The Agency reports that Martin was detained Sunday at a Gaza courthouse where he was to have testified on behalf of a defendant accused of collaborating with Israel.
According to The Independent, Martin was hoping to testify at the trial of Mohammed Abu Muaileq who is charged with conveying information to Israel - an offence which could lead to the death penalty.
The Independent has spoken to a source who said Martin was hoping to make a second film about Abu Muaileq’s decision to stop participating in violence against Israel.
When CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper scooped up a Haitian child and carried him to safety it was a watershed moment in the history of TV news, the channel’s executive vice president Tony Maddox tells The Times.
He says: “The minute and a half dispassionate news wrap is dead. TV journalism just got a lot harder because of it. The audiences are done with straight up and down. They want the entire atmosphere, all the authenticity and humanity from someone out there who can call it right. (more…)
The Financial Times Christmas appeal to support child literacy in the developing world has raised £2,689,833.
The money was raised on behalf of Room to Read, a charity which builds libraries and schools and publishes local language children’s books and supports girls’ education in south and south-east Asia and southern Africa. (more…)
A man working for The Times has been reported missing following a series of bomb attacks which struck Baghdad yesterday hitting the offices of the Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times injuring journalists and other staff. (more…)
Magazine publisher Conde Nast has revealed it plans to launch a new edition of it’s luxury travel magazine Conde Nast in India.
The first issue of Conde Nast Traveller India will hit newsstands in October this year.
It will be the sixth international edition of the magazine. It will be published bi-monthly and aimed at affluent Indian readers interested in luxury travel experiences.
The decision follows the successful launch of Vogue and GQ in India.
In the wake of the Haiti earthquake disaster last week a number of news organisations have been quick to get aid initiatives off the ground to help raise money and ease some off the communication problems caused by the collapse of the domestic telephone network. (more…)
German news publishers have lodged a complaint against Google for not paying publishers for news article “snippets” that come up in search results, Zeit and The Guardian reported.
The complaints by the Federation of Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) and Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) come as newspaper revenue declines and calls for publishers’ copyright increase. (more…)
Palin, who stood down as Governor of Alaska in July 2009, told the Washington Post: “It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.”
The new will come as a shock to some given the now infamous car-crash interview Palin gave to CBS’s Katie Couric during the election campaign.
This news comes days after Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law, PR-man Matthew Freud, declared the Murdoch family to be “ashamed and sickened” by Fox News founder Roger Ailes. I wonder how he feels now…
As former Number Ten spin doctor Alastair Campbell prepares to face the Iraq Inquiry tomorrow, new evidence from a Freedom of Information release has revealed how the notorious “dodgy dossier” on Iraq’s weapons of mass desctruction was “sexed up”.
The Guardian reports that changes were made to strengthen the dossier in response to new claims made about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities by US president George Bush.
The 2002 dossier infamously claimed that Saddam Hussein could launch chemicals weapons within 45 minutes of issuing an order to do so prompting headlines around the world. No WMD were ever found in Iraq.
Andrew Gilligan’s reporting of allegations from a senior source, later outed as weapons advisor Doctor David Kelly, that the dossier had been “sexed up” led to a major row between the Government and the BBC which eventuall led to the resignations of Gilligan and BBC director general Greg Dyke after the Hutton Report.
UN investigation has found that video footage broadcast on Channel 4 News which appeared to show Sri Lankan soldiers executing naked Tamils “appears to be authentic”.
The video was shown on Channel 4 News in August 2009, after being sent in by a group called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan government claimed in September 2009 that its investigations “have now scientifically established beyond any doubt that this video is a fake”.
But Channel 4 News reported last night that a UN report commissioned by the Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston, dismisses the Sri Lankan claims, saying “most of the arguments relied upon by the Government of Sri Lanka to impugn the video have been shown to be flawed”.
According to C4 News Alston commissioned three experts to examine the video.
A forensic pathologist, Dr Daniel Spitz “found that the footage appeared authentic, especially with respect to the two individuals who are shown being shot in the head at close range. He found that the body reaction, movement and blood evidence was entirely consistent with what would be expected in such shootings.”
Head of news and current affairs at Channel 4 Dorothy Byrne said: “This is a vindication of the correct decision by the Channel Four News team to bring these deeply disturbing images to public attention. This video is of great importance in the search for the truth of what happened during this time in Sri Lanka. ”
Chief Executive of ITN, which produces Channel 4 News, John Hardie, said: ‘We believed it was important for this evidence to be seen by the world, although we made clear at the time that we could not establish its authenticity. This UN report justifies the editorial judgement we made, and the commitment that Channel 4 News makes to its international coverage and to investigative journalism.”
Mine officials in China paid journalists a total of $380,000 to cover up a disaster which killed 34 miners and a rescue worker, according to Chinese state media.
