News

In a rare cross-industry accord, a consortium of media and Internet companies led by Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp. have agreed to a set of rules they will abide by in the contentious area of posting copyright material on the Web. Disney and Microsoft, which have been negotiating a pact for the past nine months, have pulled together a group that also includes General Electric Co.'s NBC...

Social-networking sites will enlist 230 million active members by the end of the year and will keep attracting new users until at least 2009, according to an analyst report. But investors are still wary--and for good reason, as long-term growth is by no means certain. A report by U.K.-based Datamonitor, titled "The future of social networking: Understanding market strategic and technological...

While pundits are quick to predict the Internet will drive a stake into the heart of big media, executives from CBS and Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) this week were defiant against the threat, saying the Web is less of an enemy and more of an opportunity to expand their businesses. During an onstage interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Amy Banse, president of Comcast's interactive division...

Fox Business Network, which launched Oct. 15, won’t be rated until sometime next year. But the fledgling financial service during its first four days on the air apparently took some viewers away from segment leader CNBC. CNBC saw viewership decline across several measures from Monday Oct. 15 through Thursday Oct. 18, when compared with prior-week results. However, CNBC officials note the network...

Reporters Without Borders hails a House of Representatives vote on 16 October approving, by a very large majority, a proposed Free Flow of Information Act that would protect journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources to federal courts. The press freedom organisation nonethless is concerned about the threat of a presidential veto that was brandished after the 16 October vote. “The...

(ANEM/IFEX) - BELGRADE, October 18, 2007 - Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) expresses its gravest concern and protest after the physical attack on Vesna Bojicic, journalist and Pristina based correspondent of Voice of America's Serbian Language Service. During the night between October 15 and October 16, the journalist heard somebody knocking on the door of her apartment in...

(IAPA/IFEX) - MIAMI, Florida (October 18, 2007) - In winding up its 63rd General Assembly here, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) concluded that "the exercise of press freedom, freedom of information and free speech in many countries in the hemisphere continues facing serious obstacles," among which it mentioned violence, harassment by governments and legal actions against journalists...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today condemned a wave of recent attacks on journalists in Algeria, particularly in the Djelfa, where journalists are being charged under the penal code for press offences. "The Algerian government use of the criminal code to prosecute journalists has created a hostile atmosphere for independent journalism," said IFJ General Secretary...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, October 17, 2007 - The publisher of a private newspaper in southern Nigeria, arrested last week by men suspected by local journalists to be agents of the State Security Service, was charged with sedition on Tuesday over a story critical of a local state governor, according to news reports. Jerome Imeime of southern Akwa Ibom state's private weekly Events is the first...

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns the arrest of independent journalist Zeljko Peratovic after a raid on his Zagreb home yesterday in which police seized files and computers. He has been charged with revealing a state secret. “Journalists’ homes should enjoy the protection necessary for the confidentiality of their sources, without which they cannot work properly,” the press freedom...