State Control

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has rejected the Sri Lankan government’s proposed national media policy in favour of a self-generated, self-regulated and independent framework that encompasses journalists from all sides of the nation’s conflict. According to the Free Media Movement (FMM), an IFJ affiliate, Media and Information Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa refused to divulge...

Press freedom organisaitons have deplored the censorship and harassment to which Sudan’s privately-owned media have been subjected since the start of the year. Arrests, summonses, threats and outright bans on certain news items — the campaign waged by the government against the independent press is reducing the space for free expression even more. “It should be an honour for Sudan to let the many...

Sudan has reimposed daily censorship of newspapers after they published reports accusing the government of backing Chadian rebels, Reuters reported Thursday. Journalists and local human rights activists criticised the move, which they said had begun nearly three weeks ago after rebels stormed the Chadian capital N'Djamena in a failed attempt to topple President Idriss Deby. Journalists said...

The state of emergency which Armenian President Robert Kocharyan proclaimed in capital Yerevan on Saturday last is having a serious impact on the activity of the news media, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The emergency was declared after clashes between security forces and opposition protesters who say last month’s presidential election was rigged. “This authoritarian decision to liable...

Press freedom violations marred Russia’s presidential election on March 2, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The incidents that occurred during the election are indicative of the nervousness that the authorities feel towards independent journalists,” Paris-based RSF said in a statement. In South Sakhalin, reporter Pavel Abakumov of the weekly Yuzhno Sakhalinsk Tvoya Gazeta was...

It is an irony of sorts. BBC is launching its Arabic TV, says a Guardian report, at a time when Arab governments are seeking to censor existing satellite TV channels that "negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order, and public morals" or "defame leaders, or national and religious symbols". Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Lebanon's Al-Manar TV, owned by Hezbollah, are seen as the main...

As riots tore through Armenian capital Yerevan, the country's journalists remained preocupied with the presidential elections in neighbouring Russia. The people of the city had to fall back on outside news sources to know what was happenning in their own backyard. And now, with Armenian President Robert Kocharian declaring an emergency to control the violence, among the first to face its brunt has

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has voiced strong concern over the detention of a foreign journalist and his translator by authorities last month. Mark Magnier, Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, accompanied by a translator and a lawyer visited citizens of a so-called “grievance village” in Beijing on February 27 2008. A number of officials approached Magnier and his...

Chad is now one of the few African countries without an effective independent press since a state of emergency was declared on February 15. Journalists are fleeing abroad to escape arrest or falling silent in protest against censorship and "very serious" official threats. And now, with the adoption of a new press law by decree instead of abolishing prison sentences for press offences, it makes

The Zimbabwean government is cracking down on independent media with barely one month to go before presidential elections on March 29. Journalists have been arrested, summoned and ordered to reveal sources, charged with “publication of false news” and newspapers threatened with closure if they fail to comply, in an upsurge of harassment that seriously threatens press freedom ahead of polling,”...