News

Authorities arrested a journalist on Tuesday on criminal defamation charges in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hours earlier, in an unrelated incident, armed men briefly forced the city’s three main opposition broadcasters off the air, according to local journalists and news reports. Pascal Mulunda, editor of weekly Le Monitor, has been held in Kinshasa's Penitentiary and...

Four journalists were on Monday abducted by a criminal group in Mexico's Laguna region, which includes Durango and areas of the neighbouring state of Coahuila, according to delayed reports. The group’s members have demanded press coverage of videos they made in exchange for the reporters’ release, according to international and local news reports. Media reports named the journalists as Jaime...

The board of the Audit Bureau of Circulations approved a series of changes to US newspaper rules to coincide with other broad modifications set to take effect in October. The new policies include fresh standards for newspaper subscriptions that include digital editions while addressing the growing market for paid content across multiple platforms, such as e-readers and mobile apps. The board's aim...

UK's National Readership Survey (NRS) has appointed research specialist RSMB and UKOM/Nielsen to conduct a test fusion of online audience data with NRS readership data. The results of the test should be available for assessment by the NRS in early 2011. If successful, NRS and its stakeholders (the IPA, NPA and PPA) will then decide if the fusion of online audience data onto NRS should become a...

The editor of the Hounslow and Brentford Times has confirmed the closure of the 115 year-old UK newspaper. The title, an edition of the Richmond and Twickenham Times, published its last issue on July 23 along with a second edition of the weekly paper, The Chiswick Times. The editor, Helen Barnes, wrote on the newspaper's website, "After a lengthy review a decision has reluctantly been taken to...

Rival Australian newspaper publishers Fairfax Media and APN News & Media have agreed on an alliance combining Fairfax’s online classified advertising with the print classified sections of 90 regional daily and local newspapers published by APN in Queensland and Northern New South Wales. The deal, bandt.co.au reported, will allow Fairfax to promote its classified websites – Drive.com.au, Domain.com...

Russian editor Pyotr Lipatov has been exonerated of charges that he fomented extremism by publishing articles that created “negative stereotypes and negative images of members of the security forces,” among other faults. A court on Tuesday threw out the case against Lipatov saying that the the expert testimony that prosecutors had relied upon to prove that the articles were extremist was...

A teaching assistant at the London School of Economics accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages over claims that he had "groomed" a suicide bomber, the Press Association has reported. Reza Pankhurst brought proceedings at London's High Court over stories which appeared in the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard in January. His counsel, Lucy Moorman, told Justice Tugendhat that they falsely...

Tunisian journalist Fahem Boukadous has been in extremely poor health since police arrested him on July 15 to begin serving a four-year jail sentence for covering protests in the Gafsa mining region in the spring of 2008 for the international satellite TV station El Hiwar Ettounsi. Boukadous, who suffers from acute asthma attacks and was undergoing medical tests when police arrested him, is being...

Tunisian authorities have in the past few days stepped up their harassment of journalists who dare to criticise the government and defend freedom of expression. Poet and journalist Taoufik Ben Brik has been under house arrest for the past few days, after writing two articles for the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur about Tunisia’s police state. A permanent cordon of plain-clothes police is...