2005-2014

30 September 2005

Nobody understands what happened

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Maybe Judith Miller is a really big New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox fan and she just had to watch the dramatic three-game series between the two teams this weekend. That's how absurd this case has become. Why else would she do this? The widely admired New York Times reporter, who had gone to prison three months ago to protect a source and act on a high journalistic...

More
30 September 2005

The decline of American magazines

When did magazine articles degenerate into lists? After perusing September's cover stories, I'm plagued by this question. Conde Nast Traveler's cover teases 50 top travel films. Shape wants to firm me up and feed my sweet tooth with three easy workouts and 48 best beauty goodies. Budget Travel touts 40 best getaways and places where 33 experts eat cheap. The Wine Spectator tops that with an issue...

More
30 September 2005

A Timeline in Reporters' Contempt Case

A timeline in the case of Judith Miller, a New York times reporter jailed for 85 days after refusing to divulge her sources to a prosecutor investigating the Bush administration's role in leaking a CIA officer's identity: February 2002: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson is asked by the Bush administration to travel to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Niger sold yellowcake uranium to...

More
30 September 2005

Q&A: CIA leak case

A grand jury in the US is investigating the source of a leak that led to the public unmasking of a CIA agent in 2003. The leak formed part of the wide-ranging controversy about the US administration's justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It sparked a major political row in 2003 that has refused to subside. The BBC News website looks at key issues in the case. What is the grand jury...

More
30 September 2005

CPJ troubled by U.S. message in Miller case

New York, September 30, 2005–The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved that New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been freed after spending 85 days in a U.S. prison for refusing to disclose a confidential source. But CPJ is deeply troubled by the long-term damage that the federal prosecutor’s investigation has had on the free flow of information, and the message sent worldwide by...

More
30 September 2005

Google, Yahoo, and eBay: Next-Generation Conglomerates?

There’s a new sort of Internet colossus on the rise, and it is poised to wreak havoc on what might be called the world’s legacy business infrastructure–meaning many of the world’s important businesses big and small. If you’re a banker in Greece, a telecom executive in Thailand, or a retailer in Reno, watch your back. In the first phase of the Internet era, the worry was that brick-and-mortar...

More
30 September 2005

Freed at the expense of confidentiality of sources

Reporters Without Borders today hailed the release yesterday of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who had been in prison since 6 July for refusing to reveal a source, but the organisation regretted that, in order to obtain her freedom, she has been forced to violate the principle that journalists’ sources are confidential. "Miller’s release is obviously good news in itself, but she recovered...

More
30 September 2005

America needs to give up Internet control

THE WORLD has a problem. Its biggest communication tool is controlled by the most powerful superpower. There is an argument, usually made by Americans, that this is not such a bother. The Americans invented the thing, and besides the Internet is running OK. However the fact the US military splashed out cash to develop the Internet does not mean that it has the right to run it. It has grown bigger...

More
30 September 2005

NYT reporter reaches deal with prosecutor in CIA probe

Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the CIA leak case, was released from a Virginia detention centre on Thursday after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the matter. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with...

More
30 September 2005

U.S. insists on being Internet traffic cop

GENEVA -- A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium's principal overseer. "We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international...

More