A journalist who wrote about the role of women in Afghanistan, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, remains in jail on charges of blasphemy and defaming Islam while a Council of Mullahs says he should be sentenced to death, said Reporters Without Borders. “The calls for the death penalty for Kambakhsh highlight the growing influence of fundamentalist groups…
“Where is the press?” asks Carl Pope in the Huffington Post, about media coverage of American electoral politics. “How can it be that, out of 2,679 questions asked of the candidates since January 2007 by the national press, only three questions have mentioned global warming? Great question.
It’s about time. Canada’s federal broadcasting regulator is imposing tighter rules on media ownership, reported the CBC. “The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said Tuesday thata single company or person can own only two radio stations, television stations or newspapers in a single market. It was not immediately clear whether the rules mean…
If you watched early evening cable news coverage of last night’s New Hampshire primary, you may have witnessed the appalling (or perhaps amusing, depending on your perspective) spectacle of Fox News declaring Barack Obama the Democratic Party winner even though the actual count-in-progress gave Hillary Clinton the lead. The reason? Fox trusted media exit polls…
Google’s feature, allowing “Comments From People in the News,” seems like a new twist on citizen journalism. Says a New York Times story: “The idea is simple: if you have been quoted in an article that appears on Google News, which presents links and summaries from 4,500 news sources, including the familiar big players, you…
The New York Times looks at the dependence of Western news organizations on freelancers in Iraq. The focus is the case of photographer Bilal Hussein,who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize he was jailed by the U.S. military. The military alleges he was a security threat — “fingered by “sources” as…
Reporters Without Borders released a blistering criticism of China’s crackdown on the press in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics — which the press rights organization wants boycotted; it staged a demonstration in Hong Kong after being banned from mainland China eight months ahead of Olympic Games.
A BBC series commemorating the 75th anniversary of its World Service is focused on freedom of speech, and freedom of the media and information. The first three essays on freedom of speech are by Jeffrey Sachs (“Our problems – ranging from climate change to species extinction to failed states – are global and require global…
The International Herald Tribune will announce an alliance with Reuters, reported the New York Times, that will transform its financial section online and in print. The revamped business section, “Business with Reuters,” will publish news from both organizations and could mark the start of broader cooperation, said the story. The deal is a win for…
David Carr’s column about investigative reporting, in the New York Times, makes for compelling reading. An excerpt: Serious reporting usd to be baked into the business, but under pressure from the public markets or their private equity owners, newsrooms have been cutting foreign bureaus, Washington reporters and investigative capacity. Under this model, the newsroom is no…