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Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of Egypt’s Al-Dustour newspaper, has been awarded the 2008 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) that honours an editor or publisher in the Arab region. The prize, which is made in memory of Gebran Tueni, the Lebanese publisher and WAN Board Member who was killed by a car bomb in Beirut on December 12, 2005, was presented...

The 2008 SEEMO Award for Human Rights has been awarded to Slovenian journalist, writer and human rights advocate Spomenka Hribar. The award is given by the Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), a network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in South East Europe and an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI). Hribar received much publicity in the...

The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) has created an annual award for press freedom champions, the Dana Bullen Press Freedom Advocacy Prize, in honour of the organisation's first Executive Director. The committee also announced that the first prize would be bestowed on veteran free press activist Leonard R Sussman, Senior Scholar of Freedom House and its Executive Director for 21 years (1967-88...

Cuban journalist Ricardo González Alfonso has been chosen by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) as “2008 Journalist of the Year” for helping an independent press to survive in Cuba. After challenging the state’s monopoly of news and information, González was arrested on March 18, 2003 along with 26 other dissident journalists during the crackdown known as the “Black Spring.” Accused of being “in the...

Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of Al Dustour, the daily newspaper in Egypt, has been awarded the 2008 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) that honours an editor or publisher in the Arab region. The prize, which is made in memory of Gebran Tueni, the Lebanese publisher and WAN Board Member who was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in December 2005...

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) has called for justice in the killing of Vancouver journalist Tara Singh Hayer, who was murdered 10 years ago. On November 18, 1998, the then 62-year-old publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times was shot to death at his Surrey, British Columbia home. His murder remains unsolved. CJFE's Executive Director Annie Game said in a statement, "The murder of...

Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief, IBN Network, has been unanimously been elected as President of Editors’ Guild of India. Sardesai is the first TV editor to be elected to this post. He takes over from Alok Mehta, Editor, Naidunia Delhi. K Sachidananda Murthy, Resident Editor – Delhi, the Week, has been re-elected General Secretary, while India TV COO Rohit Bansal has been elected the treasurer at...

Sami al-Haj of Sudan and Shakeman Mugari of Zimbabwe have been awarded the 2008 International Press Freedom Awards for extraordinary courage and overcoming tremendous odds to report the news. The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), which gives away these awards, has also decided to acknowledge Jim Poling of Canada with the Vox Libera Award for his long-standing commitment to freedom...

Only about 13 percent of the Washington daily newspaper press corps are journalists of color, according to a study on diversity by UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. There were slightly more journalists of colour covering the US capital in 2008 than there were four years earlier when UNITY conducted its...

Veteran journalist and founding editor of Bengali daily Bartaman Barun Sengupta died at a nursing home here on Thursday after a prolonged illness. A bachelor, Sengupta was 74. He is survived by two sisters. Sengupta, admitted to the nursing home on Sunday with multiple complications, was on a ventilator for the last two days. He died this afternoon following multi-organ failure. Sengupta, who...