2005-2014

MIAMI - Ten South Florida journalists, including three with The Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the federal government for their work on radio and TV programming aimed at undermining Fidel Castro's communist regime, the Herald reported Friday. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and wrote an opinion column for El Nuevo Herald, was paid almost $175...

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan authorities confiscated all copies of the independent al-Sudani newspaper on Saturday, the latest move in a resurgence of censorship since the beheading of a journalist last week. Mohamed Taha, editor of al-Wifaq newspaper was seized from his home and his decapitated body dumped in a dirt street on Wednesday. Since then, censors have moved into newspapers to restrict the...

A series of videos showing a 16-year-old girl opining about life, relationships, planets, cookies and religion from the orderly confines of her bedroom somewhere in smalltown America has become the pop culture hit of the summer. The short video blog postings by lonelygirl15 on the YouTube website have attracted millions of viewers since they started appearing in May. But the postings' polished...

An editorial in Monday’s Australian entitled “Endgame for Iran” is another sign that the vast resources of the Murdoch global media empire are being mobilised to support a new US war of aggression against Iran. A similar editorial headed “A nuclear Iran is not an option” appeared in the same newspaper last week, along with an opinion piece in the London-based Times entitled “What a shambles over...

Kuala Lumpur: Journalists should not regard the proposed National Media Council as an attempt by the Government to curb their freedom but, instead, accept the idea as a means to protect them, Information Minister Datuk Zainuddin Maidin said. He said the media council would not be controlled by the Government but operating like independent bodies that had been formed by the Government such as the...

New York, September 8, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores Lithuanian security agents’ seizure of all 15,000 copies of the semimonthly Laisvas Laikrastis (Free Newspaper), which was due out today with a story about alleged political corruption. Government agents, who said the story contained classified information, also briefly detained Editor Aurimas Drizius on Thursday. About 10...

Teheran (AsiaNews) –Iran could include suspension of its nuclear program in negotiations with the West, former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said yesterday in Washington. Khatami is on a visit to the United States at the invitation of the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation of the Episcopal Church. The visit of the ex-Iranian president, which will include stops in New York, Chicago...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An increasing number of television viewers are producing their own shows, and the TV industry is frantically trying to figure out how to combine broadcasts, Internet movies and home videos into one package. Internet video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video have surged in popularity over the last 12 months, with YouTube now serving 100 million videos a day, and...

New York, September 8, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Sri Lankan authorities to fulfill their duty to protect the staff of the pro-Tamil Jaffna newspaper Uthayan, which was threatened and coerced on Thursday. The incident was the latest in a series of attacks and acts of intimidation against the newspaper. E. Saravanapavan, Uthayan’s managing director, said two men, one...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government on Friday defended its decision to close the Baghdad bureau of Al Arabiya television for "sectarian" reporting, despite criticism from media bodies which called the ban an assault on press freedom. "If al Qaeda wanted reporters to work for it, it could do no better than the reporters for Arabiya," Yasseen Majeed, media advisor to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al...