Archives 2005-1014: Features
(Associated Press): Hala Misrati once wrote romance tales about lost love. Now she's the ferocious face of Libya's regime, a star talk-show host on state TV lashing out daily against Moammar Gadhafi's enemies. She railed against a Libyan woman who claimed to Western journalists she had been raped by Gadhafi militiamen, calling her a "liar" and suggesting she was a "whore." On live TV, Misrati grilled an arrested journalist for an hour with all the doggedness of a secret police interrogator. "... MORE
Passive news reporting that doesn’t attempt to resolve factual disputes in politics may have detrimental effects on readers, new research suggests. The study found that people are more likely to doubt their own ability to determine the truth in politics after reading an article that simply lists competing claims without offering any idea of which side is right. “There are consequences to journalism that just reports what each side says with no fact checking,” said Raymond Pingree, author of the... MORE
In the days following the sexual attack on well-known CBS reporter Lara Logan in Egypt, the International News Safety Institute (INSI) assembled a safety advisory for women travellers. Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) laments the trouble with documenting sexual violence against journalists. Logan, a reporter for the American TV cable network CBS, was attacked on February 11 while reporting on reactions in Cairo's Tahrir Square to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's... MORE
Altogether 139 journalists and 21 media outlets in Mexico suffered violence related to their work in 2010, a year in which violence against them media grew and drug traffickers were not the only perpetrators, says the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) in its annual report. The document reports that nine media workers were killed, three more disappeared, and two fled the country after receiving death threats. In 2010, “the criminals moved from threats and coverage demands, which... MORE
A year ago last January, Sri Lankan cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda mysteriously disappeared. Two years ago this month, independent TV station Sirasa was bombed with military precision - a couple of days before well-known editor Lasantha Wickrematunge , who was critical of his government's war against the Tamil Tigers, was killed. Today, none of the cases have been solved, and no one has been brought to justice. Sri Lanka's Free Media Movement (FMM) and other IFEX members have launched a series... MORE
Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga , a courageous, talented and iconoclastic journalist, was shot dead in Colombo by a death squad two years ago. His murder is still unpunished. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) saysit is appalled by the fact that the Sri Lankan government is doing nothing to solve this murder and in fact is clearly preventing the truth from coming to light. By blocking the investigation and by fostering a climate of impunity and... MORE
There were marked differences between countries in the coverage given to the UN’s Copenhagen summit on climate change in 2009. A new study has found that of the 12 countries studied, Brazil and India provided the most coverage, followed by Australia and the UK. Nigeria, Russia and Egypt gave the summit the least space in its newspapers. In Summoned by Science: Reporting Climate Change at Copenhagen and Beyond , researchers from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism analysed more... MORE
It's the 12th anniversary of newspaper editor Norbert Zongo’s murder. But Burkina Faso authorities are still stalling an investigation into his death. “How is it possible that the investigation into Zongo’s death is still paralysed,” asks Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) secretary-general Jean-François Julliard. “The years are passing but the wound left by this murder is still open and there has been no let-up in the public’s demands for the case to be solved. The... MORE
Iran’s sustained crackdown on critical voices and China’s brutal suppression of ethnic journalism have pushed the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide to its highest level since 1996, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ identified 145 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of nine from the 2009 tally. Iran and China, with 34 imprisoned journalists apiece, are the world’s worst jailers... MORE
Chinese journalists are increasingly finding themselves the targets of threats and censorship by private-sector companies (and some state companies as well). Several cases with serious implications for press freedom in China have illustrated this privatisation of censorship and violence against journalists in the past few weeks. The phenomenon is not new, but it is tending to grow in an alarming manner. In one case, two journalists had a run-in with the police for writing a story about a... MORE
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