Category Archives: Newspapers

Hong Kong police arrest editor-in-chief of Apple Daily newspaper in morning raids

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Ryan Law among five directors detained under national security legislation imposed by Beijing

Hong Kong national security police have arrested the editor-in-chief and four other directors of the Apple Daily newspaper in early morning raids involving more than 100 officers, in the latest crackdown on the media.

The police force’s national security department said the five directors had been arrested on suspicion of collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. All were arrested at their homes, at around 7am.

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Rupert Murdoch writes down value of Sun newspapers to zero

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Move follows £200m loss caused by Covid-19 pandemic and one-off charges related to phone hacking

Rupert Murdoch has written down the value of the Sun newspapers to zero as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic helped to fuel a £200m loss at his flagship tabloid titles.

Advertising and sales revenues at the Sun and the Sun on Sunday plummeted, with turnover falling by 23% from £419.9m to £324m in the year to the end of June 2020.

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Ruben Sergeyev, longtime Guardian fixer in Moscow, dies at 65

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Former colleagues remember ‘intelligent, playful, constantly curious’ news assistant and friend

Ruben Sergeyev, a longtime consultant and friend to Guardian correspondents in Moscow from the Gorbachev era through to the Putin years, has died of Covid-19 at the age of 65.

He died on Wednesday after being admitted to hospital in Moscow. Sergeyev worked from 1988 until 2014 as a news assistant, fixer, and all-round explainer of Russia during a time of rapid change. He helped a succession of bureau chiefs including Jonathan Steele, David Hearst, James Meek and Miriam Elder.

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Sinéad O’Connor retracts retirement announcement

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The Irish musician said her statement, made on 5 June, was a ‘kneejerk reaction’ against the UK and Irish media’s ‘constant abuse and invalidation’ of her mental health

Sinéad O’Connor has retracted her announcement, made over the weekend, that she would retire from music and live performance.

In a new statement posted to Twitter, the Irish musician explained to fans that she had felt “badly triggered” by a series of interviews regarding her new memoir, Rememberings, in which she writes of surviving physical and psychological abuse.

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Massive internet outage hits websites including Amazon, gov.uk and Guardian

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Technical problem traced to network run by Fastly brings some sites down entirely

A massive internet outage has affected websites including the Guardian, the UK government’s website gov.uk, Amazon and Reddit. The issue made the sites inaccessible to many users for more than an hour on Tuesday morning.

The outage was traced to a failure in a content delivery network (CDN) run by Fastly. It began at about 11am UK time, with visitors to a huge number of sites receiving error messages including, “Error 503 service unavailable” and a terse “connection failure”.

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‘Zero’: how the UK papers covered a day without a single reported Covid death

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All eyes now turn to whether this makes an easing of England’s Covid measures on 21 June more likely

Good news is broadcast across Wednesday’s front pages, as editors seize a rare opportunity to report on hope in the battle against the coronavirus.

Many papers suggest that the first day without a single Covid death for 10 months means the complete easing of lockdown restrictions will go ahead in England as planned on 21 June.

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‘I’m still alive’: Gomorrah author hails court victory over mafia threats

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Roberto Saviano says that a court has shown that the crime clans – whose threats forced him to live with a bodyguard – are not invincible

The internationally renowned anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano has declared that “journalism has been vindicated; words are vindicated – and so am I”, after a landmark judgment in Rome over threats to his life.

Judges ruled on Monday that a courtroom manoeuvre 13 years ago by a Camorra mafia boss and his lawyer constituted a threat to Saviano’s life, and that of a colleague – Rosaria Capacchione, then of the Naples daily Il Mattino – condemning the journalists to live ever since in the shadows, under bodyguard.

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Associated Newspapers pays damages for revealing Sand Van Roy as Luc Besson accuser

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MailOnline published actor’s identity as complainant in rape case against French director

Associated Newspapers has paid substantial damages and apologised to actor Sand Van Roy for revealing her identity as a complainant in a rape case against the French film director Luc Besson.

In May 2018, Van Roy filed a complaint with French police alleging that she had been raped by Besson. She expected to remain anonymous, as is her right under French law, but details of her complaint were leaked and reported in the French press, breaching her right to anonymity, the high court heard.

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‘People got nervous if a bag was left on a chair’: Paul Johnson on Northern Ireland

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The Guardian’s former deputy editor recalls his time reporting from Belfast during the Troubles

Paul Johnson has a vivid memory of one of his most dispiriting moments as the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent.

It was April 1986 and he was covering a Democratic Unionist party (DUP) conference. A warmup speaker for the party leader, Ian Paisley, electrified the audience with a suggestion.

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Trump DoJ seized Washington Post reporters’ phone records, paper says

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Newspaper ‘deeply troubled’ by revelation that records were secretly obtained over three months in 2017

The phone-call records of three reporters with the Washington Post were secretly obtained by officials with Donald Trump’s justice department over a period of three months in 2017, the newspaper reported.

Related: The sleazy, sordid Matt Gaetz scandal: are the walls now closing in on him?

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Hillary Clinton: ‘There has to be a global reckoning with disinformation’

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The former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped

Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works.

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‘I seek a kind person’: the Guardian ad that saved my Jewish father from the Nazis

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In 1938, there was a surge of classified ads in this newspaper as parents – including my grandparents – scrambled to get their children out of the Reich. What became of the families?

On Wednesday 3 August 1938, a short advertisement appeared on the second page of the Manchester Guardian, under the title “Tuition”.

“I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family,” the advert said, under the name Borger, giving the address of an apartment on Hintzerstrasse, in Vienna’s third district.

