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TEHRAN - A Japanese and two Canadian journalists have been arrested along with an Iranian working for "satellite channels," because they were reporting without permission on rallies in Tehran earlier this week, the Fars news agency said on Friday. The cases are under investigation, Fars said, without giving further details of the allegations against the journalists. The Tehran prosecutor said on Friday that his office was investigating the arrest of AFP reporter Farhad Pouladi while he was covering an anti-American rally in the Iranian capital on Wednesday. The annual commemoration of the November 4, 1979 storming of the US embassy...

So tell me, how do you write a “news” story about an organization paying for a speaker when you don’t even know if the organization is paying for the speaker? Ask “journalist” Jonathan Martin. He knows all about it. You see, Jonny wrote a piss poor story the other day about how the Iowa Family Policy Center will be paying a large speaker fee if Sarah Palin comes to Iowa to keynote the IFPC’s fall funderaiser. The only problem is that Jonny has no sources confirming that any exorbitant fee is being charged or paid. In fact, he had just...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – A Saudi court on Saturday convicted a female journalist for her involvement in a TV show, in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex, and sentenced her to 60 lashes. Rozanna al-Yami is believed to be the first Saudi woman journalist to be given such a punishment. The charges against her included involvement in the preparation of the program and advertising the segment on the Internet. Abdul-Rahman al-Hazza, the spokesman of the Ministry of Culture and Information, told The Associated Press he had no details of the sentencing and could not comment on it. In...

WASHINGTON – Jack Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who covered the civil rights movement and the Watergate scandal for the Los Angeles Times and was the paper's Washington bureau chief for 20 years, died Wednesday. He was 80. Nelson, who had pancreatic cancer, died at his home in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., said Richard Cooper a family friend and longtime Times associate. Nelson spent more than 35 years with the Los Angeles Times, stepping down as its chief Washington correspondent in 2001. He joined the Times in 1965 and in 1970 began working in its Washington bureau....

MOSCOW, October 17 (RIA Novosti) - An Iranian court has released on a $300,000 bail a Newsweek journalist with dual Iranian-Canadian citizenship, arrested in the wake of the disputed presidential elections in June, Iranian media said. Maziar Bahari, 42, who worked as a Newsweek reporter since 1998, was arrested on June 21 during the post-vote protests in Tehran "for his role in instigating events occurred after the presidential election," the Press TV said. "Bahari was released on 3 billion rials ($300,000) bail from Evin prison on Saturday night," the semi-official Islamic Labor News Agency said citing a judiciary source. Bahari...

Drew Sharp quoted an NFL football player who claimed that Rush had defended slavery. Sharp apparently never bothered to research this claim further, and instead just went ahead and published it. Sharp then went on The O'Reilly Factor and repeated the claim. Sharp has refused to back his claim up with an original source (because none exists), or offer a retraction and apology. Drew Sharp needs to be fired for this disgraceful bit of hack pseudo-journalism.

It happened to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. It may have happened to Anderson Cooper. After a summer of Celebrity Swine Flu Watch, Mediaite has learned Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett is the latest reporter to contract the H1N1 virus, or Swine Flu.

TORONTO — For two months Ehsan Maleki traveled around Iran with a backpack containing his cameras, a few pieces of clothing and his laptop computer, taking pictures of the reformist candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi during the presidential campaign. He did not know that his backpack and his cameras would soon become his only possessions, or that he would be forced to crawl out of the country hiding in a herd of sheep. Mr. Maleki, 29, is one of dozens of reporters, photographers and bloggers who have either fled Iran or are trying to flee in the aftermath of the disputed...

<p>No article yet; just an announcement on the NYT front page.</p>

Suspected drug hitmen burst into a Mexican radio station and shot dead a journalist in front of his colleagues in the latest brazen attack on the media, authorities and a Mexican newspaper said on Thursday. Gunmen shot Norberto Miranda, 44, several times in the rural town of Nuevo Casas Grandes in Chihuahua state near the U.S. border on Wednesday night. "His body was found full of bullets in the radio's offices," said a spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office. The newspaper El Diario said Miranda, who was well-known locally, had recently reported on growing drug violence in the remote...

