News

Some twenty lawyers of the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) attacked reporter Shaheen Attiq and cameraman Mohammed Nasir of private television channel City-42 Thursday last for airing footage of the lawyers beating a policeman a day earlier outside the premises of the Sessions Court, in Lahore, the capital city of the Punjab province. According to the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF), Nasir and Attiq...

The Saudi Arabia offices of a Lebanon-based satellite station controlled by tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal could face closure over a racy talk show featuring a man boasting about his sex life, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. The local operations of the Saudi billionaire's broadcaster LBC could be shut down because of the "offensive nature" of the programme, Abdullah al-Othaim, a senior...

Forensics experts in Ukraine are trying to identify fragments of a human skull found in the Bilotserkivski district of Kyiv Oblast, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has reported. The investigators suspect that the remains are those of independent journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, who was abducted and beheaded by unknown assailants in 2000. Gongadze, known for his criticism of the Ukrainian...

The Supreme Court has rejected a plea for putting curbs on the media and television channels from conducting sting operations. It held that any attempt to control and regulate the media from outside was likely to cause more harm than good, the Hindu has reported. A Bench consisting of Justices BN Agrawal, GS Singhvi and Aftab Alam, in its 175-page judgment in the RK Anand case, said: “It is not...

South African President Jacob Zuma accepted "very substantial damages" from Britain's Guardian newspaper over an article that wrongly suggested he was a rapist, Reuters repored quoting his lawyers on Thursday. The March article, headlined "Get used to a corrupt and chaotic South Africa. But don't write it off" also alleged Zuma was guilty of corruption and bribery arising out of his involvement in...

The Associated Press (AP) will create a news registry that will tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use. The system will register key identifying information about each piece of content that AP distributes as well as the terms of use of that content, and employ a built-in beacon to notify AP about how the content is used. "What we are building here is a way for...

Zimbabwe has allowed the BBC and CNN to resume operations in the country. This development is the outcome of meetings held by representatives of the organisations with the Minister of Media, Information and Publicity, Webster Shamu and his Permanent Secretary, George Charamba, the Zimbabwe Standard has reported. The details: [ Link] The BBC last officially covered in Zimbabwe in 2001 five weeks...

More than 1,000 publishers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Dallas Morning News have signed on to participate in the Fair Syndication Consortium, a model built to help publishers receive compensation for their content, Editor & Publisher has reported. AdBrite, an online marketplace to buy and sell advertising, has agreed to work with the consortium to help partners...

The Ann Arbor News published its final edition last week, the latest US newspaper to abandon print for an online future, says an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report. "Farewell, Ann Arbor," read a banner headline on last Thursday's edition of the 174-year-old daily, the only newspaper in the town in the northern state of Michigan. The closure of the Ann Arbor News makes the city, which has a...

The Russian government has drafted legislation that would make it easier for news agencies to contest plagiarism of their reports, drawing cheers from big outlets like Interfax and RIA-Novosti, but critics say the bill is too vague to be effective, according to a Moscow Times report. The law, drafted by the Communications and Press Ministry, would extend copyright protection to news reports, with...