Africa

The international presence in Kosovo has other important repercussions for local journalism. Many of the best local journalists are taking lucrative jobs as translators and media professionals for the many multilateral and non-governmental organizations that have set up shop in Pristina since the Yugoslav military withdrawal. “I can’t compete with their salaries,” says Margarita Kadriu,…

Shkelzen Maliqi is a chain-smoking Albanian intellectual with a salt-and-pepper beard who writes occasionally for local newspapers, works for the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute in Pristina, and has agreed to serve on the Media Policy Board. “We need a code of conduct for the press,” says Maliqi, arguing that Kosovo should adopt “a European…

When is official control of the press necessary? Never, say U.S. press freedom advocates. But in Kosovo, many local journalists support a new regulatory board designed to censor hate speech.

When is official control of the press necessary? Never, say U.S press freedom advocates. But in Kosovo, many local journalists support a new regulatory board designed to censor hate speech.

Hate speech can have dangerous consequences in any society dominated by the politics of identity. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, for example, the state-controlled Radio Television des Milles Collines (RTLM) urged its Hutu listeners to exterminate all perceived ethnic Tutsis. RTLMÕs broadcasts were considered instrumental in instigating the slaughter of between 500,000 and one…

Kosovar journalists interviewed in Pristina this month, however, were almost unanimously in favor of press regulation. “We need rules for what is news and what is a lie,” says Baton Haxhiu, the editor of Pristina’s most respected daily, Koha Ditore. Haxhiu is voting with his feet, having recently agreed to serve on the Media Policy…

New York, November 29, 1999 –Rafael Marques, a freelance journalist and Angola representative of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, was released on bail on November 25, after spending 40 days in prison. His trial is scheduled to begin on December 15. Marques had been in police custody since October 16. Angolan police informally…

War correspondents today must often choose between self-censorship and death.

New York, November 3, 1999 — Jerry Needam, acting editor of the bimonthly Ogoni Star newspaper in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, was arraigned and released on bail yesterday. Needam had been held since October 11 in connection with the publication of a police operational order that detailed a planned clampdown on ethnic Ijaw…

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned by the continued deterioration of the press freedom situation in Cote d’Ivoire. While we welcome the release from prison today of Le Populaire publisher Raphael Lakpe, threats and attacks against opposition media have intensified alarmingly in recent weeks. In a September 10 letter to Your Excellency, CPJ expressed its deep concern that the prolonged detention of Lakpe and Le Populaire editor Jean Khalil Sylla (who remains in prison) would negatively affect press freedom in Cote d’Ivoire.