AP (via the New York Times) is reporting that one Chinese journalist has been sentenced to 16 years for helping cover up the disaster which happened shortly before the Beijing Olympics. More than 50 local officials and journalists face charges.
Incredibly, the story was apparently kept quiet for three months after the July 2008 explosion.
The explosion occurred during a national safety campaign, three weeks before the Games.
Journalist, Li Junqi, the Hebei bureau chief of Farmers’ Daily, is thought to be the first of 10 journalists sentenced.
Tiger Woods is no stranger to being on front covers at the moment. Despite recent…shall we call them ‘challenges’… to his popularity US Vanity Fair’s February issue joins the throng by leading with a photo of the fallen golf star lifting dumbbells semi-naked.
The “raw, never-before-seen” photos, which will hit newsstands next Tuesday in the UK, were taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz before the car + crash + golf club + sex scandal.
Buzz Bissinger’s article that accompanies them then dwells on the “tales of kinky extramarital sex” in lavish detail.
The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist writes: “Tiger’s story has been driven by sex, tons of it, in allegedly all different varieties” before listing some of the more colourful stories.
In the “greatest single fall in popularity of a non-politician” Vanity Fair notes how Woods’ US approval rating has plummeted from 87% in 2005 to 33% in mid-December.
Journalist for Newsweek, Channel 4 and other outlets Maziar Bahari has revealed how he was threatened with execution, tortured and frequently asked sexual questions during his 118-day imprisonment in Iran.
Channel 4 News broadcast a first in-depth interview with Bahari since his release in October and his return to London.
Speaking of his interrogators, Bahari said: “Mr Rosewater looked like the boss and he was obsessed with sex, which is a sign of many ideological in Iran and around the world, but especially in Iran and among the Revolutionary Guards.
“For a month he was asking me about my sex life and what he was imagining in his head. He was going through all the female names in my mobile phone, on my Facebook account and my email addresses and asking me one by one whether I had had sex with them.
“Of course there was some physical torture. He beat me, hit me with a belt, punched and kicked me but to me the scarier parts were these conversations because I could see he had a very wrong view of the world.
“Like everybody else, Mr Rosewater spoke to his family while he was at work. One day it was his wedding anniversary and his wife called and was obviously complaining that he was not at home with her.
“He was very loving on the phone to her and he was twisting my ears at the same time.”
Snow interviewed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shortly before Christmas and put some of Bahari’s allegations to him.
Jon Snow:
“Take Maziar Bahari who worked for Newsweek. He gets thrown into jail he is beaten in jail, he is tortured in jail, he has told me that himself.”
MA:
“And you have accepted his claims?”
JS:
“He is a man I have known for a long time - I trust him…”
MA:
“People say a lot of things. Do you think freedom prevails in US? And do you think the media in the US is free? Why aren’t people allowed to have demonstrations against the Zionists? Do you think all the media in the US I against the Palestinians? They are clear facts. We are not going to deceive each other - they are political and media games. And that period is over. It will have not effect in the world. They offer interpretations based on some lies.
“That period is over we should focus on realities and we should talk to each other based on those realities, based on the law. And I think that is a mistake made by the political politicians in the West. They make the media themselves - they create them and they say lies. And based on those lies they take political positions. And at the same time they insist that others should believe them.”
Units of journalists are to be deployed to major disaster zones to “seek out, collate and disseminate life-saving information to disaster-struck populations, filling a critical gap in the chain of crisis information” under a plan launched by the Thomson Reuters Foundation today. (more…)
Thomson Reuters has revamped its Reuters.com website to more widely showcase its business and finance coverage – executives also indicated the agency would eventually charge for access to some of its online content. (more…)
News International’s Sunday Times newspaper was removed from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday after it ran a series of critical reports about Dubai’s debt problems.
The National Media Council of the UAE ordered that distribution of the paper should be blocked this weekend. (more…)
British police forensic researchers may have found the body of British journalist Alec Collett in Beirut.
Collet was on a writing assignment for the UN in 1985 when he was abducted by a Palestinian group calling itself The Revolutionary Organisation of Socialist Muslims, The Times reports. In 1986 a videotape was released purporting to show Collet had been hung in response for the US attack on Tripoli.
The forensic researchers have found two bodies in the Bekaa Valley, one of which is undergoing DNA tests to find out if it is Collett.
The number of European news channels has doubled in the last five years with over 160 channels available across the EU, according to AFP.
But as the internet becomes a more and more popular form of receiving quick news bulletins, and the credit crunch squeezes advertising revenue, the future of these channels is in doubt - the agency says in a report from the MIPCOM trade fair in Cannes, France.
Andre Lange, head of markets and financing at the European Adiovisual Observatory, said: “We can expect some channels to go bust in the next few years. The big groups, however, have a certain obligation to their viewers to provide news channels. And for some it will almost certainly be politically important.”
AFP suggests news channels could find greater profits by targeting mobile phone news.
