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BEIJING: The family of a reporter killed while investigating China's corrupt coal industry says the life sentence given to the mine boss who ordered thugs to attack the journalist is too lenient, and appealed Monday for the death penalty. The beating death of Lan Chengzhang was the highest-profile case of violence against journalists in recent years, and highlighted the lawlessness at the country...

Six months after the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, 18 suspects went on trial Monday in a case widely seen as a test of whether the country's judiciary will be able to investigate allegations of official negligence in the slaying, news reports said. Dink was gunned down on January 19 and his killing led to international condemnation and debate within Turkey about free speech...

NIAMEY, July 1 (Reuters) - Authorities in Niger have banned a newspaper for three months and given formal warnings to three others for "demoralising the troops" with their reporting on attacks by rebels in the country's remote north. Officials said the state communication council (CSC), charged with regulating the media in the West African nation, had suspended the fortnightly Air Info newspaper...

Minister for Information and Communication Krishna Bahadur Mahara said on Saturday that special code-of-conduct would be introduced for journalists in order to make the 'mission of the constituent assembly successful'. Asking journalists to work towards making constituent assembly election a success, he informed that the government plans to “bring together private and government journalists and...

WASHINGTON, July 1, 2007 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Amnesty International calls for all the evidence and circumstances to be considered as the trial of 18 people accused of involvement in the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink begins today in Istanbul. Hrant Dink was shot on January 19, 2007. The case will be heard in closed session at Besiktas Heavy Penal Court No.14...

Cairo: Seven years after his newspaper was closed down, Majdi Ahmad Hussain, editor-in-chief of Al Shaab, the mouthpiece of Egypt's now-dissolved Islamist Labour Party, sounds downbeat. "Though we have 14 court rulings in our favour, the government authorities obstinately refuse to comply," Hussain told a recent gathering in the Egyptian Press Syndicate. The authorities closed Al Shaab in 2000...

ROME - Italian journalists were on strike on Saturday in protest at a draft law banning the publication of transcripts and wiretapped conversations being used in judicial enquiries. The bill would ban the use of any court document until a case has come to trial and provides for heavy fines of tens of thousands of euros (dollars) for journalists breaking the law. It has already been passed on a...

The US military accused the international media on Saturday of exacerbating Iraq's violent tensions by reporting false claims of massacres which it said were deliberately fabricated by extremist groups. This week several newspapers and agencies reported that Iraqi police had found 20 beheaded corpses in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. AFP did not carry the report after its sources were unable to...

The worldwide journalist death toll has risen sharply this year with 100 lives lost within six months, threatening even the record level reached in 2006. According to the International News Safety Institute (INSI), 83 journalists and 17 other media professionals have died covering news stories between January 1 and June 26, compared with 68 at the same time last year. INSI recorded a total of 168...

TONOTA - Some Tonota residents have described media workers as heartless ambulance chasers who pursue tragic stories for headline news. During a kgotla meeting addressed by the Minister of Communications, Science and Technology, Mrs Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, the residetns accussed the news media of focusing on sensational news without regard for the truth. Journalists do not take peoples feelings...