The Government on Wednesday constituted a seven-member committee headed by FICCI general secretary Amit Mitra to suggest a robust television rating point (TRP) system mechanism. The committee would review the existing TRP system in India and suggest measures to bring in place an effective mechanism for a transparent TRP system in the country, the Press Trust of India has reported. It will submit...
Five years ago, on May 13, 2005, Uzbek authorities fired on a crowd in Andijan, in the eastern Ferghana Valley and expelled journalists from the city to prevent them covering the atrocities taking place there. It will always be a black day in the history of human rights violations in Uzbekistan. Uzbek President Islam Karimov rightly continues to appear in the updated list of “Predators of Press...
On May 2, the Press and Publications Court in Sana’a found Hussein Muhammad al-Leswas, editor of the news website Sana Press, guilty of “undermining national foundations, the revolution, and the republic” and sentenced him to one year in prison, according to local press reports and freelance journalist Samia al-Aghraby. The court also instituted an open-ended reporting ban against al-Leswas...
The body of Sindh-based journalist Ghulam Rasool Birhamani was found Monday morning, outside the village of Wahi Pandhi in Sindh province. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) reported that the journalist was abducted the evening before his body was discovered. They also reported that his body was badly scarred and showed evidence of torture or...
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has been forced to call off the World Newspaper Congress and postpone the World Editors Forum, planned for Beirut from June 7 to 10, due to the failure of the Lebanese host organisation to meet its financial commitments. "It is with immense disappointment that we are forced to call off our events in Beirut, but it was simply...
A Canadian supreme court decision ordering the Toronto-based National Post newspaper to surrender documents pointing to a conflict of interest in a loan that a state-owned bank gave to a friend of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is being seen as a deterrent for confidentiality of sources. The ruling, issued on May 7, jeopardises the protection of sources, a fundamental principle without which...
Two journalists have been freed in Yemen during the past 24 hours. Al-Ayyam editor Hani Bashraheel, who was arrested on January 6, and Moaz Ashhabi, who was sentenced to a year in prison on January 16, were freed on Monday, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). But a harsh crackdown on independent and opposition media continues, with another journalist, Hossein Al-Leswas, getting a one...
New demands have been made by a militant group calling itself the Asian Tigers, the captors of freelance journalist Asad Qureshi, who has been held in Pakistan since March 26, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In a video sent to the Rome-based news agency Adnkronos International Tuesday, the abductors insisted that Pakistan release at least 160 Islamic militants in exchange...
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has criticised a "highly surprising" court decision against Panamanian newspaper La Prensa that ordered payment of US$300,000 in damages to a former public prosecutor for libel after the newspaper published official reports on irregularities that took place under her watch. On April 30, Second Civil Circuit Court Judge Miriam Cheng de Aguilar ordered La...
Salvadorean authorities have arrested another suspect in their investigation into the September 2009 murder of Christian Poveda, a documentary filmmaker with dual French and Spanish nationality, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The latest detainee is Iván Antonio Leiva, 23, an alleged member of the “Mara 18” gang who was wanted on suspicion of directly participating in Poveda’s murder...
