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NEW DELHI, Jul 24 (IPS) - Across South Asia, ruling establishments have introduced or are attempting to introduce laws that curb the working of independent media, while claiming to uphold democratic values. India's federal information and broadcasting ministry has put out the draft of a proposed ‘Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2006' which ostensibly seeks to regulate ‘objectionable'...

You could be forgiven for thinking the television images in the experiment were from 2006. They were really from 1982: Israeli forces were clashing with Arab militants in Lebanon. The world was watching, charges were flying, and the air was thick with grievance, hurt and outrage. There was only one thing on which pro-Israeli and pro-Arab audiences agreed. Both were certain that media coverage in...

Opponents of The McClatchy Co.'s sale of a group of Northern California newspapers asked a federal judge Monday for a temporary restraining order to block the deal. Sacramento-based McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) planned to sell the newspapers as part of its divestiture of assets from the acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc. Four newspapers -- three of them in the Bay area -- would have wound up in the hands...

New York, July 24, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the killing of Aryana television cameraman Abdul Qodus, who died in a double suicide bombing in the Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday. Qodus had arrived at the scene of a suicide car bomb when a second attacker with explosives strapped to his body blew himself up, according to the Kabul-based Committee to Protect Afghan...

The Israel-Hezbollah conflict has claimed its first journalist. Layal Nejib, a photographer working for a Lebanese magazine was killed Sunday when her taxi was hit by a shrapnel as Israeli warplanes bombarded a convoy of people feeling their homes near Tyre in southern Lebanon. Nejib, 23, is the first journalist to be killed in Israel's offensive to push back Hezbollah guerrillas who captured two...

NEW YORK: As journalists scramble in and around Beirut and southern Lebanon to cover the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah, several veterans of recent Baghdad reporting say the violence in Iraq is, in many ways, more dangerous to reporters than what they are encountering in the newly war-torn Lebanon. In conversatons with E&P today, they also described day to day working conditions...

Muslims in UK blame Islamophobia on the portrayal of their religion in the media, a survey has revealed. An overwhelming 92 per cent feel this is either a very significant or significant problem. A significant number of the other respondents surveyed too think it is indeed a problem, with 44 per cent UK public and 40 per cent Jews saying so. THEIR STORY: It was striking that Muslims feel more...

Amnesty International has accused Internet giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Google of violating human rights principles by cooperating with China's efforts to censor the Web and called on them to lobby for the release of jailed dissidents. The London-based human rights group also called on the Internet companies to oppose in public Chinese government requests that violate human rights standards. ALL...

Bloggers in the US are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology, a survey has revealed. These are some of the key findings in a report issued by the Pew Internet & American Life Project titled Bloggers. EYE FOR A I: Most bloggers say they cover varied...

An independent and free media may undermine rather than support the rebuilding of states in crisis and post-war situations, says a new report from academics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). CRISES AND MISTAKES: One of the fundamental mistakes, the authors say, that has been made by donor agencies promoting media development strategies since the end of the Cold War has...