2005-2014

Abu Dhabi: A court fined an Arabic newspaper's editor-in-chief Dh20,000 for maligning two dignitaries by publishing an article on how their horse was stripped of an award for taking a banned substance. The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of First Instance acquitted the chief executive of the Dubai-based newspaper 'because he wasn't liable for the editorial content'. The UAE national editor-in-chief and...

SAN FRANCISCO — News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch has a $5 billion crush on the owner of The Wall Street Journal, Reuters PLC is the apple of Thomson Corp.’s eye, and Microsoft Corp., at least fleetingly, appeared to flirt once again with Internet icon Yahoo Inc. The media mating dance that broke out last week is part of a mad scramble to find the right mix of technology, business savvy and content to...

The RSS buttons may seem ubuquitous these days, but that's just what they are. RSS feeds are still far away from giving subscribers the news people want and need, a study has concluded. "RSS feeds work best for breaking-news headlines — President Bush’s veto of the Iraq spending bill or the death of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin," says researcher Susan D Moeller, a journalism professor at...

There has been a steady increase in criminal and civil defamation suits in Southern Africa which has created an environment where self-preservation through self-censorship has become common practice, says a new report. The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), in its annual publication, "So this is Democracy? State of the Media in Southern Africa", says it however witnessed an overall

TORONTO (Reuters) - Thomson Corp., the electronic publisher rumored as a potential bidder for financial data and news company Reuters Group Plc, has been no stranger to acquisitions since its founding family bought its first newspaper in small-town Canada in the 1930s. From their roots as newspaper proprietors, dealmaking has been the bread and butter of the Thomsons. The family has been involved...

LONDON: : Canadian publisher Thomson Corp is in talks to buy financial news and data group Reuters, Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper said on Friday, citing unidentified sources close to both companies. “Thomson is a big thoughtful company that makes long-range plans and doesn’t do hostile deals,” the newspaper quoted one source as saying. Reuters, which said earlier on Friday it had received a...

TEHERAN - Iran has arrested the editor of a student paper after the publication of material deemed insulting to Islam in four reformist papers at a prestigious Teheran university, press reports said on Saturday. “Ahmad Ghassaban the editor of Sahar (Dawn), a student paper in Amir Kabir University, was arrested on Thursday,” the reformist Etemad daily said. His arrest came after caricatures and...

Mizzima News Agency has been awarded the 2007 Free Media Pioneer Award by the International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists. Managing Editor Sein Win will receive the prize on behalf of Mizzima at an award ceremony on May 15 during the IPI World Congress in Istanbul, Turkey (May 12-15, 2007). Mizzima News was founded in August 1998 by...

The Internet-driven transformation of the media industry is sparking a new round of potential megamergers, underscored yesterday by reported efforts to acquire search engine Yahoo Inc. and information service Reuters Group PLC. Thomson Corp., a financial information services firm in Stamford, Conn., has reportedly approached Reuters about a possible acquisition, while software giant Microsoft Corp...

Three nations in sub-Saharan Africa are among the places worldwide where press freedom has deteriorated the most over the last five years, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found. Ethiopia, where the government launched a massive crackdown on the private press by shutting newspapers and jailing editors, leads CPJ’s dishonor roll. The African nations of the Gambia and...