News

It is an irony of sorts. BBC is launching its Arabic TV, says a Guardian report, at a time when Arab governments are seeking to censor existing satellite TV channels that "negatively affect social peace, national unity, public order, and public morals" or "defame leaders, or national and religious symbols". Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and Lebanon's Al-Manar TV, owned by Hezbollah, are seen as the main...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned two physical attacks on journalists on February 27 that seem to be linked to their coverage of a December incident in which Labour Minister Mervyn Silva stormed into the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), a state-owned television station, and assaulted its news director. “Physical attacks and acts of intimidation against SLRC journalists for...

Officers of the Liberia National Police assigned to the provincial city of Tubmanburg in Liberia's Bomi county on Saturday last flogged and briefly detained a journalist in capital Monrovia. Edwin Clarke of Truth FM Radio, who had gone to Tubmanburg to follow up on a news story regarding a stolen child, was ordered beaten by the commander of the Women and Child Protection unit of the Liberian...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called on the authorities of Niger to release editor, Aboubacar Gourouza, charged with libeling a political leader and for contempt of court. “We can’t understand why the authorities in Niger have decided to persecute the journalists at this point,” said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa office. “It is wrong for journalists to be...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has voiced strong concern over the detention of a foreign journalist and his translator by authorities last month. Mark Magnier, Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, accompanied by a translator and a lawyer visited citizens of a so-called “grievance village” in Beijing on February 27 2008. A number of officials approached Magnier and his...

The government of Niger has refused to provide Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) secretary-general Robert Ménard with a visa for a trip he was to have made to Niamey to participate from there in a special day of solidarity with the organisation’s imprisoned correspondent, Moussa Kaka, which Radio France Internationale is organising on March 10. After submitting a visa application to Niger’s embassy...

The last fortnight has been a mix of good and bad news for journalists in Iran. Maybe, more of the latter. Abolfazl Abedini Nasr of the weekly Bahar Khozestan was released on February 18, followed by that of Said Matinpour, a contributor to the weekly Yarpagh, eight days later. That's where the good streak ended. Prison sentences were passed two days ago on journalists Bahaman Ahamadi Amoee and...

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has proposed to review foreign investment (FI) limits in the electronic media to provide level playing field among competing technologies, says a Times of India report. The telecom regulatory has floated a consultation paper for reviewing the existing foreign investment limits in different segments of broadcasting sector. Some details of Monday's...

Spanish politicians competing for next month's election are wooing free newspapers, whose readership now outstrips the traditional press, says a Reuters report. A free daily diet of entertainment and human interest stories geared to the Internet generation, with politics limited and simplified, has seen freesheet circulation rise to about 1 million readers each per day. This is double the...

Nearly 70 per cent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey. Two thirds of Americans — 67 per cent — believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll has shown. The survey also found that while most Americans (70...