State Control

Canal Plus Bénédiction (CB Plus), a faith-based television station broadcast from Brazzaville, was reauthorised to broadcast on July 3 following a five-month suspension, Journaliste en danger (JED) has reported. CB Plus was suspended on February 12 on orders from the state-run national media regulator, the High Council on Freedom of Communication (CSLC), after it aired archival footage of a 1991...

Distributors blocked the July 4-10 edition of the Economist from entering Thailand over an article that covered the mounting threat of lese majeste complaints to the country's Internet freedom and freedom of expression, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This is the third time since December that distributors have opted not to distribute the British weekly newsmagazine...

The Palestinian Authority has suspended the operations of Al-Jazeera in the West Bank after the satellite channel aired a controversial interview on Tuesday. The suspension, according to a Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information statement, came on Wednesday and will remain in place until "the judiciary issues a ruling on the subject." The Ministry of Information's actions came a day after Al...

A bill regulating online communications and content has been signed into law by President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The new law gives blogs, chat rooms and other websites such as online retail outlets the same legal status as the Kazakh news media and thereby exposes them to the possibility of criminal prosecution. The bill, signed into law on July 13, will also enable the authorities to block...

Detentions of journalists reporting on ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang region has been continuing, according to press freedom groups. The Beijing-based Uighur academic and blogger Ilham Tohti, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has been missing since July 8 when he told a friend he had received a notice of detention. On July 6, Beijing public security officials questioned...

A group of Venezuelan journalists with the regional television network Telesur and the state-owned station Venezolana de Televisión (VTV) left Honduras on Sunday after being detained and harassed in the capital, Tegucigalpa, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. "We are gravely concerned that the media environment in Honduras has become increasingly polarized while the interim...

Authorities in northwest Chinese province of Xinjiang are said to be harassing journalists reporting on ethnic rioting in regional capital Urumqi, according to press freedom groups. One journalist was detained for two hours in Urumqi Tuesday for reporting independently of a government-organised media tour of the damaged city, according to National Public Radio. "I went independently of the group...

The hostility of those who staged the coup against President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 and Zelaya’s announced return could further aggravate the press freedom situation. The military’s already significant level of censorship of the international media and national media that oppose the coup has been compounded by the excesses of the media that back it, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. “We...

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) has recommended that the government should "decriminalise" offences relating to the accreditation and the practice of journalism in Zimbabwe, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. The commission ruled in favour of MISA-Zimbabwe, Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ) and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human...

Journalists in Malaysia are being restricted from covering the parliament proceedings by seemingly sudden and unannounced tightening of security rules, the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) has reported. As the parliament is first and foremost a public institution, restricting journalists from its proceedings is tantamount to restricting the public's right to know, CIJ feels. Online news...