Albania’s contentious political environment and economic underdevelopment continued to make the country a relatively chaotic and difficult place for the independent press in 2003. Journalists faced government pressure, criminal libel lawsuits, arbitrary dismissal by politicized owners, and limited access to basic government information, particularly when investigating official corruption and organized crime. Furthermore, low professional standards,…
Despite some modest media-related reforms implemented by Parliament in 2002, Albania’s contentious political scene and economic underdevelopment continue to make the country a relatively chaotic and difficult place for the independent press. Journalists face government harassment, criminal libel lawsuits, arbitrary dismissal by politicized owners, and limited access to basic government information, particularly when investigating official…
December 11 Jonathan C. Randal, The Washington Post The U.N. International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) ruled to limit compelled testimony from war correspondents. The decision, announced at the tribunal’s Appeals Chamber, came in response to the appeal by former Washington Post reporter Jonathan C. Randal, who had been…
Emboldened by the growing number of U.S. troops in the country, President Askar Akayev has used the threat of international terrorism as an excuse to curb political dissent and suppress the independent and opposition media in Kyrgyzstan. Compliant courts often issue exorbitant damage awards in politically motivated libel suits, driving even the country’s most prominent…
Press freedom is generally respected in the United Kingdom, but CPJ was alarmed by a legal case in which Interbrew, a Belgium-based brewing group, and the British Financial Services Authority (FSA), a banking and investment watchdog agency, demanded that several U.K. media outlets turn over documents that had been leaked to them. The case threatened…
The exhilarating prospect of broad press freedoms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago has faded dramatically in much of the post-communist world. A considerable decline in press freedom conditions in Russia during the last year, along with the stranglehold authoritarian leaders have imposed on media in Central Asia, the Caucasus,…
Independent journalists in Albania continue to struggle with economic underdevelopment, highly partisan politics, and security risks. Low professional standards and stalled government reforms of media laws further compounded journalists’ problems in 2001. High taxes and printing costs, poor distribution networks, low advertising revenues, limited business skills, and endemic corruption keep editors and publishers dependent on…