Controversies & Scandals

“The phenomenon of ‘paid news' goes beyond the corruption of individual journalists and media companies. It has become pervasive, structured and highly organised and in the process, is undermining democracy in India.” So finds the draft report of inquiry conducted into the phenomenon by the Press Council of India to be discussed by the full Council on April 26 in Delhi. The Hindu has obtained a...

The Press Council of India has found two newspapers, Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran, guilty of publishing advertisements masquerading as news before the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. The decision in the case, along with all the case papers, has been sent to the Election Commission for further action. These newspapers published a one-sided news item in the form of an advertisement in favour of...

The Iraqi journalist jailed for throwing his shoes at former US president George W. Bush has arrived in Greece following his release, Iraqi diplomats said Thursday, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report. TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi went to Greece for medical treatment after suffering torture while in prison, his family said. He was released on Tuesday after being jailed for one year...

The released Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at former US President George W. Bush said Tuesday he was tortured during the first days of being in custody. "I have been tortured by electric shocks, beatings and whipped by cords," Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who was freed earlier in the day after nine months of imprisonment, told in the news conference at the TV station where he works in Baghdad's...

An American fugitive, accused of murdering an aide to the late Shah of Iran in the United States, was made an editor of Iran’s English-language television network in Tehran, a report in the Times newspaper has revealed. Hassan Abdulrahman, who is wanted by the FBI for shooting dead Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Maryland, worked for Iran’s flagship broadcaster Press TV. A Press TV journalist who resigned...

CNN has asked cable operators in the US that carry its channel to block a commercial, produced by liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, which critiques CNN's Lou Dobbs, the New York Times has reported. CNN managers said in a morning staff meeting on Tuesday that the channel had invoked unspecified agreements with operators to stop the ad from running. The ad accuses Dobbs of “promoting the...

A journalist from China Central Television was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison with a four-year reprieve for accepting a bribe in northern Shanxi province, China Daily has reported. The Xinghualing District Court in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi, convicted Li Min of accepting 37,000 yuan ($5,400) and using her job to lobby for a suspect in a case being investigated by the Xinghualing...

South African President Jacob Zuma accepted "very substantial damages" from Britain's Guardian newspaper over an article that wrongly suggested he was a rapist, Reuters repored quoting his lawyers on Thursday. The March article, headlined "Get used to a corrupt and chaotic South Africa. But don't write it off" also alleged Zuma was guilty of corruption and bribery arising out of his involvement in...

An iconic Spanish Civil War photo that shows a Republican soldier at the apparent moment he was fatally hit in the back by a bullet was in fact staged, a Spanish newspaper claimed on Friday. "(Robert) Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting," wrote Barcelona-based newspaper El Periodico which carried out a study of the photograph taken in September 1936, the third...

Jarnail Singh, the Sikh journalist who created a stir by flinging a shoe at Union home minister P Chidambaram, was on Thursday sacked by his employers. Singh, who was a defence correspondent with Hindi daily Dainik Jagran for nearly a decade, said his services with the newspaper were terminated following a show-cause notice issued about 4 months ago. “I have been victimised for raising a genuine...