Palestinian journalist sentenced to 18 months by West Bank court

Tareq Abu Zayd, the correspondent of Hamas-run TV station Al-Aqsa was found guilty by a Palestinian Authority military court last week.

He was found guilty of charges of seditious acts and impart information and smuggling money to parties hostile to the Palestinian National Authority in a manner contrary to the provisions of Palestinian law.

A group of Arab human rights organizations in a public statement said that the court ruling about the Palestinian journalist Tareq Abu Zeid by a special military court is illegal and unfair and considered a precedent and contrary to the standards of protection of Freedom of speech and expression.

According to RSF

The supreme court in Ramallah ordered his release on 12 January but the order was ignored. Zayd was arrested several times last year by militias loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Nepalese media under pressure

Journalists in Nepal who are supposed to cover the news are becoming the news themselves.

That's the claim of Kunda Dixit writing a guest blog at CPJ.

The latest threats have been directed at Nepal’s largest media company, the Kantipur group, for reporting on police investigations into the murder of media tycoon Jamim Shah on February 8. Shah was gunned down in broad daylight in a heavily guarded part of Kathmandu by assassins on motorcycles who blocked his SUV and fired on him in the front passenger seat.

Since starting its move from monarchy to democracy,four journalists have been killed or disappeared in the last three years.

Jamin Shah was the chairman of the Nepalese television station and satellite network Space Time Network.

Committee to protect journalists releases its name and shame list for 2009

The Committee to protect journalists has released its attacks on the Press 2009 report but as its executive director Joel Simon says

Today’s fragmented and diffuse media landscape has opened new opportunities for advocacy campaigns, ones that unite local and international concerns, ones that use blogs, e-mail blasts, and social media to shape public opinion. With the power of traditional media diminished, getting your message out is a painstaking process that demands the use of multiple methods. This is true whether you are running a political campaign, marketing a movie, or fighting for the human rights of journalists working in repressive countries.

71 journalists have been killed last year and as at the 1st of December 136 were being held in prison.

Amongst the countries highlighted in the report comes Iran which still held 23 writers and editors,and the Philippines which ranked worst among peacetime democracies, trailing only war-ridden places such as Iraq and Somalia.

Times journalist assaulted by BNP thugs

The perils of journalism.

Despite yesterday's vote at the BNP for allowing ethic minorities to join,it seems that the invitation does not extend to journalists at the Times.

Dominic Kennedy has in his words

gone to the Elm Park pub in Hornchurch to report on a press conference at which Nick Griffin, MEP for North West England and chairman of the British National Party, was to explain how his activists had just passed an historic membership reform.

However the party had taken exception to an article he had written in the previous day's paper and the result?

One man grabbed my nose and tried to remove it from my face. I was seized and shoved out of the door towards a parked car. I threw my hands out to steady myself. A BNP thug snarled: “Don’t touch people’s cars mate.”

Australian state restricts political blogging during elections

Could it happen here?

The South Australian Government passed a Bill late last year which makes it illegal during election time to post political views on a blog or comment without also including a name and address.

The move is seen as a way of preventing people from not taking responsibility for posts which could sway public opinions on the election.

Those that transgress face a fine of A$1250 for citizens whilst if the media fall out of line that figure rises to A$5000

A potent for the future?

47 journalists held in Iranian prisons

The Iranian authorities have set a new record.

Iranian authorities are now holding at least 47 journalists in prison, more than any single country has imprisoned since 1996

according to the Committee to protect journalists

While many of the detainees were arrested in the aftermath of the disputed June presidential election, CPJ’s survey found that authorities are continuing to wage an aggressive campaign to round up independent and opposition journalists. At least 26 journalists have been jailed in the last two months alone,

Journalist convicted in Burma

A journalist working in Burma has been jailed for 13 years for working illegally for foreign media organisations.

The BBC reports that

Ngwe Soe Lin, who reported for the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma, was convicted of violating immigration laws and the Electronics Act.

