2005-2014

Irish publisher Independent News & Media (INM)has sold its remaining 5.7 per cent stake in Indian publisher Jagran Prakashan Limited (JPL). The stake netted INM €32 million (£26.5 million), which it said will go towards reducing bank debt. INM had already sold most of its stake in the Indian media group, which it first acquired in 2005, over the course of the past year to pay off debt, accptdomg...

The author of the Rolling Stone article that ended the military career of Gen Stanley McChrystal, the former top commander in Afghanistan, has been denied permission to join US troops fighting in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. Defence Department spokesman Col David Lapan told reporters that freelance writer Michael Hastings was rebuffed when he asked to...

A Venezuelan newspaper that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez's government says its office has been attacked with firebombs, the Associated Press has reported. Carlos Hernandez is executive director of Las Noticias de Cojedes. He said no one was injured when unknown people hurled two Molotov cocktails at the building early Tuesday. Hernandez told the local television channel...

The Press Guild of Kashmir has condemned the fresh curbs on media in Kashmir in the wake of curfew restrictions. The Guild reminded the government of its commitment made to all the representative bodies of the media groups the other day. With the curfew remaining in place in most of the Valley areas, the police and security forces are not honouring the curfew passes issued to the media persons by...

A one-year jail sentence and fine of 5 million CFA francs has been slapped by an Abidjan criminal court on Traoré Médandjé, a leading reporter for the daily L'Intelligent d'Abidjan, on charges of defaming and trying to blackmail a former health ministry official. The case was prompted by an article headlined “Vavoua's illegal boutique clinics,” published on September 4, 2009, in which Médjandé...

Social media is becoming more influential by the day. If the May elections in the UK were anything to go by, social media has been an influencing factor for those aged between 18 and 24. A recent study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows that politics has caught on with the youth with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter becoming important in communicating

Timothy Kalyegira, a former Daily Monitor columnist and current publisher of an online newspaper, Tuesday became the first Ugandan to face sedition charges arising from the use of new media, the Daily Monitor has reported. Police on Monday summoned Kalyegira to appear for interrogation over reports that questioned whether it was really the Somali-based militants, the al-Shabaab, that bombed and...

Benin suspended Radio France Internationale (RFI) broadcasts for 14 hours on Tuesday and questioned one of its journalists after it aired reports on accusations against the president, witnesses said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The reports aired over the weekend as the tiny West African country celebrated 50 years of independence from France, with some 10 African heads of state...

A journalist of Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper was killed in clashes between the Israeli and Lebanese armies which erupted Tuesday, shattering several years of relative calm on the tense Israel-Lebanon border. The Lebanese news site NOW Lebanon named the journalist as Assaf Abu Rahal, according to the International Press Institute (IPI). Arab news reports also said Ali Chouayb, a journalist working...

The police prevented the staff of the opposition newspaper Azadlig from entering its premises Monday at the behest of Agbey Askerov, the head of the state-owned publishing house Azerbaijan, which prints the newspaper, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Askerov is demanding immediate repayment of a debt of 15,000 manats (15,000 euros), which he says dates...