NewsIn many countries, it is a crime to insult public officials or any individual, group or religion. The World Press Freedom Committee has launched a campaign to eliminate this extreme form of defamation, used by many regimes to stifle press freedom. Read the committee’s press release.
NewsThe judge presiding over Robert Pickton’s murder trial has instituted a “sensible and practical protocol” to allow journalists to apply for access to exhibits. See the Vancouver Sun report.
NewsIn a move hailed as a step toward greater press freedom, Mexican President Felipe Calder??n has approved amendments to decriminalize libel, slander and defamation. Mexico joins El Salvador as the only two Latin American nations to wipe criminal libel off the books. Read Editor & Publisher‘s April 17, 2007report.
NewsVideo blogger Josh Wolf was freed on April 3, 2007after spending more time behind bars for contempt than any other American journalist in recent history. The 24-year-old, whorefused to comply with a grand jury subpoena for his testimony and video outtakes, spent 226 days in a California prison. Read the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of…
NewsBritain’s House of Lords has refused to review a landmark ruling that has been criticized for protecting privacy at the expense of free expression — and could restrict how journalists cover celebrities and public figures. The March 30, 2007 decision endorses a lower court’s finding that a former friend of Loreena McKennitt breached the Canadian…
“In the last year, the trends reshaping journalism didn’t just quicken, they seemed to be nearing a pivot point,” according to the 2007 edition of the annually anticipated report on US news media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).
This Concordia journalism department is currently tackling the subject of climate change and have named their school’s blog “Tempest.”
In 2007, Event is hostingits 20th Annual Creative Non-Fiction Contest, for which three winners will each receive $500 plus payment for publication in an upcoming issue of Event Magazine. Deadline for submissions is April 16.
AnalysisRoger McConchie, a Vancouver lawyer who specializes in libel and privacy issues, has compiled detailed summaries of Canadian court rulings on Internet libel.
Book ReviewJoseph Howe, the courageous editor of the Novascotian, has long been the poster-boy for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Canada. His exposes of government corruption in Halifax in 1835, his prosecution on a trumped-up libel charge, the eloquent six-hour speech that won his acquittal – these are the stuff of…