The reports adds that

Ngwe Soe Lin was arrested as he left an internet cafe in the Rangoon area of Kyaukmyaung in June 2009. After being interrogated for two months, he was sent to the city's notorious Insein prison, where his sentence was handed down on Wednesday.

Crimes against God

Two Iranian bloggers face the death sentance reports Reporters without Frontiers

Mehrdad Rahimi and Kouhyar Goudarzi, have been accused of wanting to wage “a war against God,” in a similar manner to the two men who were executed this morning in Tehran on charges of “Mohareb” (being enemies of God). Both contributors to an opposition website, Rahimi and Goudarzi are also facing a possible death penalty.

adding that

Tehran state prosecutor Abass Jafari Dolatabadi declared on 22 January that this committee was an offshoot of the outlawed People's Mujahedeen Organisation and that any collaboration with its website was therefore banned.

Worries in Sri Lanka

Today sees presidential elections in Sri Lanka and reporters without frontiers is concerned about how the media is being treated.

Monitoring of state TV stations Rupavahini and ITN by Reporters Without Borders shows they have been abused by the president and his aides to a rarely-seen degree to promote his campaign.
More than 96.7 per cent of the 1,539 minutes (about 25 hours) of news programmes monitored on these two stations was given over to the activities of the incumbent and his followers. Less than 3.3 per cent was accorded to the opposition, including Gen. Sarath Fonseka, the leading opposition candidate. The two stations were monitored for the seven days ending 24 January.

Today's poll sees a runoff between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his challenger, the former army commander Sarath Fonseka,with the opposition evening raising the specter of a military coup, warning that Rajapaksa will do anything to stay in power.

China and Google-a cartoonist's view

As seen by Jeff Danziger, political cartoonist syndicated by the NYTimes worldwide

A year on from the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge

It's a year since the murder of Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickrematunge and Time magazines takes a look at journalism on the Indian ocean island 12 months on.

With the perpetrators still not found,there has been an exodus of journalists and media activists from Sri Lanka and as the magazine reports

The widespread condemnation of Wickrematunge's murder did little to change the restrictions on the media. For months after the civil war was declared over, journalists were not permitted to travel to or report in the former conflict zone in the island's north, and they still need permission to visit camps where those displaced by the war remain, or to speak with those who have returned to their former villages. Similar authorization is required to visit and write on the accelerated development and resettlement process now under way in the Vanni, the former conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka.

One thought for the New Year

As we end the New Year,Reporters without frontiers reminds us that

76 journalists killed (60 in 2008)
33 journalists kidnapped
573 journalists arrested
1456 physically assaulted
570 media censored
157 journalists fled their countries
1 blogger died in prison
151 bloggers and cyber-dissidents arrested
61 physically assaulted
60 countries affected by online censorship

Media freedoms in Pakistan

This via the Committee to protect journalists


We released this statement after Dawn newspaper columnist Kamran Shafi said today that his house had been sprayed with machine gun fire on the night of November 27, in Rawalpindi...

“CPJ condemns this attack on such a prominent Pakistani journalist,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “Pakistan’s media environment is declining rapidly as a consequence of the political and military strife erupting under the government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Local and foreign journalists are coming under threat from all sides to the country’s many conflicts. Increasingly, Pakistan’s free press is under a threat almost as menacing as that under former president Pervez Musharraf ,” added Dietz.

12 journalists killed in the Philippines

Quite appalling news coming out of the Philipines yesterday.

Reporters without borders reporting that

At least 12 journalists were killed today in Maguindanao province (on the southern island of Mindanao) by armed men, including two policemen, linked to the province’s governor, a supporter of President Gloria Arroyo. More than 30 other people were murdered. Some of the victims were beheaded.

