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CLEVELAND (AP) -- Six former Knight Ridder Inc. newspapers awaited word on their fate Wednesday as McClatchy Co. collected offers on the final day of bidding for the newspapers, the last of 12 that McClatchy intends to sell. The other six newspapers have already found new owners, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was sold to a local investor group there, and four others that were bought...

May 31 (Bloomberg) -- Perfil SA, Argentina's second-largest media company, sued the country's government, alleging it violated press freedoms by withholding advertising from media it considers critical, company president Jorge Fontevecchia said. The lawsuit, which is the first by a media outlet against President Nestor Kirchner's government, demands the government ends its policy of...

By some reckonings, the death of two journalists working for CBS News on Monday firmly secured the Iraq war as the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times. Since the start of the war in 2003, 71 journalists have been killed in Iraq, a figure that does not even include the more than two dozen members of news media support staff who have also died, according to the Committee to Protect...

NEW YORK, May 30 (Reuters) - The number of journalists killed in Iraq is now similar to the total who died in World War Two, underscoring the risks reporters face in informing the public about the conflict, press advocates say. The deaths of CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan on Monday increased the number of journalists deaths in Iraq to 71, as listed by the New York-based...

Tehran (AsiaNews) – A good many Iranians are not ignorant of what is going on in the world and the perception of the same of Iran. Many illegally watch international satellite TV and tune in to opposition radios, which have a network of clandestine reporters at work in Iran. However, the national media is submitted to so many restrictions and controls that its credibility is generally very limited...

(MISA/IFEX) - The general manager of Blantyre Newspapers Limited (BNL), Jika Nkolokosa, and one of his reporters, Maxwell Ng'ambi, have been charged with criminal libel for writing negatively about Health Minister Hetherwick Ntaba. Both journalists pleaded not guilty before the Lilongwe Magistrate Court on 29 May 2006. According to the charge sheet, the journalists, "knowing it to be false and...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - A Tamil-language daily, "Makkal Osai", has received phone calls from individuals threatening to burn down its offices and legal notice of defamation suits after publishing reports revealing "controversial" comments allegedly made by a cabinet minister. S.M. Periasamy, group general manager of Makkal Osai Group, said he received anonymous telephone calls on 18 and 23 May 2006, as...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) welcomes the move by the National Assembly of Cambodia to abolish the jail term for defamation. The move to decriminalise defamation was passed in Cambodia's National Assembly on Friday May 26, and is welcomed as a considerable development towards press freedom and democratic rights in Cambodia. "The IFJ and the Cambodian Association...

(RSF/IFEX) - Twenty-five journalists were injured on 29 May 2006 when members of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) attacked a demonstration in the western city of Kushtia by journalists protesting against the violence and threats many of them have received there. "We call on BNP activists to immediately refrain from further acts of violence against journalists and we call on the party...

(RSF/IFEX) - On 30 May 2006, Patrice Booto, the editor of the tri-weekly "Le Journal" and its supplement "Pool Malebo", was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of US$500 that must be paid within a week or his prison term will be extended by three months. The sentence was passed by a lower court in Assossa after it found him guilty of insulting the president and government. He was retried...