Confinement of press professionals: Some journalists are making the step up13/01/2010 | 13:31:49
In response to the confinements of Radio Fahazavana station's reporter and director, a new crisis cell has been created by journalists.
The world of press is boiling again. The situation has been getting tenser since journalist Radio Fahazavana's reporter Lolo Ratsimba, and director, Didier Ravoahangiarison's jail sentence related to the Support Regiment's aborted mutiny back to the end of December.
Journalists have erected a crisis cell anew. Some professionals already met the Justice minister to require the immediate and unconditional release of their colleagues.
Judicial authorities are avoiding to openly linking both of Radio Fahazavana's reporters’ custody to breach of press rules. Lolo Ratsimba is charged with "complicity" in a mutiny case, for having failed to alarm the authorities although being the first outsider on the scene at 04:00 a.m.
The Justice's argument is definitely being rejected by journalists making it a cover for hindrances of press freedom. "Can a scoop, now, drive into jail?" regretted a journalist. Lolo Ratsimba and his director have not been the first reporters sent in jail since Andry Rajoelina's led putsch. In April 2009, Radio Mada's Evariste Ramanantsoavina, jailed by the High Authority of Transition, has celebrated his third week behind bars.
A rather special work session was held in the Carlton hotel. It was the Malagasy reporters' occasion to openly display their profession's difficulties indulged in by the political crisis to Antananarivo's diplomatic bodies.[See]
It was the first contact ever between the minister in charge of communication, Nathalie Rabe, and capital city's editors from TV and radio stations as well as newspapers.[See]
The "Clergy leaders' movement"'s leading figures are being planning various actions, without any further information, in order to get Radio Fahazavana's reporters held in custody since nearly one month.[See]
"...One month of suspension for the news bulletin and the political program Ampenjika". So read the sanction inflicted upon the Fahazavāna radio, the single one station close to the ousted president Marc Ravalomanana, the single still working one.[See]
The press microcosm is mourning one of his own again. The newspaper La Gazette de la Grande Île's journalist caricaturist, Aimé Razafy, has passed away.[See]
Some of the capital city's press groups have been denied access to the palace of Ambohitsorohitra when Andry Rajoelina gave a press conference concerning his position in face of international mediation and the setting up of the Transition's new government.[See]
