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When it comes to accusations of Left-liberal bias, the BBC is a bit like an alcoholic. People have been sniggering about his drinking for years; he pretends not to notice. There have been complaints; he brushes them aside. Throwing up at that wedding reception? Someone spiked the punch. Propositioning the boss's wife? That was a joke. But, deep down, the drunk knows he has a problem. More to the...

Only days after the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) was joined by journalists’ organisations around the world in demanding the Pakistan government take action to address the appalling press freedom and journalist safety situation, the IFJ is shocked to learn of the murder of a journalist and kidnapping of another in Pakistan. “The news keeps getting worse and worse. The Pakistan...

Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip said they were pressing the kidnappers of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston to free him by Monday and hoped they would secure his release without the use of force. "The last appointment given for the kidnappers is today," senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar said. "If they are not going to free him smoothly, we are going to use every way in order to set him free...

LONDON: Journalists at Les Echos, a French financial daily, walked off the job Tuesday, stopping publication of Wednesday editions, as Pearson, its British owner, confirmed that it was considering a sale of the newspaper. Pearson declined to name the interested party or parties, but a union representative at Les Echos, Katty Cohen, said journalists assumed that the potential buyer was Bernard...

General Electric Co. and Pearson Plc, weighing a bid for Dow Jones & Co., may struggle both to top a $5 billion offer from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and to agree on a proposed structure for the combined business. Murdoch’s $60-a-share bid values the publisher of the Wall Street Journal at 65 percent more than its price before Dow Jones disclosed the offer. GE and Pearson envision an entity that...

June 19 (Bloomberg) — Josh Rushing has gone from Marine Corps spokesman (the role in which he appeared in the 2004 documentary “Control Room'’) to Washington-based reporter for Al Jazeera, known in some quarters as Osama bin Laden’s favorite TV network. A profound conversion by most standards, though in his memoir “Mission Al Jazeera'’ Rushing argues it was a natural progression. A Texan who...

Hamas’ recent takeover of the Gaza Strip has been described as many things: an escalation of Palestinian civil war, a threat to Israel’s existence, and a major setback for Palestinian statehood. The last of these descriptions, prevalent throughout the American mainstream press, has dramatic consequences for those seriously interested in the peaceful co-existence of both Palestinian and Israeli...

NANDIGRAM: Journalists were allegedly fired at as violence continued in Nandigram for the third consecutive day on Sunday with more than 25 rounds fired and bombs hurled from a brick kiln at neighbouring Kejuri. Police sources in Nandigram said the shots were fired and the bombs thrown allegedly by CPI-M cadres from a brick kiln from where ten persons with sophisticated firearms were arrested...

An appeal court in Andijan reduced human rights activist Gulbahor Turaeva’s sentence from six years in prison to a suspended three-year sentence on 12 June after she promised the court to turn over a new leaf and criticised several independent journalists by name. It was the second time in a month that an Uzbek court has suspended an activist’s jail sentence after a public confession. A doctor and...

The International Federation of Journalists today renewed calls for urgent action to protect Palestinian journalists after an armed raid at the weekend on the Gaza offices of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate by militants linked to Hamas. Gunmen entered the offices of the Syndicate, which is affiliated to the IFJ, on Saturday and seized documents and computers according to a statement issued...