Ethics and Freedom

New Delhi: The CEO and editor of the Live India television news channel that broadcast a fake sting operation that purported to show the alleged involvement of a teacher in a prostitution racket and set off a riot in the process said the reporter who carried out the investigation was a "criminal and breached the trust". "The reporter kept me in dark and breached the trust. He is a criminal and a...

Bangladesh's first and only 24-hour news channel has gone off air days after broadcasting last month’s student-led anti-government riots. The Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission told the CSB News station it would be permanently closed if it fails to satisfactorily explain its registration status in seven days, said Hummam Quader Chowdhury, director of Focus Mult, the company that...

Egyptian prosecutors on Wednesday questioned the editor of a prominent independent newspaper about his paper's recent reports on the health of the country's 79-year-old leader, President Hosni Mubarak. Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the independent daily Al-Dustour, was questioned for several hours by prosecutors Wednesday outside Cairo on accusations that he published reports “likely to disturb public...

Egyptian prosecutors on Wednesday questioned the editor of a prominent independent newspaper about his paper's recent reports on the health of the country's 79-year-old leader, President Hosni Mubarak. Ibrahim Eissa and one of his journalists, Sahar Zaki, were sentenced on June 29, 2006 to a year in prison and a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (1,450 euros) on charges of libelling the president...

New Delhi, September 7: A Week after his sting on a teacher’s purported sex racket, Prakash Singh, the reporter of Live India news channel, was today arrested. Singh, whose report aired on August 30 led to violence near the school in Daryaganj, has been charged with fabricating evidences, cheating and criminal conspiracy to show that Uma Khurana forced her girl students into prostitution. The...

The UN Human Rights Council is “still badly falling down on its job” after only a year in existence, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said today. It called for the system of UN special rapporteurs to investigate human rights in individual countries to be maintained. RSF said that the mandates of the rapporteurs on Cuba and Belarus, two of the world’s worst violators of press freedom, had not been...

This was one sting that did not smell right on Day One. A week after, it stinks. The police on Thursday arrested a woman, who played a critical role in the sting on a government schoolteacher, charging her with cheating. The accused, Rashmi Singh, had posed as a schoolgirl alleging that teacher Uma Khurana pushed her and other girls into prostitution. All this was said, recorded on film and...

Leading international news agencies Thursday launched a boycott of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, plunging the event into controversy on the eve of its opening game. Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters, the Associated Press (AP), Getty Pictures and German agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) said no text, photo or video news on the World Cup would be sent for 24 hours in protest at restrictions imposed...

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...

A Swedish Muslim group is planning to sue a local newspaper for publishing a drawing of the prophet Mohammed with a dog's body. The Nerikes Allehanda newspaper in Orebro printed the cartoon made by artist Lars Vilks in an August editorial that criticised Swedish art galleries for not displaying Vilks' art. Mahmoud Aldebe, chairman of the Swedish Muslim Federation, told the Associated Press (AP)...