• Friday 25 June 2010

  • Rwandan journalist Jean Leonard Rugambage was shot dead last night in front of his house in the capital, Kigali.

    He was acting editor of an independent paper, Umuvugizi, that was recently suspended by the Rwandan authorities. But it continued to publish online.

    The paper's chief editor, Jean Bosco Gasasira, who went into exile in Uganda in April, blamed the government. "I'm 100% sure it was the office of the national security services which shot him dead," he said.

    Sources: AFP/BBC

  • Thursday 24 June 2010

  • Trevor Ncube, the Zimbabwean publisher of South Africa's successful weekly, the Mail & Guardian, launched a daily newspaper, NewsDay, in his own country three weeks ago.

    As David Smith reported for The Guardian, Ncube's paper is now head to head with the state-owned Herald, cheerleader for Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe.

    Ncube knows he is taking risks. Over the years, despite leaving Zimbabwe, he was a thorn in Mugabe's side with his two weekly newspapers theZimbabwe Independent and the Sunday Standard.

    So why has he decided to publish a daily in a country with a wrecked economy? Ncube has been explaining his strategy to Gill Moodie on the Cape Town-based bizcommunity site.

    Here are some highlights... first, on the difficulty of building an audience:

    Readers are hungry for independent news but it is important to realise that the majority of Zimbabweans are in the rural areas. The urban population is between 25% and what could now be as high as 40% of the population. That's a challenge that any publisher who wishes to achieve economies of scale faces. How do you penetrate that other 60%?

    Moodie: "Excuse my ignorance - which is probably the ignorance of the average South African - but I thought all the independent newspapers were run out of town by the Mugabe regime."

    My newspapers have been around for 15 years and, if you know me, you'll know I wouldn't run a newspaper that is censored by the government. These are very independent newspapers.

    At the moment, one of my editors is facing a 20-year jail term and that is the kind of thing we've endured: publish and be damned; publish and be imprisoned...

    My two newspapers performed the role of the opposition. It was a small weekly voice in a market crowded with government propaganda.

    Moodie: "Were are you finding journalists, as there's been such a brain drain from Zimbabwe?"

    One or two people have come from the diaspora, which is very interesting. This is another thing people don't realise: Zimbabweans are coming back home. They are tired of being treated like second-class citizens in South Africa and everywhere else...

    People are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm getting Twitter, Facebook and email enquiries from people who are wanting to come back. We also poached from existing establishments and there are journalists in Zimbabwe who have been on the streets...

    On NewsDay's stance, in terms of politics and the news agenda:

    It's certainly not going to be down-market but we want to be able to talk to the serious reader in the township... It's for your blue-collar and executive workers who want a daily record of what took place yesterday but who are also interested in analysis and independent reportage.

    The one commodity that Zimbabwe lacks right now is hope. We want NewsDay to help Zimbabweans get that hope back again... We also see NewsDay's duty as participating in national healing and nation building...

    Right now Zimbabwe is split into two: those that are pro-Zanu PF and those that are anti-Zanu PF. There are high intolerance levels on both sides and we can't move as a nation with this kind of paralysis.

    We want NewsDay to be the paper that sits in the middle and is seen as a mirror via which both sides look at each other.

    Source: bizcommunity

  • Wednesday 9 June 2010

  • Three journalists covering the World Cup in South Africa have been robbed at gunpoint by two men who broke into their hotel 75 miles outside Johannesburg, close to where the Portuguese team are staying.

    Portuguese journalist Antonio Fimoes was held at gunpoint by one man while the other rummaged through his belongings.

    He also rifled through the bags of Spanish journalist Miguel Serrano and Rui Gustavo Morais from Portugal. But they remained asleep throughout the raid.

    The robbers escaped with money, passports, photographic material and clothing.

    Sources: AP/PA/Guardian

  • Tuesday 8 June 2010

  • Namibian page

    Memo to subs on The Namibian: careful where you place your headlines and pictures.

    However, there is a serious side to this otherwise amusing juxtaposition because the story, published on 19 May, concerned the trial of two gay men who were accused of unnatural acts and gross indecency.

    Two days later they were sentenced to 14 years in jail with hard labour, the maximum sentence.

    Thankfully, after a world-wide protest, they were granted a presidential pardon within a week despite homosexuality being illegal in Malawi, as it is in most of Africa.

    Malawi's president Bingu wa Mutharika announced the pardon after meeting UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who also called on Malawi's parliament to change the country's laws.

  • Thursday 27 May 2010

  • The Zimbabwe Media Commission has granted licences to four daily newspapers and one weekly: the Daily News (owner: Associated Newspapers), The Mail (ZANU PF's youth organisation, Footlink Ventures), Newsday (Alpha Media), the Daily Gazette (Modus Media), and The Worker (ZCTU, a trade union body).

    When the commission announced its decision at a press conference in Harare last night journalists criticised the presence of Tafataona Mahoso, who won the nickname of "media hangman" when running the previous Media and Information Commission

    Source: SW Radio Africa

  • Tuesday 4 May 2010

  • Journalists protesting about the death of a Cameroonian newspaper editor have clashed with riot police in the capital Yaounde. Several hundred demonstrators were prevented from staging a sit-in at the prime minister's office to mark World Press Freedom day.

