Censored

MISA-Namibia has expressed surprise at a ban on chat shows by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). In a statement on 3 March 2009, Andrew Kanime, Acting Director General of the NBC, announced that the National Chat Show programmes hosted in the morning shall cease. Members of the public used to phone in to express views on and discuss a number of issues. The government and the ruling party...

Several copies of the weekly Le Nouveau Réveil newspaper were seized on March 4 from the newsstands and destroyed by two unidentified persons in Cocody and Yopougon, two suburbs of Abidjan, capital of Côte d'Ivoire, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). MFWA's correspondent reported that the publishers of Le Nouveau Réveil have since lodged a formal complaint to the Ivorian...

Guinea-Bissau’s broadcast media were allowed to resume operating shortly after midday on Monday after being ordered off the air Sunday night following the murder of the armed forces chief of staff, which was followed in turn early Monday by the murder of President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira. “Amid the current instability, we urge all of Guinea-Bissau’s actors, especially the armed forces, to...

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has temporarily closed Mzimba Community Radio Station, based in the northern part of the country, on grounds that the station did not comply with the regulatory body's rules and regulations as stipulated in the Communications Act, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. Details behind the community radio station's closure...

Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico newspaper recently accused the government of Álvaro Colom of censoring the press by using government advertising funds in a discriminatory fashion to punish or reward media outlets. As a result, the newspaper has asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights's (IACHR) Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression to intervene in the situation. On...

All copies of the February 18 issue of the Moscow-based biweekly Novaya Gazeta that were to have sold in the Moscow satellite town of Khimki were bought up by the local authorities prior to distribution so that the only way for Khimki residents to be able to read its content was to go the newspaper’s website, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The issue included an open letter from a...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the s decision by judge Tatsiana Miranyuk of a district court in the western city of Brest to order the immediate seizure and destruction of the seventh and eighth issues of the opposition cultural magazine Arche on the grounds that their content was “extremist”. “We are again confronted by an absurd logic,” RSF said. “The administrative and judicial...

Press freedom groups have rubbished the charges that Sri Lankan newspaper editor Nadesapillai Vithyatharan helped Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels carry out a suicide air strike on Colombo on February 20. Vithyatharan was arrested Thursday in Colombo. According to friends who were with him at the time, police detained Vithyatharan while he was attending the funeral of a friend in...

The Egyptian judiciary has imposed a fine on five journalists for violating a ban on media coverage of a murder trial involving an influential businessman who is a member of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In a hearing attended by CPJ Thursday, the Sayyida Zainab Misdemeanors Court sentenced Magdi al-Galad, Yusri al-Badri, and Faruq...

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has condemned amendments to the UK Counter Terrorism Act, which came into force in the UK on February 16. The amendments contain powers of arrest and imprisonment of anyone who takes pictures of police officers or other public servants which are "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism." "This is a serious setback for...