News

Rupert Murdoch appears to be a step closer to acquiring The Wall Street Journal, a move that would set off what promises to be culture shock at the venerable financial news institution. The Journal’s parent, Dow Jones & Co., and Murdoch’s News Corp. have agreed in principle on a set of editorial protections for The Wall Street Journal, according to a report on WSJ.com. Protecting the editorial...

(RSF/IFEX) - On 27 June 2007, the 30th anniversary of Djibouti's independence, Reporters Without Borders condemns the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of President Ismael Omar Guelleh's government, in particular, a campaign of harassment that led to "Le Renouveau Djiboutien", the country's sole opposition newspaper, being silenced. "The national holiday is a time of anxiety this year," the...

(CJES/IFEX) -On 21 June 2007, the Moscow Golovinsky Court ruled as legal the January 2007 seizure of documents in the office of Educated Media Foundation (formerly known as Internews Russia), which is headed by Manana Aslamazyan. Thus, the court took the side of the prosecutor's office, which linked Aslamazyan's alleged violation of legislation governing currency import into Russia with the work...

(CJES/IFEX) - On 16 June 2007, the Moscow Koptevsky Court ruled in favour of the plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit filed by the Moscow region's governor, Boris Gromov, against Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervising Natural Resources, and the newspaper "Moskovskaya Pravda". The suit was filed over an article entitled "How Can Gromov Answer for Everything?", which was based...

NEW YORK: They read like items one might post on Legacy.com or some other such memorial to the dead. "Used witty or acerbic lines of prose," "had deep affection for his colleagues," or " I've never seen anyone work as hard as he did." But these words of praise and stories of success are not for the recent passing of a news colleague or someone cut down in a work-related death. These paragraphs of...

China's National People's Congress [official website] on Sunday revised a proposed law regulating media during national emergencies [JURIST report] after delegates and local people's congresses criticized the law as improper. The proposal, first introduced last June, would have imposed fines up to $13,000 on media outlets that report on public emergencies such as floods or disease outbreaks...

TWO journalists from the Melbourne-based Herald Sun newspaper have avoided jail for contempt of court. Reporters Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus had pleaded guilty to contempt of court for refusing to disclose the source of a leaked story about a federal government proposal to slash war veterans' benefits. Victorian County Court chief judge Michael Rozenes today recorded convictions against the...

BEIJING (AFP) - In the strictly controlled media world of communist China, "citizen journalism" is beating a way through censorship, breaking taboos and offering a pressure valve for social tensions.In one striking example this month, the Internet was largely responsible for breaking open a slave scandal in two Chinese provinces that some local authorities had been complicit in. A letter posted on...

The conflict in Iraq is the most deadly war on record for journalists. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says 108 reporters have been killed on duty while covering the conflict during the past four years, and Iraqi journalists are bearing the brunt of these fatalities with a total of 86, according to the committee. And yesterday, a 35-year-old woman was shot to death on her way...

SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt - Middle East leaders looking to contain and weaken Hamas forces now controlling the Gaza Strip converged at this Red Sea resort Monday. But Hamas upstaged them by releasing the first recording of an Israeli soldier they captured a year ago, which had touched off a major Israeli intervention in Gaza. The audiotape showing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, combined with the...