International

Four newswomen from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cyprus and the United States have been honoured by an international journalism group for their work in difficult and dangerous situations that sometimes include risking their lives to tell a story. Aye Aye Win, a correspondent for the Associated Press (AP) in Burma, was one of three women to receive Courage in Journalism Awards from the International Women...

Democracies embroiled in wars outside their own territory, such as the United States and Israel, have fallen further in the World Press Freedom Index 2008 of Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Several emerging countries, especially in Africa and the Caribbean, on the other hand, give better and better guarantees for media freedom. India, ranked 120th last year, has risen only two notches up to 118...

Free expression defenders have won a small, but important victory: the UN Human Rights Council has dropped efforts of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and some African countries to endorse the concept of defamation of religion at its latest session. Following calls from IFEX members ARTICLE 19 and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), among other press freedom...

The world newspaper industry is heading for another showdown with Google. The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has asked competition authorities in Europe and North America to block the advertising agreement between Google and Yahoo on anti-competitive grounds. The deal, WAN insists, would have a negative impact on the advertising revenues that the search giants provide to

A UN tribunal has convicted a journalist of contempt of court for publishing details about a protected witness who testified at the trial of Kosovo's former prime minister. The tribunal is trying those responsible for atrocities committed during the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s, says a Press Trust of India (PTI) report. Journalist Baton Haxhiu was also fined 7,000 Euros by Hague-based...

In many countries, media workers such as journalists, camera/sound operators and translators are being killed due to their jobs, according to just published research by the University of Otago, Wellington. The study in the international journal 'Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health', examined five authoritative data bases to find the number and risk factors for all media worker homicides...

Guardian News & Media has acquired ContentNext, publisher of media and technology business blog paidContent.org, a sign of the growing importance of such sites to traditional media companies, says a Reuters report. ContentNext's founder and editor, Rafat Ali, and Chief Executive Nathan Richardson would continue to run the company as a standalone business, said the privately held Guardian, which...

The ministerial council of Arab information ministers, held in the headquarters of the Arab League on June 20 and 21, has sought to further restrict satellite television broadcasting. The meeting resulted in the release of a document employing overly broad terms to define a proposed regulatory framework for satellite channel transmissions, according to the Arabic Network for Human Rights...

Authoritarian regimes around the world are dealing with troublesome citizen bloggers by arresting them, and they're doing it more often. "Last year, 2007, was a record year for blogger arrests, with three times as many as in 2006. Egypt, Iran and China are the most dangerous places to blog about political life, accounting for more than half of all arrests since blogging became big," says Phil

New York-based political blog Talking Points Memo (TPM) has been honoured with the 2008 IPI Free Media Pioneer award. David Kurtz, Managing Editor of Talking Points Memo, received the prize on behalf of TPM at the award ceremony in Belgrade on June 17. Created and run by the U.S. journalist, Joshua Micah Marshall, Talking Points Media ( http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com) is the flagship blog of TPM...