2005-2014

THE BBC has suffered another credibility blow after admitting that it made up a Newsnight survey suggesting that most of Britain and Scotland's leading businesses were not in favour of independence. Presenter Jeremy Paxman had told SNP leader Alex Salmond that 'not one' of 50 firms, made up of 25 in Britain and 25 north of the border, supported the party's independence policy on a TV special shown...

(MISA/IFEX) - On 17 July 2007, security personnel at the Livingstone International Airport attempted to stop Edward Mulenga, a bureau chief of the "Times of Zambia" newspaper, and other journalists from taking pictures. They also threatened to confiscate Mulenga's camera. Mulenga and the other journalists were trying to photograph an airplane with Djibouti's President Ismail Guelleh on board...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called on the government of Guinea-Bissau to help end the intimidation of journalists covering the trafficking of drugs in the country and to ensure appropriate compensation is paid to the journalists who were victims of a road accident in 2005, following a recent court ruling. "We are very worried for the security of our...

British news websites should display a kitemark to indicate they adhere to Press Complaints Commission (PCC) guidelines, the head of journalism's self-regulatory agency has said. PCC director Tim Toulmin said that the current debate over trust in broadcasting, sparked by the premium phone-in scandal, necessitated a multimedia standard to restore faith. "It will not be enough to subscribe to a...

Prompted by rising delivery costs and pressure to grow profits, leading magazine wholesalers are making unprecedented steep distribution cuts across all magazines, with a sharp focus on their least-profitable ones, those with a $2.50-and-under cover price. The News Group and Source Interlink Cos. have made significant cuts since May 1, following a similar move by Anderson News Corp., which sources...

An officer of a private telecom company on Monday failed to produce call details of the husband of slain journalist Shivani Bhatnagar before a court trying the murder case involving suspended IPS officer RK Sharma, the Times of India has reported. Some details: Gulshan Kumar Arora, witness produced by Sharma to defend himself, said that the records are maintained upto a particular period of time...

A judge is expected to decide this week whether to proceed with a lawsuit that claims Facebook's founder stole source code, trade secrets, and intellectual property from people who hired him to work on a social networking site. U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock is expected to hold a hearing in Boston Tuesday to decide whether to the defendants' motion to dismiss the case. The lawsuit...

On Friday, journalists at the Glasgow-based Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times newspapers walked out, launching the first Scottish newspaper strike since the bitter Aberdeen Journals dispute of 1989-90. Officially, owner Newsquest's desire for compulsory redundancies provided the grounds for action, but supporters of the strike say this is a battle for the soul of The Herald and part of a...

Today's news world is a political junkie's oyster. Cable TV offers CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and C-SPAN. The Washington Post, BBC online, The Note and many, many more news Web sites are only a click away. But that's where they remain for many Americans. Decades into the "information age," the public is as uninformed as before the rise of cable television and the Internet. Greater access to media...

HARARE - A media watchdog in Zimbabwe says the coverage of the alleged adultery case involving Archbishop Pius Ncube of the Bulawayo Archdiocese by the State media is an affront to ethical journalism. The Zimbabwe Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) said the reportage was unfair and unbalanced. "The coverage of the purported revelations and 'scoop' by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting...