2012
Sina ‘information credit score’ restricts Weibo users
Sina’s Twitter-like microblog service Weibo has released new guidelines to restrict users who share banned content, according to international news reports. It’s the first time such guidelines target users who adopt puns, homonyms, and other veiled references to discuss censored news stories without using keywords on the propaganda department’s blacklist, the reports said.
One year later: Saleem Shahzad’s case is buried
On May 21 this year, a military court convicted three Pakistani naval officers of negligence and dereliction of duty for their actions during an attack on the main naval airbase in the heart of Karachi on May 22, 2011. After the incident had ended, the military said 10 security guards were killed, two aircraft were…
Ethiopian police detain VOA reporter, interpreter
Nairobi, May 25, 2012–Police in Ethiopia today detained Peter Heinlein, a correspondent for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Voice of America, along with Simegnish Yekoye, a freelance reporter and Heinlein’s interpreter, according to Jennifer Janin, the Africa coverage editor for VOA, and local journalists.
Liberia university suspends student journalist over article
A private university in Liberia has suspended a journalist studying there for publishing a newspaper story critical of the institution’s management. On May 8, private Cuttington University in Suacoco in central Liberia suspended Selma Lomax, a reporter with independent newspaper FrontPage Africa and a third-year student in agriculture at the institution, for four months over an April 26…
Charges against Indian video journalist must be dropped
New York, May 25, 2012–Local authorities in India must drop the criminal charges filed against video journalist Mukesh Rajak, an apparent attempt to prevent him from reporting on local government expenditures, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Solidarity, a key to security, eludes Salvadoran press
No other journalists are remembered quite like this. Visitors looking through the glass display at the Monsignor Romero Center & Martyrs Museum in San Salvador see the pajamas and other clothes that three Jesuit university priests were wearing when they were shot down by automatic rifle fire. A series of clear containers are filled with…
At CPJ Debrief, Gettleman cites Somalia danger, reward
Jeffrey Gettleman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent, says he travels with “a small militia” whenever he reports from Somalia, the East African country afflicted by armed insurgency, poverty, and hunger. As intrusive as the security detail might be, he feels far more fortunate than the local reporters who face sustained and often deadly…
In Somalia, journalist killed in Mogadishu
Nairobi, May 24, 2012–Assailants in Mogadishu today gunned down the host of a critical radio program, further punctuating what has already been a deadly year for the Somali press corps and for the journalist’s employer, the Shabelle Media Network. Four unidentified men fired repeatedly at Ahmed Addow Anshur at around 1:45 this afternoon while he was…