News

Iraqi authorities have unveiled a new hotline to protect journalists, Reuters has reported. The new hotline was set up with the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a non-governmental Iraqi organisation that defends reporters. The hotline numbers are posted on the JFO website www.jfoiraq.org. Journalists who feel threatened can phone JFO, which will quickly pass their case on to a special police...

The debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden drew nearly 70 million US television viewers, far more than the John McCain-Barack Obama bout, making it the most watched vice presidential debate ever, Reuters has reported quoting ratings issued on Friday. Some details: The television audience for the Republican Palin and Democrat Biden also was the biggest for any nationally televised political...

A judge dismissed a libel lawsuit against a reporter who wrote about workplace conditions at the Santa Barbara News-Press, the the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The September 24 ruling by Orange County Superior Court Judge H Warren Siegel in the case of journalist Susan Paterno was made under a California law geared to prevent the silencing of critics through lawsuits. Some backgrounder: "It...

French President Nikolas Sarkozy's comments about the state of the print media in the country has drawn criticism from journalists. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European group of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), says it is worried about some proposals made by Sarkozy as he launched a national discussion on print media. After the launch of the "Etats généraux...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is asking for the judge to show clemency for journalist Jason Nicholas, independent photographer for the New York Post, currently in jail in Rikers Island, New York for parole violation. Jason Nicholas is scheduled for another parole hearing in front of an administrative judge on October 15. He was one of over 40 journalists arrested while covering the Republican...

Hams has announced a new system of accreditation for all telecommunications companies, Internet service providers, broadcast media and news agencies based in the Gaza Strip, which has been controlled by it since June 2007, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Yusef Al-Mansi, the Hamas government’s minister of communication and information technology, told Paris-based RSF that the aim of...

Russian lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, who represents the family of slain Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, has been the target of an apparent poisoning in Strasbourg, France, press freedom organisations have said. This has come days before she was due to appear in a Moscow court for pretrial proceedings for three suspects charged in Politkovskaya’s October 2006 slaying. “We are shocked by...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter seeking to protect the identity of unidentified sources is asking two judges to stop a deposition intended to reveal who leaked information to him about the investigation of a prosecutor, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Some details from the AP report: David Ashenfelter of the Detroit Free Press is scheduled to give testimony in a deposition Thursday. A...

A Hanoi court has convicted two journalists of "abusing democratic freedoms" for their reporting on a corruption scandal in the country's transportation ministry. The court Wednesday sentenced journalists Nguyen Viet Chien, 56, to two years in prison, and Nguyen Van Hai, 33, to one year on probation. Chien was convicted of "abusing freedom and democracy" at the end of a two-day trial at the Hanoi...

The number of foreign journalists reporting from Baghdad has been declining sharply, says a Washington Post report. The number of journalists travelling with US forces in Iraq has plummeted in the past year. US military officials say they "embedded" journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number dwindled to 39. Of the dozen US newspapers and newspaper chains that maintained full...