News

Global entertainment and media revenue is forecast rising by an average of 6.6 percent a year to $2.2 trillion by 2012, boosted by advertising-supported digital and mobile media and an explosion in the adoption of broadband. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) annual forecast released on Wednesday, advertising tied to the burgeoning interest in watching videos on the Internet and on...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the Pakistani federal government and information minister Sherry Rehman in particular to publish the results of the investigations into the death of Hayatullah Khan, a reporter in Pakistan’s northeastern Tribal Areas, whose body was found two years ago, six months after his still unexplained abduction. "Pakistan is currently outraged by the death of 11...

Cartoonists Rights Network International has announced the winner of its 2008 Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award: Bahaa Boukhari, a Palestinian. CRNI, the only international organisation devoted to defending the human rights of cartoonists imperiled because of their work, will present the award to Boukhari at its annual dinner on June 26. The dinner is to be held at the Hotel Contessa in San...

The trial of the alleged killers of Carlos Quispe Quispe, a journalist on Radio Municipal Pucarani opened Wednesday. The journalist died in Pucarani, in La Paz department, western Bolivia on March 29 after being beaten up by opponents of the mayor. The six defendants, charged with "homicide" and "association to commit a crime", were all in court for the opening of the trial: four municipal...

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) has expressed concern at the court decision allowing police to use photographs belonging to the Hamilton Spectator. Officers executed a search warrant on May 6, 2008, in order to obtain photos of a highway blockade in Caledonia. Brian Rogers, representing the Hamilton Spectator, was in court on June 12 to fight the issuing of the warrant, but his...

The joint trial of independent newspaper, the Standard, its editor Davison Maruziva, and Professor Arthur Mutambara, leader of a faction of opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been postponed to July 10. The Standard newspaper, Maruziva and Mutambara stand charged under Section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act following the publication of an opinion...

A journalist won a legal test case over the confidentiality of reporters' contacts after judges ruled against a court order seeking all his notes for a biography of a former Islamist radical. The order had required London reporter Shiv Malik to give police all his notes and source material for a book he was writing on Hassan Butt, a British-born Muslim who spent 10 years inside radical Islamist...

Veteran journalist and founding editor of Bengali daily Bartaman Barun Sengupta died at a nursing home here on Thursday after a prolonged illness. A bachelor, Sengupta was 74. He is survived by two sisters. Sengupta, admitted to the nursing home on Sunday with multiple complications, was on a ventilator for the last two days. He died this afternoon following multi-organ failure. Sengupta, who...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed for charges to be dropped against Mazen Darwish, the president of its partner organisation, the Syrian Centre for Media & Freedom of Expression, two days ahead of the verdict in his defamation trial on June 18. Darwish, a journalist and human rights activist, was arrested on January 12 while covering violent clashes in the Damascus suburb of Adra and...

Javier García, news anchor for the Caracas-based television station Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV), was found dead in his Caracas apartment on Sunday. García, 37, was last seen by friends and family on Friday night, according to local and international news reports. On Sunday afternoon, García’s brother entered the anchor’s Caracas apartment and called the local fire department when...