New York, April 3, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by state-owned Moroccan public television’s (TVM) decision to bar the satellite television station Al-Jazeera from using its facilities to feed broadcasts to the station’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Morocco, Iqbal Ilhami, told CPJ that on March 30, she and her…
New York, April 2, 2003— Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian free-lance cameraman on assignment for the BBC, was killed today in northern Iraq after stepping on a land mine, the BBC confirmed. Golestan accidentally detonated the mine when he exited his car near the town of Kifri, John Morrissey of the BBC’s foreign desk told CPJ.…
New York, April 1, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is pleased that four journalists, who were last seen in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel on March 24, are now safe in Jordan. Free-lance photographer Molly Bingham; Johan Rydeng Spanner, a free-lance photographer with the Danish daily Jyllands Posten; and correspondent Matthew McAllester and photographer Moises Saman,…
Although the Kenya-based East African Standard, one of Africa’s oldest continuously published newspapers, marked its 100th anniversary in November, journalism remains a difficult profession on the continent, with adverse government policies and multifaceted economic woes still undermining the full development of African media.
The Arab world continues to lag behind the rest of the globe in civil and political rights, including press freedom. Despotic regimes of varying political shades regularly limit news that they think will undermine their power. Hopes that a new generation of leaders would tolerate criticism in the press have proved illusory, with many reforms…
Algeria’s private press has survived a brutal, extremist-led assassination campaign that lasted from 1993 to 1996 and took the lives of 58 journalists. Since the early 1990s, it has also weathered government interference. Nevertheless, the private press has earned a reputation for tough criticism of the government and politicians.
In 2002, Bahrainis went to the polls for the first time in three decades. Municipal and parliamentary elections, held in May and October, respectively, were the result of King Hamed Bin Issa al-Khalifa’s much anticipated political reforms, which are aimed at bringing limited democracy to this tiny Persian Gulf archipelago. Although the elections represented a…
Egypt’s position as one of the most politically influential countries in the Arab world ensures its press a prominent regional standing. The country boasts some of the best-known writers and commentators in the Middle East, and newspaper columnists often pointedly criticize government officials and policies. Nonetheless, Egyptian journalists know that some topics remain sensitive–criticism of…
With the threat of U.S. military action looming, President Saddam Hussein invited the foreign press to cover a sham election in October, in which the government reported that he took 100 percent of the vote, extending his rule another seven years. A few days later, the media covered demonstrations that followed Hussein’s order to empty…
While the press is largely free within Israel proper, the country’s military assault on the Occupied Territories fueled a sharp deterioration in press freedom in the West Bank and Gaza during much of 2002. Despite vocal international protest, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) committed an assortment of press freedom abuses, ranging from banning press access…