An Iraqi journalist who gained worldwide fame after hurling his shoes at George W. Bush today claimed he had been tortured while in prison. Muntadhar al-Zeidi was freed to a hero's welcome after spending nine months behind bars for his extraordinary attack on the former US president. Hundreds of people congregated to meet him, a phalanx of gun-toting men fired volleys into the air while women cried out and broke into traditional Iraqi dances. Supporters around the world have offered him everything from a harem to a four-bedroom house while one Saudi man reportedly offered to pay $10 million for...

What should one make of the tale of Stephen Farrell--the seemingly reckless New York Times reporter who was rescued by British soldiers on Sept. 9 after spending four days as a captive of the Taliban? A soldier died in the course of his rescue, leading sections of British public opinion to go ballistic, accusing Farrell not merely of selfishness, but of moral responsibility for the soldier's death. Is this reaction fair and justified? Stephen Farrell was a British citizen reporting from Afghanistan. He'd received very strong advice from British troops to stay out of a Taliban-controlled sector into which he...

Welcome Awaits Iraq Shoe Thrower Dargham al-Zaidi is helping to prepare the family home for his brother's party The Iraqi journalist jailed for hurling his shoes at former US President George W Bush is to be freed on Monday - to an uncertain future. Muntadar al-Zaidi's release after nine months in prison will be celebrated by many across the Arab world to whom he has become a hero. He is reported to have been offered money, lucrative jobs, marriages and even a career in politics. His brother says an official boycott may stop Zaidi's return to journalism. Zaidi, a reporter...

KABUL — British commandos freed a New York Times reporter early Wednesday from Taliban captives who kidnapped him over the weekend in northern Afghanistan, but one of the commandos and a Times' translator were killed in the rescue, officials said. Reporter Stephen Farrell was taken hostage along with his translator in the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday. German commanders had ordered U.S. jets to drop bombs on two hijacked fuel tankers, causing a number of civilian casualties, and reporters traveled to the area to cover the story Two military officials told The Associated Press that one British commando died...

NATO troops released a kidnapped New York Times reporter in Northern Afghanistan in a raid before dawn on Wednesday, after he had been held for four days, an Afghan district chief said. Reporter Stephen Farrell, who is British, was abducted on Saturday along with his Afghan interpreter while attempting to visit the scene of a NATO air strike.

A New York Times reporter taken hostage by militants was rescued from a hide-out in northern Afghanistan early Wednesday in a daring raid that left his translator, a British soldier and civilians dead. Journalist Stephen Farrell was kidnapped Saturday while interviewing villagers in the northern province of Kunduz about NATO air strikes that reportedly left as many as 90 people dead. Farrell's interpreter, one of the British commandos sent to rescue them and several others died when a firefight broke out during the raid. According to the Times, Farrell called an editor at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and declared, "I'm out!...

According to reports from Afghanistan, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell and his driver/interpreter have been kidnapped while attempting to cover the story of the NATO airstrike on the two Taliban-hijacked tankers in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The local Afghan press is reporting on Farrell's kidnapping; however, the international press and the wires services have been silent on this issue. Multiple sources in Afghanistan tell me that The New York Times is attempting to suppress the reporting on Farrell's kidnapping. Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/2009/09/nyt_reporter_kidnapped_in_kund.php#ixzz0QO1gsSUt

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi journalist jailed after hurling his shoes at former President George W. Bush will be released next month after his sentence was reduced for good behavior, his lawyer said Saturday.

Here is a video report on a new prototype military vehicle made by Lockheed Martin that flipped over while carrying a news crew. The crew was on board as Lockheed was showcasing the safety and maneuverability of the new JLTV, which they believe surpasses the Humvee used for so long by the military. Just prior to the test drive that went wrong, Lockheed officials had been bragging that in 50,000 miles of test driving, the JLTV had never flipped over. But, inexplicably, it flipped over shortly thereafter with the news crew on board. No word yet from Lockheed Martin as...

