Ethics and Freedom

Even while Manipur is immersed in the controversy over the life attempt on a well known journalist by an underground organization, a not so similar media issue is raging in the West. Danish newspapers in September published a series of cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, some of which are said to have lampooned him as a terrorist (we have still not seen them although they are reported to be on...

WASHINGTON – Military leaders angrily denounced as "beyond tasteless" a Washington Post editorial cartoon featuring a likeness of a severely wounded soldier and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as an attending doctor who says, "I'm listing your condition as 'battle hardened.'" The cartoon by Post artist Tom Toles appeared in Sunday's newspaper. It reflected the view of some that Bush...

BHUBANESWAR: Development Commissioner Ajit Kumar Tripathy has filed a defamation case of Rs 30 lakh against vernacular daily ‘The Samaja’ in the court of Senior Civil Judge, Bhubaneswar over an article published in the paper. President and member of the Lok Sevak Mandal, printer, publisher and editor of the paper have been made parties in the case. Senior lawyer Prashant Routray and his associate...

The Madras High Court today quashed the chargesheet filed against columnist S Gurumurthy for refusing to divulge information and answer questions put to him by the Tamil Nadu police in connection with the September 2004 murder of temple official Sankararaman. He was also charged under section 14 of the Press and Registration of Books Act 1867 for his articles published in an English Daily on...

New Delhi: An Editors Guild of India committee, constituted in the wake of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent remarks about the lack of accountability in news reporting, has found that the race to increase circulation and a lack of transparency in acknowledging the news source are the primary causes of misreporting. While noting various cases of irresponsible reporting that led to serious...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is to scrap a bid to define common rules on which national legislation should apply in cross-border media defamation cases, the EU's top justice official said on Tuesday. European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini told EU lawmakers that he would ask the EU executive to drop the plan on Wednesday because of differences among the bloc's 25 member...

The Tokyo District Court dismissed a journalist's suit Wednesday over the press club system and government discrimination against freelance reporters, ruling media access to court proceedings does not fall under freedom of the press. Yu Terasawa, 38, had demanded 2.48 million yen on grounds that his access to the court system was limited because he was not a member of the "kisha kurabu" (reporter...

A fierce public debate about journalistic ethics has begun in Iceland after a newspaper reported that a former school teacher was being investigated for sexually abusing two boys, and the man committed suicide. Two senior editors at DV, Iceland’s fourth-largest daily newspaper, have resigned, and more than 10% of Iceland’s population of 300,000 people has signed an online petition demanding that...

LONDON (Reuters) - Police have arrested a journalist for trying to get a job at Buckingham Palace for an undercover report. A spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police said the 25-year-old woman had been arrested on Thursday after they discovered bogus details on her application for a job at the palace. The News of the World, a Sunday tabloid, said its reporter Bethany Usher "was engaged in a...

While Google refused to comply with the United States government’s request for search data last August, Microsoft, Yahoo, and America Online admitted Friday they provided some data to the Justice Department. A Yahoo spokesperson said the portal firm provided data that the company’s executives believe did not violate the company’s privacy guidelines. An AOL spokesperson said the portal firm gave...