News

New York, September 20, 2006 – The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that a freelance video blogger has been ordered back to jail after losing an appeal in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco. Joshua Wolf spent 30 days in prison after refusing to turn over to a federal grand jury unaired videotape of a 2005 protest. A two-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered his...

Journalists under repression around the world tend to find that financial independence and stability are keys to resisting pressure and harassment. Peter Whitehead of the Media Development Loan Fund reports on how veteran independent journalists are sharing their expertise with the new targets of dictatorship. Although 2005 was the most dangerous year in a decade for journalists, with 63 killed...

THE BUOYANT growth of the Indian newspaper industry in the past decade is a major theme — a sort of `India is where the action is' theme — of international media discussion. The latest report of the World Association of Newspapers on world press trends, which puts daily newspaper circulation in India at 78.7 million (18 million behind China, the Number One in this respect), and the National...

(JED/IFEX) - Only a week after their broadcast programming had resumed, after being suspended by the illegal and unfair cutting of their signal for 21 days, both of the television channels, Canal Congo Television (CCTV) and Canal Kin Television (CKTV), were shut down again in the early evening hours of 18 September 2006, by a mysterious fire which broke out and caused extensive damage. CKTV is...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - Press freedom and access to information in Thailand following a military coup against caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appears to be normalizing, one day into the military takeover, but an interruption in news flow on local and cable channels in the first hours of the putsch, and the military's assertion of ownership over the airwaves, underscore an unstable and...

(PROBIDAD/IFEX) - Journalist Óscar Valdez, director of "La otra cara" television programme, broadcast by Telecab company and Radio Antena 5 radio station in the northeastern department Olancho, is facing a lawsuit for alleged defamation and slander for having broadcast information about alleged irregularities in the sale of light bulbs or floodlights that consume less energy. The suit was filed by...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors could be forgiven for wondering if they had stepped into the wrong conference on Tuesday -- old media executives talked up digital strategies even as Internet media leader Yahoo warned of an unforeseen advertising shortfall. It appeared that old and new media companies had swapped roles for a day. While many blue chips slipped on Tuesday, a handful of media stocks...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has asked the agency's inspector general to investigate why two draft reports on television and radio ownership never saw the light of day until now. Martin, a Republican, said Monday evening he sought the review after Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer questioned whether the agency suppressed the reports, dated 2003...

AFFLUENT AMERICANS ARE READING MORE consumer magazines and using the Internet for certain business transactions much more in 2006 than they did just a year ago, according to the Mendelsohn Affluent Survey, an annual study investigating the habits of Americans with income exceeding $85,000 a year. The news for print publications was especially encouraging, according to Mitch Lurin, the president of...

Two senior editors at a Nasdaq-listed Chinese internet portal have been fired after an online survey revealed deep discontent among their fellow citizens. More than 65 per cent of Chinese respondents to the survey would choose to be born in another country if they could live their lives over again, the poll at Netease.com indicated. Chief news editor Tang Yan and chief commentary editor Liu...