News

New York, July 31, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by threats to distributors of two Tamil-language dailies, Sudar Oli and Thinakkural, in Batticaloa and Amparai districts of eastern Sri Lanka. Both newspapers stopped distributing in the area last week after they received threatening phone calls, their managing editors told CPJ. On July 24, a caller identifying...

New York, July 31, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the provisional release of journalist Jean-Léonard Rugambage, who had been jailed for nearly 11 months by a traditional court trying suspects in the 1994 genocide. Rugambage was freed on Friday on the orders of the national committee overseeing traditional or “gacaca” courts following an investigation into procedural abuses in...

NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) CNN plans to standardize how it solicits and handles user-contributed news amid an industry-wide move to let consumers play a more prominent role in the news gathering process. The cable news network on Tuesday plans to announce it has created a new program to let users send in digital audio and video from breaking...

Mainstream media may be able to breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now: A study finds that although the Internet has grown significantly in the past decade, it is supplementing traditional outlets such as newspapers and television, not replacing them. The biennial news consumption survey of 3,204 adults, out today from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, finds that although a...

FAR more Americans use the internet to get their news than a decade ago but the rate of online news audience growth is slowing, according to a new study. Nearly one in three Americans regularly used the internet to get their news in 2006, compared to one in 50 in 1996, according to the Pew Research Centre for People and the Press. The most recent result was about the same as it was two years ago...

NEW YORK, July 31 (Reuters) - Fox News has agreed to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, on behalf of former female employees who said a vice president routinely cursed and denigrated women in the workplace. The settlement, submitted for approval in Manhattan federal court on Monday, includes a total payout of $225,000 to four women...

Reporting on incidents relating to militants and militancy in Manipur is increasingly making life difficult for journalists here. The latest episode has been the death threat against the Imphal Free Press over a report about the killing of two suspected militants in an encounter that the newspaper carried last week. The threat has since been withdrawn but working conditions for journalists remain...

NEW DELHI, Jul 30 (IPS) - Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, is known as an island paradise for those who want to get away from it all. But, not so well known is the fact that it is a hell for journalists and dissidents who dare criticise the 28-year-old regime of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Gayoom is currently under severe criticism from international media groups for denying his country's 300...

Here is a media & health paradox: despite low levels of literacy among the populations most at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, a recent study has found greater coverage of HIV/AIDS stories in print media rather than in broadcast media. Of the 356 stories sampled over two-week monitoring periods, 281 (79 per cent) were from the print media and 75 (21 per cent) from the broadcast media. While more...