2005-2014

QUETTA, Sep 1 (Pajhwok Afghan News): An Afghan journalist was arrested and later released by Pakistani security agencies on Chaman - Spin Boldak border crossing on Thursday. Ghousuddin Firoten, an Afghan national and correspondent of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was detained by intelligence officials as he crossed into Pakistan on Thursday morning. The intelligence officials...

An Iraqi freelance journalist working as a stringer for news agency Agence France-Presse has been abducted in Baghdad after visiting a relative in a government-run jail. Bilal Abdelrahman al-Obeidi disappeared on August 14 after he visited a detention centre near the Interior Ministry in central Baghdad to see his cousin. Mr Obeidi's family and AFP have been in contact with his captors using his...

There is an Arabic TV channel dying to keep alive the debate on “mughamaraat” (adventures). Since the crippled cease-fire in Lebanon, there is a concerted attempt (otherwise, why are the viewers strangled with monotony?) to discredit the resistance fighters. So the “experts” are logging in many many-hours to prove to the Muslim public (which is no more for sale) that it was the unwarranted risk...

It would be great if more magazines went out of business in the coming months. And more websites were shut down, TV shows yanked off the air, newspapers folded and radio programs unplugged. The media landscape needs to be cleared of some of its clutter. Hearst Magazines Cases in point: the closings by Hearst Magazines of Weekend and Shop, Etc. magazines, and Time Inc.'s decision to shut down the...

September 3, 2006 -- Something akin to infanticide is taking place in the magazine industry. As evidenced by the closings of Celebrity Living, Sly and, most recently, For Me - all launched in 2005 - magazine life spans are getting shorter and shorter. Since 2003, survival rates for magazine launches have plummeted. Of the 454 magazines launched with a frequency of four issues per year or more in...

WITH the fall comes the harvest. Or at least that’s what Richard D. Parsons and his top dogs at Time Warner have hoped for in autumns past. But regardless of how much the chief executive and his allies regroup, retool and reorganize their sprawling media empire, the stock market just yawns. Every morning when they look at Time Warner’s ticker, it’s Groundhog Day. Carl C. Icahn seems to be the only...

WASHINGTON – Aman Feda, an Afghan-born mortgage broker, cringed at his 13-year-old niece’s choice of music, the hip-hop blaring from the car radio, the lyrics grating on his nerves as they drove home after shopping at a mall. “Why not listen to some Afghan music?” Feda asked casually. “What music?” he remembers her saying with a shrug of her shoulders. “There’s nothing.” The exchange sparked Feda...

New Delhi: Law Minister H. R. Bhardwaj on Saturday defended the role of the media in highlighting the lapses of the prosecution and thereby ensuring that the "rule of law" prevailed in the country. Asserting that the country had a vibrant democratic system with a highly independent judiciary, the Minister rejected the charge that "trial by media" in important cases tended to influence the judges...

New Delhi: The 17th Law Commission has made recommendations to the Centre to enact a law to prevent the media from reporting anything prejudicial to the rights of the accused in criminal cases from the time of arrest, during investigation and trial. The subject "Trial by Media: Free Speech vs. Fair Trial Under Criminal Procedure (Amendments to the Contempt of Court Act, 1971)" was taken up suo...

New Delhi: A settlement regarding the future of the financially unsound Prasar Bharati is in the offing under which the facade of autonomy of the broadcasting corporation may be done away with and its role as a purely public broadcaster reassured. The lack of space in the private electronic media for public interest and social issues has prompted this feeling, sources in the Ministry of...