News

A reporter for the Tele Diario news show of Guatemala’s Channel 3 television was gunned down in the eastern city of Chiquimula, police said on Sunday, the Latin American Herald Tribune website has reported. Marco Antonio Estrada was killed after parking his motorcycle on an avenue in Chiquimula, located some 222 km (nearly 140 miles) east of Guatemala City, the National Civilian Police, or PNC...

A new website has been launched which promotes the concept of the "entrepreneurial journalist." Founded by a veteran of traditional media, Lewis Dvorkin, True/Slant wants its writers to be more than just a name and a mug shot. The name True/Slant is meant to convey the way news is delivered to the website's audience by knowledgeable and experienced contributors seeking the truth, while honestly...

Two masked gunmen killed the director of one of Somalia's largest broadcasters on Sunday, raising to five the number of journalists killed in Somalia this year. The gunmen shot Radio Shabelle's director Moqtar Mohamed Hirab several times in the chest and head, said Feysal Ahmed, a businessman who saw the shooting occur just outside his shop in the capital, Mogadishu, the Associated Press (AP)...

North Korea's top court convicted two American journalists and sentenced them to 12 years in a prison Monday, intensifying the communist nation's confrontation with the United States. The sentencing came amid soaring tensions fueled by the North's latest nuclear and missile tests. The Central Court tried American TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee and confirmed their unspecified "grave crime"...

Russian news agencies RIA Novosti and Interfax have launched a joint project set to cover important national news in around 600 regional media. The details: [ Link] “This project is revolutionary as two rival agencies—the independent Interfax agency and the federal state RIA Novosti agency—are carrying out a joint media project for the first time,” RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk...

Privately-owned Rrokum TV in Kosovo is still suspended by the Kosovar broadcasting network and internet provider IPKO, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Although it has a contract guaranteeing its transmission for five years, Rrokum TV was dropped from IPKO’s network of 80 local, regional and international TV stations without warning on April 1. IPKO has at first blamed technical...

The director of Somalia's Universal TV, Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, was abducted Tuesday as he was returning from Afgoye, 30 km north of Mogadishu, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Universal TV is a privately-owned Somali television station based in London. “This kidnapping comes just a few days after a journalist was killed while covering the fighting between government forces and Islamist...

The Libyan government has decided to nationalise the country's few privately-owned news media, which until now were controlled by Al-Ghad, a company launched two years ago by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Seif Al-Islam, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “This is clearly a retrograde measure,” Paris-based RSF reacted. “The launch of several privately-owned media by Seif Al-Islam...

Three more suspects have been arrested for the October 2008 murders of Ivo Pukanic, owner and editorial director of the Zagreb-based political weekly Nacional, and Niko Franjic, the publication's marketing director. Three other suspects had been arrested in November 2008. Pukanic and Franjic were killed on October 23, 2008, when a bomb exploded under the editor's car, which was parked outside the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has offered condolences to the family and colleagues of Philippine journalist Jojo Trajano, who was killed in crossfire on Wednesday during a police raid of an alleged organised crime den near Manila. A group suspected of drug dealing and theft opened fire on police during the raid at around 2.30 a.m. this morning in Taytay Town, Rizal Province, fatally...