News

Russian President Vladimir Putin has decreed the creation of a new Soviet-style agency to regulate the media and the Internet. This has sparked fears among many Russian journalists of a bid to extend tight publishing controls to the relatively free Web. A customer looks at TV screens in a shop in Moscow during the broadcasting of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual address to Russian and...

Some of America's most prominent political journalists are, quite literally, wedded to the 2008 presidential race: Their spouses work for one of the candidates. Relationships that cross the media-political divide raise ethical questions for the journalists and their employers. Should the potential conflict of interest merely be disclosed to readers or viewers? Or should the journalists be shifted...

Scheming by Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is killing off the few remaining independent news media while the government-controlled Media Information Commission (MIC) continues to use obligatory press accreditation as way to pressure journalists in an entirely unacceptable fashion, Reporters Without Borders said today. “The infiltration of the last privately-owned media by the...

Reporters Without Borders expressed concern today at the plight of Darío Arizmendi Posada, news editor at Radio Caracol, who was forced to flee the country on 8 March after death threats from an unknown group. The worldwide press freedom organisation noted that seven journalists were last year driven out of their home region or obliged to go abroad after threats from paramilitray groups or armed...

Reporters Without Borders expressed its deepest sympathy today with the family and colleagues of Miguel Pérez Julca, a radio journalist who was gunned down on 16 March in Jaén, in the northwestern province of Cajamarca. Given the stories Pérez was covering and the manner of his death, the organisation hopes the police will thoroughly investigate the possibility that it was connected with his work...

CARTAGENA, Colombia: Press freedom in Latin America is being hurt by leftist governments' intolerance of criticism and a spate of drug mafia-ordered murders of journalists in Mexico, according to reports issued Saturday at a newspaper industry meeting. In country reports presented to the InterAmerican Press Association, representatives from Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia said the...

Palestinian journalists demonstrated in Gaza during the weekend to call for the safe return of abducted BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. There has been no word on his whereabouts since he went missing last week. Palestinian journalists and media students from Hebron University demonstrate for the release of kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston and Al-Jazeera Arab satellite channel journalists...

THE Hamas man cut straight to the point. "Are you scared of being kidnapped?" he asked. On a dark, cold laneway in the middle of a Gaza refugee camp, it didn't seem like a bad question. But this was a Hamas neighbourhood and Hamas militants do not have a track record in kidnapping civilians. And then came the man's kicker. "Today I was having coffee," he said pointing towards a main street over...

At 9 p.m. in a dark Shenzhen parking lot, Dr. Bai Xiuyu handed over a plain envelope in what was supposed to be a discreet blackmail payment to a local reporter in this southern Chinese city. The money in the envelope – 15,000 yuan, about $2,000 (all figures U.S.) – was to be paid to three reporters who'd threatened to go public with a story saying her health clinic was providing services it was...

Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was released by the Taliban Monday after two weeks in captivity and days after his driver was executed, news agencies have reported. Sources privy to the deal told local Pajhwok Afghan News that the La Repubblica journalist was handed over to Italian officials in the Hazarjuft district of the southern Helmand province at 5:10pm (local time). "My head is...