UK: Broadcasters win legal fight over Dale Farm footage

A number of UK broadcasters have won a judicial review overturning a decision that had forced them to hand over video footage of October’s Dale Farm evictions to Essex Police. ITN, the BBC, Sky, Hardcash Productions and the National Union of Journalists had appealed a decision by Chelmsford Crown Court to grant a production order to present unbroadcasted footage of the controversial evictions to the police. Today Mr Justice Eady and Lord Justice Moses overturned the judgement in a landmark decision, which NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said was a “huge victory for the cause of press freedom”.

Al-Oula newspaper boss ends hunger strike

Nebil Jridet, General Director of the Arabic-language weekly newspaper Al-Oula has ended his hunger strike.

Jridet spent seven days on hunger strike in protest at Tunisian government’s “unequal” distribution of state advertisements among newspapers. He accuses the government of allocating adverts according to “newspapers’ political affiliations”.

The director’s decision came after talks with Samir Dilou, Minister of Human Rights and Transitional Justice on 15 May. Dilou said: “the state advertisement issue is a just cause and requires all concerned parties’ efforts in order to come up with the solutions which would make the distribution of state ads among newspapers a transparent process”.

In exchange, a national conference addressing state advertisement matters will be held at the end of the month. The National Syndicate for Tunisia Journalists and the National Syndicate for Independent and Party Newspapers will head the conference.

“It will take much time and we are going through serious financial problems which might come in the way of issuing the newspaper in the upcoming weeks” Nebil Jridet told Index.

Iraq: Kurdish authorities arrest magazine editor

The editor of a Iraqi Kurdish magazine has been arrested for reprinting an allegedly blasphemous article. Hamin Ary, editor of Kurdish and Arabic monthly publication Chirpa (Al-Hamsah in Arabic) was arrested on 7 May after publishing an article by controversial writer Goran Halmat. Ary was arrested for “offences that violate religious sensibilities”, an offence which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. The article, entitled “Me and God” was originally posted on Facebook in 2010, and was deemed “offensive to Islam”.

Colombia: Bomb attack on minister-turned-journalist

A former interior minister-turned-journalist was targeted in a bomb attack in Colombia earlier this week. Fernando Londoño Hoyos, who is now a radio station programme director and a columnist for various newspapers, was injured after a bomb was thrown onto his car bonnet in Bogotá. Londoño survived the attack, but his driver and bodyguard were killed and 39 others were injured. It is unclear who was behind the bombing.

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