19 Mar 2008 | Comment, News
Threats to reporters from government and criminals are making investigative journalism impossible, writes Deborah Bonello
In February this year, the car of Mexican journalist Estrada Zamora was found empty on the side of the road in the southern state of Michoacán with its engine running. Zamora was not inside and has not been seen since.
A few days earlier Francisco Ortiz Monroy, a reporter for the Mexico City-based daily Diario de México was shot dead, apparently by hitmen, in the municipality of Camargo in Tamaulipas, a state near the US border.
These are only the latest in a litany of murders and crimes of aggression against journalists in Mexico, which in 2006 earned itself the ignoble title of the most dangerous place to work as a journalist after Iraq from Reporters Without Borders. 2007 wasn’t much better, and as the above shows, 2008 is also shaping up to be a fatal year for some in the profession. Three journalists were shot dead in a single week in February.
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18 Mar 2008 | News
Northamptonshire Police have launched a criminal investigation after a complaint was made about a joke featured in the children’s television programme The Basil Brush Show.
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6 Mar 2008 | News
The House of Lords last night approved amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that would abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales.
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15 Feb 2008 | Comment
London Underground’s ban of an exhibition advert is elitist, writes Edward Lucie-Smith
Exhibition organisers at the Royal Academy are expressing bewilderment and outrage, at least in public, because the people who run advertising for the London Underground have decided to ban a poster featuring a nude Venus by the German 16th century artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. In private, they must be hugging themselves. At the time of writing three major newspapers have picked up the story – the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, and it is out on the Press Association wire service. Doubtless other newspapers will follow. It’s the kind of publicity you couldn’t buy, for an exhibition that many people might think of as being a bit esoteric and scholarly – in a phrase, above their heads. The RA have even got an influential MP on their side. John Whittingdale, chair of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, is quoted as saying: “The decision is absolutely bonkers. This was painted around 500 years ago.” (more…)
