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Under attack for his "takeover" of UNI, Zee group chairman Subhash Chandra on Friday said he was only joining other shareholders to bail out the news agency from its financial crisis, which would require an investment of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) in the next two years. MediaVest, the group's investment arm in the print media, which had bought 51 per cent UNI equity for Rs 32 crore (Rs 320...

NEWSPAPER companies continued to show weakness yesterday, with The New York Times Company and the Tribune Company both reporting lackluster earnings, citing soft advertising sales as a major culprit. At the Times Company, the slowdown “is expected to continue through the end of the year,” said Janet L. Robinson, the company’s president and chief executive. The Times Company reported a 39 percent...

Comparisons of Google to a freight train that defies the laws of physics are looking apt right about now. By all rights, such forces as a slowing economy and increased competition from new search engines and social networks should be dragging on the company's growth. That's what they're doing to rival Yahoo! (YHOO). But time and time again Google (GOOG) proves that it is far from running out of...

MEDIA baron Rupert Murdoch will be given an extension of his controversial "poison pill" corporate defence strategy at tonight's News Corporation annual meeting in New York. Company sources last night confirmed that Mr Murdoch, News chairman and chief executive, had the numbers for a two-year extension of the poison pill when the issue goes to a vote of shareholders. This was despite the fact that...

(RSF/IFEX) - Police and some judges deliberately sabotaged and then blocked judicial steps against members of the pro-government EPDP party implicated in the murder in 2000 of Tamil journalist Mayilvaganam Nimalarajan at his home in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, said Reporters Without Borders. The result has been that six years after the death of the BBC World Service journalist, his killers have...

KABUL, Oct 19 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Italian journalist, who was kidnapped in Afghanistan, Thursday appealed media and fellow-journalists to help him in his release from the clutches of abductors. Arranging his talks with Pajhwok Afghan News by the kidnappers from undisclosed location, Gabriele Torsello said he was under constant threat and extreme pressure from his abductors. His words were...

NEW YORK: Joe Maguire was fired as a Reuters editor for writing a book critical of Ann Coulter, according to the People for the American Way (PFAW) Web site. There has been speculation that Maguire's departure from Reuters earlier this month was tied to his writing "Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter" (William Morrow, Oct. 10). Maguire's Tuesday talk at PFAW's New York office was...

The venerable judiciary has done it again. They have deemed that most sting operations are money-making rackets — which they may well be. They have also said that sting operations, if in public interest, are good. Here, then, is my concern. Should I, as a citizen of this country, be concerned if those elected to office in assemblies and Parliament are crooks; if they are law-breakers; if they are...

Tribune Company suffered from Hollywood’s dramatic pullback from newspaper advertising as it reported another quarter of weak results. Tribune said that advertising from the film studios had declined 17 per cent this year at the Los Angeles Times, its biggest title, including a 10 per cent drop in the third quarter from last time. “Part of the decline is due to smaller ads, and shorter theatre...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the attacks on the NE TV station office by members of the Youth Congress on October 12 in Assam, India. According to an IFJ affiliate, the Indian Journalists’ Union (IJU), the group of Youth Congress workers gathered outside the station and yelled abuse at NE TV journalist Manoranjana Sinh and her husband, a former central minister...