News

According to a survey undertaken by the Jordanian Higher Media Council (HMC), national newspapers give more coverage to regional and international politics than they do to local issues. The seven newspapers studied were Al Anbat, Al Arab Al Youm, Al Diyar, Al Dustour, Al Ghad, The Jordan Times and Al Rai. According to the research, only one of them gave more space to local political news than...

6 December 2005 (RFE/RL) -- In an exclusive interview given to RFE/RL's Russian Service, Yelena Fedorova explained her reasons for submitting her resignation as information service editor at Russia's REN-TV. She told RFE/RL interviewer Anna Kachkaeva that her decision was motivated primarily by censorship on the part of the television station's management and its efforts to prevent her and fellow...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the actions of the Associated Press (AP) over its the dismissal of unionised editorial staff at its Mexico City bureau where workers have been coerced to sign agreements disowning attachment to their trade union. The IFJ Executive Committee, meeting in Sydney, Australia, from December 2-3rd 2005, expressed concern at reports from AP...

NEW YORK–Time Warner Inc. is closing in on a deal with Microsoft Corp. to team up on an online advertising service to compete with Google Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the talks. The paper said the two companies were now focusing on a deal that would combine their advertising-related assets, with little or no money changing hands. It said they...

DUBAI – Democracy as perceived by the US should not be imposed on Iraq at this point of time, Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, the jet-setting prince of Saudi Arabia said yesterday. A vocal supporter of the US, Al Waleed bin Talal said that it was too early to let media rule in Iraq. "Iraq is a complicated country which has never experienced stability. Right now, it would be right to let the country...

One spring afternoon in 1996, then-Seattle Times reporter Deborah Nelson's phone rang. The anonymous caller told her that an Indian tribal official had built a castle-like home for herself and her husband, using federal money earmarked to build reservation houses for low-income American Indians. Nelson took a drive to the construction site to see the 5,300-square-foot structure, one of 18 lavish...

CHICAGO -- There is something fundamentally wrong with the blanket notion being floated by some so-called experts that the only way to realize more value from media conglomerates is to dismantle them. Aside from being an overly simplistic, one-size-fits-all view, it smacks of an unproved knee-jerk response to the industry's complex and challenging digital broadband transition. It fails to address...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday that news media organizations were focusing too much on casualties and mistakes by the military in Iraq and were failing to provide a full picture of the progress toward stabilizing the country. "We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth...

The editor in chief of The Village Voice, the alternative weekly, resigned yesterday, less than two months after the newspaper's parent company, Village Voice Media, was acquired by New Times Media. Don Forst, 73, said his departure, effective Dec. 31, is unrelated to the acquisition, which was announced the same week as the 50th anniversary of The Voice. "I've been here nine years and I just...

Time Warner may not be selling a piece of America Online after all. Time Warner is still in negotiations with Microsoft and Google over a variety of potential deals involving its AOL unit. But most of the possibilities under discussion do not involve either company's buying a stake in AOL, an executive briefed on the negotiations said yesterday. Rather, they would involve cooperation on Web search...