Ethics and Freedom

SYDNEY (Reuters) - International news agencies have ended their boycott of Australian cricket after reaching a deal over media coverage rights. Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse had all been refusing to cover the series between Australia and Sri Lanka in protest at Cricket Australia's (CA) demands. But they reached a provisional agreement on Friday, allowing the agencies to start...

Sweden's largest direct marketing company has joined the national postal service in refusing to distribute a political newspaper containing a caricature of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Earlier this week Posten decided not to distribute SD-Kuriren - a newspaper produced by the far-right Sweden Democrats - in Svedala in southern Sweden. As the newspaper contained a reproduction of Lars Vilks's...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: A Sri Lankan newspaper chose a graphic way to illustrate how a media rights dispute between Cricket Australia and the major international news agencies is hurting its coverage of the series. With its national squad in Brisbane, Australia, for the first test match against the world's top-ranked team, Sri Lanka's Sunday Times would usually rely on The Associated Press, Reuters...

BRISBANE, Australia (AFP) — Australia's Test cricket season opened with international fans unable to follow the action after organisers locked global news agencies out of the ground in Brisbane. The row also left Australia's largest media organisation, News Limited, unable to cover the first day of the Australia-Sri Lanka Test, although it secured a breakthrough with Cricket Australia later in the...

KURNOOL: The Congress government in the state on Wednesday once again muffled the media by arresting two journalists of two vernacular dailies for what it called distorting facts with regard to a report on the Indiramma scheme. Though the journalists — Boya Sriramulu, contributor of ‘Andhra Jyothi’ and Boya Urukundu of ‘Andhra Bhoomi’ — were picked up from Kodumuru town at 7 am on Wednesday, they...

GLOBAL media coverage of today's first cricket Test is in disarray, with international media agencies boycotting the event after accusing Cricket Australia of blackmail in the latest fight over digital sports rights. And a lock-out of journalists at the first Test with Sri Lanka at the Gabba was only narrowly avoided yesterday as negotiations over CA's attempt to restrict online coverage continued...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police posed as a TV news crew to trap a one-time Palestinian informer, provoking an outcry from critics who said the sting threatened to put the lives of newspeople at risk. Police said the target of the operation was Nadim Injaz, a Palestinian man who had been wanted for making unspecified threats. Last year, Injaz burst into the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, claimed to...

Five newspapers yesterday agreed to pay substantial libel damages to Julia Kushnir, the woman who survived the crash in Moscow in which Liam Lawlor died, a day after evidence emerged to show there was no justification for describing her as a prostitute. The Moscow police press office told a journalist working for the Sunday Independent and Observer in the immediate aftermath of Mr Lawlor's death...

SYDNEY: As global sports administrators try to squeeze more money out of coverage of events, media outlets in Australia have threatened to boycott the international cricket season starting this week. A new contract drawn up by Cricket Australia increases limitations on what can be published in print, online and in the burgeoning mobile phone market, and media companies, including one of the...

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York magazine agreed Tuesday to stop accepting sex ads after the local chapter of the National Organization for Women threatened protests outside the offices of the popular weekly publication. The women's rights group had accused New York of being a "marketing arm of the organized crime world of prostitution and human trafficking" because of classified ads at the back of the...