News

THE Huangpu People's Prosecutors' Office yesterday ratified the arrest of Jiang Sheng, who allegedly defrauded more than 40,000 yuan (US$4,938) in cash and valuables after posing as a journalist. Prosecutors said such cases are rare. Jiang, 23, saw an ad in a newspaper. A man surnamed Liang, who owned a minibus, was seeking work as a driver. Jiang called Liang and claimed he was a journalist at...

The Associated Press has terminated its relationship with a freelance reporter in Haiti after learning she was working for a U.S. government-sponsored organization. The National Endowment for Democracy confirmed Regine Alexandre began working for the organization in October as a "part-time facilitator" between the NED and Haitian groups. The NED describes itself as a private, nonprofit...

Oh what a year for plagiarists. Herewith, a quick collection of the year’s instances of plagiarism in the media. We’ve tried to catch them all, but can’t promise that this is a definitive list. Please email us if you know of one we’ve missed. (Then we’ll take your information and use it as our own without attribution.) In January Siddharth Srivastava, an India-based freelancer for the...

The Press Law in Yemen has just returned to the circle of discussion after it was neglected for a long time now. This law has been pushed to the light just after the President has returned from the U.S. where he was demanded to protect rights of opinion expression and freedom of the press. A freedom, which is confined by oppressive laws and operates under bias judicial authorities. The Shura...

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has set up a high-powered committee on information, communication and entertainment (ICE) which will be headed by the Principal Secretary to the PM. The committee would identify new opportunities in the areas of information, communication and entertainment where the government was expected to play a pro-active role to promote Indian media and entertainment...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- The Arab media have come a long way recently. Only a decade ago the media landscape in the Arab world looked pretty bleak. Only a handful of sharp and courageous writers were then publishing their eye-opening articles in newspapers printed abroad. Today that situation has completely changed. The Arab public now has several independent news channels and many...

Prague, 29 December 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Afghan journalist Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, the editor of the "Hoqoq-e-Zan" (Women's Rights) monthly, was sentenced to two years in prison in October on blasphemy charges. An appeals court reduced that to a six-month suspended sentence last week, after Nasab -- who is also an Islamic scholar --apologized for articles he had written that questioned the harsh punishment...

Internet users share many common interests, but men are heavier consumers of news, stocks, sports and pornography while more women look for health and religious guidance, a broad survey of US Web usage has found. Trends are marked now: young women are more likely to be online than young men. And black women have surged online in the last three years. Pew Internet Project surveys between January...

NEW ORLEANS – To New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, the front porch gatherings felt like an extension of his work – another way to talk with his neighbors about everything that had happened since Hurricane Katrina. A collection of old and new friends arrived on the stoop of his Uptown home most nights following the storm. Their stories flowed, along with the cold bottles of Abita...

The year 2005 rocked! It was a year that witnessed the biggest growth in advertising spends in the last four years. AdEx India, a division of TAM Media Research, estimates the total advertising revenues across TV, print, radio, out of home (OOH), cinema and internet at Rs 13,200 crore. A whopping 14.1% growth over 2004. Of course, TV and print had their own story to tell. While TV grew by 11.4 %...