News

PARIS: Help Wanted: Aging former Maoists seek wealthy industrialist to help finance and lead modernization of money-losing French daily newspaper. Capitalist approach welcome, but profit not expected. Libération, the newspaper founded by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and members of the extreme political left, says the end is nigh. The paper's largest shareholder, Edouard de Rothschild, a member...

THEY say that everything is bigger in America, and this was certainly true at the Los Angeles Times last week. Declining newspaper sales might be raising tensions between journalists and corporate owners all over the place, but they have reached unprecedented levels on LA’s most famous newspaper. Having refused to make new staff cuts on the back of over 200 redundancies over the past five years...

Pushed on the backfoot over its decision on new controls over the distribution of news, photographs and graphics by foreign news agencies, China has called it is only a "transitional arrangement" and a government department would eventually take over the responsibility. GIVEN A BAD NAME AND INCARCERATED: Protesters hold placards featuring a portrait of Straits Times correspondent Ching Cheong...

Besides separatist violence, a disinformation campaign and propaganda against the Indian State run by Pakistan is yet another battle ground in Jammu and Kashmir. Various official media units of the Government of India, primarily Doordarshan, shell out a good amount of money every month on making special programs and documentaries showcasing the democracy and secularism of India but at the end of...

Kathmandu, Sep 16 (IANS) Three years after a fierce opposition to alleged Indian investment in the media, Nepal's new government is now thinking of liberalising this sector, including allowing up to 49 percent foreign direct investment. After the fall in April of King Gyanendra's regime that had imposed harsh restrictions on the media, the new seven-party alliance (SPA) that came to power on the...

Caracas, Venezuela, September 16, 2006 - The South American Television Network Telesur announced the creation of a news agency to rival Reuters and the Associated Press, this Thursday. Andres Izarra, President of the Venezuela-based Telesur, made the declaration at the 14th Non-Aligned Summit this week. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrived in Havana on Thursday for the highly anticipated...

ISLAMABAD: A former secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists suffered injuries when Federal Minister of Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Ghulam Sarwar Khan’s guards thrashed him outside Parliament House, news reports said. The incident occurred when the deputy editor of the daily Ausaf, C R Shamsi, requested the minister to solve the longstanding 7th Wage Board Award...

An international press freedom watchdog has urged Eritrea to free 13 journalists who have been held "incommunicado" in secret jails for the past five years without trial. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also denounced the continued detention of the journalists, who were seized in a 2001 government crackdown. "Not only is the government continuing to hold these prisoners...

New York, September 15, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the ruling of an Iranian appeals court upholding a one-year prison sentence against Kurdish journalist and human rights activist Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand. The court of appeals in the northwestern province of Kurdistan ordered him to serve the suspended jail term, the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA)...

Penn State University still offers classes in journalism and Ford Risley, the head of the journalism department, tells students that exciting changes are happening in the newspaper business where traditionally print-focused publications are posting stories online, setting up blogs and learning to podcast. Yet living in interesting times isn't always the easiest thing to do as evidenced by the...