Americas

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) expressed again today its concern for the May 10 disappearance of journalists Gamaliel López and Gerardo Paredes of TV Azteca Noroeste and at the lack of progress in the investigations into their whereabouts. López is a reporter and Paredes a cameraman for the TV station located in Monterrey, in the northern Mexico state of Nuevo León. According to...

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...

The conviction and subsequent sentencing of the mastermind behind the murder of Paraguayan journalist Samuel Román is being seen as an out and out victory of justice in the battle for violent conspiracies against journalists in the country. The 450-mile-long Paraguay-Brazil border is known as a hotbed of corruption, smuggling and organised crime. After deliberating for more than 12 hours, a jury...

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 people who run journalism and mass communication (JMC) schools in the United States (US) are overwhelmingly white, and two-thirds of them are male — even though about two-thirds of the students today are female. Those findings come from a new survey of administrators by Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Kunkel is the new president of...

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 –...

Opposition-aligned Venezuelan TV channel RCTV has been allowed by the country's Supreme Court to remain on cable, just hours before a government-set deadline that could have removed it from the cable lineup. The Supreme Court of Justice said in a statement Wednesday that it suspended the telecommunications commission's order for Radio Caracas Television and other cable channels to register as...

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has clinched a deal to buy Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co for $5 billion ending a century of family ownership. The companies said Wednesday that they signed a definitive agreement after the deal won sufficient support to pass from a deeply divided Bancroft family, which has controlled the storied newspaper publisher for generations, the Associated Press (AP...