International

As the Rugby World Cup is set to begin in France later this week, media restrictions imposed by the International Rugby Board (IRB) threaten full press coverage of the events. England's Mark Regan (left) tries to break a tackle from France's Jerome Thion (centre) and Raphael Ibanez during their Investec Challenge international friendly at Twickenham, August 2007. England's rugby World Cup squad...

Newspapers that break up their editorial departments and outsource journalistic work to moneysaving information production factories will only hasten the demise of the traditional press in developed countries, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned. IFJ was responding to plans by New Zealand’s biggest daily newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, to outsource editorial production...

News and information group Reuters said today its takeover by Canadian rival Thomson was on track and could be completed later this year. Reporting a 11% rise in pre-tax profits to £136m in the first half, Reuters said discussions with regulators over the £8.7bn Thomson deal were progressing and that customers were supportive of the tie-up. The deal with Thomson, announced in mid-May, ends 156...

Press freedom organisations have heaved a sigh of relief at the release early Wednesday morning local time of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who had been held captive for over four months in the Gaza Strip. In the same breath, all have called for global action to protect journalists working in hostile environments. Johnston was abducted while on his way home from his office in Gaza City on the...

The worldwide journalist death toll has risen sharply this year with 100 lives lost within six months, threatening even the record level reached in 2006. According to the International News Safety Institute (INSI), 83 journalists and 17 other media professionals have died covering news stories between January 1 and June 26, compared with 68 at the same time last year. INSI recorded a total of 168...

Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 — distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing — ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet...

At least three journalists a month since 2001 have fled their country to escape violence, imprisonment, or harassment, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found in a new report for World Refugee Day, June 20. Only one in seven exiled journalists ever returns home, and those who remain in exile face slim opportunities in journalism. Less than one-third of journalists now in exile have...

June 19 (Bloomberg) — Josh Rushing has gone from Marine Corps spokesman (the role in which he appeared in the 2004 documentary “Control Room'’) to Washington-based reporter for Al Jazeera, known in some quarters as Osama bin Laden’s favorite TV network. A profound conversion by most standards, though in his memoir “Mission Al Jazeera'’ Rushing argues it was a natural progression. A Texan who...

Most major news outlets are unwilling to let the public see how their editorial process works, a new study has concluded. Fewer than half of the websites surveyed publicly corrected mistakes in their stories and only a handful shared with readers the journalistic and ethical standards that theoretically guide their newsrooms. 'Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media...

Online news and information will supplant television network news as the leading news source over the next five years, but newspapers will remain a vital source on their own, and can become dominant if they successfully integrate online delivery as a part of what they offer the public, a new poll has revelaed. The findings are from a Harris Poll conducted last month by Harris Interactive in...