2005-2014

A few months ago, if a newspaper reporter called the War News Radio office wanting to run a story on the program, the members of War News Radio would have been ecstatic. But now when a call comes in, they ask: Is it national? In recent weeks, War News Radio has garnered a great deal of media attention through being featured in print publications, such as The New Yorker and the Philadelphia...

23 February 2006 -- Belarus' Information Minister Uladzimir Rusakevich has threatened tough measures against a Belarusian newspaper that reprinted the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The private weekly "Zhoda" reprinted the cartoons on 17 February to illustrate an article about the deadly impact of the protests they sparked across the Muslim world. The Foreign Ministry lashed out at...

The storm over the Danish cartoons has been mistakenly described as a debate over the limits of free speech. One of the milder posters carried during a Londonistan anti-cartoon protest read "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM." The coverage in the mainstream American press has ranged from the banal to the bizarre, depicting broad-minded Danes and Dutchmen as raving xenophobes for refusing...

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has reprimanded one of its biggest daily newspapers for printing a cartoon lampooning the global controversy over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad. The government's move has fanned a hot debate in this mainly Muslim country about where to draw the line between press freedom and respect of religion, because this time it involves a newspaper closely aligned with...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A new South African Web site aims to capitalise on a potential cyber boom by offering a media-wary public the chance to become journalists themselves. Web site "reporter.co.za" lets members of the public submit articles and pictures, which are sifted through by an editorial team and posted on its site. The "reporter.co.za" site hopes to cash in on government plans to...

SHANGHAI, Feb. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- China's largest city, Shanghai, will hold the media accountable for carrying misleading commercials in its latest move to crack down on fraudulent advertisements, a government spokesperson said. Advertisers as well as publishers of fraudulent ads will face more severe penalties in the city's forthcoming campaign to better regulate the market and improve the overall...

NEW YORK, 23 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The report is considered groundbreaking in its precise and detailed description of the instruments of censorship in a rapidly changing Chinese society. It shows how a system of control that originated under classic totalitarian conditions is being adjusted, refined, and modernized to meet the agenda of the current Chinese leadership -- market economy with...

Death is always in the news. From local car crashes to catastrophes in faraway places, deadly events are grist for the media mill. The coverage is ongoing -- and almost always superficial. It may be unfair to blame journalists for failing to meet standards that commonly elude artists. For centuries, on the subject of death, countless poets have strived to put the ineffable into words. It’s only...

FOUNTAIN CITY, Wisconsin (AP) -- A man from Wisconsin says his attempts to sign up for an e-mail account with Yahoo failed when he used his name, which includes the letters a-l-l-a-h -- as in Allah, the Arabic word for God. Ed Callahan said he started trying to establish the e-mail account after his mother, with the same last name, could not get one. As he tried using various words, he determined...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said it was posting on the Web confidential documents used in its defense as it fought the threat of European Commission antitrust fines reaching up to 2 million euros ($2.4 million) a day. The U.S. software giant planned to post the documents at 1800 GMT on Thursday at www.microsoft.com/presspass/legalnews.mspx, including an...