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Aljazeera has hired a British law firm to press its request to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a partial transcript of a conversation between him and US President George Bush, in which the American leader allegedly said the Arab broadcaster's headquarters should be bombed. Yosri Fouda, an investigative reporter and acting Aljazeera bureau chief in London, said the network had hired Finers...

BUENOS AIRES - When a provincial newspaper reported on a corruption scandal, the state government cut off its advertising. And when a well-known journalist's national TV show was canceled, he blamed the decision on economic pressures from Argentina's federal government. Free press and civic activists here are expressing growing concern about subtle government censorship, especially as President...

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - A couple weeks ago, my wife and I caught a lengthy but entertaining promo for the Winter Olympics on NBC. It consisted of ice skaters skating, plus a song that combined hip-hop and arena rock by a group we didn't know. A little searching on the Web revealed that the group was Flipsyde, that Washington Post critic Geoffrey Himes considered its "largely ignored" We the People to...

South Africans are proud of our democratic Constitution and its media freedom provisions. And so we should be, given our exemplary rights to free speech and our diverse media, and their contrast to neighbouring countries Zimbabwe and Swaziland. It's not that we're just "lucky" to lead the continent in this respect: our relative paradise was hard fought for. But before we get too complacent, it's...

The Israeli media failed the test of covering the disengagement - according to a new report released Tuesday by Keshev, The Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel. An extreme portrayal of settlers, and a marginalization of the Palestinians and of the political and historical implication of the process, are the two issues sited in the report as the media's most glaring failures. "The...

The Government has proposed a policy that could ban cross-media ownership in the country. Information minister Mutahi Kagwe confirmed that the policy, which is contained in the broader Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) framework, was discussed and passed by the Cabinet last week. "We are asking ourselves whether we should allow one person to own a newspaper, TV station and four FM...

17 January 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian state-run media are reporting that President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has decided to allow CNN to resume operations in Iran following an apology by the U.S.-based news network for misquoting Ahmadinejad, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reported. Iranian authorities on 16 January banned CNN journalists from working in Iran after the broadcaster, during a live translation of a...

TEHRAN - The US-based news channel CNN has been banned from working in Iran for having mistakenly quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying his country is seeking nuclear weapons, a government official said Monday. During CNN's simultaneous translation of a press conference by Ahmadinejad Saturday, the president was quoted as saying that "we believe all nations are allowed to have nuclear...

A police official in Xi'an who organized a severe beating of a reporter received a severe warning from the Communist Party plus administrative demerits. The reporter was collecting evidence that minors, who are legally banned, are allowed in a Lanjingling bar where they play video games. The attack, which took place on Friday, was reported by the Xi'an-based Chinese Business View newspaper. The...

After an elementary school girl was killed in Hiroshima on her way home from school last year, the Chugoku Shimbun, a major regional daily, based in Hiroshima, western Japan, has been encouraging its readers to post messages about child safety on its weblog. A mother of two elementary school-aged children wrote, "We are really feeling unrest," while a member of the Parent-Teacher Association at a...