News

A number of major news outlets plan to announce today that they are adding a new way to search their Web sites, a move aimed at boosting traffic by encouraging readers to use them as a first stop for information gathering, just like Google or Yahoo. Inform Technologies LLC, which is based in New York, said 16 online publications plan to include its new search function. Among them are...

Internet advertising revenue in the U.S. set a new record in 2006, growing 35% to reach almost $17 billion, according to a report released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC). Revenue for the fourth quarter of the year, $4.8 billion, also set a record and similarly showed a 35% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2005. Randall Rothenberg...

The future of journalism is in your hands. That's the message today as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today hands out more than $11 million in prize money to a motley crew of bloggers and organizations ranging from MIT to MTV -- winners of the first Knight News Challenge contest. The contest challenged applicants to develop ways of using digital media to foster local communities, and...

For years now, newspapers have quietly watched Google index their headlines and offer users a synopsis of their stories without paying them a dime. Google is supposed to make it easier for newspaper readers to find content online. But some in the industry are questioning whether it makes business sense to allow Google to use their material for free. "If all of the newspapers in America did not...

The International News Safety Institute (INSI) has dismissed the Iraqi government's restrictions on news coverage of bombings as irrelevant to the safety of journalists. According to a report on state-run Al-Iraqiyah television last week, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the ministry had decided to prevent news teams from approaching the scenes of incidents out of concern for their safety...

Reporters Without Borders has asked the US ambassador in Afghanistan, William Wood, to intervene on behalf of Claire Billet, a French journalist working for the independent Hamsa Press agency, who was notified by email on 17 May that she has been blacklisted by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. Last month, she was arrested by private security guards and interrogated by US soldiers in...

Three members of a TV crew working for privately-owned Universal TV who were arrested while covering a news conference in Somalia on April 8 have been released. After questioning them about their work, a Mogadishu court Tuesday decided they did nothing wrong and ordered their release, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. RSF had expressed concern about press freedom in Somalia after a...

Reporters Without Borders today deplored the North Korean government’s resumption on 11 May of its jamming of independent and dissident radio stations broadcasting in Korean from outside and called on the South Korean government and the international community to defend their right to broadcast freely. "North and South Korea are celebrating the historic reopening of a railway line between the two...

The Venezuelan government’s decision not to renew a television broadcasting license is being seen as a serious setback for freedom of expression in Venezuela. Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), the country’s oldest private channel, will have to close shop when its licence expires on May 27, 2007. President Hugo Chávez has repeatedly threatened to cancel RCTV’s licence ever since he accused it of...

As a Glebe Coroner’s Court inquest into the murders of cameraman Brian Peters and four other TV journalists in the East Timor town of Balibo on 16 October 1975 draws to a close, Reporters Without Borders today called on deputy state coroner Dorelle Pinch to use all possible national and international police and judicial mechanisms to arrest those responsible. The press freedom organisation said...