Ethics and Freedom

The Russian police raided the offices of a British organisation that supports journalists in conflict zones on Wednesday as part of a probe into alleged financial irregularities. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a nongovernmental organisation which seeks to support objective journalism in some of the world's most hostile regions, from Iraq to the Caucasus and Afghanistan. IWPR...

A British investigative journalist has warded off a renewed bid to force him to reveal his source for an article published seven years ago about a mental hospital's alleged mistreatment of a murderer. Robin Ackroyd gave extracts from Brady's medical records to the Daily Mirror, which printed them in an article about "the Moors Murderer's hunger strike" in December 1999. The House of Lords ordered...

The long-running libel case brought by an English journalist against six newspapers came to a dramatic and abrupt end at the High Court in Cork, Ireland, last week. Ian Bailey had claimed the newspapers had wrongly linked him to the 1996 murder of the French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier (above) in west Cork. Bailey’s libel action over newspaper coverage of the du Plantier murder, 10...

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Few adults in the United States agree with the use of anonymous sources in journalism, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. Only 28 per cent of respondents think the practice is ethical. In the early 1970s, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein relied on an anonymous source—known as "Deep Throat"—to provide information and context on a series...

Feb. 16, 2007 · Testimony ended this week in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, signaling the forthcoming conclusion of a trial that has subjected both the White House and the Washington journalism community to uncomfortable scrutiny. In the end, three journalists testified for the prosecution and seven testified for the defense...

Two US reporters have avoided going to jail after their source revealed himself in a criminal plea agreement. The two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, faced up to 18 months in prison for refusing to name the source who provided them with secret grand jury testimony about alleged steroid use by professional athletes. San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's richest woman, who is also the wife of Moscow's mayor, is suing the Russian edition of Forbes magazine for defamation over a story detailing her business interests, her company said on Wednesday. A spokesman for Yelena Baturina's Inteko firm said it had filed a suit against the magazine and its editor in Russian courts seeking compensation totalling 213,000 roubles ($8...

NEW YORK A U.S. judge has stopped further disclosure of confidential documents that became the basis for a series of critical stories in The New York Times last year about the antipyschotic drug Zyprexa. Ruling Tuesday in federal court, U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein found that Times reporter Alex Berenson conspired with a lawyer, James Gottstein, to obtain and illegally distribute the...

WASHINGTON — New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson testified briefly in the CIA leak trial today as defense attorneys tried to undercut the credibility of another witness, former Times reporter Judith Miller. Abramson was the Washington bureau chief in 2003 when Miller says White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby told her that the wife of a former ambassador and prominent war critic...

NEW YORK: "AntiBrennan," as he branded himself, was happily blasting away at his contentious, litigious arch-enemy on NJ.com, raining down such pejoratives as a "litigation terrorist," "Billy the Baby," and a "paranoid-delusional, over-paid-under-worked sicko." But then NJ.com -- a joint venture of New Jersey newspapers including the Star Ledger, The Trenton Times and The Jersey-Journal --...