UPDATE: Press Freedom in Burundi Staggered by Enactment of Repressive Media Law

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Proclaiming that the news media will be professionalized and that his war-torn nation will benefit from journalists being prohibited from inciting violence, Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza this week put into effect a repressive media law passed by the National Assembly last April (see "TUOL" post 4/5/13), according to reports by BBC News and BloombergBusinessWeek.com.

The new measure supplants a 2003 law and among its provisions, mandates journalists, irrespective of their professional experience, possess a university degree, compels reporters to disclose their confidential sources, bars reporting on issues, including public safety, national security, morality and the national economy, and subjects offenders to fines ranging from $2,000 to $6,000 and criminal penalties of up to a maximum life imprisonment.

Free press advocates, including New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists("CPJ") and Human Rights Watch ("HRW"), and France-based Reporters Without Borders ("RWB") all condemned the new law as a major setback to press freedom. Burundi is recovering from the aftermath of a decade-long civil war sparked by the assassination of its first democratically elected president that claimed more than 300,000 lives.

Nkurunziza, an insurgent leader during the civil war, was elected in 2005 and re-elected in 2010, though opposition leaders boycotted the most recent election. According to the BBC News report, the African nation's National Communication Council ("NCC") on May 31 imposed a one-month ban on an online forum of the Iwacu newspaper because the NCC claimed readers critical comments ran afoul of the law by endangering national unity.

"This is a black day for freedom on information in Burundi," proclaimed the RWB Web site.

Saudi Interior Minister Wins Libel Suit Against U.K. Daily

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Prince Nayef Bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister and second in line to the country's throne, has been awarded significant undisclosed damages by England's High Court in his libel suit against The Independent, according to an online article by BBC News.

Both the daily's publisher, Independent Print Ltd. and Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who wrote the Independent article published April 15, 2011, underlying the defamation claim, apologized in the proceedings presided over by Mrs Justice Nicola Davies. The plaintiff said he will donate the judgment amount to charity.

The Independent article accused al-Saud of ordering police to use deadly force on unarmed protestors. The Prince's counsel said the alleged written order was a fake and contained features that authentic orders from the Ministry of the Interior would not.

Pew Study: Online News Trumps Newspapers; Trails TV

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BBC News cites a  recent study by the Pew Research Center that finds more people getting their news from online news aggregators and news Web sites than from newspapers.

Regular readers of newspapers, according to the Pew study, have dropped to 50 percent.  Meanwhile, online news, whether from aggregators such as Google News and AOL, or Web sites such as BBC.com and CNN, is the third most popular source of news, but still lagging behind local and national tv stations. Seventy-eight percent of those queried say they get their daily news from local tv, compared to 71 percent from national networks and cable channels, such as CNN and Fox, while 61 percent look online for news reports. Radio news is a resource tapped by 54 percent of those polled.

The Pew survey also noted that 90 percent of respondents get their news from more than one medium and 57 percent claimed they consult two to five Web sites daily for their news.