News

THE possibility of a dangerous conflict between Islamabad and the small provinces over the Kalabagh dam is very real. The swords are out. General Pervez Musharraf’s lobbying efforts in Sindh are met by counter moves by a united opposition. They are holding rallies protesting against the proposed dam and the Musharraf government. Protests in NWFP have also been organised. Many Sindhi and the...

As with lots of pressing issues people grapple with, complaints about the media invite a partisan clash: liberal vs. conservative; Democrat vs. Republican. Or some other "us" against a readily targeted "them." But maybe there’s a more useful, even unifying mind-set: to see the media delivery system for news, entertainment and other programming as being skewed in a cross-the-board, nondoctrinaire...

NY1 News, the local news channel for the cable customers of Time Warner in New York, boasts on its Web site that its all-digital newsroom is "one of the most advanced newsgathering operations in the world." But last week the site was not much of a showcase for the channel's technological prowess. Visitors to NY1.com seeking news about the city's transit strike found a stark black-and-white page...

After 4.6 billion years of planetary history, we may become the first species to monitor our own extinction. In impressive detail, humankind is amassing evidence of devastating changes in the atmosphere, oceans, ice cover, land and biodiversity. And yet mass media, politics, the education system and other realms of public inquiry demonstrate a stunning capacity to focus on what does not really...

A 2005 year-end review of blogging has found that politics took a back seat to discussions about entertainment, technology, natural disasters and the evolution of blogs as legitimate media channels, according to Intelliseek's BlogPulse.com. Michael Jackson and Britney Spears generated more celebrity buzz than other entertainers, Boing Boing and Engadget were the two most popular blogs, "Sin City"...

NEW YORK (AP) - Under other circumstances, 2006 might look like a pretty good year for the media industry. The Winter Olympics and a midterm election are sure to boost advertising spending, the economy is humming along and consumers seem to be spending. But these are hardly normal circumstances. The broad shift of viewers and advertising dollars to the Internet is deeply troubling to many media...

(NewsYemen) Dec 25, Sanaa – A Yemeni journalist said yesterday that he was intimidated and threatened by the manager of a criminal investigation department in the province of Hajja. In a memo sent to the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, Managing Editor of Annas private Weekly Abdulbassit Al-Qaedi said he was threatened after he published a report on human rights violations committed by security...

A Chinese researcher for the New York Times was indicted Friday for revealing state secrets to the newspaper and on a lesser charge of fraud, a move that should send the case to trial within six weeks, his lawyer said. The indictment signified a decision by prosecutors to proceed with a trial of 43-year-old Zhao Yan, after 15 months of investigation by the State Security Ministry during which Zhao...

This is not another story about the newspaper industry's Internet-induced march to the tar pits. Then again, it's not a contrarian "everything's OK after all" article. That's because one of the most important trends of the digital age--the shift of classified advertising from newsprint to the Web--isn't a cut-and-dried failure or success story for the newspaper industry. Newspaper-owned Web sites-...

The recent British press revelation that President George W. Bush last year told U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that Washington was considering bombing the Qatar headquarters of the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera (denied by the White House) brought to new levels of intensity and idiocy the ongoing tension between the American government and some Arab satellite channels. This is the most...