News

The "Danish cartoon crisis" was quietly revisited at a conference at the Christiansborg Palace -- the beautiful building that accommodates the Danish Parliament -- in Copenhagen over the weekend. The conference, organized by the Danish Free Press Society and Jyllands Posten, the paper that printed the controversial caricatures, has revealed, sadly, that not only in Turkey but even in "more...

Copenhagen (Denmark), May 03: A Danish newspaper has said it had filed a defamation lawsuit against a lawyer representing a group of Muslim organisations that sued the daily for publishing Prophet Muhammad cartoons, which sparked riots across the world. The Jyllands-Posten sued Michael Christiani Havemann for saying its top editors ordered a cartoonists to deliberately make a "gross" drawing of...

A lawsuit filed this week alleges that Yahoo is charging advertisers for "premium" ads that are displayed on illegal sites that show spyware pop-up ads and typosquatter sites that appear when a surfer misspells a Web address. Instead of the "highly targeted" sites the ads are supposed to appear on, the ads end up on low-quality sites that show random ads and little or no bona fide content...

Media NGO Reporters Without Borders has published a saddening report on the state of play for independent journalists around the world, with the finger also pointed at European countries. According to the Paris-based organisation, at least 63 journalists were killed worldwide in 2005, the highest total in ten years, and over 1,300 media workers were injured with 100 jailed. In the report, issued...

KUALA LUMPUR, May 3, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Muslim heavyweight Malaysia has proposed setting up an international Islamic journalism center to counter mounting Islamophobia and coach non-Muslim journalists about Islam and Muslims, reported the official Bernama news agency. "This center can be set up along the lines of several international journalism institutes that are already in...

BAGHDAD, 3 May (IRIN) - The new government should "reaffirm its commitment to protect the right of journalists to go about their work, free from intimidation and threats," said UN Special Representative for Iraq Ashraf Qazi on Wednesday, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. Qazi, who called Iraq "a very risky environment for journalists", expressed his support for the Iraqi media "as it...

Suppression of press freedom in Africa has been widespread particularly in the last year. The continued detention of and relentless attacks on journalists by governments continues to be a problem in numerous African states. From Eritrea in the East of the continent to Sierra Leone in the West, Zimbabwe in the South and Egypt in the North, stories of imprisonment, harassment and even killings...

To mark World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2006, it was announced that a social cause will be listed directly on a major stock exchange for the very first time. Media Development Loan Fund, a New York non-profit organization providing low-cost financing to independent news media in emerging democracies, has teamed up with Swiss bank Vontobel Group and Zurich-based social investment specialists...

Two fired editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal have been awarded the National Press Club of Canada's World Press Freedom award for 2006. The awards will be presented Wednesday, which is World Press Freedom Day. Former editor Dr. John Hoey and senior deputy editor Anne Marie Todkill were fired in late February after a run-in with the journal's publisher over an investigation which...

Press freedom advocates around the globe observed World Press Freedom Day on May 3 � a day to remind the world of the crucial role a free press plays in strengthening democracies and fostering development. Celebrated each year since 1993, when it was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, World Press Freedom Day is an occasion to pay tribute to journalists who have been killed because...