journalism

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has pledged to review a media law passed by parliament that has sparked outrage among the media. Kenyatta asked journalists on Saturday to report more responsibly, but said he would closely examine the law, which will only become effective once he signs it. "I shall look at the bill once it is forwarded to me with a view to identifying and addressing possible grey areas to ensure the new media law conforms to the constitution," a statement from the presidency said, quoting Kenyatta at a public rally near the capital Nairobi.

A plan to regulate the British press as a result of the country's phone-hacking scandal was signed by Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday despite the objections of publishers who sought a court order to block such a measure. The royal charter approved by the queen and the nation's major political parties calls for the creation of a watchdog group designed to curb the type of abuses revealed by the scandal.

The New Express's campaign to get Chen Yongzhou, 27, released from police detention last week attracted international attention, including CPJ's. On Wednesday and Thursday last week the Guangzhou-based New Express ran front page, big character headlines calling for their reporter's release. The paper's editors had thoroughly vetted Chen's stories and they had found only one factual error, they said in support of his reporting.

China's media regulator has vowed to protect "lawful reporting rights," state media said, in a rare official intervention over press freedom after a journalist was detained by police. Chen Yongzhou, with the New Express tabloid, was held last Friday on "suspicion of damaging business reputation" after he wrote a series of articles on "financial problems" at Zoomlion, a partly state-owned construction machinery manufacturer.

Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade called on the United States on Tuesday to widen an investigation into spying to include allegations that a U.S. government agency hacked former President Felipe Calderon's public email account.

China’s Communist Party has begun ordering all Chinese journalists not to take supportive stances toward Japan when writing about territorial and historical issues between the two countries, participants of a mandatory training program revealed Saturday. Around 250,000 journalists who work for various Chinese media organizations must attend the nationwide training program to learn about such topics as Marxist views on journalism, laws and regulations and norms in news-gathering and editing, in order to get their press accreditation renewed.

October 18, 2013

Everywhere he looks nowadays, Nicolás Maduro sees conspiracies. At least a dozen plots to assassinate him have allegedly been detected since he became Venezuela’s president in April. Mr Maduro recently expelled three American diplomats for supposedly conspiring with the opposition, business groups and unions to wage “economic war” and overthrow the government. Some plots may even be real: there are rumours of discontent in the armed forces, on which the president is lavishing time and money. But publicly, at least, the opposition media are Mr Maduro’s prime suspects.

October 13, 2013

This is the last time you will be reading The International Herald Tribune; as of tomorrow, it is The International New York Times.

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