News

LONDON - BBC World News is to be launched in the US, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as part of RealNetwork's SuperPass broadband service in the first step towards offering 24-hour rolling news to the US market. The deal follows reports last month that the launch of a 24-hour US BBC News channel could be getting closer as the corporation extended its BBC World News service to offer hours of...

Consumer spending for online content in the US grew to $987 million in the first half of 2005, an increase of 15.7 per cent over the same period last year. For the first time ever, in Q2 of 2005, quarterly sales of content topped half a billion dollars, according to a study commissioned by the Online Publishers Association (OPA). Spurred by growth in online music sales, entertainment/lifestyles...

Cheju Island _ Some 70 senior journalists from 22 nations Wednesday called on the Nepalese government to take immediate steps to restore freedom of speech in the Himalayan country. ``The ongoing government crackdown on the Nepalese media is a cause for great concern for journalists committed to freedom and democracy in the Asia-Pacific region,'' they said in a statement. They adopted the statement...

The BBC harbours an anti-religious attitude, its correspondents have little understanding of religious issues and soaps such as EastEnders ridicule religion, the House of Lords select committee considering the future of the corporation heard today. The BBC was also attacked by members of the committee for treating religion "with kid gloves" and for employing reporters who tried to "fluff their way...

BOGOTA, (IPS) - They live in such fear that they dare not venture beyond the city limits. The death threats are periodically renewed, just in case it occurs to any of them that the danger has disappeared. They are reporters in the midst of Colombia's four-decade civil war. After they were targeted by collective threats in 2003, 16 journalists with the leading publications in the eastern oil-rich...

NEW YORK: Private Capital Management LP, Knight Ridder Inc.'s largest shareholder, called for a sale of the newspaper publisher on Tuesday, citing management's inability to boost profit and the company's share price, according to a Bloomberg News report. In a letter dated Nov. 1, Bruce S. Sherman, CEO of PCM, asked Knight Ridder’s board of directors to consider breaking up the company. "In light...

The old joke asks what do you do when the only way to save an endangered species is to feed the animal endangered plants. The serious question is what do you do when the only way to protect freedom of the press is to kill the biggest story of your career. This Solomonic stumper arose last weekend when an independent US prosecutor charged the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney with perjury. The...

Remember James Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the male prostitute-turned-conservative blogger-turned-White House briefing regular? When he emerged on the scene last winter as the White House correspondent for GOP-connected TalonNews.com, his ability to get into both press briefings and several Bush news conferences sparked a firestorm of controversy that even had some members of Congress calling for...

The most intriguing revelation of Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's news conference last week was his assertion that he would have presented his indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby a year ago if not for the intransigence of reporters who refused to testify before the grand jury. He said that without that delay, "we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005." Had that...

With prime-time TV ad clutter reaching an all-time high this year, advertisers and networks are holding talks to explore ways to improve TV's crowded ad schedule, which buyers say is partly to blame for declining viewership. Several ad agencies last week said they are in discussions with TV networks about exclusive sponsorship deals that will cut back the number of ads in a particular sponsored...