United States

SALT LAKE CITY: A federal judge yesterday rejected the news media’s request for access to the government’s investigation of the Crandall Canyon mine disaster. U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said there’s nothing in the Constitution that gives reporters the right to watch interviews or get other access to an active investigation. He denied a request for an injunction. “While it may be true that...

NEW YORK -- After two decades of cutbacks in international bureaus, ABC News is bucking the trend by creating one-person operations that will dramatically boost its coverage in Africa, India and elsewhere. The small offices, staffed by a reporter-producer with the latest in hand-held digital technology, cost a fraction of what it takes to run a full-time bureau. But the work they file will be...

SALT LAKE CITY: A coalition of media organizations, including The Associated Press, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Monday seeking to halt a federal investigation into the Crandall Canyon mine disaster until a judge can decide whether the proceedings should be public. The U.S. Labor Department has refused to allow the public to attend interviews during the government's investigation of...

Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, said some jobs will be cut after the company's $5.2 billion sale to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. ``Where job cuts are unavoidable, we will communicate that as soon as practical,'' Dow Jones Chief Executive Officer Rich Zannino said in a regulatory filing today. Employees who lose their jobs will receive severance and...

Almost half of the articles published by daily newspapers in the US contain one or more factual errors, and less than two per cent end up being corrected. The findings are from a forthcoming research paper by Scott R Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. The findings challenge how well journalism’s "corrections box" sets the record...

Public interest in natural disasters, sports and political scandals in the United States (US) has fallen in the last two decades, the first quite precipitously, a Pew Research Centre survey has found. Three categories of news shifted downwards, and two of those changes could conceivably be regarded as symbolic of greater seriousness. Interest in natural disasters fell precipitously from an index...

Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, a Guantanamo detainee since June 2002, has suffered a sharp deterioration in his health and is said to be fearing for his survival. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) voiced “deep concern” about al-Haj, whose lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith said yesterday after recovering his notes from US military censors that his client’s health has worsened considerably in recent days...

The US media's reporting of the war in Iraq fell sharply in the second quarter of 2007, largely due to a drop in coverage of the Washington-based policy debate, a study released Monday said. Taken together, the war's three major story lines — the US policy debate, events in Iraq and their impact on the US homefront — slipped roughly a third, to 15 per cent of an index of total news coverage, down...

The American public continues to fault news organisations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticising them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes. Some of the harshest indictments of the press now come from the growing segment that relies on the Internet as its main source for national and international news. The Internet news audience –...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Times is moving to a smaller format starting Monday, cutting 1.5 inches from its width and moving to what is becoming a newspaper industry standard of 12 inches. The change, which the company originally announced a year ago, will result in cost savings of about $10 million per year, spokeswoman Diane McNulty said. Several other major newspapers have already adopted...