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WASHINGTON -- The hurricane season officially ended on November 20, yet there will be no respite for President George W. Bush. Having barely recovered from the fallout of Hurricane Katrina, the president is now facing the full brunt of Hurricane Al Jazeera. A document leaked to the London Daily Mirror reported that Bush raised the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's main offices in Doha, the capital of...

The case against Scooter Libby is up in the air, but the case against the press is solid. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. on criminal charges, including obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak investigation. The press indicted itself on grounds of coziness, self-interest and dishonesty. So far, Plamegate - the...

The recent revelations about the man often seen as the "moral hero" of the Watergate scandal, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, have the feel of an interment ceremony. Reading press accounts of how Woodward swallowed the first Plame leak for a mere two-plus years without a peep and then went out on the Larry-King circuit to dismiss the significance of Plamegate, what came to mind was the burial...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has condemned the ongoing treatment of the magazine Cicero and its reporter Bruno Schirra by German authorities, and urged the German interior minister to suspend the prosecutions against the magazine and its reporter. In a letter to the German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the IPI urged the ministry and the prosecutor's office to issue new...

The British government has threatened editors with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act if they publish further details from a top secret memo that records US President George W Bush's intention of bombing the headquarters of Arab TV station Aljazeera in Qatar. This has been flayed far and wide. Aljazeera TV Lebanon staffers protest during a sit-in outside the pan-Arab satellite channel's...

HAVANA, Nov 24 (IPS) - More than 100 journalists from 14 countries have started networking to find ways round censorship, give gender equality greater prominence in the media, and promote the use of non-sexist language. The International Network of Journalists with a Gender Vision came into being in the city of Morelia, Mexico as a non-hierarchical, inclusive organisation that builds on the...

Reports have recently come out in the mainstream press about the use of white phosphorus by troops in Iraq. These reports aren’t new – just over a year ago they were coming out from human rights organisations and medics and journalists that white phosphorus, napalm and other agents were being used. But it was not reported in the mainstream because the mainstream, to put it politely, are beholden...

The NUJ Pay In The Media Summit this weekend made huge strides towards a sector-wide approach to building on important gains already made and uniting to drive pay up across the entire industry for the future. Union activists came from all over the country and every media sector to share experience and plan a strategy for an effective pay battle in the coming year. In his opening speech, NUJ...

The controller of BBC Two has said he wants it to be the first mainstream TV channel to appear on broadband. Roly Keating revealed his vision of an online BBC Two mixing "simulcast programming" and "comprehensive catch-up" in a speech to TV executives. He said the channel would be "in the front line" of launching on broadband. A pilot will be unveiled next year along with further trials of...

Even before the the actual megashow of the 36th IFFI began today, all the media persons, particularly the electronic media and the photographers, boycotted the press conference in the middle in protest against authorities deciding not to allow carrying of still camaras and mobile phones into Inox multiplex theatre complex to watch the films. The journalists, who thronged Goa to cover the mega...