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If sex, religion and caste are to be taken together, more than two-thirds of the top media professionals in the country come from less than 10 per cent of the population. Hindu upper caste men, who are barely 8 per cent of the country's population, have a majority share of 71 per cent among top media professionals in the country. These findings are from the same survey of the social profile of key...

ALMATY (Reuters) - Kazakhstan, criticised in the West for tightening its grip over the media, plans to step up control over the Internet, the information minister was quoted as saying on Thursday. Kazakhstan introduced new legislation this week putting print and television journalists under tighter state control despite criticism from the United States and Europe that it would further harm press...

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives, on a party line vote, passed an innocuous-sounding resolution that "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt, and capture terrorists by not disclosing classified intelligence programs such as the Terrorist Financing Tracking Program." The...

North Korea's test launch on July 4 and 5 of seven Nodong ballistic missiles (including one long-range Taepodong-2 missile) is likely to result in new efforts at diplomatic engagement. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is adept only at applying what is usually described as "diplomatic pressure." As a result, the Bush strategy will likely remain unchanged: leaving direct diplomacy to the five...

The Sanskriti Pratishthan is inviting applications for its annual Prabha Dutt Fellowship in Journalism from young women who wish to investigate and research on any topic of contemporary relevance. The Prabha Dutt Foundation initially administered the Fellowship. The scheme will now be managed by the Sanskriti Pratishthan, which has been giving similar awards for cultural, media and social activism...

The survival of newspapers will depend on how quickly and effectively they adapt to the digital age and that too through new business models, two of the world's most revered newspaper specialists have predicted. NEWSPAPERS ARE NOT VANISHING YET: Philip Meyer addresses a gathering. Meyer says, "James Madison warned his fellow Americans about 'the men of factious temper' who would keep us distracted...

The big fish always eat the small fish. Just the way, big newspapers elbow out small newspapers. Yet, grassroots, community newspapers can survive – as some in South Africa have been doing. And the mantra is the same for all of them: editorial content must have a local focus and should be relevant to members of the newspapers' communities. COMMUNITY-OWNED: Rose Stephenson, co-owner of the North...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - A state-owned newspaper has suspended the column of blogger Lee Kin Mun, following an information ministry official's warning that "it is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues." A 30 June 2006 article by Lee in the state-owned "Today" newspaper sarcastically discussed how many Singaporeans cannot make ends meet despite all the "progress" trumpeted...

Beijing - Police on Thursday detained a German journalist who was attempting to investigate controversial plans to dam the Nujiang river in south-western China's Yunnan province. Georg Blume, a correspondent for Die Zeit newspaper, said he was taken away by police for 'illegal reporting' on Thursday afternoon while he was speaking to villagers about plans to resettle them to make way for one...

Iraq is the deadliest war on record for news people. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 74 journalists have been killed there since the bombing of Baghdad began in 2003. And there have been plenty of near-misses. NBC's David Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism in the early weeks of the war while riding in a tank. ABC's Bob Woodruff was seriously injured last January, and CBS's...