News

New Delhi: Law Minister H. R. Bhardwaj on Saturday defended the role of the media in highlighting the lapses of the prosecution and thereby ensuring that the "rule of law" prevailed in the country. Asserting that the country had a vibrant democratic system with a highly independent judiciary, the Minister rejected the charge that "trial by media" in important cases tended to influence the judges...

New Delhi: The 17th Law Commission has made recommendations to the Centre to enact a law to prevent the media from reporting anything prejudicial to the rights of the accused in criminal cases from the time of arrest, during investigation and trial. The subject "Trial by Media: Free Speech vs. Fair Trial Under Criminal Procedure (Amendments to the Contempt of Court Act, 1971)" was taken up suo...

New Delhi: A settlement regarding the future of the financially unsound Prasar Bharati is in the offing under which the facade of autonomy of the broadcasting corporation may be done away with and its role as a purely public broadcaster reassured. The lack of space in the private electronic media for public interest and social issues has prompted this feeling, sources in the Ministry of...

Shillong, Sept 2 (IANS) People with HIV/AIDS in India's northeast blame an insensitive media for the society stigmatizing the problem that has assumed epidemic proportions. 'I have come across journalists refusing to shake hands, sat a few meters away from me, and didn't even look at my eyes during interview sessions. I always thought journalists would help in breaking the stigma,' Vanlalmuana...

NEW DELHI: In a bid to restore balance between free speech and fair trial, the Law Commission on Thursday came up with a set of controversial proposals to rein in what it called "trial by media". Reacting to aggressive coverage of crime stories, the commission recommended that the media be barred from reporting anything prejudicial to an accused, right from the time he is arrested in the course of...

Under Afghanistan’s post-Taleban government the country has seen an unprecedented flourishing of the media, but the apparent choice of print publications belies the fact that no one is actually reading them. The easiest explanation should be Afghanistan’s high rates of illiteracy, especially but not only among women. Yet that does not appear to be the main reason - instead, the papers themselves...

Hemin Baba Rahim, 26, a reporter with the reputable Kurdish newspaper Hawlati (Citizen), and his wife were sound asleep when security forces raided their home in Kifri, 220 kilometres southeast of Sulaimaniyah. Baba Rahim was arrested, dragged to a car and taken to the offices of the security services where he had to spend a sleepless night with 18 people in a small room. He was released the...

NEW YORK -- Though more marketers plan to advertise on blogs and public forums next year, only a small amount of consumers consider those formats to be trustworthy, according to a new report from Jupiter Research. Only 21% of consumers trust product information within such social media when mulling a product purchase. Consumers are twice as likely to trust information on a corporate Web site or on...

An Apple Inc subcontractor has slashed a libel claim against two Shanghai journalists, who said workers at a plant making iPods were mistreated, from 30 million yuan ($3.77 million) to just 1 yuan (12 cents) to avoid a major PR disaster. BACKGROUND MUSIC: A woman rides a bicycle past advertisements of Apple Computer's iPod in this Friday, August 18, 2006 file photo in Shanghai, China. Apple...

A Chinese court jailed a reporter for a Singapore newspaper for five years on Thursday on a charge of spying, the latest in a series of high-profile cases underscoring China's curbs on the media and dissent. RELEASE HIM: Pro-democracy demonstrators and local legislators hold photos of jailed journalist Ching Cheong as they rally outside the Chinese Liaison office in Hong Kong. The recent jailing...