2005-2014

At 9 p.m. in a dark Shenzhen parking lot, Dr. Bai Xiuyu handed over a plain envelope in what was supposed to be a discreet blackmail payment to a local reporter in this southern Chinese city. The money in the envelope – 15,000 yuan, about $2,000 (all figures U.S.) – was to be paid to three reporters who'd threatened to go public with a story saying her health clinic was providing services it was...

Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was released by the Taliban Monday after two weeks in captivity and days after his driver was executed, news agencies have reported. Sources privy to the deal told local Pajhwok Afghan News that the La Repubblica journalist was handed over to Italian officials in the Hazarjuft district of the southern Helmand province at 5:10pm (local time). "My head is...

During 1963 and 1974 the big American media (agencies, television networks and newspapers) enjoyed a high international reputation for their critical coverage of Presidents Johnson and Nixon over Vietnam and Watergate. However, after 1974, the US media broadly reverted to their old cold war loyalty to the foreign policies of each incumbent President. Over a lengthy period (1951 onwards) The New...

HANNOVER: In 1980, the aspiring global media baron Rupert Murdoch turned to the president of his U.S. newspaper operations, Donald Kummerfeld, and, as he was wont to do, made a bold prediction. "Someday, Don," Murdoch said, according to Kummerfeld, "all news — and advertising — will be delivered digitally. There will really be no need for paper and ink." More than a quarter of a century later, the...

Assam Rifles jawans assaulted journalists and detained them at a security post for two hours on Wednesday for covering protest rallies over the alleged rape of an 18-year-old girl by a personnel of the post. The journalists were asked to erase all the photographs which captured the “excesses” of the AR personnel, the Imphal Free Press reported. Representatives of the All-Manipur Working...

The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague has dismissed the appeal of a Croatian journalist and found him guilty of contempt for revealing closed transcripts and part of a witness statement. The former editor-in-chief of Croatian daily Slobodna Dalmacija, Josip Jovic, has been ordered to pay a fine of €20,000 (£13,720) within the next 30 days, news agency Hina...

Pakistan has banned a leading prime-time television programme because of negative coverage of President Pervez Musharraf’s fight with Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, news reports have said. A Pakistani protester throws a tear gas shell towards police during fierce clashes in Islamabad. Police fired rubber bullets at protesters and arrested dozens of people as they tried

A total of 97 journalists and 37 media support staffers have been killed in the line of duty since the war began on March 20, 2003. The media death toll in Iraq has steadily climbed since 2003, when 14 journalists — most of them reporters working for the international press— were killed. In 2004, 24 journalists were killed, followed by 23 deaths in 2005, and 32 deaths in 2006. The 32 deaths in...

Four years after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains the deadliest country in the world for the press as local journalists continue to suffer disproportionately from the violence, research by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) shows. The bodies of correspondent Atwar Bahjat (inset), cameraman al-Falahi, and engineer Khairallah were found near Samarra, a day after the...

NYU professor Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment.net and Wired News have launched an attempt to bring together professional writers and editors with citizen journalists to collaborate on reporting and writing about the rise of crowdsourcing on the Web. Inspired by the open source movement, the goal of Assignment Zero, as the project is called, is to develop a working model of an open newsroom. “An...