State Control

Yahoo shareholders have vetoed with an overwhelming majority the company's proposed Chinese anti-censorship policy. This comes close on the heels of the mother of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao announcing plans to continue with the lawsuit against Yahoo. Proposals to set up a human rights committee with the task of reviewing Yahoo’s policies around the world, specifically in China, were also...

As Bolivia undergoes massive political changes, its media is also going through tumultuous times. Bolivia's unstable political situation, widespread civil unrest, and weak rule of law present serious long-term threats to journalists amid the broader perspective of human rights. Observers see Bolivia’s current situation as a make or break situation for the Bolivian media, who seem to be the...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned new media censorship in Yemen, where access to at least two websites has been blocked since the start of the year, in one case for three months, and the information ministry is now censoring the distribution of news to mobile phones by SMS message. “It is disturbing that the Yemeni government is attacking new technology in this way,” the press freedom...

Amid government measures reinforcing censorship of television and telecommunications, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to heed the appeals of Pakistan's journalists, the public and the international community to respect press freedom. "Gen Musharraf, it is not yet too late to rescind the new electronic media ordinance and to put an end to the arbitrary...

A newspaper in southwest China has sacked three of its editors over an advertisement saluting mothers of protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. A young clerk with no knowledge of the Tiananmen massacre allowed a tribute to victims to slip into the classifieds page of the Chengdu Evening News, a newspaper in south-west China, the South China Morning Post reported. The tiny ad on...

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has called on democratic governments to take specific measures to protect freedom of the press in the face of widespread tightening of anti-terrorism measures. The WAN Board, meeting at the 60th World Newspaper Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, expressed its concern that following major terrorist attacks worldwide, tightened security and surveillance...

Leaders of the world’s press have called on African governments "as a matter of urgency" to abolish all laws that restrict press freedom, and have pledged to increase "aggressive and persistent campaigning against press freedom violations and restrictions in Africa." The Declaration of Table Mountain, approved on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Cape Town, calls...

Hundreds of protestors took to the streets after the Pakistan government blocked three private television news channels. Geo TV, Ary one TV, and Aaj TV said they had been kept off air because of their coverage of the political crisis over Musharraf's March 9 ouster of the country's chief justice, according to news reports. President Pervez Musharraf Monday imposed fresh curbs on the electronic...

BEIJING (Reuters) - An advertisement saluting mothers of students and workers killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown appeared in a newspaper in southwest China on Monday, two witnesses said, in a rare public criticism of the massacre. The advertisement, in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News, read: "Paying tribute to the strong mothers of June 4 victims", two local...

New York, June 4, 2007—A Nanjing-based reporter whose online video, audio, and written news reports had angered authorities is in police custody today along with his wife, according to his employer at the U.S.-based news Web site Boxun News. Following the May 30 arrest, police accused Sun Lin (known by his pen name Jie Mu) of illegally possessing weapons and heading a criminal gang. "We are...