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A new law guaranteeing freedom of the press in Afghanistan has been formally inaugurated. At a brief ceremony at the presidential palace in Kabul, the Minister of Information and Culture, Said Makhtoum Rahim, handed over the new press freedom bill which was signed into law by the head of the interim government, Hamid Karzai. The new law gives written guarantees for a free press, and Mr Karzai said...

Aaj Tak in Punjabi. Well, that's how the STV Enterprises brass would like to describe its 24-hour Punjabi news channel, which debuted on January 14. The channel, branded Punjab Today, aims to bring "news about people to the people" (Lokan dian khabran lokan tak). A free-to-air channel, Punjab Today beams via Thaicom 3 satellite. Promoted by Delhi-based broadcast equipment service provider Jugal K...

At the Prabha Sakshi headquarters in Noida (Uttar Pradesh) things are in fast-forward motion. People are running in and out of their rooms. The phones are ringing madly. The receptionist is on the brink of losing her sanity. The wastebasket is choking with papers. From the office boy to the director, everybody is in a nervous frenzy.The countdown has begun. Prabha Sakshi, new Hindi daily promoted...

On 29 December 2001, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the regulatory body for cable television operators, issued directions to cable television operators to stop the transmission of Indian channels. The PTA said the decision was taken in view of the one-sided, poisonous Indian propaganda by that country's channels aimed at tarnishing Pakistan's image. According to a PTA announcement...

The classroom chatter faded as she read her "what makes me tick" essay. It was a journalism exercise I'd asked the high-school students to do to get them thinking about why people behave the way they do, how they acquire their personalities and quirks. As journalists, they'd be doing that, so I had them start with themselves. This particular student wrote about a terrified young woman who found...

It has become the post-September 11 cliché to say that the attacks on New York and Washington changed everything. But clichés have their kernels of truth. Journalists and industry-watchers say that the events are making newsroom managers more aware of the need for hard news. Coverage of foreign events, government agencies, and the like is suddenly in the forefront, and infotainment has receded, at...

Shortly after the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets in the West Bank city of Nablus to celebrate by honking horns, handing out sweets, and firing their guns into the air. The demonstrators may not have represented the sentiment of the majority of Palestinians, but the protest was a newsworthy event, and...

In the early summer of 1995, in a cramped, cluttered newsstand in Greenwich Village, I purchased my first copy of Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life. The headline grabbed me: "Inventing Wills: How an Ex-Jesuit, Sometime Professor Became America's Heavyweight Know-It-All." I was intrigued that Lingua Franca's writer, Adam Begley, had somehow convinced the brilliant and irascible Garry Wills...

GOOD WORK: WHEN EXCELLENCE AND ETHICS MEET By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and Howard Gardner Basic Books 288 pages. $26.00 This intriguing book offers important insights for journalists, who all too often wrap themselves in their own cocoons, reveling in a specialness that sets them apart from other professionals. In an unusual collaboration that has lasted for five years and promises...

In a letter to Chief Minister of Karnataka State S.M. Krishna, RSF has asked to be informed of the exact reasons for the detention of a journalist named Sivasubramanian, who has been accused of supporting the bandit Veerappan. RSF fears that the journalist has been mistreated by the police in order to obtain a confession. "If Sivasubramanian's arrest is tied to his professional activities, we ask...