KABUL — A roadside bombing has wounded two Associated Press journalists embedded with the U.S. military in southern Afghanistan. Photographer Emilio Morenatti and AP Television News videographer Andi Jatmiko were traveling with the military when their vehicle was struck by the bomb Tuesday. Both were immediately taken to a military hospital in Kandahar. Jatmiko suffered leg injuries and two broken ribs. Morenatti, badly wounded in the leg, underwent an operation that resulted in the loss of his foot.

But it's conservatives who engage in violence and hate speech, right? The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that one of their own, reporter Jake Wagman, was one of six people arrested in connection with the beating of a conservative activist outside of a town hall forum held by Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan. According to Dawn Majors, a Post-Dispatch photojournalist who witnessed everything unfold, an officer said that Wagman had been "interfering."

Amid all the adulation over Bill Clinton's "rescue" of the two reporters from North Korea, what have we learned since they were released about the circumstances under which they were captured by the North Koreans? Have the two acknowledged whether they crossed illegally into North Korea and thereby precipitated the crisis?

A member of an extremist Sunni group has confessed to the 2006 rape and murder of prominent Iraqi TV reporter Atwar Bahjat, whose brutal death at the height of the sectarian violence shocked even battle-scarred Iraqis. The confession was made in a videotape broadcast at a press conference today. Suspect Yasser al-Takhi described how he and three others abducted and killed Bahjat and her two-man crew, Adnan Abdullah and Khaled Mohsen, in the central Iraqi town of Samarra. His two brothers also confessed to killing Abdullah and Mohsen. Bahjat, who worked for the Arabiya TV network, had gone to Samarra...

Longtime readers know my point of view on this: whether you are American or not, a “journalist” or not, if you go to Iran or North Korea, you knew the likely consequences, you assumed the risk, and I couldn’t care less about you. I care far more about those held in these totalitarian states against their will, not dumb, left-wing Americans who went there willingly. We have enough looming and present foreign and domestic policy problems to worry about. We don’t need to add people like Laura Ling and Roxana Saberi . . . and now, three “hikers” who are...

Three Americans who were arrested after crossing into Iran have been accused of being spies, according to a local report. Tehran-based television news channel al-Alam quoted an Iraqi police officer as saying the trio were “working with the CIA.” The Swiss Embassy in Tehran was working to learn more about the Americans' fate through its contacts with the Iranian Foreign Ministry, spokeswoman Nadine Olivieri said. Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here It also emerged that an American linguistics student traveling in northern Iraq didn't go on an ill-fated hiking trip because he...

IRAN'S state-owned Arabic-language al-Alam TV station has confirmed that three US citizens were arrested after crossing the border from Iraq. The report said the three Americans were detained on Friday after crossing into Iran's Kurdistan province. They were arrested after refusing to heed warnings from border guards.

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) - The U.S. State Department says it's investigating reports that three Americans have been detained by Iranians after wandering near the border in the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Two Kurdish officials say the three Americans apparently were arrested after entering Iranian territory without permission. One security official says the missing Americans were tourists on an outing. The official says the three contacted a colleague Friday and said "they had mistakenly entered Iranian territory and troops surrounded them." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information. State Department spokesman...

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." -- Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823 On occasion a particular revelation or thought may cause one to laugh out loud. An hour after watching the White House briefing recently where seasoned reporter Helen Thomas took Robert Gibbs to task for White House efforts to control the media, I laughed aloud. It occurred to me, at this rather seasoned stage of...

Jeremy Andrew Clawson was a man of great integrity, friends say. As an American soldier, he put his life on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve his country. As a husband and father, he was devoted to his family. And as a journalist, he never stopped pursuing the truth. Clawson, 36, a member of the Kansas Army National Guard, was found dead Tuesday along a road at his post in Fort Sill, Okla., according to The Associated Press. Fort Sill officials reported his body was found near one of the post's firing ranges. His death is being investigated...

It's time for a post-Cronkite post-mortem, but not on the late "icon" himself — the "most trusted man in America," the "voice of G-d," "the gold standard," the "proxy for a nation," or, in plainer English, the lush-lived celebrity "anchor" who died this month at age 92. No, the Cronkite post-mortem that's needed is for the zombies who conjured up the hollow rapture and the living dead who fell for it. Harsh words? You bet. But I don't know how else to begin to assess a nation that sees fit to celebrate, crown, even worship a man who said his...

