2005-2014

The editor of a New York-based weekly has received a death threat. Majeed Babar, executive editor of the Weekly Asia Tribune, said a man called him on March 29 and told him, “We will cut you to pieces” in Urdu. Babar told the Committee to Protct Journalists (CPJ) that the threat was linked to opinion columns and paid advertisements promoting a beauty pageant in his print and online newspaper, the...

A New York Times correspondent and a British freelancer who were arrested and accused of reporting illegally in Zimbabwe have been freed on bail, but their passports are being held and they are unable to leave the country, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting a lawyer. Barry Bearak, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Times, suffered a back injury during a fall in his cell, said...

The Yemeni government has cancelled the licence of independent weekly newspaper Al-Wasat. On Saturday last, Information Minister Hassan al-Lawzi ordered the newspaper’s licence terminated because the paper had damaged relations with Saudi Arabia, and violated technical provisions of the press law, according to local journalists and official press accounts. A Yemeni government spokesman who asked...

Four men have been convicted and sentenced to 11 years each in the November 2004 murder of Mexican photographer Gregorio Rodríguez Hernández. Judge Daniel Armenta Rentería convicted former Escuinapa Police Chief Abel Enríquez Zavala on charges that he acted as an intermediary between the mastermind and the perpetrators, court secretary Juan Carlos López told the New York-based Committee to Protect...

Five years after a series of US military strikes against news media outlets in Baghdad killed three journalists, there are calls on the US military to fully investigate the incidents and make its findings public. So far, impunity has ruled. On April 8, 2003, a US tank fired a single shell on the Palestine Hotel, the main base for dozens of international journalists covering the US-led invasion of

Network 18 and Marathi newspaper Lokmat have launched a regional news channel, says a CNN-IBN report. Bits from the promo news item: Speaking about the new venture CNN-IBN’s Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai said, “Our aim with IBN Lokmat was to build truly a world class regional channel that will fulfill the aspirations of the people of Maharashtra but more importantly will become a sort of bridge...

Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal case into the mysterious death in July 2003 of an investigative journalist and liberal lawmaker, news agency RIA Novosti has reported quoting an investigation committee spokesman on Friday. Yury Shchekochikhin, who reported on high-profile corruption cases, died after a brief and puzzling illness almost five years ago, at the age of 53. A post mortem...

Newspapers will have to change the way they approach blogging if they are going to be a force in increasing public dialogue on political issues, says a joint study from American universities Ball State University and the University of Nevada, Reno. A study of blogs and audience engagement during the week before the fall 2006 US elections found that most newspaper staff-produced blogs contained a...

The daily Berliner Zeitung has announced that the overwhelming majority of editorial staff has voted to access their official records at the government's archive, after two senior journalists at the newspaper admitted they were former East German secret police, Stasi, informants. On Monday, the left-leaning paper's 50-year-old political editor admitted to having been a Stasi informant for a decade...

An appeal court in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica Wednesday ordered a new trial with different judges in the murder of Dusko Jovanovic, the owner and editor of the opposition daily Dan, who was gunned down outside his newspaper in Podgorica on May 28, 2004. The original trial ended in December 2006 with the acquittal of the sole defendant, Damic Mandic, a former karate champion and alleged...