News

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has voiced outrage at the assault on a French reporter in Tunis and the failure of police nearby to intervene. Reporter Christophe Boltanski of the French daily Libération was beaten and stabbed by four men late last Friday near his hotel in the capital's diplomatic quarter, which is heavily patrolled by police. He needed several stitches in a stab wound...

The second stage of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis from 16 to 18 November will be a showy United Nations event where countries will try to agree on the legal and technical future of the Internet. How the Web is administered and regulated worldwide will be the hottest topic on the agenda. The United States currently controls the main bodies that run the Internet...

Reporters sans Frontières has said it was "appalled" by Monday's attack by plain-clothes police on a Belgian TV crew as it was accompanying lawyer and human rights activist Radhia Nasraoui to a meeting of non-governmental organisations at the German "Goethe Institute" cultural centre in Tunis. "This new act of intimidation proves that a campaign is being deliberately organised against the foreign...

Overnight the international press publicized the crude efforts of the Tunisian government to thwart Tunisian and international civil society organizations’ plans to hold an alternate meeting to discuss Internet issues in Tunisia alongside the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The international and local reaction continued today, as diplomats fumed, some civil society organizations...

The much-hyped World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) event suffered a setback even before it could begin. International Freedom of Expression Exchange's Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 14 organisations, has pulled out of the event. In a statement last night, IFEX said "There has been a series of serious incidents against journalists and human rights activists. Most shocking...

American Journalism Review Managing Editor Lori Robertson is leaving the magazine this month to concentrate on freelance writing, and current AJR senior writer and part-time editor Rachel Smolkin is being promoted to Robertson's position. AJR Editor and Senior Vice President Rem Rieder announced the changeover today. Robertson plans to spend several months in Latin America, traveling, writing and...

Brian Roberts, chief executive of the biggest cable operator in the US, recently quipped that Comcast Corp's shares could be picked up in a "going-out-of- business sale" in the stock market. In the two months since then, Comcast's stock price has fallen further, despite growth in revenues and profits. Comcast is no exception. Shares of media and communications companies have been underperforming...

Making the most of digital broadband interactivity requires an understanding of new consumer behavior and preferences that already are challenging media's major players and much of the industry's conventional wisdom. The traditional consumer demographics that have defined success in the television, film and print media businesses are but a starting point in a new era in which respecting the deeper...

Newspaper websites grew 11 per cent year-over-year to 39.3 million unique visitors in October 2005, comprising 26 per cent of the active US Internet population, or one out of every four Internet users. The 11 per cent increase exceeds the growth of the active Internet universe as a whole, which rose three percent year-over-year, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings research. This research...

A Senegalese journalist is among the three winners of this year's Integrity Awards given by Transparency International (TI) for contributions to the fight against corruption in their countries. The 2005 Integrity Awards were given to Abdou Latif Coulibaly, an investigative journalist from Senegal; Khairiansyah Salman, an auditor at the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) in Indonesia; and an independent...