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MANILA: Kerala-based journalist M Suchitra was among the three Indian scribes to be honoured at the 2006 Developing Asia Journalism Awards held here. Founder and Director of Quest Features and Footage in Cochin, M Suchitra 43, became the first ever female to win the overall Development Journalist of the Year title for her article on high maternal and infant deaths among tribals due to...

"IF YOU want to have a fun debate, ask bloggers what a blog is," says Jeremy Zawodny at Yahoo! Only a few years ago, that debate would have been short. So few people blogged that most of them knew one another and could probably agree on a definition. Today a new blog is created every second of every day, according to Technorati, a search engine for blogs, and the "blogosphere" is doubling in size...

THE next big thing in 1448 was a technology called "movable type", invented for commercial use by Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith from Mainz (although the Chinese had thought of it first). The clever idea was to cast individual letters (type) and then compose (move) these to make up printable pages. This promised to disrupt the mainstream media of the day–the work of monks who were manually...

MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti) - New York Supreme Court Wednesday ruled to withdraw claims filed by a U.S. lawyer against popular Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, while leaving in place claims against other paper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. Julian Lowenfeld agreed to settle out of court with Argumenty i Fakty and to drop all claims against the newspaper in a long-running case over alleged non...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the violent closure of a journalism seminar and consequent harassment of media workers in Bangladesh. On April 13, 2006 a journalists’ seminar organised by the Debidwar Press Club was forcibly foiled by a group of men allegedly sent by the local Bangladesh National Party (BNP) leader and Member of Parliament, Manjurul Ahsan Munshi...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced outrage at the Rabat appeal court's 18 April 2006 decision to uphold a damages award of 3 million dirhams (270,000 euros) against the "Journal Hebdomadaire" newspaper in a libel suit brought by the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre (ESISC), a think-tank based in Brussels. "The judges are clearly trying to crush the newspaper by...

U.S. freelance journalist William Nessen was detained by immigration officials upon arrival in the Indonesian city of Medan Wednesday and his deportation was due later in the day. Nessen arrived in the North Sumatra capital en route to nearby Aceh province, where he said he would visit his wife. "I plan to meet my wife, who is an Acehnese," he was quoted by the Detikcom news website as saying...

We live in an age of communication, yet the voices that most need to be heard often aren't. Moderates are criticised for saying too little, and extremists for saying too much. But what everyone agrees on is that freedom of speech is vital. In the wake of the Danish cartoon crisis, media freedom is particularly relevant to the Muslim world. Morocco, for one, is considered to be making landmark...

Reporters Without Borders has obtained a copy of the verdict in the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for his online pro-democracy articles, showing that Yahoo! helped Chinese police to identify him. It is the third such case, following those of Shi Tao and Li Zhi, proving the implication of the American Internet company. The verdict, made available and...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) voiced concern about detained Sudanese cameraman Sami Al-Haj of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera, and reiterated its call for his release in the absence of specific charges after speaking to his London-based lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith. Arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001, Al-Haj has been held at the US detention centre at...