State Control

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about the action of the Chinese foreign ministry in summoning and warning two western journalists about their reporting from Tibet last month, and it called on Beijing Olympic Games organiser Liu Qi to clarify the status of Tibet in the new rules for foreign journalists. "The Beijing games organising committee has just published a very detailed report...

The Venezuelan government’s decision not to renew a television broadcasting license is being seen as a serious setback for freedom of expression in Venezuela. Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), the country’s oldest private channel, will have to close shop when its licence expires on May 27, 2007. President Hugo Chávez has repeatedly threatened to cancel RCTV’s licence ever since he accused it of...

The military government in Thailand closed down three community radio stations - Confidante, Taxi Driver Community Radio and Saturday Voice Against Dictatorship - just hours after they broadcast Thursday an interview with deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The authorities have also charged them with violating “national security.” The night of the September 2006 coup, the military pulled...

Two pominent reformist newspapers in Iran that had been banned resumed publishing this week. One of the papers, Hammihan (Compatriot), was banned in 2000 by the hardline judiciary after it called for improved ties with the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reported. On Sunday, the paper was back on the newsstands, and its top story — with the headline "Iran-US talks in Baghdad" — was on an...

BEIJING: A Chinese court sentenced a man to life in prison Wednesday for taking nearly $500,000 in bribes while posing as a reporter -- and sometimes a top editor -- for the Communist Party's official newspaper, the People's Daily. Liu Yonghong had promised low-level officials outside Beijing that he could help them get promotions or work transfers by delivering their bribes to top leaders in the...

KABUL: Afghanistan’s government, competing with the Taliban for public support and trying to fend off accusations that it is corrupt and ineffective, is moving to curb one of its own most impressive achievements: the country’s flourishing independent news media. Under President Hamid Karzai, a 1960s media law was updated and has been considered the most liberal in the region. Six independent...

A court in Xingjian, north-west China has sentenced Ablikim Abdiriyim, the son of renowned Uigar activist, Rebiya Kadeer, to nine years in prison for posting “secessionist” articles online, in what Reporters Without Borders called a “travesty of a trial”. China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that the 17 April verdict indicated that the young activist had sent the offending articles to the...

The Afghanistan government has ordered a TV station to suspend broadcasts of Al-Jazeera’s English-language programmes, the station’s director said Tuesday. A statement from Lemar TV said the Ministry of Information and Culture, which oversees media in Afghanistan, did not provide reasons for the order. The station complied, but contested the order before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has decreed the creation of a new Soviet-style agency to regulate the media and the Internet. This has sparked fears among many Russian journalists of a bid to extend tight publishing controls to the relatively free Web. A customer looks at TV screens in a shop in Moscow during the broadcasting of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual address to Russian and...

At 9 p.m. in a dark Shenzhen parking lot, Dr. Bai Xiuyu handed over a plain envelope in what was supposed to be a discreet blackmail payment to a local reporter in this southern Chinese city. The money in the envelope – 15,000 yuan, about $2,000 (all figures U.S.) – was to be paid to three reporters who'd threatened to go public with a story saying her health clinic was providing services it was...