2005-2014

The News & Observer is incompetent or insensitive or irresponsible or just plain mean, depending on which of our readers you talked to about the paper's coverage of the West Virginia mine disaster. By now it's old news that The N&O ran on its front page Wednesday the incorrect story reporting that 12 miners had been rescued. "'Miracles happen in W.Va.': 12 miners found alive," proclaimed the large...

The Sentinel apologized on Thursday's front page for a headline and article in that space the day before, quoting relatives of 13 trapped West Virginia coal miners as saying, "They're alive!" All but one of the miners, it later turned out, were not alive. S. Atticum of Longwood, among others, found the apology unnecessary. "Your readers readily understand how upstream sources can get it wrong...

Contrary to the movies, hollering "Stop the presses!" all but never happens. But the mining tragedy last week demanded it. Front page designer Mark Friesen had left the newspaper about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday after revising Page One through the evening with updates from West Virginia. The banner headline read, "Joy as 12 miners found alive." As he walked into his Southwest Portland home, his wife was...

"I just want to let everyone know, this man is spying on you." With those words, a woman at the Sago Baptist Church has forced me to think about my profession in a different way – Am I a spy, or worse, a voyeur, a Peeping Tom into another person’s living hell? That’s not how we reporters like to think of ourselves, and mostly, I don’t think it’s fair. But I’ve seen enough covering last week’s mine...

LUCKNOW: A photojournalist working with a local English daily suffered severe injuries when he was attacked by a group of traders at AP Sen Road on Saturday. The incident took place when the journalist spotted an organised racket of refilling liquid petroleum gas (LPG) for use as fuel in four-wheelers and tried to take pi ctures of the culprits in action. Though an FIR was lodged with the local...

Fourteen media organizations have made a commitment to provide equitable coverage of elections due later this year with the signing of a Code of Conduct at Le Meridien Pegasus last evening. By virtue of placing their signatures on the document, the representatives of NCN, Guyana Press Association, HBTV-Channel 9, AFP, Stabroek News, New Nation, MTV, Catholic Standard, Kaieteur News, Guyana...

NMouakchott, Mauritania, 01/08 - Mauritania has set up a consultative National Commission for the Reform of the Electronic and Print Press made up of 60 members from public authorities, the private press, political parties and the civil society. Led by Imam Cheikh, the Prime Minister`s communications adviser, the new body aims at establishing a complete diagnosis of the media situation, and make...

PARIS: The competition stares dead straight into Ulysse Gosset's eyes every moment he sits at his cluttered desk at temporary headquarters near the glassy Seine. Before him flickers a television tuned to Atlanta-based CNN, which 25 years ago created a powerful genre with a 24-hour all-news network that now reaches more than two billion people. For other countries, such global power is as...

The mainstream media are under pressure, their future cloudy as people turn to a wider and more diverse variety of sources for their news. But from his perch on the third floor of CBS's San Francisco offices, news veteran Larry Kramer isn't worried. As the recently named president of CBS Digital Media, the network's Internet division, Kramer is quickly reshaping CBS' news and entertainment...

COPENHAGEN - When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one in which he is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, it expected a strong reaction in this country of 5.4 million people. But the paper was unprepared for the global furor that ensued, including demonstrations in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, death...