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MELBOURNE: Hedley Thomas, the journalist who wrote a series of stories about the Australian government's handling of Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef's arrest on suspected terror charge, has won the country's most coveted journalism award. Thomas, who is associated with The Australian newspaper, won the "Gold Walkley" award for covering and highlighting the mistakes made by the government in the...

Aboard the crowded D train, rumbling into Brooklyn on the Manhattan Bridge, the inevitable rant explodes. A rant courtesy of Faye Anderson, whom we'll call Ms CJ, a k a Citizen Journalist. A rant directed at us, Mr MSM, a k a Mainstream Media, for all our perceived faults. "It's not you, the journalist, it's the institution," Ms CJ tells Mr MSM. "You're not telling the whole story. ... You've lost...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook is good for keeping up with high-flying buddies, MySpace is for teenage offspring and the BlackBerry is a full-time addiction, according to top media executives who were quizzed on their personal media habits at this week's Reuters Media Summit. "I may be the only human being on earth who's on MySpace under his own name and I am on Facebook," said Strauss Zelnick...

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the arrests of several dozen journalists to prevent them from covering a failed coup attempt at a Manila hotel where around 30 soldiers had demanded the ouster of President Gloria Arroyo on 29 November 2007. The journalists were taken, their hands bound, to the National Capital Region Police Office in Bicutan, south-east of the capital. Police said they had...

Reporters Without Borders has greeted with relief the news that Riaz Mengal, a reporter with the newspaper "Intikhab", succeeded in escaping from kidnappers who abducted him on 4 October 2007 in the Khuzdar district of Baluchistan province. The journalist told a press conference in Quetta on 26 November, a day after his escape from his captors, that his "kidnapping was linked to articles about...

MELBOURNE: Hedley Thomas, the journalist who wrote a series of stories about the Australian government’s handling of Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef’s arrest on suspected terror charge, has won the country’s most coveted journalism award. Thomas, who is associated with The Australian newspaper, won the “Gold Walkley” award for covering and highlighting the mistakes made by the government in the...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 28 November 2007, the police captured Nazario Coronel Ramírez, a.k.a. "Chamaya", the alleged perpetrator of the murder of journalist Miguel Pérez Julca, which took place in March 2007 in the city of Jaén, northeastern Peru. Coronel Ramírez was detained in Saposoa, a town in the province of Huallaga, San Martín region. After a week of surveillance, 10 policemen sent from Jaén...

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the way news media are being harassed to prevent them reporting the activities of the opposition parties taking part in this weekend’s parliamentary elections and by the way the public TV stations have systematically promoted Vladimir Putin’s candidacy. “Public opinion is being crudely manipulated,” the press freedom organisation said. “The international...

(RSF/IFEX) - New draconian restrictions on the coverage of fighting between government forces and rebels by the few media still operating in the capital are "unacceptable," RSF said on 28 November 2007. The restrictions were ordered on 26 November by Mogadishu mayor Mohamed Omar Habeb, a former warlord and governor of the central city of Jowhar who is also known by the nom de guerre of "Mohamed...

(RSF/IFEX) - Mahjoub Ourwa, the chairman of the independent Arabic-language daily "Al-Sudani", and Noureddine Medani, the newspaper's editor, were released on 29 November 2007 after spending 11 days in Omdurman prison, located north of Khartoum. The two journalists had been detained on 18 November for refusing to pay court-ordered fines of 10,000 Sudanese pounds (approx. 3,500 euros) each for...