Newsworthiness

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian government leaders have rebuked a local newspaper for publishing a frank expose of sexual attitudes among the country's youth. The Weekend Mail gave detailed descriptions of favourite sex positions from its survey -- including "spooning, galloping and tea bag positions" -- in three pages of stories that delivered on its front-page promise: "You'll be shocked". "I...

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The conservative Media Research Center of Alexandria, Va., has predicted that TV networks will reveal partisan slants in their election night coverage. The center's Brent Baker said he believes broadcast networks ABC, NBC and CBS will likely use the results to paint Democrats in a favorable light, The Washington Times reported Monday. "Victories for Democrats...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - When journalist Aly Colon began his career, he always made the same request to his editors. Could he please have an accent? Colon, a Puerto Rican native, writes his name with an accent over the second "o" to distinguish it from the less than elegant body part. When his editors said they couldn't or wouldn't add the slash to his byline, Colon began adding it by hand before...

At first glance, three uproars that buffeted American politics in recent weeks have little in common. Former congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) ended his political career over sexually charged e-mails to former House pages. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) stumbled over his puzzling use of the word "macaca" and his clumsy response to revelations about his Jewish ancestry. Former president Bill Clinton had a...

Panic. That's the operating system of the war on terror. Panic is produced and mobilized. The pope's comment about Islam coincides with the E.coli spinach outbreak. Both create a phantasm of panic, with fear of the unknown shutting down borders everywhere, from countries to people to difference to ideas. The current outbreak of Islamophobia has distinct visual markers in the commercial mass media...

Should newspapers, including this one, carry such a caveat? Perhaps this suggestion is not as bizarre as it might first sound. A newspaper, particularly on its front page, daily presents a view of reality. In fact, this reality is totally relative and highly subjective. Obviously, the front page of a San Francisco newspaper will portray a 'reality' very different from that of a newspaper published...

Mohamad Bazzi was in his Beirut apartment having breakfast and thumbing through a newspaper when a friend called with a shocker: Hezbollah guerrillas had made a daring raid into Israel, kidnapping two soldiers. In retaliation, Israeli tanks and commandos were heading toward south Lebanon. All hell was breaking loose and Newsday's Middle East bureau chief was in the perfect position to cover a...

JAKARTA, Sep 26 (IPS) - An Indonesian journalist has news for those of the country's Muslims who have turned to terrorism to express rage. ''Journalism is my jihad,'' says Agung Rulianto, who leads a team of investigative reporters for the 'Tempo' weekly magazine. While the term jihad is often used to refer to armed struggle many Muslim scholars are agreed that it denotes a striving of any type...

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something" - Plato Bihar has been the favourite punching bag of the Indian English language journalist community, actually not just the journalists but many English speaking "elite" of India. We see the parody of Bihar bashing being played out everyday. Sometimes one feels upset, sometime angry and sometimes...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced...