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Three journalists of Al-Arabiya television, including a well-known woman correspondent, were kidnapped and killed while covering sectarian violence in Samarra, police and the Arabic-language channel said. The bodies of Atwar Bahjat, 30, and her cameraman and soundman were found early Thursday near the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, local law enforcement officials said. MURDERED: Bodies of Al...

China has finally freed a journalist after 16 years of imprisonment left him mentally impaired after being tortured and held for long periods in solitary confinement. Yu Dongyue, then 23, was jailed for splattering paint on a portrait of Mao Zedong during the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. MAO@TIANANMEN: The portrait of Mao Zedong looms over student protestors at Tiananmen Square...

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The New Straits Times, the flagship newspaper of Malaysia's second-biggest publisher, said the government may take action against it over a Wiley Miller cartoon it published following complaints it insults the prophet Muhammad. ``The matter is in the hands of the authorities,'' New Straits Times (M) Bhd. Group Editor-in-Chief Hishamuddin Aun said in a statement published on...

A few months ago, if a newspaper reporter called the War News Radio office wanting to run a story on the program, the members of War News Radio would have been ecstatic. But now when a call comes in, they ask: Is it national? In recent weeks, War News Radio has garnered a great deal of media attention through being featured in print publications, such as The New Yorker and the Philadelphia...

23 February 2006 -- Belarus' Information Minister Uladzimir Rusakevich has threatened tough measures against a Belarusian newspaper that reprinted the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The private weekly "Zhoda" reprinted the cartoons on 17 February to illustrate an article about the deadly impact of the protests they sparked across the Muslim world. The Foreign Ministry lashed out at...

The storm over the Danish cartoons has been mistakenly described as a debate over the limits of free speech. One of the milder posters carried during a Londonistan anti-cartoon protest read "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM." The coverage in the mainstream American press has ranged from the banal to the bizarre, depicting broad-minded Danes and Dutchmen as raving xenophobes for refusing...

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has reprimanded one of its biggest daily newspapers for printing a cartoon lampooning the global controversy over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad. The government's move has fanned a hot debate in this mainly Muslim country about where to draw the line between press freedom and respect of religion, because this time it involves a newspaper closely aligned with...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A new South African Web site aims to capitalise on a potential cyber boom by offering a media-wary public the chance to become journalists themselves. Web site "reporter.co.za" lets members of the public submit articles and pictures, which are sifted through by an editorial team and posted on its site. The "reporter.co.za" site hopes to cash in on government plans to...

SHANGHAI, Feb. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- China's largest city, Shanghai, will hold the media accountable for carrying misleading commercials in its latest move to crack down on fraudulent advertisements, a government spokesperson said. Advertisers as well as publishers of fraudulent ads will face more severe penalties in the city's forthcoming campaign to better regulate the market and improve the overall...

NEW YORK, 23 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The report is considered groundbreaking in its precise and detailed description of the instruments of censorship in a rapidly changing Chinese society. It shows how a system of control that originated under classic totalitarian conditions is being adjusted, refined, and modernized to meet the agenda of the current Chinese leadership -- market economy with...