News

AMMAN, Jordan, 29 June 2007 – Mohammad’s TV show, ‘Sabah El Kheir Mosul’ (Good Morning Mosul), is different than most Iraqi news programmes. To balance the grim daily reports of bombings and violence, Mohammad, 28, is trying a new focus – the lives of children. “I used to dream of being a children’s cartoonist,” said Mohammad. “But the war has made this job very hard. So for now I am satisfied...

Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 — distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing — ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian investigators ruled out foul play on Friday in the death of a journalist who was investigating arms deals shortly before he fell from a window in his apartment building. But the Kommersant newspaper where the journalist, Ivan Safronov, worked said it believed the official investigation had not been thorough enough. Safronov's colleagues have treated his death with...

New York, June 29, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalist is concerned about an attack reported by Nukri Kacharava, a camera operator for the independent Georgian television station Mze, who said Russian military officers assaulted him and confiscated his equipment as he was filming their move out of a Russian military base in Batumi, capital of the southwest Georgian republic of Adjara...

New York, June 29, 2007—Three rooms in the headquartersof Shacab, an independent newspaper in northeast Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland, were damaged Wednesday night after assailants threw gasoline-fueled bombs, according to local news reports and the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSJ). One man was arrested after being identified by a security guard and other eyewitnesses...

AT AN OMMA VIDEO PANEL, reps from major media companies and Web giants knocked heads over who should control the end-user experience for Web videos. "Not being [platform] network agnostic" is the biggest drag on growth for media companies, said Karin Gilford, vice president and general manager, Yahoo Entertainment. "Remove the restrictions," pleaded Scott Levine, director of product marketing, AOL...

The editor of The Straits Times (ST) yesterday said this newspaper had done all it could to protect the identity of unnamed sources in its reports. Mr Han Fook Kwang added that although two journalists -- including one from ST -- recently complied with a court order to name their source, there should not be a "chilling effect" on the ability of Singapore journalists to obtain information. He was...

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today at the threats and physical attacks against two journalists by demonstrators on 22 June in Maimón, in the central province of Monseñor Nouel, saying it was astonished by the government’s failure to react to an increase in this kind of incident since the start of the year and to the resulting impact on press freedom. “The National Union of Press Workers...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times, reeling from months of staff cuts and management shake-ups, said on Thursday that one of its two managing editors, Douglas Frantz, would leave the newspaper next month. Frantz, a former foreign correspondent named managing editor in 2005, will depart from the nation's fourth-largest daily on July 6, though he did not offer a specific explanation for...

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro is being threatened by both state and anti-state powers trying to muzzle free expression in Mexico and silence voices which expose their corruption and illegal activities. Lydia Cacho, 43, correspondent for CIMAC news agency and feature writer for 'Dia Siete' magazine in Mexico. Cacho, a journalist for more than two decades, has endured numerous death threats because of her...