 to not allow foreign broadcasters to continue to do live transmissions from Abbottabad must be rescinded immediately, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. "It is reckless for Pakistan to interfere with the flow of information from the site of what is one of the world's most important news stories. Falling back on...

Bulgaria's Parliament has adopted changes to the penal code that have introduced jail time for journalists and writers who instigate hatred, discrimination or violence - and could be used to impose controls on the media, says the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI). While the previous law covered only racial discrimination, the...

Officials in Ethiopia hijacked a local UNESCO-sponsored World Press Freedom Day event, installing government-backed journalists as speakers and nixing independent journalists slated to speak. There was no discussion, as originally planned, of this year's global theme on new media and the Internet at the Tuesday forum, according to local sources and news reports. The programme for the event at...

The kingpins of repressive machinery, political leaders of regimes hostile to civil liberties and direct organizers of campaigns of violence against journalists – they are the predators of press freedom. They prey on the media. There are 38 predators this year, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Pride of place goes to North Africa and the Middle East...

The Saudi government issued a decree on April 29 imposing new restrictions on the media and drastically limiting press freedom. The decree, which amends five articles of the 2000 press and publications law, is clearly designed to ensure that the protests sweeping the Arab world since the start of the year do not take any greater hold in Saudi Arabia than they have already. The decree bans...

Responding to restrictions and attacks on its staff, Al-Jazeera has suspended its operations inside Syria indefinitely, the Qatar-based news network told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. Damascus has subjected Syrian employees of Al-Jazeera to sustained pressure to resign from the widely viewed satellite news channel, the station's Public Liberties and Human Rights Section told CPJ...

A dozen community radio stations linked to the opposition “Red Shirts” were shut down in a major police operation on April 26 in Bangkok and the surrounding provinces, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). An exact list of the radio stations raided by the police is not yet available. “Coming just a few months before general elections, this crackdown is very...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed mixed feelings over the Guinea Bissau government’s decision not to go ahead with a threat to suspend newspaper Última Hora as it seems to be no more than a stay of execution. At a news conference on April 20, presidency minister Maria Adiatu Djaló Nandigna issued a “vibrant appeal to the media, especially newspaper...