Media and Issues

UNESCO has published a handbook for journalists of developing countries on the use of Internet for journalistic purposes. The handbook — The Net for Journalists — has been published in collaboration with the Thomson Foundation and Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA). An important feature of the handbook is that it does not only tell where and how to get the information one needs, but also...

Until September 2004, it was illegal for the voice of a woman singing to be broadcast on the radio in Afghanistan. I wanted to see what was going on in Afghanistan since the invasion and spent six weeks writing about the US Army in Kandahar. Later, I visited Herat in the West of Afghanistan. Herat is probably the most stable and fertile part of Afghanistan. During my trip there I was able to visit...

The immense human toll caused by conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Haiti, Chechnya, and northeast India are among the "Top Ten" Most Under-reported Humanitarian Stories of 2005, according to the year-end list released Thursday by international humanitarian medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The eighth annual list also highlights the lack of media attention...

Women's trend stories are themselves a trend -- a trend toward trendy reporting in all kinds of media outlets, not just in the fluffy realm of "women's magazines." Trend stories don't usually call themselves trend stories, but the identifying features are unmistakable. They employ headlines with the words "new" and "next," sometimes followed by markers like "generation" or new monikers for...

DUBLIN, December 27 (UNHCR) – As a prize for winning an asylum reporting competition among journalism schools in Ireland, UNHCR's Representation in Dublin sent a student journalist to Romania to witness developments in refugee protection on the borders of the European Union. In a joint initiative of the UNHCR offices in Ireland and Romania, the winner visited Bucharest to see developments in the...

THE possibility of a dangerous conflict between Islamabad and the small provinces over the Kalabagh dam is very real. The swords are out. General Pervez Musharraf’s lobbying efforts in Sindh are met by counter moves by a united opposition. They are holding rallies protesting against the proposed dam and the Musharraf government. Protests in NWFP have also been organised. Many Sindhi and the...

After 4.6 billion years of planetary history, we may become the first species to monitor our own extinction. In impressive detail, humankind is amassing evidence of devastating changes in the atmosphere, oceans, ice cover, land and biodiversity. And yet mass media, politics, the education system and other realms of public inquiry demonstrate a stunning capacity to focus on what does not really...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Indentured servitude in Saipan. Murder of indigenous people in the Philippines. Abuse of psychiatric patients in Paraguay and around the world. Not your typical holiday movie fare, yet these and other disturbingly true stories have been captured on video as the nonprofit group Witness pursues its goal of using visual media as a positive force for change. And...

MS. MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NEWS STORIES FOR WOMEN IN 2005 Advances, Setbacks and Cultural Milestones MOST SIGNIFICANT: Sandra Day O'Connor resigns from the Supreme Court, leaving a vacancy and likely a shift in direction of the court threatening to narrow women’s rights. MOST OUTRAGEOUS REJECTION OF SCIENCE: FDA controversy: stalls once again on Plan B – flying in the face of scientific decision...

NEW YORK Reuters' AlertNet, the humanitarian news portal, has won financial backing from Great Britain's Department for International Development to create services to help journalists reporting on humanitarian crises. The amount of financial backing was not revealed. AlertNet's "MediaBridge" services are being developed in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian...