28 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
The newly elected President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, appointed Mervyn Silva as the deputy minister for media and information on Friday. Silva is a politician with a notorious reputation for physically and verbally attacking journalists and other members of the press, including one incident in December 2008 where he and a large group of men stormed a television station and assaulted its news director. The appointment angered Reporters sans frontières, it asked “In what country do you appoint an arsonist to put out fires?”
28 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
An amendment to laws on guarding state secrets could force communication providers to cooperate with the country’s security apparatus over the leaking or distribution of state secrets. Telecom operators and internet service providers will have to ‘detect, report and delete’ information about such secrets. This could force providers to copy the example of Yahoo. The company famously supplied the Chinese government with the private details of journalist Shi Tao after he leaked sensitive documents in 2007. Tao was arrested.
28 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost
International human rights monitors are to investigate the murders of journalists in Honduras. Since the beginning of March, seven reporters have been shot dead in the country. A delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will travel to Honduras in May to determine whether the murders were related to their work. There have been suggestions that the killings may be connected to organised crime in the country.
28 Apr 2010 | Uncategorized
Remember Robert Dee?
Robert Dee is a professional tennis player. Trouble is, Robert Dee is not a great tennis player. Federer he ain’t. He’s got nada on Nadal. You get the idea.
What Robert is (or was) very good at is (or was) threatening libel actions against anyone who pointed out the fact that he’s not great at tennis. Over 30 media outlets capitulated to his legal threats.
But now, a high court judge has ruled that the Daily Telegraph was within its rights to refer to Dee as the “world’s worst Tennis player”.
Mrs Justice Sharp commented in her judgment:
“The incontestably true facts are that the Claimant [Robert Dee] did lose 54 matches in a row in straight sets in his first three years on the world ranking ITF / ATP tournaments on the international professional tennis circuit, and that this was the worst ever run.”
Thing is, he’d probably still beat me.
