State Control

The Hamas interior ministry has decided to deny Palestinian and foreign journalists access to the southern city of Rafah and to all hospitals in the Gaza Strip until further notice. The ban was issued on August 14, after fighting broke out in Rafah between the Hamas government and a radical Islamist group. "The Hamas-led government's interior ministry has again demonstrated a desire to control...

The Afghanistan government has imposed a media blackout on election-related violence during Thursday's presidential polls. Afghanistan's National Security Council released a statement through the Foreign Ministry Tuesday and official spokesmen contacted news bureaus by telephone to discourage reporting on violent incidents from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, according to local and international...

The violence that threatens journalists working for Afghanistan’s news media has created a climate that does not favour free and impartial coverage of the August 20 crucial presidential election, now just a day away. Media coverage is also affected by the fact that political obstruction has prevented the adoption of a new press law, a situation that Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has

The National Intelligence Agency has issued a warning to the managers of three local radio stations in the eastern DRC province of Nord-Kivu saying that their stations will be closed down unless they stop retransmitting the programmes of French public broadcaster Radio France Internationale (RFI). “This threat is unacceptable,” Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) reacted. "It confirms that...

Pro-government journalists have ousted the board of the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (NSTJ), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The syndicate was the only independent organisation of its kind in Tunisia for critical journalists, providing them with syndication services among other benefits. In the latest in a long string of actions meant to eliminate critical...

The European Newspaper Publishers Association and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers have called on European governments to help ensure that Lithuania respects freedom of expression and freedom of the press following approval of a law that makes it a crime to ridicule someone. The law would also bar information that promotes homosexual lifestyles, or information that promotes...

A Moscow military court has decided to press on with the retrial of three alleged accomplices in Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, rejecting a petition by the Politkovskaya family for it to be postponed while further investigations were carried out. Presiding judge Nikolai Tkachuk on Friday denied the request although it was supported both defence lawyers and prosecutors. “We are...

Zimbabwean authorities have issued an operating licence to a local newspaper group forced to close down by the state five years ago, a move which suggests the new unity government intends to open up the media. A special committee set up by the Information Ministry nearly two years ago said the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) was free to resume operations, according to zimguardian.com. ANZ...

The Venezuelan government has withdrawn the licences of 34 radio and TV stations, 13 of which already stopped broadcasting earlier. When the authorities announced the withdrawal of 34 broadcast media licences on August 2, they warned that 200 other radio and TV stations could suffer the same fate. Diosdado Cabello, the minister who supervises the National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel)...

The Saudi Arabia offices of a Lebanon-based satellite station controlled by tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal could face closure over a racy talk show featuring a man boasting about his sex life, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. The local operations of the Saudi billionaire's broadcaster LBC could be shut down because of the "offensive nature" of the programme, Abdullah al-Othaim, a senior...