2005-2014

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a campaign of death threats against singer and radio host Karim Sama, which took a disturbing new turn with an arson attack on his car on 28 September in Ouagadougou. Also known as “SAM’S K Le Jah,” Sama hosts a successful programme on privately-owned Ouaga FM in which he often criticises President Blaise Compaoré. The programme is popular outside of...

Reporters Without Borders today accused the Zimbabwean authorities of escalating repression after they arrested two actors and a journalist on the evening of 28 September during the performance of a satirical play about the country’s political situation. “With the privately-owned press already under permanent threat, the police are now targeting the theatre,” the press freedom organisation said....

Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the prolonged detention of Syrian journalist Ata Farahat, the Golan Heights correspondent of the daily newspaper Al-Watan and Syrian public televison. The organisation wrote to justice minister Daniel Friedman yesterday requesting his release. “We are all the more concerned as Palestinian journalists have in the past been kept for long periods in...

The Press Complaints Commission has made an example of the Wigan Evening Post and Wigan Observer in its first enforcement of the new rules on reporting suicide. The press watchdog found that the local papers in Greater Manchester breached its voluntary code by breaking Clause 5, which covers intrusion into grief or shock and was amended last year to restrict coverage of suicide. The clause now...

NEW YORK: Editor Joe Cannon of the Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City defended his decision to attend a conservative policy conference this past weekend that barred media coverage, saying the event was a good place to touch base with sources and local leaders. "Would I do it again? I would do it again," said Cannon, who was criticized by the rival Salt Lake Tribune for the appearance. "I would...

HSBC and the China Charity Foundation celebrated a decade of working together in July, bringing in the global bank's chairman and renting a room in the Great Hall of the People. Organisers of the event extended the charity to Chinese reporters: donating Rmb200 (EUR19.33) to each of those who attended, according to people present. Such payments - called "transport money" by public relations firms -...

TOKYO (AFP) — Three of Japan's leading newspapers said Monday they would cooperate in their online productions and distribution, joining hands to maintain clout in an industry under threat from the Internet. The tie-up involves The Yomiuri Shimbun, which is considered the world's top-selling newspaper, along with its liberal arch-rival The Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily. The three...

Kathmandu, Oct. 2 (PTI): Nepal's largest newspaper office was attacked by Maoist supporters who destroyed properties and disrupted the publication of two leading dailies here. A trade union affiliated to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) disrupted the printing of two leading dailies, English edition of The Kathmandu Post and Nepali-language newspaper Kantipur and vandalised the media house...

New Delhi, Oct. 2 (PTI): A city court on Monday remanded a private news channel reporter, arrested in connection with an allegedly fake sting operation against a school teacher, to 14 days judicial custody. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Alok Aggarwal remanded Live India reporter Prakash Singh to judicial custody till October 14, after the Crime Branch submitted that the case was...

When Arianna Huffington announced plans two-and-a-half years ago to publish a blog, she was greeted with derision by many of the vocation’s purists. The archetypal blogger, after all, was supposed to be a solitary outsider who worked from home – preferably in pyjamas – railing against the arrogance and excesses of the so-called mainstream media. Ms Huffington, on the other hand, was a multi...