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LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday denied receiving any details of a reported U.S. proposal to bomb the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera. The Daily Mirror newspaper reported last week that a secret British government memo said Blair had talked U.S. President George W. Bush out of bombing the broadcaster's Qatar headquarters last April. The White House has dismissed the report as...

I'M SLIGHTLY embarrassed by the bagpipe dirges played when American newspapers drop employees like autumn leaves. Some columnists practically bawled over the accelerating decline and decay of the American newspaper. How many tears rolled down columnists' cheeks when GM announced it would cut 30,000 jobs by 2008? Their self-pity showed that some journalists believe the planets orbit around them...

Lord Goldsmith has been a busy attorney general in the past few days, caught up in two controversies and having to scatter denials and explanations all over the media. Question one: Is he trying to gag newspapers by threatening to use the Official Secrets Act against those who publish the contents of the memo said to contain President Bush's idea of bombing al-Jazeera and Tony Blair's advice to...

In 1997, the new Labour government published a white paper setting out its proposals for a Freedom of Information Act. The opening paragraph stated: "Unnecessary secrecy in government leads to arrogance in governance and defective decision-making. The perception of excessive secrecy has become a corrosive influence in the decline of public confidence in government. Moreover, the climate of public...

Press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the decision by the management of REN-TV to prevent a star presenter on the news analysis programme "24" from broadcasting. Olga Romanova was told on November 24 that she was not going on air that night. Three security guards, none of them employed by the station, physically stopped her from entering the studio after she refused to

On November 22, Britain's Daily Mirror published a startling allegation: In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. The report was based on a memo stamped "Top Secret" that had been leaked by a Cabinet official in Blair's government. Is the allegation "outlandish...

When Lord Goldsmith, the British attorney general, pounced on the Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper last week, threatening it and the rest of the media with the nation's Official Secrets Act, he was accused of imposing censorship to save prime minister Tony Blair, and his master George W Bush, from embarrassment. This was likely the intention, but the result could become not a savior, but the...

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is known to be one of the closest aides to President Vladimir Putin, a founding member of the inner circle where key decisions are prepared with absolute confidentiality and zero leaks. That loyalty helps Putin to remain a master of the state apparatus even in his "lame duck" position, and two weeks ago he asserted his control with a surprise reshuffling of...

(NewsYemen) Nov 27, Sanaa – In one of the harshest court verdicts issued recently against the press, the Western Court of Sanaa sentenced yesterday the Al-Tajammu opposition newspaper to closure for six months, banned its Editor-in-Chief and one of its writers from writing for a year and fined them a total of YR 300,000 (about USD 1,500). The newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Dr. Abdulrahman Abdullah...

The head of Al Jazeera’s new English language channel has launched a scathing attack on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, shortly before the station’s launch in the US. Accusing Rumsfeld of spreading "complete misinformation" about the Doha-based broadcaster, Nigel Parsons said the US defence secretary was out of sync with Washington’s PR efforts abroad. In an interview with Arabian Business...