Alerts

New York, October 20, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is heartened to learn that murder charges were filed today in the 2005 slaying of investigative reporter Marlene Garcia-Esperat in the Philippines.

Lima’s 27th Criminal Court found Medina, host of the nightly gossip show “Magaly TeVe” on national television station ATV and owner of the weekly magazine Magaly, and Guerrero, her producer, guilty of defaming Peruvian soccer star Paolo Guerrero. 

New York, October 17, 2008–The director and a staff member of the Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI), a Sierra Leone media advocacy group, say they are receiving death threats after publishing a report on press conditions late last month.

New York, October 17, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the detention in western China of a filmmaker and his assistant, who have been held for nearly seven months after taping interviews with Tibetan residents about their lives under Chinese government rule. 

New York, October 16, 2008–Nigerian journalist Eiphraim Audu was shot by six unknown gunmen near his home on Wednesday in Lafia, central Nigeria, local journalists and the Nigerian Union of Journalists told CPJ.

New York, October 15, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns an Egyptian court’s decision on Saturday to levy steep fines against an editor and reporter for an independent weekly that published a satirical piece about a prominent cleric.

New York, October 15, 2008–Nguyen Viet Chien, a reporter for the Vietnamese daily newspaper Thanh Nien who broke major stories on high-level government corruption in 2006, was sentenced today to two years in prison after being found guilty of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state,” according to news reports.

New York, October 14, 2008–Kalima, an independent Tunisian online news site, was hacked into and shut down on October 8, according to the Web site’s staff.

New York, October 14, 2008–Mexican editor and publisher Miguel Angel Villagómez Valle was executed hours after being kidnapped on Thursday in the state of Michoacán. His body was found on Friday in neighboring Guerrero state. The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating possible links between Villagómez’s death and his work as a journalist.

New York, October 14, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the welfare of Russian lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, who represents the family of slain Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Moskalenko was the target of an apparent poisoning in Strasbourg, France, days before she was due to appear in a Moscow court for pretrial…