For the first time in its five-decade history, the whole board of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) has been accused of committing lèse majesté, a crime with a maximum jail sentence of 15 years. The board, includes three British nationals including the BBC’s Bangkok correspondent Jonathan Head, and three American nationals, including two working for Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. Read more here
As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor citizens. Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls. It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008. Read more here
As the divide narrows between left and right in Britain, so too does the space for adversarial dialogue and free expression
(more…)
The BBC Trust’s condemnation of Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen has the potential to cause serious damage to the corporation’s international standing, says Jonathan Dimbleby
(more…)