    Cameroon Express editor Bibi Ngota died last month in a Yaounde prison, as I reported here. His family rejects the government's explanation that he died of an HIV-related infection.

    The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says it holds the authorities responsible for Ngota's death.

    Newspapers in Cameroon are subject to considerable official restrictions and constrained by tough libel legislation.

    Source: BBC

  • Tuesday 27 April 2010

  • Three journalists were murdered at the weekend in Nigeria. Edo Ugbagwu, a court reporter with The Nation, was shot to death at his home in Lagos after men broke in and began arguing with him.

    On the same day, two journalists working for the Christian newspaper The Light Bearer were stabbed to death while on their way to Jos, the central Nigerian city where there has been sporadic fighting between Christians and Muslims. There were identified as deputy editor Nathan S Dabak and reporter Sunday Gyang Bwede.

    Source: AP/ABCnews

  • Thursday 15 April 2010

  • Rwanda's press regulator, the media high council, has suspended two independent newspapers - Umuseso and Umuvugizi - until after the coming presidential election. The six-month ban was imposed because the papers are said to have incited the police and created fear among the public.

    Human Rights Watch claimed earlier this year that opposition activists are facing increasing threats as the next presidential election approaches in August.

    Sources: AllAfrica.com/Human Rights Watch/Index on Censorship

  • Thursday 19 November 2009

  • Two journalists have been shot at and wounded in the last two days in Somalia. On Tuesday, Voice of America reporter Mohammed Yasin Isak was shot in the shoulder by a police officer just after being stopped at a police checkpoint.

    And yesterday, Abdirahman Warsame of Xinhua news agency was hit by a stray bullet while standing outside a hospital in Mogadishu. He was covering the fighting that continues to rage between the Somali government, African Union forces and insurgents.

    Source: IPI

  • Thursday 12 November 2009

  • Six independent newspapers have been suspended in Gabon for "violations of the principles of professional conduct and ethics" and two other titles were "warned to respect the regulations."

    Among their "violations" was to criticise the contested September election of Ali Bongo Ondimba as president of the oil-rich equatorial African nation. He replaced his father, Omar Bongo, who died in June after ruling for 41 years.

    One paper called Gabon "a republican monarchy" and another referred to the election as "a parody of democracy."

    Norbert Ngoua Mezui, editor of one of the banned papers, Nkuu le Messager, said the bans were "a way of sweeping aside democratic expression."

    Sources: Sapa-AFP/IoL

  • Monday 19 October 2009

  • Innocent Ebodé, editor of a privately-owned weekly in N'Djamena, capital of Chad, has been expelled after the authorities accused the Cameroon national of staying illegally in the country.

    The day before his expulsion his paper, La Voix, carried a front page article that revealed Chad had spent £11.8m on buying weapons from France, thereby becoming France's second biggest customer for military hardware.

    Source: IFEX

  • Fred M'membe, editor-in-chief of Zambia's largest newspaper, the Daily Post, has been charged with contempt of court for running an article critical of controversial charges against his news editor, Chansa Kabwela.

    Kabwela is being tried for "circulating obscene materials" by sending two photographs of a woman giving birth without medical help outside a hospital to the vice president, the minister of health, the cabinet secretary, the archbishop of Lusaka, and two civil society groups.

    The Zambian authorities "are determined to censor coverage of this embarrassing story," says a Centre for the Protection of Journalists official. "The authorities must drop all charges against the paper and its staff immediately."

    Source: CPJ

  • Thursday 24 September 2009

  • Ibrahim Soumana Gaoh, the editor of a weekly news magazine in Niger, Le Témoin (The Witness), has been arrested on charges of defaming the country's communications minister. He is to appear before a judge tomorrow and could face several months in jail if convicted. A 14 September article accused the minister, Mohamed Ben Omar, of being involved in a financial scandal during the 2001 privatisation of a telecommunications company. Source: IPI

  • Friday 11 September 2009

  • There are growing signs of threats to press freedom in Uganda. A photo-journalist with the Kampala-based Observer was detained and beaten yesterday by security forces for taking pictures during a riot.

    After being released Edward Echwalu told colleagues he was arrested after he "took pictures of military men passing near a dead boy". The beating started after he made calls to his bosses.

    And a Buganda radio station, CBS, went off the air. A soldier was seen by a presenter climbing up the broadcasting mast.

    Two people were reported killed in the demonstration related to the arrival in the city of the king of Buganda, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi.

    Earlier this month, three editors were detained for questioning over a cartoon criticising President Yoweri Museveni and accused of sedition.

    The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed serious concerns over constraints to press freedom in Uganda as the number of criminal charges against journalists in the country is increasing.

    Sources: The Observer/UGPulse/bizcommunity/CPJ

  • Thursday 27 August 2009

  • Radio presenter Bruno Koko Chirambiza, a journalist with the privately-owned radio station Radio Star, was stabbed to death after being ambushed in Bukavu, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    The murder is the latest in a string of events that raises serious press freedom concerns according to several press watchdogs, including Journaliste en Danger, the International Press Institute and Reporters Without Borders. Chirambiza is the third journalist to be killed in the city in mysterious circumstances and, over the past year, journalists have faced heightened risks in covering fighting between DRC armed forces and rebel groups.

    Source: IFEX

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