News

Google (GOOG) on Thursday released a free software tool that allows Google AdWords advertisers to create their own Google Print Ads for display in newspapers. The company released Google Print Ads in July, a service that enables advertisers, large and small, to buy traditional print newspaper ads. Citing a 2006 Scarborough Research report, Google on its Web site claims that 3 out of 4 adults in...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The government banned a TV news channel for a month on Thursday after it aired a misleading sting operation in which it accused a Delhi teacher of blackmailing her students into becoming prostitutes. Live India showed hidden camera footage and an anonymous interview with a supposed victim last month, accusing the teacher of drugging her students and making pornographic images...

The Iranian justice system has just made public charges against journalists Ako Kurdnasab and Soheil Assefi, in two unconnected cases, more than one month after the two were arrested. They are among a total of ten journalists currently behind bars in Iran, one of them, Mohammad Sadegh Kabovand, who was arrested on 1st July 2007, still does not know what charges he faces. “Iran is one of the Middle...

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about Amaury Ribeiro Junior, a crime reporter with the Correio Braziliense national daily, who was hospitalised yesterday after being shot in the stomach on a street in the Brasilia suburb of Cidade Occidental, where he had gone to cover organised crime. “We do not yet know if Ribeiro was personally targeted or if he was the victim of random criminal...

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by an assault on journalist Tomás Eliaschev on 13 September in Buenos Aires in connection with a labour dispute. Eliaschev is the editor of perfil.com, a news website that is part of the Perfil press group. The attack is indicative of the terrible climate currently afflicting the Argentine news media. The press freedom organisation also condemns the arrest and...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A judge on Tuesday ordered Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder to leave his job for a year, a sweeping victory for the rival St. Paul Pioneer Press, which had accused its former publisher of misusing proprietary information. Ridder's actions when he joined the Star Tribune in March caused the Pioneer Press "irreparable harm," Judge David C. Higgs wrote. He said an injunction was...

NEW YORK: Almost 50% of people in Canada's four largest markets read a newspaper on an average weekday, according to the latest results from the Newspaper Audience Databank (NADbank). NADbank measures readership for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa-Gatineau. The data for this survey was conducted in the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007. Vancouver tops the four markets with the highest...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders is shocked by the violent death of Shankar Panthi, a correspondent of the local pro-Maoist "Naya Satta Daily" newspaper, in Sunawal, in the western district of Nawalparasi. His body, which bore the signs of injuries to several parts of his body, was found by police at a roadside near a petrol station on 14 September 2007. "The behaviour of the police in this...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 15 September 2007, during an address broadcast on radio, President Rafael Correa asked the new Constituent Assembly, which will begin its deliberations on 30 September, to further regulate the media so as to "stop them from being able to manipulate information". The president made this request after declaring that the state should have more regulatory powers over media outlets...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 13 September 2007, Asana Gordon, central regional correspondent of the Accra-based privately owned daily newspaper "Daily Dispatch", was barred from covering the Central Regional Health Service awards ceremony to honour stakeholders in the health sector by Clarence Lartey, the public relations officer of the Central Regional Coordinating Council (RCC). Media Foundation for West...