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“The aim of sending me to prison was to make me suffer as much as possible". APN met with Algerian publisher Mohammed Benchicou one year after he was released from prison.
ARTICLE 19 has released its publication 'Defamation ABC' in Arabic and French translations. The ABC is intended both as an accessible introduction to the law of defamation, and as a tool for those interested in progressive reform of defamation statutes, whether lawyers or non-lawyers.
The Amman-based
Arab Women Media Center will be holding its sixth Arab
Women’s Media Conference from June 26 to
28. Entitled, “Arab Women Journalists in between Laws and Ethics”, the
conference will be held at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan.
In an effort to offer an alternative voice to the Egyptian newspaper readers, the independent weekly Al Dustur got a daily sister newspaper with the same name at the end of March 2007. APN interviewed Ehab Elzelaky, the newspaper’s editor, about the challenges and opportunities of producing a daily newspaper, in a politically challenging context, where diverging voices are not welcome.
The decision to publish government secrets is never an easy one, but has become even more difficult since the September 11 attacks, says Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, in an exclusive interview with the World Association of Newspapers that is being offered to newspapers world-wide for publication on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May.
Two years
after a military coup that ended nearly 20 years of authoritarian rule,
Mauritanians went to the polls and voted in what became one of the
first tests of the new public media.
On 30 March 2007, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on “Combating Defamation of Religions.” Under the guise of protecting religious sensibilities, WAN has denounced this resolution as a facilitator to the attack on freedom of expression.
A delegation
from the Committee to Protect Journalists voiced concern about a troubling pattern of punitive judicial sanctions that have
threatened Morocco’s independent press.
Journalist, novelist, and blogger, Sanaa Elaji, 30, has an incisive style. One of her recent articles, Jokes: How Moroccans laugh about religion, sex and politics, published in Nichane resulted in criminal charges being pressed against her, as well as her editor-in-chief, Driss Ksikes, last January.
While newspapers throughout the world confront the exciting challenge of creating multi-platform news and advertising enterprises, the media in dozens of African countries still remain engaged in the struggle to finally win freedom and independence.
Nine journalists, including two from Egypt and Iraq have been named the Alfred Friendly Press Fellows (AFPF) for 2007 and arrived in the United States 16 March to begin six months of journalism training in American news organizations.
Increasing repression by the Tunisian government has caused a "serious deterioration" in press freedom in the country, according to an international coalition of freedom of expression and human rights groups, including the World Association of Newspapers.
A recent poll showed that forty percent of Arabic-language journalists would be more likely to make use of a press release if it was accompanied by a gift.
Chérif Choubachy, ex-director of the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram’s Paris office and a former news anchor in Egypt, recently published the book A bas Sibawayh, (Down with Sibawayh), which sparked an outcry in the Arab world. 
The Dutch
foundation Free Voice is looking for a partner organization in Egypt,
Jordan or Lebanon to collaborate in one of its projects in the Middle
East.
Arab media managers and supervisors will have a unique opportunity this fall to enhance their leadership skills and find innovative solutions to the challenges they face in media management through a comprehensive six-week fellowship. 
Palestinian photographer Mohammed Ballas, from Associated Press, won the third prize singles in the spot news category of the 50th annual World Press Photo Contest.
au fait is the first free daily to be launched in Morocco, which already has several free weeklies. With a circulation of 10,000 copies, this newspaper is distributed from Monday to Friday by a team of fourteen peddlers in Casablanca and three in Rabat since 1 March 2007, it will soon be available in Marrakech. 
Shortly after the attacks of September 11, Khadija Darid, a Canadian of Moroccan origin who has lived in Quebec for the past 18 years, decided to start a magazine for the Arab community in Canada, whose image had been quite tarnished. 
"Reading & Learning," a ground-breaking series
of Newspapers in Education (NIE) guides that target diversity as a core
element of NIE, has just been published by the World Association of
Newspapers.
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27 March 2007
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24 March 2007 In Iraq, the editor-in-chief of the daily al-Safir, Hussein al Jaburi, died from his injuries in a hospital in Amman, Jordan on 16 March 2007 where he was taken for treatment after being ambushed outside his Baghdad home on 11 February 2007. |
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22 March 2007
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21 March 2007
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20 March 2007
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17 March 2007 In Morrocco, Azzedin Gaiz, a correspondent for the national daily Yawmiyat Ennass, filed a complaint to the prosecutor's office in the city of Khénifra on 30 January 2007. According to reports, Gaiz had received several anonymous calls in the past month, telling him to stop writing if he wanted to live. |
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16 March 2007
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15 March 2007 Hana Hajjar, 26, is one of the very rare women cartoonists in the Arab world. Born in Saudi Arabia where she studied fine arts, she has been working mainly with the English-speaking Saudi daily Arab News for almost two years now. Each month, between 10 and 15 of her drawings are published in this newspaper. |
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14 March 2007
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14 March 2007
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13 March 2007
Arabs are rich, lazy people who always complain of being Israel’s victims. Americans are fat consumers who do not know a thing about the rest of the world. These are just basic examples of widespread stereotypes in the United States and Arab countries. |
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10 March 2007 In Somaliland, Haatuf newspaper chairman Yusuf Abdi Gabobe, editor-in-chief Ali Abdi Dini and journalists Mohammed Omar Sheik and Mohammed Rashid Farah were sentenced by Hargeisa court on 4 March to jail terms ranging from 24 to 29 months. |
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09 March 2007
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08 March 2007
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08 March 2007
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07 March 2007
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06 March 2007 The contest, which is co-organised by Institute for War and Peace Reporting, an international non-profit media development network, and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund, celebrates the memory of the American freelance reporter killed in an ambush while on assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone in May 2000. Two annual prizes of $5,000 each are awarded - one to to a local journalist in the developing world, and the second to an international freelance journalist covering foreign news. Massoud Ansari from Pakistan and the late Steven Vincent from the US were last year’s winners. |
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02 March 2007
Le Canard Libéré is the name of the latest newspaper to hit the Moroccan newsstands at a price of 8 Dirham (0,7 Euro). The first issue of this French-language satirical weekly was launched on 3 February.
