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The thugs that attacked reporters, including one from Thanh Nien, who were covering a betting scandal that involved senior officials will be brought to justice, Hanoi police told Thanh Nien Sunday. The police visited Thanh Nien newspaper in Hanoi Sunday after one of its reporters was assaulted Thursday taking pictures of a state official arrested in connection with a multi-million dollar scandal...

NEARLY a year ago Ethiopia was viewed by western donors as reform-minded, progressive, and on a path to growth and political liberalisation. Today it is state of repression and fear. As a result of a massive crackdown on the opposition and the press, more than a dozen journalists are in prison on charges that could bring the death penalty, according to a recent report released by the New York...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Since Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra took office five years ago, dozens of journalists who criticized the government have been fired or sued for libel, television talk shows have been canceled and radio stations yanked off the air. Thaksin, a telecom tycoon-turned-politician, has repeatedly blasted reporters who question his policies as ignorant and unpatriotic. He and his...

The number of journalists in China has doubled compared with 20 years earlier, official statistics show. Figures released by the General Administration of Press and Publication indicated that more than 700,000 people chose journalism as their career last year, 150,000 of them armed with a journalist certificate. According to the administration, Chinese journalists are increasingly entering the...

LONDON, England -- An anonymous Iraqi woman has been nominated for a major literary award for her Internet blog account of the impact of war on ordinary Iraqi people. "Baghdad Burning" by a 20-something university graduate, who uses the pen name Riverbend, was among the titles announced Monday in the competition for the 30,000-pound ($52,000) Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. The prize -- the...

With the McClatchy Company set to accept bids, starting as early as tomorrow, for the 12 Knight Ridder papers it is selling, some of the potential buyers are looking at the country as if it were a giant chessboard. The goal is not to topple a king but to become one – a king of each regional market where potential buyers already own newspapers and can achieve economies of scale by buying pieces of...

Encyclopaedia Britannica has reopened the debate over how its accuracy stacks up against that of its online rival, Wikipedia. The publisher of the venerable encyclopedia this week released a scathing 20-page rebuttal to a December article in the journal Nature that tallied errors in both Britannica and Wikipedia and found that the web upstart more than held its own. The experts who reviewed...

International press freedom and free expression groups have expressed concern over the systematic attacks, intimidation, harassment, sexual abuse in custody and arbitrary detention of journalists by security forces in Nepal. FIGHTING FOR PRESS FREEDOM: Executive Director of International Media Support Jesper Hojberg(far left) addressing journalists in Kathmandu March 25, 2006. "The refusal of the...

The syndicate council composed of 12 members as well as members of various political parties have begun to defend journalists from the abuse they have received at the hands of official groups. Mahbub Ali announced his resignation that was refused by the government last week. The campaign against the journalist syndicate began via news sites connected with the military. The government rephrased the...

DOHA, Qatar - This spring, the TV channel reviled for showing U.S. prisoners of war, hostage videos and messages from Osama bin Laden will launch an English-language spin-off, finally allowing Americans and other Westerners to judge Al-Jazeera for themselves. To the Bush administration and other critics, Al-Jazeera is a dangerous platform for terrorists and an anti-American propaganda tool known...