MEDIA FREEDOM - The African Mirror

Jul

08

2026

Mali’s junta suspends popular radio show

MEDIA FREEDOM

LAST week, Mali’s media regulator silenced one of the country’s few remaining public forums, the popular radio phone-in show, Allô Klédu. On June 25, the High Authority for Communication ordered the suspension of the show, broadcast on the private station Radio Klédu, for two months. The media regulator said the program had become “a platform for listeners to vent against the government” and sought to justify the suspension by citing broadcasts in which callers accused the authorities of profiting from the armed conflict and lacking the will to end it. It said this amounted to defamation under the July 2000 press law. “Allô Klédu has long…

Jun

27

2026

By The African Mirror

Burkina Faso’s missing journalist exposes the junta’s tightening grip on dissent

MEDIA FREEDOM

Two years after journalist Atiana Serge Oulon vanished in Burkina Faso, his disappearance has become more than a missing-person case. It now stands as a warning about how the military authorities are using fear, secrecy and coercion to suppress scrutiny of their rule. Oulon, who led the investigative weekly L’Événement, was seized from his home in Ouagadougou on June 24, 2024, by armed men who identified themselves as intelligence agents. Authorities later claimed he had been conscripted into the army, but rights groups say the evidence points instead to enforced disappearance and secret detention. That distinction matters. Conscription implies a…

Jun

11

2026

By The African Mirror

Malian journalist detained over Pan-African forum remarks as press groups sound alarm

MEDIA FREEDOM

CHAHANA Takiou, Director of Publication of the Malian biweekly newspaper 22 Septembre, was detained by the National Cybercrime Unit on charges of “undermining the credibility of the State” through the country’s judicial institutions — an arrest that press freedom organisations say stems directly from statements he made at an international media forum held in the capital less than a week ago. The detention order, issued by the Prosecutor of the Republic attached to the National Cybercrime Unit, follows remarks Takiou allegedly made during the Forum Panafricain des Médias (FOPAME), which ran in Bamako from 3 to 6 June 2026. The…

Jun

03

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

Tributes for Souleymane Diallo – pillar of African journalism, hero of media freedom: 1945-2026

MEDIA FREEDOM

SOULEYMANE Diallo, doyen of Guinean journalism and founding pillar of the African Editors Forum (TAEF), has died - leaving an emptiness in African newsrooms and a legacy of principled, courageous journalism that reverberates across the continent. For decades, Diallo steered Le Lynx, the Guinean satirical weekly he edited, into a position of moral authority and fearless inquiry. He combined the sharpness of a seasoned editor with a calm, almost reserved dignity that masked a fierce commitment to press freedom, democracy and the rigorous pursuit of truth. As colleagues and friends in TAEF and beyond have testified in recent hours, he…

May

11

2026

By JOVIAL RANTAO

In exile and under fire, Sudanese journalists win the world’s top press freedom honour

MEDIA FREEDOM

THEY reported from rubble, from rooftops, from exile. Some transmitted dispatches while sheltering from drone strikes. Others disappeared into the silence of a war that has swallowed whole cities and shuttered newsrooms across a country the size of Western Europe. On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation gave them the world’s most prestigious press freedom prize. The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate has been named the 2026 laureate of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize — awarded in recognition of the collective’s extraordinary documentation of what has become one of the most…

Apr

30

2026

By The African Mirror

Unbowed: Zied El Heni speaks from his cell

MEDIA FREEDOM

"I went on a hunger strike from inside prison in protest against arbitrary detention, defamation without any formal complaint, and an unfair trial outside the protections of Decree 115." — Zied El Heni, from prison Those are not the words of a broken man. They are the words of a journalist who has been locked in a cell in Tunis for five days - and who refuses, with every fibre of his being, to pretend that what is happening to him is just. Zied El Heni — editor-in-chief of the independent outlet Tunisian Press, broadcaster, one of the most celebrated…

Apr

27

2026

By The African Mirror

Facebook Post. Handcuffs. Silence.

MEDIA FREEDOM

A summons. Then handcuffs. That was the arc of journalist Zied El Heni’s Friday morning in Tunis, after Tunisia’s Cybercrime Brigade — the Fifth Central Brigade for Combating Information and Communication Technology Crimes of the National Guard, headquartered in El Aouina — placed him in custody following a post he had published on his official Facebook account. El Heni had disclosed the summons himself. On Thursday, he posted publicly that he had been ordered to appear at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, 25 April 2026, at the El Aouina brigade — as a suspect. He showed up. He did not leave…

Apr

14

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Africa mourns Cisse – founding pillar of continental press freedom

MEDIA FREEDOM

THE African Editors Forum (TAEF) has paid a warm tribute to Hameye Mahaman Cissé, one of the continent's most consequential press freedom advocates, a co-architect of pan-African editorial solidarity, and a journalist whose moral clarity shaped the conditions under which African journalism was practised for more than three decades. Cisse passed away on Thursday and has been buried in Bamako, Mali. In a statement that was equal parts institutional tribute and personal grief, TAEF described a man who was not merely present at the founding of African media structures, but foundational to them - someone who translated ideas into action,…

Apr

01

2026

By The African Mirror

Nigeria urged to forge media-government partnership amid continent-wide journalist crackdowns

MEDIA FREEDOM

VICE President Kashim Shettima called on Nigeria's media and government to unite as "partners in progress" through constructive journalism, delivering the message at a book launch amid escalating reports of journalist harassment across West Africa and beyond. Speaking on Monday at the public presentation of "My Life and Journalists Hangout" by TVC News Director Babajide Kolade-Otitoju, Shettima praised the veteran's 60th birthday and his program for fostering "critical engagement." He warned that societies crumble not from lacking ideas, but from failing to interrogate them, positioning the media as democracy's conscience - probing power, warning of dangers, illuminating truths, and avoiding…

Mar

24

2026

By The African Mirror

Mali’s Cybercrime Unit convicts newspaper editor in blow to press freedom

MEDIA FREEDOM

MALI National Cybercrime Unit has convicted Youssouf Sissoko, editor of the independent newspaper L'Alternance, in a ruling that has drawn immediate and sharp condemnation from the country's private media sector and raised fresh alarms over the state of press freedom under the country's military-led government. The Association of Private Press Publishers (ASSEP) condemned the conviction in unequivocal terms, describing it as a worrying setback for freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Mali. In a statement signed by ASSEP President Boubacar Yalkoué, the organisation warned that the judicial decision sets a dangerous precedent likely to further weaken media outlets…