US Navy Commander Jeffrey D. Gordon has filed a sexual harassment complaint against the Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg. FishbowlDC obtained a copy of the July 22, 2009 letter addressed to Miami Herald Senior VP and Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal. In the complaint, Gordon calls for a "thorough investigation" to put an end to Rosenberg's "appalling behavior" that includes comments about the Commander's sexual orientation. The complaint outlines examples of Rosenberg's alleged "abusive and degrading, comments of an explicitly sexual nature." Gordon writes: To me, in front of another journalist with reference to why 9/11 co-defendant Mustafa Al Hawsawi was seated...

Broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite has died at age 92, The New York Times reports.

An al-Jazeera reporter who was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay plans to launch a joint legal action with other detainees against former US president George Bush and other administration officials, for the illegal detention and torture he and others suffered at the hands of US authorities. The case will be initiated by the Guantánamo Justice Centre, a new organisation open to former prisoners at the US base, which will set up its international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month. ... Al-Haj, who is back at work for the Arabic satellite channel in Qatar, is in frequent contact with Guantánamo detainees,...

Anti-Tea Party Correspondent's Contract Not Renewed by CNN By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-07-17 10:52 The last time we saw [0] CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen, she was arguing with folks at the April 15 Tea Party in Chicago claiming the event was "anti-government, anti-CNN [and] highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox." Although CNN officials won't blame the decision specifically on this event, the network has decided not to renew her contract. All together now: Aaaaaawwww. As reported [1] by TVNewser Thursday: TVNewser has learned CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen [2]'s contract will not be renewed and she will be leaving...

Over the last few weeks dozens of Iranians yearning for a more democratic government, striving to beat back the oppressive Mullahs, desperate to live free, have been killed in the streets of Iran during democratic protests. In China Uighurs and members of the religious sect Falun Gong are constantly attacked, imprisoned, tortured and killed for their ethnicity or beliefs by Chinese officials. Not long ago Buddhist Monks were killed by police for their protests in the streets of Myanmar. And on a nearly daily basis, members of the Taliban are killing villagers for not observing their oppressive rule in...

A local corruption reporter in Russia died of head injuries on Monday in what police said Tuesday was a drunken fall. Colleagues, on the other hand, are sure it was a revenge attack for muckraking journalism. Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, 63, the editor of a Rostov-on-Don newspaper whose name translates as Corruption and Crime died Monday of a severe head injury sustained April 30. Police say Yaroshenko was drunk and hit his head on the stairs, but colleagues claim Yaroshenko was attacked. "I have no doubt that the attack was directly connected to Yaroshenko's writing and is payback for his journalistic work,"...

Back in 2008, New York Times correspondent David S. Rohde, along with Afghan reporter Taki Luden, were abducted in Pakistan by the Taliban. Because they felt it might adversely affect hostage rescue efforts, the Times requested a news black-out. The Associated Press and other news agencies respected the request and only broke the story recently, after Rohde and Luden had scaled a wall and made their escape. It would be nothing other than a story with a happy ending, except that the Times has time and again ignored the government’s requests that it not report the specific ways in which...

NEW YORK (AP) - Deciding not to report initially on reporter David Rohde's capture by the Taliban for seven months was "an agonizing position that we revisited over and over again," New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said Sunday. [. . .] . . . the Times did not reveal his abductors. Keller told CNN: "The more you talk about who did what ... the more you're writing a playbook for the next kidnapping." ---_ Associated Press Writer Paul Alexander contributed to this report from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Senators Want Envoys For Jailed Journalists Carmichael Native Laura Ling Jailed In North Korea POSTED: 7:16 am PDT June 19, 2009 UPDATED: 7:41 am PDT June 19, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO -- California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and seven Senate colleagues want the White House to consider sending "high-level envoys" to North Korea to try to free two American journalists.

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until now, the kidnapping has been kept quiet by The Times and other media organizations out of concern for the men’s safety.

