State Control

Eight Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporations (ZBC) employees have been summarily sent on paid vacation leave for two months, letters written to them by the Head of Human Resources Benania Shumba in early June 2008 indicate, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. The eight include senior employees at the State broadcaster, Robson Mhandu (Television Production General Manager)...

Journalists and the news media have consistently been harassed in the past two months by the Moldovan authorities. The biweekly Moldavskie Vedomosti is threatened with closure by an investigation into alleged corruption while the body that allocates broadcast frequencies has been accused of favouring pro-government radio and TV stations. “With just one year to go to parliamentary elections, it is...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed concern over the decision ot Chinese authorities to suspend publication of a magazine and forced the dismissal of its editorial staff over coverage of last week's earthquake in Sichuan province. New Travel Weekly, published in Chongqing, was reportedly suspended from publishing on May 20 after failing to carry mourning messages in the...

Private weeklies in Burma have been ordered by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Board not to run any story that depicts the destruction caused by the cyclone that pummelled the Rangoon and Irrawaddy deltas; rather, they have been told to cover only the reconstruction efforts by authorities, Mizzima News has reported quoting local journalists. Mizzima's sources spoke on condition of anonymity...

A newspaper in Cambodia has had to stop publishing a pullout on Burma after authorities confiscated that section for two consecutive days, warning that a suspension would soon follow. The English-Khmer Cambodia Daily started the pullout, called the "Burma Daily", on May 16, "to introduce to the Burmese people what a free and responsible newspaper looks like", its publisher Bernard Krisher was...

TAM, the JV between Nielson Media and Kantar Media, which measures television viewership across 40 countries, including India, has criticised the Indian government over its efforts to intervene in this space, the Economic Times has reported. It reported: “TAM does not see any role for the government to intervene in any form into this industry exercise, nor does it foresee any requirement of any...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to veto a bill that would reverse efforts to reform Kyrgyzstan’s state television and radio company (KTR) into a public broadcaster. Kyrgyzstan’s parliament passed the bill on April 24. It gives the president the right to appoint KTR’s chief executives and affirms the state’s monopoly on national...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the actions of Burma’s military government in restricting press access to disaster areas and censoring local news coverage of the massive devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis. According to CPJ sources, Prime Minister Thein Sein announced at a meeting with businessmen Tuesday that foreigners—including journalists—would not be allowed into the...

The Kremlin is planning to give foreign news agencies greater access in covering the new president, according to the Moscow Times. Under the plan, reporters representing foreign news wires such as The Associated Press and Reuters will be allowed the same travel opportunities as their Russian counterparts, but they will have to be Russian citizens, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. Some...

Moroccan authorities have stopped the pan-Arab satellite TV news station Al-Jazeera from broadcasting a daily news programme covering the Maghreb countries from its studios in the Moroccan capital Rabat. Al-Jazeera’s Rabat bureau received a fax Tuesday from the National Agency for Telecom Regulation (ANRT) saying the frequency it used for broadcasting the Maghreb programme was being withdrawn...