ARCHIVES: South Korea
A Japanese journalist has been charged with criminal defamation in South Korea and forbidden from leaving the country, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the move and called on South Korean authorities to drop the charges against Tatsuya Kato immediately and remove the travel ban. Kato, Seoul bureau chief of the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun , was charged on Wednesday in connection with an August 3 story that criticised the behaviour of South... MORE
The Korean government has come under fire for its recent selection of new TV channel operators. Critics say it will cause excessive competition in a saturated market and aggravate large conservative newspapers' dominance of public opinion. Experts are also voicing doubt about the selection committee's fairness and correctness in assessing applicants, according to the Korea Herald. The Korea Communications Commission announced last Friday that it picked the country's four largest conservative... MORE
Two reporters working for Nippon Television Network Corp. were confirmed dead Sunday after they had climbed to a mountain in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture of Japan to cover the fatal crash a week earlier of a rescue helicopter, local media reported. Kyodo News said the two men, with whom the broadcaster had lost contact, are Yuji Kita, a 30-year-old reporter who lives in the city of Saitama, and Jun Kawakami, a 43-year-old photographer from Tokyo. They began climbing the mountain from a forest... MORE
The Roh Moo-hyun administration has decided to take disciplinary measures against South Korean journalists and their companies that do not abide by the "news embargoes'' set by government offices. The Government Information Agency (GIA) Tuesday unveiled a plan to implement it as early as next month, the Korea Times reported. Journalists who violate embargoes would be banned from interviewing public officials for a certain period. The government will also stop offering press releases to their... MORE
OhmyNews introduced the world to "citizen journalism" -- breaking news, investigative reporting, tales of daily life, written by thousands of amateurs all over South Korea. But now the online newspaper finds itself in the throes of change. After having turned a small profit for three years, OhmyNews slid into the red in 2006. It faces growing competition in South Korea, has failed to catch fire beyond its borders and, most important, has lost its luster as the must-read, latest new thing. In an... MORE
Tribun Timur is a local newspaper in Makassar, the capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi, which benefits from citizen journalists. It was first published two years ago and has become one of the leading newspapers in Makassar, with a distribution of 50,000 copies and about 120,000 readers. In a talk with Tribun Timur Editor-in-Chief Dahlan, he explained that, as a new newspaper, his company has a limited budget for sending reporters overseas, although there are always... MORE
