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…
New York, March 6, 2003—Armenian police yesterday arrested six suspects in the December 2002 murder of Tigran Nagdalian, the 36-year-old head of the state-owned Armenian Public Television. The police continue to look for other individuals linked to the crime. Law enforcement authorities have not released the suspects’ names or details of the crime, including the…
New York, December 30, 2002–Tigran Nagdalian, the 36-year-old head of the state-owned Armenian Public Television, was shot in the head as he was leaving his parents home in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, on Saturday, December 28. The journalist was rushed to a hospital, where he died during emergency surgery, according to press reports.
New York, October 24, 2002—Armenian free-lance journalist Mark Grigorian suffered serious shrapnel wounds to the head and chest from a grenade thrown at him as he walked through the center of the country’s capital, Yerevan. The grenade exploded at around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 22, as Grigorian walked past the entrance of the Yerevan…
New York, April 8, 2002—CPJ is alarmed that the independent television channel A1+ has lost its broadcast frequency and been forced off the air. On April 2, the National Committee on Television and Radio (NCTR), whose members are appointed by the president, awarded the A1+ frequency to the entertainment company Sharm, which has close government…
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,…
ARMENIA Widespread poverty, polarized politics, and flawed legislation kept the media at the mercy of government officials and wealthy sponsors during 2001. Libel remained a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment, though it was not used against journalists during the year.
POLITICAL REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, along with the advent of democratic governments in Croatia and Serbia, brightened the security prospects for journalists in Central Europe and the Balkans. In contrast, Russian’s new government imposed press restrictions, and authoritarian regimes entrenched themselves in other countries of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, further threatening…
ARMENIAN JOURNALISTS SUFFERED FROM LINGERING POLITICAL INSTABILITY last year, following the October 1999 terrorist attack on Parliament that left eight politicians dead, including Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkissian. In March 2000, the attempted assassination of Arkady Ghukasian, self-declared president of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, contributed to the general turmoil. Advertising revenues are generally low in Armenia,…