Media and Issues

People are being warned about spam e-mails containing BBC News stories designed to trick them into visiting malicious websites. Cyber criminals are using the messages to exploit a recently discovered flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. If users click on the link, they are taken to a fake website that installs a piece of software that can monitor online financial activity. People who receive the...

In recognition of an imaginative campaign for water conservation, an Indian daily newspaper today received the $20,000 biennial prize for rural communications awarded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Malayala Manorama, published in Kerala, launched its Many a Drop campaign in May 2004 to disseminate a new perspective on water to the local population...

I'd like to think the reason so many people have been asking me if I have a blog is because they love my writing so much they just can't get enough. But it's more likely just another sign of how influential the form is becoming, particularly in the environmental world. Still, it has made me wonder if it's time for me to get on the bandwagon and start blogging. "Don't do it, man, it's a time suck,"...

Does the mainstream media depict Islam unfairly? According to a new Washington Post poll, 46 percent of Americans have a negative view of Islam. The Post attributes this fact to "political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists." It may have been the extremists who hijacked the airplanes, but it was the women and the children who flooded the...

According to statistics provided by Arab media, the number of Arab women who do not get married after the age of 25 has been increasing dramatically. "A’nes" is an Arabic word used in reference to a woman who reaches a certain age without getting married. This term has a negative connotation. Women who are labeled as "a’wanes" (plural of A’nes) generally have considerably fewer chances of getting...

Forty-six women journalists have been killed worldwide while doing their job since 1992, two are currently being held hostage in Iraq, and six others languish in jails elsewhere, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. RSF called for the release of Jill Carroll and Rim Zeid, held hostage in Iraq, and for six other women journalists who are imprisoned in Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Maldives, Nepal and...

The International Federation of Journalists has called for fresh actions by unions and media organisations to end all forms of discrimination that stop women from getting to the top both in media and in professional organisations. "Despite the feminisation of the profession, media houses and journalists unions remain male dominated," said Pamela Morinière, IFJ Gender Rights Campaign Officer. "This...

Panos London, Internews Network and the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) have launched a one year pilot phase of the Health Journalism Partnership, to build better health journalism in countries with the most acute public health crises. In the past decade, global funding to address critical health issues such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and childhood diseases has grown...

SANA'A- The Yemen Female Media Forum (YFMF) have joined hands to launch a new newspaper for the organization. Al-Raidah, which means ‘The Pioneer’, is 16 pages long and is issued monthly. It covers the state of women working in the media and the obstacles they face. In the first issue YFMF published a summary of the situation of Yemeni women in the media and the severe conditions they face in...

During last month’s ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong Kong, an estimated 3,000 journalists filed a steady stream of stories highlighting diplomatic clashes between developed and developing countries over the rules that govern world trade. Filipino protesters wear masks during a demonstration in front of the Chinese consular office in Makati's financial district of...