News

The Los Angeles Times is axing Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez and longtime columnist Robert Scheer as part of a major editorial page shake-up. The changes were announced on Thursday by the Times editorial page editor Andres Martinez, who assumed responsibility for the daily Op-Ed page and the Sunday Current section in September. Robert Scheer: My only regret is that my...

Meddlers or defenders of the truth? Schoolboy tell-tales or readers’ champions; heroes or villains? Readers’ editors are controversial figures, but their influence in European newspapers is growing, with the US-born trend spreading to the UK and beyond. But do they actually help newspapers to do their job better, or are they a hindrance to good old-fashioned journalism? Life in the newsroom used...

Chances are you may die dozens of deaths at the hands of ever alert 'Breaking News' channels — yes, sure 24x7 — if you are a VIP or VVIP hours or days before doctors certify your death. Former President of India KR Narayanan was not treated any differently by the over-enthusiastic media, which killed him in broad daylight on November 9, 2005 on bulletin after bulletin, scroll after scroll, when he...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned that France's imposition of a 12-day state of emergency and night-time curfews to curb street violence in major cities could lead to restrictions on press and media coverage of disturbances across the country. "These draconian rules will undermine the work of journalists and make an already difficult reporting environment even worse,"...

The fall deadline for the Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography is November 15, 2005. Getty awards five $20,000 grants annually to photojournalists selected by a panel of judges. Applicants must submit a 500-word proposal explaining a chosen journalistic project along with a portfolio of previous work. Judges for the current contest include Giovanna Calvenzi, director of photography at...

CBS is having a terrific autumn. As a result, you're going to see more advertising. The network's "CSI" has been the top-rated show among all networks and all viewers so far this season, with "CSI: Miami" and "Without a Trace" occupying two of the other top five slots. Overall, the network is No. 1 among viewers 18 to 49, the age group most sought after by advertisers. Last May, those advertisers...

A group of journalists today called on the chief of the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal to play a pro-active in protecting Nepali media from various government offenses. In a memorandum handed over to Ian Martin, the journalists said they feared that in the aftermath the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in relation to the media ordinance, the...

King Gyanendra, while addressing the inaugural session of the thirteenth SAARC summit in Dhaka today, said that his February 1 move was necessitated by the ground realities of the pre-Feb 1 period and was not taken at the cost of the democracy. Nepal was in the danger of turning into a failed state, but since February 1, the security situation in Nepal had improved, the King said. He said the...

Media giant News Corp has posted a quarterly net loss on a large accounting charge but beat analyst forecasts as operating profit rose 20 per cent on advertising gains at its cable networks and revenues at its 20th Century Fox film studio. News Corp on Thursday reported a fiscal first-quarter net loss of $433 million compared to a net profit of $625 million in the same period last year. Revenue...

The Nepalese Attorney General, Professor Pawan Kumar Ohja, has defended the legality of the recent media ordinance, claiming that it is not unconstitutional - despite having been issued by the executive in the absence of parliament. "As ordinances also hold legislative power, it can amend not only the ordinance itself, but also the existing laws and regulations made by the parliament," Ohja said...