2005-2014

NEW YORK: More people are going to newspaper Web sites and in November the overall number of visitors to newspaper.coms hit an all-time high, according to numbers released by ratings firm Nielsen//NetRatings and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The report shows that more than 55 million people visited newspaper Web sites at least one time during the month of November, a 30% increase...

WASHINGTON – Military leaders angrily denounced as "beyond tasteless" a Washington Post editorial cartoon featuring a likeness of a severely wounded soldier and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as an attending doctor who says, "I'm listing your condition as 'battle hardened.'" The cartoon by Post artist Tom Toles appeared in Sunday's newspaper. It reflected the view of some that Bush...

Little surprise accompanied my reading that Coreweekly, one of Madison’s alternative weekly publications, was ending its 18-month run because of apparent financial difficulties. In the saturated news environment that is Madison, publications that have a hard time defining themselves and their product usually have a hard time attracting readers and advertisers. Coreweekly’s demise, however...

Men and women who fight in wars say that even the most intense battles begin to feel routine if they go on long enough. Humans have an amazing capacity to adapt to horror, from the crack of incoming bullets to the deaths of their friends. Deadening their sense of shock, in fact, is what helps them to survive. It's even easier for people who are untouched by war to become inured to the flow of bad...

One of Zimbabwe’s last remaining independent newspapers ‘The Zimbabwe Independent’ has allegedly been blackmailed into retracting an accurate story in order to secure accreditation for its journalists. Tafataona Mahoso, the Head of the Media and Information Commission (MIC), told the paper it would not get accreditation for its journalists if it did not retract a story quoting an MIC commissioner...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed for calm and reason even as the controversy over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed moved in disturbing new directions: "While we understand that many Muslims have been shocked by these caricatures, as Islam forbids any physical representation of the Prophet, there is no justification for calls for violence or threats of any kind." The...

PARIS (Reuters) - One man's cartoon can be another man's crime. The row over Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, which has sparked off protests and boycott calls throughout the Middle East, has turned into a verbal clash of civilizations pitting Western freedom of speech against Muslim taboos. The more that Muslim countries protest, withdraw ambassadors and boycott Danish goods over what...

Muslim condemnation of the European media campaign to reprint controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed spread on Thursday, with leaders warning the controversy could play into the hands of extremists. President Hosni Mubarak said the reprinting of the cartoons – originally published by Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, they were reproduced this week in newspapers across Europe – would lead to...

In September 2005, a Danish newspaper published 10 cartoons, including one depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his turban. There were immediate protests within Denmark and the situation has recently escalated to the point where Danish goods are being boycotted, Scandinavian aid workers have been pulled out of Gaza and ambassadors have been recalled. One striking feature of these events...

The BBC has involved itself in a growing Europe-wide controversy by broadcasting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused outrage in the Islamic world and led to the sacking of a French newspaper editor. The corporation showed the images as they appeared in French newspaper France Soir as part of a story on the controversy on today's One O'Clock News bulletin and on the News 24 channel...