News

New York, February 10, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists praises the Indonesian Supreme Court's decision on Thursday to overturn the September 2004 criminal libel conviction of Tempo magazine's top editor, Bambang Harymurti. The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that civil, and not criminal, laws should apply. Lower courts had applied criminal law to convict and sentence Harymurti to a...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - The Muslim Students Association at the University of North Carolina on Friday asked the campus' student newspaper to apologize for publishing an original cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad. "The intention of bigotry was clear," the association wrote in a letter to The Daily Tar Heel. "One must question the DTH's ethics in advancing a widely protested issue to cause a riot...

A trip to the newsstand these days can be a dizzying descent into a blizzard of numbers. The March issue of Elle Girl promises readers "375 excuses to shop." Harper's Bazaar offers "783 new ideas to flatter you." Marie Claire trumpets not only "71 easy hair and makeup how-tos" but a mind-blowing "1,157 hot looks (all shapes, all sizes, all prices)." Magazines, particularly the "service"...

Expanding a test of its print advertising program, Google is now allowing advertisers to bid for space in 28 magazines, including high-profile publications such as Martha Stewart Living and Motor Trend. The move is part of a continuing effort to diversify its advertising business beyond the Internet, which now produces the bulk of its revenue. The company also recently required a company that will...

The Delhi High Court has granted interim bail for four weeks to former inspector general of Haryana Police R.K. Sharma, the key accused in the murder of Indian Express reporter Shivani Bhatnagar, according to an Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) report in the Times of India. Details: Granting bail, judge S.K. Aggarwal Friday directed that Sharma should not move out of his residence at Panchkula in...

The Guwahati Press Club (GPC) is inviting applications from working journalists of Northeast India for the 2nd GNRC Media Fellowship. The fellowship programme was launched last year when three journalists were selected. The number of fellowships has been increased to four this year. The fellows, selected for the three-month-long programme, will receive a stipend of Rs 10,000 per month each. A...

The clash over the Muhammad cartoons isn't just between "the West" and Islam. It's more between Muslims. Protests over the derogatory cartoons were purposely fanned by Arab leaders who need to look like mightier defenders of Islam than the jihadists who want to overthrow them and unite all Muslims. Many actions by the West serve as merely a foil in a long intra-Muslim struggle over whether to...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi journalists were threatened, detained, tortured and killed -- victims of a system that tightly controlled what was written about the country's Baathist leader. The destruction of the Information Ministry -- one of the main instruments of Saddam-era censorship -- during the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Iraqi leader in March 2003 symbolically ended...

It appears that early predictions for online ad spending in 2005 have been confirmed, with some commentators estimating as far back as June that expenditure would top £1bn by the end of the year. The joint Thomson /KPMG report, although it doesn’t give actual figures for Internet spending, concludes that overall advertising spend in the UK was up 5.4%, with television contributing growth of 4%...

LONDON - The word on the street is that a revival of the dot com boom is upon us. If true, then as some entrepreneurs dither at reliving the trauma of a costly cyber-dream, the fortunate few like Rupert Murdoch can hedge their bets, thanks to financial cushions like News Corp. Just as the billionaire chief executive has been touting his push into digital media with a clutch of new Web-based...