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HARARE, 8 January (IRIN) - There are renewed fears that the Zimbabwean government is intensifying its campaign against the few remaining privately owned media organisations in the wake of severe press criticisms of its human rights violations, a dismal economic record and President Robert Mugabe's plans to extend his stay in power by another two years. The government has stripped newspaper...

Even-numbered years are often good to the advertising industry. Odd-numbered ones, rarely so. That maxim held up in 2006, when audience-drawing events like the World Cup soccer tournament, the Winter Olympics and the U.S. congressional elections combined to produce higher-than-expected global ad spending, even if some of the largest individual markets, including the United States, were sluggish...

The National Readership Study (NRS) and the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), the two primary readership surveys in the country, may make way for a common survey. Executives of the National Readership Studies Council (NRSC) told Business Standard that Media Research Users Council (MRUC), which commissioned the IRS, had submitted an application to become a part of the joint industry body that governs...

It has to choose between commerce and credibility. Newspapers, the earliest form of the media, have been around in some sort of a way as long as the printing press. In Elizabethan London, they took the form of pamphlets filled with grisly tales of murder, executions, witchcraft and “monstrous” creatures. Political news was absent as it was considered “dull and boring”. The world’s oldest surviving...

NEW YORK: A new Gallup poll released today reveals a halt in the steady decline of Americans who rely on newspapers for most of their news gathering, with local TV news still holding at #1. Despite all of the publicity about people fleeing to the Web for their daily news diet, the Gallup survey found that twice as many still rely on newspapers: 44% daily vs. 22% daily for Internet use. "The rapid...

(FNJ/IFEX) - Krishna Lama, a correspondent of "Taja Khabar Weekly", was abducted from Samakhushi Chowk by Maoist cadres in Kathmandu on 4 January 2007 at 7:30 p.m. (local time) and later released around midnight the same day in Ratnapark. Lama said Maoist cadres threatened him with a pistol and then transported him forcibly to an unidentified place where they questioned him about a news report...

(RSF/IFEX) - In response to a call from RSF, around 50 journalists and photographers gathered this morning outside the headquarters of the French news agency Agence France-Presse in Paris in a show of solidarity with Jaime Razuri, the AFP photographer of Peruvian nationality who was kidnapped in Gaza City on 1 January 2007 (see IFEX alerts of 4 and 2 January 2007). The photographers laid their...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced deep concern about the fact that journalists are being denied all access to war zones while a war of words and figures is being waged between the government and the Tamil armed separatists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). "This week's Padahuthurai bombing tragically showed that the lack of independent information is detrimental to the...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and journalists across the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip today demanded the immediate release of Peruvian photographer Jaime Rázuri, kidnapped in Gaza on Monday. "Free him now and stop this cat-and-mouse intimidation of journalists and media staff," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. The IFJ says kidnapping of journalists...

(IPI/IFEX) - According to information provided to the International Press Institute (IPI), Trevor Ncube, the publisher of the privately owned Zimbabwe Independent and Zimbabwe Standard, is facing renewed attempts to deny him Zimbabwean citizenship. At present, Ncube is seeking a High Court order compelling the government to renew his application for citizenship after it was initially withdrawn. In...