Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui

A Vietnamese journalist was arrested Thursday for allegedly threatening to write negative stories about a cement company unless he was paid off, state-controlled media said.

The prime minister of Vietnam, a country whose media ranks as one of the world's least free, has compared journalists to soldiers who must serve the nation, a report said Wednesday.

A prominent state-linked Vietnamese newspaper on Friday made a rare direct attack against a draft decree which, the paper reported, would tighten restrictions on journalists.

HANOI - Vietnamese police released blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh on Saturday after more than a week in detention under investigation on state security grounds, her mother said by telephone from the beach town of Nha Trang.

HANOI — A Vietnamese journalist has been arrested for allegedly violating national security laws, her editor said Tuesday, insisting the detention had no link to her work for a prominent news website.

HANOI — Vietnam will grant an early release to a journalist jailed for his aggressive coverage of a government corruption scandal, an official said Friday.

HANOI - A U.S.-based human rights group denounced the recent firing of two Vietnamese newspaper editors, saying Friday that the incident signaled a clampdown by the communist government on the state-controlled media.

The conviction of two senior journalists in Hanoi last week had more to do with tussles within the leadership of the ruling Vietnam Communist Party than anything else. The much-derided show trial of the journalists and two anti-corruption investigators indicates the intensity of the conflict between the party's conservatives and reformists. The loser appears to be Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

HANOI — Vietnam on Tuesday put on trial two reporters who helped expose a major state corruption scandal, in a case seen as a test on the limits of media freedom in the communist country.

HANOI — Two Vietnamese journalists will go on trial next week for allegedly writing inaccurate stories about one of the country's most high-profile corruption cases, an official said Friday.

Hanoi - Le porte-parole du ministère des Affaires étrangères a rejeté la rumeur selon laquelle un correspondant de l'AP aurait été battu, et affirmé que ce correspondant étranger a violé la loi du pays.

HANOI — The Vietnamese government said Saturday that four journalists had been stripped of their accreditation because they wrote and edited false information on an anti-corruption case and had defended colleagues arrested for their coverage of the case.

New York - Eight Vietnamese writers are among a diverse group of 34 writers from 19 countries to receive Hellman/Hammett awards this year in recognition of the courage they showed when facing political persecution, Human Rights Watch said today.

HANOI — The arrests of two Vietnamese reporters for their coverage of a bribery, gambling and corruption scandal have led to a highly unusual confrontation between Vietnam's Communist government and the country's state-controlled newspapers. "Honest journalists must be freed," blared a bold headline in Wednesday's Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper, where one of the reporters worked until he was jailed Monday.