2005-2014

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's state television has begun broadcasting appeals for the release of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll including footage of her mother and a major Sunni Arab politician describing the 28-year-old freelancer as a friend of Iraq. Carroll, who reported from Iraq for the Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped Jan. 7 in Baghdad while on her way from the office of Sunni...

Russia's Muslim rights activists are ready to demand that Russian publishing houses be shut down if they publish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, a member of the Russian Public Chamber said Wednesday. 'We have information on the publication of [religious] cartoons,' said Kamilzhan Kalandarov, the head of the all-Russia public Islamic organization Al-Khak (Justice). 'We will be pushing for the...

COPENHAGEN (AFX) - The editor of the Danish newspaper that first published the controversial prophet Mohammed cartoons said the media was giving Muslims special treatment as a result of the subsequent uproar. 'It turned out that the freedom of the press crumbled much more quickly than I thought. It seems to me that the freedom of the press the world over is being limited as Muslims are being given...

NEW YORK: The print media, beset by intensifying competition for advertising dollars, are seeking to strike back. Trade organizations for the U.S. newspaper and magazine industry are planning elaborate and expensive campaigns that tackle a daunting task: persuading marketers and agencies to think better of print as an ad medium. The industry is contending with sluggish growth as it faces off...

The student newspaper at Northern Illinois University this week ran the controversial Danish political cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. The student paper at the University of Illinois is still reeling from the consequences of running them. Harvard's conservative alternative paper has run them. On Wednesday, so did the alternative student paper at Illinois State University. By this point...

Last Thursday, two men shot three bullets into Ratan Luwangcha, the General Secretary of the Manipur journalists’ union and bureau chief of a popular local newspaper, the Poknapham. He is in a critical condition, but at least he is still alive – unlike the three editors of Manipuri dailies who have been shot dead in the past few years. Killing journalists seems to be becoming a bit of a fad...

Some weeks ago, a journalist investigating a scam in the Assam forest department was brutally murdered. Perpetrators of the crime are obviously part of the loop of crime and sleaze surrounding the department. There is the timber lobby, politicians, bureaucrats and what have you. They are a deadly cocktail by any standards. Following on the heels of this gruesome killing is the attempt on the life...

Even while Manipur is immersed in the controversy over the life attempt on a well known journalist by an underground organization, a not so similar media issue is raging in the West. Danish newspapers in September published a series of cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, some of which are said to have lampooned him as a terrorist (we have still not seen them although they are reported to be on...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Iraqi state television has aired video clips put together by the Christian Science Monitor urging the release of its reporter Jill Carroll, less than a week after her captors renewed threats to kill her, the newspaper said on Wednesday. The Boston-based newspaper said the broadcasts on al-Iraqiya television began airing on Tuesday and included interviews with Iraqis who say they...

The weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire has accused Moroccan authorities of orchestrating protests against it for publishing a photograph of a French newspaper showing a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed. The Casablanca-based newspaper said in a statement that for two days this week protesters have demonstrated against it and that two state-run television stations have accused it of blasphemy. Le Journal...