News

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Sri Lankan security forces’ improper use of the anti-terror law to arrest people working for the media. Dushantha Basnayake, financial director of Standard Newspapers Private Limited (SNPL), which publishes the Sinhalese-language weekly Mawbima, was arrested in the capital Colombo on 26 February 2007. Officers of the Terrorist investigation Division (TID...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the action of the Tunisian authorities in banning issues of two French publications, the daily Le Monde and the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, and blocking the website of a third, the daily Libération, because of articles by Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik critical of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. “After three years of silence, Taoufik Ben Brik...

Rupert Murdoch is facing a government review of his UK media assets, after ministers decided to intervene in last year's acquisition by BSkyB, the satellite group he chairs, of a stake in ITV, the country's largest commercial broadcaster. Alastair Darling, the UK trade and industry secretary, called yesterday for a review of whether the £940m ($1.84bn, €1.4bn) investment, "raises public interest...

The proliferation of people posting their views on the internet has caused Pearson, owner of the Financial Times, to rethink opening up its FT.com website. Chief executive Dame Marjorie Scardino, announcing a strong 19% rise in annual profits to £502m, admitted that FT.com is likely to continue to rely on subscriptions, retaining its so-called "chargewall". "As debate online has become more...

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has rapped the security services on the knuckles for searching the offices of a political magazine to identify who leaked a confidential police report. In what media are hailing as a significant reaffirmation of press freedom in Germany, the court ruled that the search had breached the constitution which enshrines the right of journalists to protect their...

Reporters Without Borders has voiced outrage at the pressure applied by the Australian federal government so that three hearings in a coroner's enquiry into the death of Brian Peters and four others journalists in East Timor in 1975 are held in camera. "The secrecy now surrounding the hearings is the result of disquiet within the government about the increasingly serious allegations of lying by...

At least three people were killed and more than 100 people were injured Monday as a fire tore through a Dhaka office building housing private television stations NTV and RTV and Bangla language newspaper Amar Desh. The cause of the fire was unclear. Two members of a television crew cry as their office burns in Dhaka February 26,2007. At least three people died and dozens were injured on Monday in...

British broadcaster ITV News has been censured by watchdog Ofcom over a report about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq. The report, broadcast in March last year, had reported that the Prime Minister had said his belief in God played an important part in deciding to go to war, the Independent reported. ITV News host Michael Parkinson (back to camera) listens to Blair. Based...

CHICAGO: Paddock Publications Inc., publisher of the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago, on Monday became the 10th charter member of the national consortium between newspaper companies and Yahoo. The Daily Herald began uploading its local jobs to the HotJobs.com online platform. The Yahoo site has 1.1 million registered job seekers in Illinois, Paddock said. Yahoo reaches an audience of 4.9 million...

(IAPA/IFEX) - ASUNCION, Paraguay (February 23, 2007) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) stated today that freedom of the press will remain uncertain in Paraguay until the disappearance of a local journalist is solved and as long as impunity surrounds murder cases, disproportionate punishment is dispensed against journalists and news media in libel cases, and there is no law on free...