2005-2014

A local court will grant journalists from The New York Times unrestricted access for four days later this month to study China's legal procedures. They will be allowed to enter any courtroom and hear any case as well as interview litigants and lawyers a move considered unprecedented in a Chinese court. A notice from the Shanghai High People's Court to the designated court, Pudong New Area District...

For years, sizing up the media's shortcomings has been a popular if fuzzy sport, full of subjective observations, grand generalizations, and polemical abstractions. Al Franken, for example, is happy to tell us that "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," but he never tells us precisely how big, or how idiotic. Ditto for Bill O'Reilly, who warns us of the media's anti-Christmas bias. But he never gives...

Media buyers are eagerly awaiting details and pondering the possibilities of the expected expanded alliance between America Online and Google. The most interesting tidbits surfacing in the published reports, they say, are the potential for AOL's sales force to sell display ads on Google's contextual network and the audience growth the deal could bring to AOL's Web properties. "Anything that...

Users of Google's search engine will soon see something they are not used to on the notoriously spare site: advertising with logos and graphics. And the advertisers will not be limited to America Online, whose talks with Google prompted the change in policy, according to two executives close to the companies' negotiations. As part of their deal, which is expected to be announced this afternoon...

THE editor of the official newspaper for Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu PF party has been bailed by a magistrate after appearing in court charged with theft by conversion. Lovemore Mataire, editor of The Voice and close confidante of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite is accused of diverting $6 million from the publication into his personal savings account over a period of 14 months. State prosecutors say Mataire...

NEW YORK In the most recent bout of MoveOn.org actions against Tribune Company job cuts, the progressive advocacy group solicited petition signatures from community members in Baltimore and Allentown, where two Tribune Co. newspapers have significantly reduced staffs. MoveOn organizers have gathered about 4,000 signatures from Baltimore residents and 1,200 in Allentown, online and during the Dec...

The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election. But the newspaper held the story for more than a year and only revealed the secret wiretaps last Friday, when it became apparent a book by one of its reporters was about to break the news, according to journalists familiar with the paper's...

When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the pyramids. But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an...

The recent uproar over a fake Wikipedia entry on journalist John Siegenthaler, Sr. should teach us all an important lesson: If you get the itch to libel someone, try to avoid prominent journalists from powerful families -- especially when they have carte blanche to use the USA Today editorial page to hunt you down. Siegenthaler -- scion of a prominent Nashville family, one-time RFK aide, editor...

ISLAMABAD - Journalists in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday took to the streets to protest failure of authorities to recover a colleague abducted in the tribal North Waziristan region early this month. They demanded international journalists’ bodies to take notice of Pakistani government’s "apathy" not just towards that incident but the overall "intimidating" environment for the...