2005-2014

BEIJING: A Chinese court sentenced a man to life in prison Wednesday for taking nearly $500,000 in bribes while posing as a reporter -- and sometimes a top editor -- for the Communist Party's official newspaper, the People's Daily. Liu Yonghong had promised low-level officials outside Beijing that he could help them get promotions or work transfers by delivering their bribes to top leaders in the...

Lachlan Murdoch, the estranged heir of Rupert Murdoch is in India to consolidate his media interests, reports CNBC-TV18. The former heir apparent of News Corporation and the former blue-eyed boy of Rupert Murdoch, Peter Mukherjea now make a common pair. When Mukerjea resigned from Star TV, it fuelled speculation of a joint venture for the better part of last year. Lachlan Murdoch broke off from...

GAZA (Reuters) - A little-known Islamist group claimed responsibility in an audio recording on Wednesday for abducting the BBC's Gaza correspondent, issuing demands immediately rebuffed by the Palestinian government. As evidence that it is holding BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, the group posted on the Internet a photo of his BBC identification card. The posting appeared to be the first tangible...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 9, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death on Saturday of Mohammed Abdullahi Khalif, a contributor to the private radio station Voice of Peace in Somalia's northeastern, semi-autonomous region of Puntland. Khalif was killed by crossfire while covering an army raid on an illegal gun market in the city of Galkayo. Khalif died from a bullet to the chest...

May 9 (Bloomberg) -- Rupert Murdoch tried today to persuade the Bancroft family to sell him Dow Jones & Co. by offering appeals to their pride. What he didn't offer is more money. ``We admire the Bancroft family and the Dow Jones management,'' Murdoch told analysts on a conference call after News Corp., the third-largest media company, reported quarterly earnings. ``If we didn't have such strong...

Google would normally be the last company you’d expect to be talking up the unlocked value of print advertising. But at a time when the troubled newspaper industry is struggling to hold on to advertisers, the search giant is in the early stages of a partnership with publishers such as the New York Times Co. (nyse: NYT - news - people ) and Tribune (nyse: TRB - news - people ) to sell print ads in...

Two employees and a security personnel of Tamil newspaper Dinakaran were killed Wednesday after supporters of DMK leader MK Azhagiri, elder son of Chief Minister K Karunanidhi, attacked the daily’s office in Madurai and set it afire. The supporters, who hurled petrol bombs and stones at the building, went on a rampage protesting against the survey published by the Maran family-owned newspaper on...

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is entering the Indian newspaper space in association with Chennai-based Kalanithi Maran, owner of the Sun group. The Sun, the flagship publication of Murdoch’s News Corporation, is in talks with Maran’s Sun group to launch an English tabloid in the country. Sources close to the development said the tabloid was likely to be titled Sun and would be introduced in south...

(FOPEA /IFEX) - On May 8 2007, freelance photographer Juan Bolaños was assaulted by security forces while covering a protest against the provincial government in Rio Gallegos, a city in Santa Cruz province in Argentina's southern Patagonian region. In a separate incident, in the midst of an increasingly tense political situation at the national level, on 25 April supporters of a candidate for...

(MEAA/IFEX) - The Media Alliance has written to the federal government protesting a decision to ban online politics and media commentary site http://www.crikey.com.au from the annual budget lockup. This is the third year Crikey, which has a subscription base of 45,000, has been barred from the handing down of the federal budget. Crikey has an accredited journalist within the federal press gallery...