Ethics and Freedom

NEW YORK (AP) _ An investment group sued a Japanese media company Thursday, saying it had been wrongfully and maliciously accused of being associated with members of Japanese organized crime. Cerberus Capital Management LP, headquartered in Manhattan, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accusing The Mainichi Newspapers Co. of publishing a story last week alleging that the...

SALEM: Journalists were reportedly manhandled by some tribals from Vellakadai in Yercaud, when the former reached the place for coverage of the controversial ‘naked dance ritual’ performed by tribal women. The journalists could make their escape only after police intervention. While a TV anchorman and a few reporters managed to give the slip to tribals, the reporter of a Tamil Daily and its...

The chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has decided to withdraw the indictments against three Croatian journalists charged with contempt. She says that “in the interest of justice and judicial economy” she’s chosen not to proceed against Stjepan Seselj, Domagoj Margetic and Marijan Krizic, who had been all charged in connection with revealing the identity, statement and testimony of a protected...

The big story in Europe before Christmas was that the CIA operated clandestine prisons in eight European countries where it was questioning Al-Qaeda suspects and secretly flew the prisoners through European air space. Condoleezza Rice basically confirmed to European governments there had been clandestine flights, but "What prisons?" and the host governments named said, "No way." So it comes as a...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court declined to intervene on Thursday on behalf of Yahoo Inc., the world's largest Internet media company, saying U.S. courts have no jurisdiction in a case pitting free speech against a French law barring the sale of Nazi memorabilia. In a case that pitted U.S. freedom of speech rights against European anti-hate group statutes, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court...

ZAGREB - A Croatian journalist charged by the UN war crimes tribunal with contempt of court has defied it by publishing the secret testimony of a protected witness on the Internet, reports said on January 12. Domagoj Margetic put out on his personal website what appeared to be testimony by Croatian President Stipe Mesic during the 1997 trial of former Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic, the...

Military prosecutors in Switzerland have opened an investigation into a newspaper editor and two journalists for having published news of a secret fax which appears to confirm allegations of CIA secret prisons in Europe, Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI) has reported. GOING TO THE POLE: The airport in Szymany, Poland, identified by Human Rights Watch as a potential site of alleged...

The french private organisation calling itself "Reporters Without Borders" once again loses credibility by attacking China while remaining silent on abuses in western countries especially the very neighbour of France, the "United Kingdom" of Britain. In a press release today headlined "Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression?" Reporters Without Borders...

KUALA LUMPUR , Jan 7 (IPS) - News reports based on secret video grabs of a woman forced to do 'nude squats' in police custody, which put the Malaysian government in a spot over human rights, have backfired on press freedom as it turned out that the victim's nationality had been wrongly identified. The widely-circulated, Chinese-language daily newspaper ‘China Press' which broke the story was, on...

MILWAUKEE - A college newspaper that printed a photo essay depicting an editor's sexual fantasy of being raped created such a backlash on campus that a task force is being formed to focus on the problem of violence against women. Some women's advocates have called for harsh penalties, such as tossing the UWM Post out of its free office space at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, because...