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01 March 2007 The World Association of Newspapers has joined an international day of action calling for the release of Mohamed Abbou, a Tunisian lawyer and human rights activist, jailed for having exercised his freedom of expression. |
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28 February 2007 A growing number of training programmes in the past year have encouraged Jordanian journalists to be more outspoken, even though the media are still facing a number of problems. |
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23 February 2007 A new self-assessment website has been launched, providing journalists and those who work them with a confidential tool to help them determine if they are suffering the effects of post traumatic stress. This unique web-based clinic is now available directly at www.conflict-study.com or through a link on the front page of the website of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) at www.newssafety.com |
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21 February 2007 Time is getting short to register for the 7th World Young Reader
Conference, “Making New Connections,” set for 25 to 28 March 2007 in
Washington, D.C., USA.
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09 February 2007 APN spoke to
Saleh Zakwani, publisher and CEO of Apex Press and Publishing, which
publishes TheWeek, about why the paper decided to carry out an audit
and its overall aims. |
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05 February 2007
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01 February 2007 APN will shorty carry stories from the event. The WEF began its Master Class series last year in Hanoi, Vietnam. For more information on the Master Classes, contact Bertrand Pecquerie, WEF Director, at bpecquerie@wan.asso.fr |
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30 January 2007
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29 January 2007
In a country
where working for a media outlet has become synonymous with threats,
kidnappings and killings, Iraqi Kurdistan remains a relatively safe
area. Media outlets in the autonomous entity, located in northern Iraq,
also have a longer tradition of independence than the rest of Iraq.
However, running a newspaper in Kurdistan is still a challenge,
characterized by issues similar to those in other parts of Iraq, or
other places in the world where media are under pressure. |
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24 January 2007
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With an ever-expanding list of media,
education, information and entertainment channels all competing for the
attention and time of young people, newspapers must continuously
rethink and revisit their traditional approaches and strategies for
engaging young readers.
Four years after American forces invaded Iraq, journalists in this country are being killed in unprecedented numbers.
« Women and Islam: Understanding and Reporting » is the theme of the 2007 Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism. This annual event will be held on March 29, 2007, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 
I say to Al-Azhar and its university and its professors and preachers who stand against anyone who thinks differently to them: 'You are destined for the rubbish bin of history, where you will find no one to cry for you and your regime will end like others have'. The author of these words, Abdel Karim Suleiman, a 22-year old Egyptian blogger, was sentenced last February to four years imprisonment.
The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) is seeking nominations from around the world for its 2007 Courage in Journalism Awards and Lifetime Achievement Award.
Middle Eastern and North African journalists working in print, radio, television or online are invited to submit entries for the second edition of the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press by 30 March 2007.
As Tunisian lawyer and cyberdissident Mohamed Abbou began his third year in prison, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) activists demonstrated outside the Tunisian Tourism Office in Paris on 1March 2007 to protest against his continued detention. Mohamed Abbou was jailed two years ago for criticising President Ben Ali in online articles.
The International News Safety Institute (INSI)
presents the dramatic results of the world’s most comprehensive inquiry
into the deaths of journalists over the last decade in a report called Killing The Messenger: The Deadly Price of News.
Print journalists covering local stories in developing countries and freelancers specialized in foreign reporting have until 15 June 2007 to enter the Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. The submitted articles should focus on conflict, human-rights concerns, cross-border issues, or any other issue of controversy. The stories must have been published between 1 March 2006 and 30 April 2007. 
A conference for media professionals from the Arab world will be held in The Hague, the Netherlands in June 2007. Under the title of "Strategy for Training Journalists and Protection of Journalists in the Arab World" a number of Arab and international experts on media, freedom of press and development will meet and discuss the strategy to raise professional journalistic standards, legal awareness and freedom the press in the Arab world. The dates for the conference are 7 to 8 June.
Editors from across the Middle East gathered in Cairo on 24 and 25 January for "How to successfully reshape Arab newspapers," the second in a series of Master Classes for editors in developing countries from the World Editors Forum.
Prison
sentences, physical attacks and publication bans are among the press
freedom violations that occurred in Egypt last year. In its annual
report on press freedom in Egypt, the Arab Press Freedom Watch (APFW)
reports on a high number of press freedom violations in this country
which at the same time is the home to a vibrant press, including over
two hundred independent publications. Many of the violations were
linked to political events in Egypt, in connection to which the media
were among the main victims. Several politicians filed suits against
journalists, among them the former Minister of Housing, Eng. Mohamed
Ibrahim Soliman who filed 35 suits, most of them resulting in
sentences.