A Canadian journalist working in Iran was arrested without charge on Sunday and has not been heard from since. Maziar Bahari, 42, a correspondent for Newsweek magazine, has been reporting on Iran for the past decade from his base in Tehran, where he was born. His most recent article for Newsweek, published in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election, examined opposition supporters’ concerns that groups loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were staging violent incidents at their rallies to undermine support for their movement. “Newsweek strongly condemns this unwarranted detention, and calls upon the Iranian government to release him immediately,”...

PARIS – Iranian authorities have arrested 23 journalists and bloggers since post-election protests began a week ago, according to a media watchdog that says reporters are a "priority target" for Iran's leadership. Among those arrested was the head of the Association of Iranian Journalists, Reporters Without Borders said Sunday. ... The group released a list of 23 Iranian journalists, editors and bloggers arrested since June 14, and says it has lost contact with several others believed detained or in hiding. ..

CBS News reporter Mark Knoller issued a sharp retort to people on Twitter responding with derision to critics of Barack Obama's decision to go out for ice cream today while Iran is in the midst of a citizens revolt:"Surprised by the outrage at the ice cream outing. What is it you expect or want the US to do about Iran? Attack? War?"Knoller's liberal defense of Obama is not surprising. Four years ago he was Cindy Sheehan's head cheerleader when she arrived in Crawford, Texas to launch a protest against President Bush and the was in Iraq. Knoller failed to report...

A New York Times reporter known for making investigative trips deep inside dangerous conflict zones escaped from militant captors after more than seven months in captivity by climbing over a wall, the newspaper said Saturday. David S. Rohde was abducted Nov. 10 along with an Afghan reporter colleague and a driver south of the Afghan capital, Kabul. He had been traveling through Logar province to interview a Taliban commander, but was apparently intercepted and taken by other militants on the way. The Times reported that Rohde and Afghan reporter Tahi Ludin on Friday climbed over the wall of a compound...

A New York Times reporter has escaped from his Taliban captors after being held for seven months in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the newspaper reported on its website on Saturday. David Rohde, together with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were abducted on November 10 outside Kabul.

When we stopped, an officer grabbed me, pinned my arm behind my back and led me into the bowels of the Interior Ministry headquarters - where so many Iranian dissidents 'disappear' Mistaken for a protester in Tehran, Globe freelancer George McLeod was captured and beaten by riot police. This is his story. Riot police had driven off anti-government demonstrators and the sting of tear gas in the air was fading yesterday when the heavy-set man in a camouflage uniform grabbed me, shouting in Farsi, and pushed me into a throng of riot police. They shouted while I waved my hand...

The controversy surrounding journalist Max Blumenthal continues in the wake of the release of his video of intoxicated American Jews in Jerusalem insulting President Barack Obama, but he rejects the claims that the footage fuels anti-Semitism. The video shows young American Jews, who are apparently very drunk, criticizing Obama for his Mideast policies and describing him in derogatory terms. It has also had more than 400,000 hits on YouTube. "I have received death threats from people, mainly ones calling me a self-hating Jew. I am self-hating, but my self-hatred has nothing to do with me being Jewish," Blumenthal told Haaretz...

N. Korea says trial of two U.S. journalists will begin 3 p.m. SEOUL, June 4 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's highest court will begin trial of two U.S. journalists at 3 p.m., the official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday. "The Central Court of the DPRK will start a trial of American journalists Laura Ling and Seung-eun Lee from 3 p.m. Thursday on the basis of the indictment already brought against them," the one-sentence report said. The female reporters were detained on the border with China on March 17. North Korea accused them of illegally entering the country and committing unspecified...

Security officers at Los Angeles International Airport physically removed a reporter from a press area near Air Force One Thursday as she waited to hand a letter to President Obama. Brenda Lee, a writer for the Georgia Informer, an African-American-oriented paper, was ejected shortly before Obama arrived at the airport to leave California. She told The Associated Press that her letter urged Obama “to take a stand for traditional marriage.” Lee said she approached a Secret Service agent, requesting that he pass her letter on to Obama. He declined and said she should give it to a White House staffer....

<p>Airport security officers carried the woman away by the feet and arms as she protested her removal.</p> <p>She later identified herself as Brenda Lee, a writer for the Georgia Informer in Macon and said she has White House press credentials. The newspaper's Web site says it is a monthly publication, and a Brenda Lee column is posted on it.</p>