NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday informed the Delhi High Court that it was planning to bring an amendment in Press Council on India Act to give it more teeth for acting against newspapers and magazines which publish obscene pictures. The Centre shared its plan for give more powers to the PCI with a Bench [...]

Oct 05: The Information and Broadcasting Ministry is now planning to bring online news portals and web editions of newspapers under the umbrella of the Press and Registration of Books Act that was 140 years old and carrying the old British law of that time till today without major amendment. For this reason the government [...]

BAGHDAD: A cameraman for the independent satellite channel Al-Mousaliya was killed by unknown gunmen Monday in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul, police said. Amir Malallah al-Rashidi was killed in the ambush at 8 p.m. in an eastern part of the city by gunmen in two cars, said Police Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri. The [...]

Female journalists are increasingly being treated as soft targets by groups wanting to get their message of violence and control across. Two Afghan reporters and an Iraqi journalist who received numerous death threats for their work covering sectarian violence were killed last week, in a string of attacks against women journalists in conflict areas. Sahar Hussein [...]

A new parliamentary bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act is due to be introduced under the Ten Minute Rule in the House of commons tomorrow. Tom Brake MP is set to introduce the Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No2) Bill, which would remove ministers’ power to veto decisions of the information commissioner. His Private Members’ Bill [...]

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday approved the setting up of a new wage board to recommend the minimum emoluments and perquisites for working journalists. “Formal orders regarding this will be issued shortly by the labour ministry,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). “Working journalists may be reassured that the prime minister has [...]

Hundreds of protesters blockaded an Afghan hospital where freed Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was staying on Tuesday, demanding details of the death of his beheaded driver, news agencies have reported. Luisella Longo, wife of kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, leaves the daily La Repubblica in Rome. Mastrogiacomo was freed Monday hours before a Taliban deadline issued [...]

New York, March 7, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces Wednesday’s arrest of Gemma Bagauaya, editor of the online newsmagazine Newsbreak in a 100 million peso (US$2 million) libel case filed by Ilocos Sur provincial governor Luis Singson. Newsbreak Managing Editor Glenda Gloria and Editor-in-chief Marites Vitug were also charged by Singson. “The authorities in the Philippines [...]

Major newspaper editors have now got together in opposing the British government’s proposed changes to the Freedom of Act Information that would cut down the number of access to information requests and save money. “I can’t remember any time when regional and national editors and broadcast and print are all completely at one,” said the Guardian [...]

It has to choose between commerce and credibility. Newspapers, the earliest form of the media, have been around in some sort of a way as long as the printing press. In Elizabethan London, they took the form of pamphlets filled with grisly tales of murder, executions, witchcraft and “monstrous” creatures. Political news was absent as it [...]

NEW DELHI, DEC 30 (PTI): Fear of government controls came to haunt the Indian media in 2006, a year which saw the much- resisted CAS finally moving toward roll-out and the struggling FM radio sector literally boom. Just as media rode high on popular public support to sting operations, especially those exposing MPs allegedly accepting money [...]

LONDON: The European Commission is trying to rally support for a sweeping overhaul of media regulations after policy makers softened proposals to govern the emerging digital media with the same rules that traditional broadcasters are required to live by. The media commissioner, Viviane Reding, wants to update the Television Without Frontiers directive, a law written in [...]

Last week, the Ministry of Finance addressed a seemingly innocuous letter to the Indian Newspaper Society. Written by the Director (Budget) in the Department of Revenue, the letter informed newspapers they were liable to deduct tax at source on advertisement revenues from advertising agencies. It said, “the Central Board of Direct Taxes has arrived at [...]

New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) India could review the 26-percent foreign equity cap in news and current affairs publications if stakeholders take a collective view on the matter, Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi said in an important declaration of intent Monday. ‘Let the industry decide and get back to me. We will then review the [...]

NEW DELHI: Figure this out. Even as the government busies itself with a policy to put Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from countries such as China, Hong Kong and Macau under an intense security scanner (Pakistan and Bangladesh are already excluded from the benefit of automatic FDI) even for soaps and shampoos, it is quite oblivious [...]