(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has deplored the Pakistani Supreme Court's 6 April 2006 decision to uphold a life sentence imposed on Rehmat Shah Afridi, the former editor for the "Frontier Post" and "Maidan" daily newspapers, for alleged drug trafficking. Afridi has been insisting on his innocence ever since his arrest by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) in 1999. The press freedom...
Botswana's Minister of Communications, Science and Technology, Pelonomi Venson, has announced that she will be presenting the controversial Mass Media Bill to Parliament. The proposed law has been rejected by media practitioners because they feel there was no extensive consultation with all stakeholders. In a statement in Parliament at the end of March 2006, Venson said the Mass Media Bill would...
Shortly after midnight on March 27, a group of armed paramilitary officers pick up Musa Saidykhan, editor-in-chief of the private biweekly newspaper, the Independent, from his home in Banjul, Gambia. Around 8 a.m., staff and visitors to the paper's offices are detained by paramilitaries as they walk into the premises. A few hours later, the detained visitors and staff, with the exception of...
SANA’A, April 9 – Journalist Abdulfatah Al-Hakimi remains in intensive care in an Aden hospital, his health deteriorating after his car was sprayed with an unknown gas. He became asphyxiated when he got into the vehicle and inhaled the gas, which affected his respiratory system. Thereafter, he suffered severe exhaustion and a drop in blood sugar. He was rushed to intensive care at an Aden hospital...
MINSK, Belarus (UPI) -- A Canadian reporter arrested while covering a demonstration in Belarus has been released after two weeks in jail. Frederick Lavoie was on his way to Kiev in Ukraine on Saturday and was expected to fly to Montreal Monday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported. He was being escorted by the Canadian consul general from Poland. Lavoie was one of 13 reporters arrested in...
New York, April 6, 2006 - An early morning explosion today rocked the Sofia apartment of Vasil Ivanov, a Nova Television investigative reporter who recently uncovered abuse of inmates in Sofia Central Prison, local and international press reports said. No injuries were reported, but the bomb caused extensive damage. The 2-pound (1 kilogram) bomb was detonated around 3 a.m. outside the door to...
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - The media industry, in confronting the Internet, seems to have added an additional level to the oft-cited stages of grief. To denial, anger, depression, and acceptance, now many major media companies seem to have added self-abasement. Some of the biggest companies seem to have stopped fighting the Web and instead fallen in love with it. They think it is better than they are --...
SOFIA (Reuters) - A powerful bomb exploded in front of the apartment of a Bulgarian television reporter early on Thursday, smashing windows and walls in a seven-story building but causing no casualties, police said. The attack came as Bulgaria tries to prove it can crack down on rampant high-level corruption and organized crime to the European Union, which will decide on May 16 whether to let the...
Nichols and McChesney have written a very readable book that describes well the current state of the U.S. media, illustrates the media’s serious recent mal-performance with enlightening case studies, and discusses what can be done about it. The authors put their analysis of the current state of the media in a historic and normative context. Media diversity has diminished hugely since the 19th and...
An EU anti-corruption campaigner attacked Wednesday subsidies paid to some journalists covering the European Parliament, but officials defended the aid as needed to maintain the profile of EU bodies. The attack highlighted growing euroskepticism about the embattled 25-nation bloc's institutions, widely seen as cut off from ordinary Europeans. Independent MEP Hans-Peter Martin said a system which...
