News

NEW YORK – For May Chidiac, host of Lebanon's popular "Good Day" TV program, it was a regular Sunday in September. She had just finished a show on Syria's possible involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and had left the studio feeling satisfied and secure. When she got into her car, a half-kilogram of explosives blew up under her front seat. She survived, but the...

NEW YORK: It could take as long as 30 years for online revenue to represent at least 50% of a newspaper’s top line, according to a new report issued by Merrill Lynch on Tuesday. “Even if the rapid [online] growth continues for the next few years, we don’t see online representing over 50% of newspaper ad revenues for at least a couple of decades, suggesting that industry profit could stay flat for...

WASHINGTON, October 24, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Turkmenistan remains among the six countries with the worst records on press freedom, according to the Worldwide Press Freedom Index published on October 24 by the international advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. The organization -- known by its French initials, RSF -- said the worst offenders remain the same as in the past four years. The index also...

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- An Associated Press photographer abducted in Gaza earlier Tuesday has been freed, Palestinian security and political sources told CNN Tuesday night. The AP and a Spanish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman identified the photographer as 37-year-old Emilio Morenatti. The AP reported that Morenatti was kidnapped as he was leaving his temporary apartment in Gaza and heading toward a car...

(LIP-wb) -- Peruvian journalist Cesar Hildebrandt complained he is being harassed after he broke the stories on President Alan Garcia's affair which resulted in fathering his sixth child, and presumed irregularities in the current vaccination campaign against rubeola (measles). Hildebrandt, one of Peru's most prolific journalists, announced his resignation as columnist for newspaper "La Primera"...

New York, October 24, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed that a Colombian journalist has been forced into hiding following threats. Television host Otoniel Sánchez became the sixth journalist this year in Colombia to flee after being threatened or intimidated. Unidentified gunmen fired six shots at Sánchez’s house in the town of Cartago, Valle del Cauca province, southwest of...

It took 31 years, but Newsweek magazine admitted it was incorrect about climate change. In a nearly 1,000-word correction, Senior Editor Jerry Adler finally agreed that a 1975 piece on global cooling “was so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future.” Even then, Adler wasn’t quite willing to blame Newsweek for the incredible failure. “In fact, the story wasn't ‘wrong’ in the journalistic...

JERUSALEM, Oct 24 (Reuters) - In a little over a year, the Gaza Strip has gone from being a possible model for a future Palestinian state to becoming a den of lawlessness and infighting with few signs stability will return soon. The kidnapping on Tuesday of a Spanish photographer working for the Associated Press -- at least the 24th abduction of a foreigner working in Gaza since August 2005 -- has...

"Come on, don't be shy," mumbles an ageing C-list Bollywood actor to a girl on a grainy video shown on an Indian news channel last year. "I want to make love to you." This, most say, marked the nadir of sting journalism in India - an out of work actor had been seemingly entrapped by a journalist posing as a sweet talking young aspiring actress. The channel was unfazed - viewership leapt three-fold...

(IFJ/IFEX) - In response to the recent deterioration of the security situation in the country, which has contributed to an uncertain environment in which the media operates, a group of editors and journalists from South Asia is visiting Sri Lanka from 23-25 October 2006. The Mission members include: Bharat Bhushan, Editor (Delhi), The Telegraph; Prateek Pradhan, Editor, The Kathmandu Post, Nepal...