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The crackdown on journalists by the Ethiopian government which saw a dozen of them being arrested in November has taken a turn for the worse with one of them being convicted already. SHUTTERS WIDE SHUT: Ethiopians are seen in front of closed shops in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia November 5, 2005. Across Addis Ababa, many shopkeepers are still struggling to repair windows and doors damaged in a spate of

BISHKEK, 7 December (IRIN) - Eight months after public protests swept away Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, press freedom remains a key issue in the former Soviet republic, despite expectations that the new authorities would promote media liberalisation, journalists say. A recent month-long dispute between the staff and shareholders of KOORT - the first national independent television channel in...

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Expect a somber mood Wednesday at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York City: It is newspaper day. At a confab sprinkled with presentations from executives at cable networks (like Time Warner Cable), advertising agencies (example: Universal McCann), satellite concerns (BSkyB and XM Satellite Radio) and technology hardware providers that make all this media possible...

Newspapers in Iran are both angry and cynical about the plane crash in Tehran on Tuesday in which over 100 people died. Commentators are scathing about the lack of adequate safety checks said to be a widespread issue in Iran. The fact that many journalists were among the dead adds piquancy to their comments. The moderate Mardom-Salari is convinced that nobody will be called to account for the...

"In the United States, for example, increasingly, the practitioners of mainstream journalism are holders of post-graduate degrees, often with relevant first degrees in such disciplines as Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Science and Technology, Law and International Relations as well as Linguistics and Religions. In recent weeks, intense public debate in the global Ghanaian, and African...

A Swedish journalist who was released after four years from an Eritrean prison for demanding press freedom in the east African country last month has been imprisoned again. Dawit Isaak, who holds dual Swedish and Eritrean citizenships, was unexpectedly released on November 19, but was sent back to prison two days later for unknown reasons, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a

MIRANSHAH, Dec 6: Authorities in North Waziristan have not been able to trace the whereabouts of a local journalist who was kidnapped on Monday. Speaking to a delegation from the Tribal Union of Journalists on Tuesday, North Waziristan’s political agent Zaheerul Islam said that although investigators had not yet reached any conclusions it was possible that "Taliban elements" had a hand in the...

Al Jazeera's new English-language service is not about to take the United States by storm, but it could have a major effect on Muslim communities around the globe. Its greatest impact, however, may be on Al Jazeera's Arabic broadcasts. As veterans of the American media environment know, US audiences are growing increasingly segmented. Hundreds of cable and satellite television channels compete for...

Between November 2003 and May 2004, while I was writing my book about Al Jazeera, I spent time interviewing a multitude of miscellaneous individuals and organizations about their feelings towards the network. I heard a diverse range of opinions about the channel, stretching from the overwhelmingly positive to the vehemently negative. I soon saw patterns emerging. I could see at once, for example...

DOHA -- There is no getting away from it. Al Jazeera continues to dominate the discourse, despite significantly improved competition (reflected in growing market share) from Al Arabiya and a step back over the past year from its past tendency to overly emotionalize, Fox TV-style, when framing the news. Nowhere was that more apparent than at the Fifth Doha Forum on Democracy and Free Trade at the...