News

Financial Times is ending its 15-year relationship with the Business Standard, says a report in Mint. BS will retain the right to use the FT brand as well as content through at least 2008. As of now, FT is closing an online content deal with Network 18 Media and Investments Ltd, the diversified media conglomerate, which, through its TV18 India Ltd, runs CNBC TV18 as well as Moneycontrol.com...

The editor of an opposition daily in Azerbaijan has been sentenced to a four-year prison term on charges of hooliganism and inflicting minor bodily harm in November. He has been in custody ever since. Acording to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Genimet Zakhidov, editor the daily Azadlyg (Freedom), was secretly brought to the Yasamal District Court in Azerbaijan’s capital...

A federal judge in Washington has ordered a journalist to pay up to $5,000 a day if she continues to refuse to reveal her sources, acording to the Associated Press (AP). US District Judge Reggie Walton ruled that former USA Today reporter Toni Locy must pay the fines starting midnight on Tuesday next. The first week she is required to pay $500 a day, $1,000 a day for the second week and $5,000 a...

The news editor of a prominent Shiite-run television station in Iraq was released Friday afternoon from US custody, two weeks after a raid aimed at disrupting Iranian-backed militia groups, a producer for the station told the Associated Press. The AP report said: Hafidh al-Beshara, the news editor and manager of political programming for Al-Forat TV, and his son were taken into custody after...

The United Nations has sharply criticised as inadequate a Congolese military investigation and murder trial which followed the killing of a UN radio journalist by armed men in military uniform last June, news agencies have reported. Serge Maheshe was shot in the legs and chest by two men on June 13 as he was leaving a friend's home in the eastern town of Bukavu, where he was editor-in-chief of UN...

Two years after a court imposed a news blackout on a terrorism case that includes charges of a plot to storm Canada's parliament, several media organisations have asked an appeals court to lift ban. Lawyers for the Associated Press (AP), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV television, and the Toronto Star appealed the blackout before Ontario's Court of Appeal earlier this week. They argued...

Press freedom organisaitons have deplored the censorship and harassment to which Sudan’s privately-owned media have been subjected since the start of the year. Arrests, summonses, threats and outright bans on certain news items — the campaign waged by the government against the independent press is reducing the space for free expression even more. “It should be an honour for Sudan to let the many...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the surrender of a suspect to police in the 2004 murder of Filipino broadcaster Herson Hinolan, but is concerned that the move came shortly after the withdrawal of an important prosecution witness from the case. Alfredo Arcenio, a former mayor of the town of Lezo, turned himself in to the Regional Trial Court in the nearby town of Kalibo...

Sudan has reimposed daily censorship of newspapers after they published reports accusing the government of backing Chadian rebels, Reuters reported Thursday. Journalists and local human rights activists criticised the move, which they said had begun nearly three weeks ago after rebels stormed the Chadian capital N'Djamena in a failed attempt to topple President Idriss Deby. Journalists said...

The Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 18 member organisations of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) network, are appalled at the treatment of human rights activists Sihem Bensedrine and Omar Mestiri upon their arrival in Tunisia on March 3. Bensedrine is Secretary-General Observatory for the Freedom of Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia (OLPEC), IFEX's...