News

The International Institute for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Journalism Penplusbytes has announced a three month (April 20 to July 20, 2007) online training opportunity for journalists in the area of ICT Journalism. Participants will be exposed to the wider context of ICTs assisted journalism including its history, how these technologies are impacting on the world of journalism...

Blogger Colleen Caldwell rants and riffs about whatever strikes her fancy — a run-in with her child's school principal, the rising price of Girl Scout thin mints, an upcoming movie that caught her eye. "Has anyone out there read a book called 'The Ultimate Gift'? I just heard that a movie is being made of the book (which sold 4 million copies)," she wrote in a recent post on her site, Simple Kind...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 5 March 2007, the Bamako Commune II County Court sentenced managing editor Diaby Makoro Camara, and editor-in-chief Oumar Bouaré, of "Kabako", a privately-owned, monthly newspaper, to a four-month suspended sentence for defaming Mariamantia Diarra, Minister of Planning and the Interior. Camara and Bouaré were ordered to pay an amount of 50,000 FCFA (approx. US$99) in damages. The...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, March 9, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is disappointed that a freelance video blogger will remain in jail after a court-appointed arbitrator was unable to mediate a settlement that could have led to the journalist's release. Joshua Wolf has spent 198 days in jail, the longest incarceration of a journalist in U.S. history, for refusing to provide the court with...

Two journalists were bruised by Israeli stun grenades at an Israeli military checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah Thursday. Rami al-Faqih, a correspondent for the local Al-Quds Educational Television, and Iyad Hamad, a cameraman for the Associated Press, were each hit as Israeli border police fired at journalists covering a peaceful protest marking International Women’s...

(MISA/IFEX) - On March 7, 2007 the High Court of Swaziland dismissed a E750,000 (approx. US$100,000) lawsuit against the "Times of Swaziland" newspaper filed by the Minister for Education, Themba Msibi. The case was dismissed on grounds that the wrong parties were cited in the particulars of claim. Msibi, ex-Minister for Public Service and Information, was suing the "Times" for alleged defamation...

As more women work as journalists, the number of women journalists being killed for their work is also rising rapidly. Of the 82 journalists killed worldwide in 2006, nine (11 per cent) were women. Nearly 13 per cent of the journalists killed in the course of their work in 2005 were women, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. Atwar Bahjat of the Al-Arabiya TV station was killed after being...

Magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi is shutting down the US edition of its well-known and respected film magazine Premiere. The company, which also publishes Car and Driver, Elle and other magazines, said Monday that the April edition of Premiere, which is on newsstands until April 16, will be the last for the US edition. The international edition will continue to appear in the Czech Republic...

An international press freedom panel has found a serious deterioration in the security situation for the Sri Lankan media with threats, abductions and attacks committed by all parties to the conflict, and particularly paramilitary and militia groups. Journalists march during a protest against the killing of prominent Tamil journalist Dharmeratnam Sivaram in Colombo. On 29 April, 2005, Sivaram’s...

Journalists have reported extensively on information technology and financial services work migrating offshore. Now it’s their own jobs they can see disappearing over the horizon. In Britain and the US, the so-called outsourced newspaper is becoming a reality. Last Thursday, Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media announced plans to hive off the downtable sub-editing of three of its Irish...