They describe it as

“Never in the history of journalism have the news media suffered such a heavy loss of life in one day,”

as

The convoy of Mangudadatu supporters, accompanied by journalists, had been on its way to an electoral bureau to file documents related to his candidacy, which the gunmen wanted to prevent. The fatalities included Mangudadatu’s wife, sister and other relatives. The governor’s son is also alleged to have been involved in the massacre.

Journalists under attack in Ukraine

According to the CPJ

Officials first barred reporters from entering their offices in the Odessa Television and Radio Center and then cut the power supply to their newsrooms and transmitter, silencing 12 independent broadcasters, Natalya Perevalova, chief editor of the Odessa-based independent television channel ATV, told CPJ.

A move that Perevalova says follows

critical reporting on corruption in the city administration and its poor financial policies have prompted official retaliation ahead of the 2010 mayoral and presidential elections.

Unlike some countries,getting news here will never cost a life

Join Reporters without frontiers campaign of awareness for the United States

Still concerns about the press in Zimbabwe

Reporters without frontiers has voiced concern once again about the situtaion in Zimbabwe.

It has written to Tomás Salomão, the executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community, on the eve of a SADC meeting in Maputo on the situation in Zimbabwe.

Voicing concern about the impact of the Zimbabwean government’s internal crisis on the ability of journalists to work freely and the reemergence of an independent press, Reporters Without Borders urges the SADC and the leaders of Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia to spare no effort to help the government emerge from the current deadlock.

Unlocking China

Polis' Charlie Beckett is currently out in Shanghai and writes an interesting post on whether the new media business is changing the politics of China?

The media industry here appears to be booming but scratch under the surface and you realise that even the political authorities fear that there are too many obstacles to innovation. This is both a source of concern and hope

.he writes and continues

the journalism school students and staff talk about how they are being paid for by the state to create journalists who will go out to serve the state. They describe it as accepting 10% censorship in return for doing the rest of their jobs.

Can this work with new media? Well, the answer I am getting is that it doesn’t and that the state itself recognises that.

Media freedoms being curtailed in Pakistan

Bob Dietz Asia Program Coordinator for CPJ reports on some worrying incursions into media freedoms in Pakistan who got an email message from Mazhar Abbas in Islamabad this morning.

He is worried about proposed legislation that passed Thursday through the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Information—which is headed by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. The committee has recommended that a new law be passed that would set restrictions on media, including a ban on live coverage of events the government doesn't want to see on the air. Mazhar says the legislation would allow for sentences of up to three years in jail and 10 million rupee fines (about US$120,000). He worries that “it is almost the revival” of an ordinance amended by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulations Authority that was imposed by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on November 3, 2007. That's the day Musharraf declared a state of emergency amid mounting political criticism that eventually drove him from office.

Pakistan is of course at the forefront of the fight against the Taliban.its armies are currently on the offensive in the border territories with Afghanistan and the Taliban have responded by carrying out suicide attacks on its cities including a devastating one in Peshawar earlier this week

Tunisian opposition kept out of the election campaign

Tunisia goes to the polls today but it appears that the election campaign has proved impossible for the opposition media to get their point across.

Reporters Without Borders, have been to the country in the week before the election and report that

Pluralism in news is still not a reality in Tunisia. It is unfortunately particularly true in an election campaign. President Ben Ali is splashed on the front pages of newspapers that are tireless in his praise. The columns of the state-run and pro-government newspapers are brimming with messages of congratulations and support for the candidate-president. The same goes for television and radio. Unfavourable opinions of the head of state are largely absent from media and Tunisians do not have access to balanced news and information”,

President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, currently serving a fourth term after amending the constitution in 2004 to permit his candidacy,pledged that the elections will be held in a transparent, democratic manner.

However at CPJ reports

authorities barred Florence Beaugé, a Le Monde correspondent, from entering the country after she arrived at the Tunis-Carthage International Airport, according to news reports. After spending the night at an airport terminal under tight police surveillance, she was put on flight back to Paris. No official explanation was given.