2005-2014

BEIRUT, 8 January (IRIN) - The Lebanese Press Federation announced it would press murder charges against those involved in the killing of journalist and Member of Parliament Gebran Tueini, who died in a car-bomb attack on 12 December 2005 in the capital, Beirut. According to a statement, federation president Mohammad Baalbaki commissioned has lawyers to "file a lawsuit against everyone which the...

NEW YORK When word mistakenly spread early Wednesday that 12 trapped miners in West Virginia had been found safe, the frenzy of rumor, hope, and unconfirmed reports swept through parts of the tight-knit area of Sago, W.V., within minutes. Meanwhile, at the command center monitoring the rescue attempt--inside a trailer-sized unit just 100 yards from the church where miner families had been...

A total of eight Tribune readers called me to comment on the problem that challenged and vexed newspapers across the country this week: false reports of 12 survivors in the Sago Coal Mine explosion instead of the one man who actually survived the disaster. Of the readers who called, six were amazed that The Tribune had the correct number of survivors and two were curious about the process that put...

THE Houston Chronicle's headline read: "Bells ring out for 12 rescued miners." It was an appropriately triumphant tout that 12 of the 13 men who had been trapped for 41 hours in a West Virginia coal mine would soon be going home to their worried families. Unfortunately, the headline and The New York Times story we published Wednesday on Page One were wrong, as we and other news media outlets...

For a few hours this week, it seemed the new year had started with a wondrous story. " 'They're alive,' " a headline Wednesday in one edition of the Rocky Mountain News trumpeted of the trapped West Virginia coal miners, reflecting the moving pictures on the cable networks late Tuesday night. The nation's heart had been with the men and their families. We were uplifted - and then crushed. Forget...

A few readers continue to take us to task this week for the erroneous front page story and headline that ran in some editions of Wednesday's newspaper proclaiming a miraculous rescue of 12 coal miners trapped underground in West Virginia. Why didn't The Atlanta Journal-Constitution go to greater lengths to confirm reports from family members and politicians that the miners had been found alive...

Warangal: A journalist working as Doordarshan Mahbubnagar district contributor was found dead in suspicious circumstances near Quila Warangal on Saturday. Vijayanand (37), a native of Mahbubnagar, came to Warangal on December 28 to write the final exams of the Bachelor of Communication and Journalism, a year-long correspondence course, offered by the Distant Learning and Continuing Education of...

KUALA LUMPUR , Jan 7 (IPS) - News reports based on secret video grabs of a woman forced to do 'nude squats' in police custody, which put the Malaysian government in a spot over human rights, have backfired on press freedom as it turned out that the victim's nationality had been wrongly identified. The widely-circulated, Chinese-language daily newspaper ‘China Press' which broke the story was, on...

NTERNATIONAL media groups, stung by stagnating sales and declining profits, see India as a fast-growing market ripe with opportunity. Efforts to liberalise overseas investment rules have attracted a raft of foreign players including Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times, Independent News and Media, Turner International and, most recently, BBC Worldwide. The unit, the commercial arm of the BBC...

BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhuanet) — Men still play the dominate role in China’s media industry, and most news stories disregard or reveal insensitive attitude towards gender problems, according to a survey released by China’s Women Reporter Association Saturday. Among China’s broadcasters, 69 percent are female, and among journalists, 54 percent are female. However, about 81 percent news stories are...