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Times change but Guardian values don’t: 200 years, and we’ve only just begun | Katharine Viner

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On the Guardian’s 200th anniversary, our editor-in-chief sets out how media can help rebuild a better world beyond Covid

I remember the day, in late March 2020, when I first worried that we might not be able to publish a newspaper, for what would have been only the second time in the Guardian’s history. I had driven into the office – no one was taking the train any more. Classed as an essential worker, I was permitted to travel, but the streets were utterly silent, with every school, cafe and shop closed.

I sat down with colleagues, spaced apart by yellow tape, to work out whether we could gather enough people to produce a print edition. We could publish the digital Guardian from anywhere, but to publish the newspaper, we needed a small number of people in the office. A handful of colleagues volunteered, but I wondered how we would be able to keep everything going. People were anxious for their families and friends and themselves – and frightened, too, for what kind of world we were entering, and what we would be left with.

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UN catalogues ‘chilling tide of abuse’ against female journalists

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Misogyny, bigotry and threats ‘cut public trust in critical media’, warns report after major investigation

An epidemic of online violence against female journalists worldwide is undermining their reporting, spilling over into real-life attacks and harassment, and puts their health and professional prospects in jeopardy, the UN has warned.

The avalanche of misogynistic abuse and threats is not only damaging women working in media, it is also weaponised “to undercut public trust in critical journalism and facts in general”, a report commissioned by the UN’s cultural agency Unesco has found.

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‘Warm, kind, wise and brilliant’: Guardian writers remember Kakoli Bhattacharya

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Our Delhi correspondents pay tribute to the Indian journalist and Guardian news assistant, who has died of Covid

Every Guardian south Asia correspondent over the past decade can remember the first time they met Kakoli Bhattacharya. A smart, brilliant and tenacious journalist, Kakoli joined the Guardian in Delhi in 2009 as an assistant, translator and fixer – but the role she would play in the lives of all the correspondents who worked with her far outstripped her official duties.

On Saturday, Kakoli – who was known to her friends and family as Pui, meaning “birdsong” – died in hospital of Covid-19. She was 51. Her death leaves a great absence. Here, Delhi correspondents past and present share their lasting memories of a much valued colleague and friend.

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Guardian film Colette wins Oscar for best documentary short

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Film about a former resistance fighter travelling to visit the concentration camp where her brother died wins prize at the 93rd Academy Awards

• Watch the Guardian’s Oscar winning film, Colette

Colette, a film released by the Guardian, has won the Oscar for best documentary short at the 93rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Anthony Giacchino, and produced by Alice Doyard, Annie Small and Aaron Matthews, Colette tells the story of 90-year-old former French resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine, who visits the concentration camp where her brother was murdered during the war with a young history student, Lucie Fouble.

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‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’: world’s media react to Chauvin trial verdict

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Analysis: relief and reflection sweep newsrooms as George Floyd case points to ‘turning point’ in US race relations

With intense international interest in the US trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, news organisations around the world had been live blogging the proceedings and were quick to reflect the ruling by the jury.

Most reporting focused on two themes: a sense of relief in the US that the jury had delivered a verdict many judged correct and the question over what it meant for the future of the US’s fraught racial relations.

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Oppression of journalists in China ‘may have been factor in Covid pandemic’

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China placed 177th in Press Freedom Index, with warning that persecution of reporters can have international impact

Persecution of journalists in China may have contributed to the global coronavirus outbreak by stopping whistleblowers coming forward in the early days of the pandemic, according to the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders.

China ranks 177th out of 180 countries on the organisation’s annual Press Freedom Index, with the organisation warning that persecution of journalists in totalitarian regimes affects citizens in western democracies.

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A wistful yearning for home and family | Brief letters

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Nesrine Malik’s columns | Ex-leaders compared | Love for Guardian letters | A mother’s place

Your columnist Nesrine Malik writes (11 April) that the pandemic has made her reflect wistfully on the bargain she made when she left Sudan to find success far from home. Nesrine’s columns, expressing subtle thoughts with admirable lucidity, have been something I’ve looked forward to reading all during lockdown. Perhaps we in her adopted country are not the audience she most longs for, but her eloquence has surely touched many readers.
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh

• It’s been suggested that there’s little to distinguish between the main parties. But what former leaders do with their time may be instructive: David Cameron’s delayed self-justification for his use of networks to lobby for a company (Report, 12 April) should be weighed against Gordon Brown’s call for the G7 to develop a vaccination plan for the poorest countries (Opinion, 12 April).
Les Bright
Exeter

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Prince Philip: respect and restraint required after duke’s death | Letters

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Martin Buckley, Carl Gardner, Margaret Vandecasteele and Pete Bibby on the death of the Duke of Edinburgh and media coverage of it

“Inevitably he will be remembered for the gaffes,” BBC TV told me on Friday. I interviewed the Duke of Edinburgh for the BBC over 20 years ago for a documentary presented by George Monbiot. The duke (whom we were talking to as president of the WWF) was informal and funny, and his intelligence shone through; he had a manifest love of nature and a terrifically detailed grasp of his environmental brief. The gaffes are a tired trope, endlessly headlined by our alternately sycophantic and feral media. Yes, the duke was impatient with the constraints he was permanently under, and yes, he occasional showed archaic attitudes. But at this time, it would be nice to acknowledge his positive qualities.
Martin Buckley
Farringdon, Hampshire

• I and many of your readers, I’m sure, would like to complain about the 13 pages on Prince Philip in Saturday’s Guardian (10 April). I would be interested to know what percentage of your readers read any of it. After all, by Saturday morning we all knew everything we wanted to know about him, and more, due to almost a full day’s blanket coverage on radio and TV. I expected better than a repeat performance across your pages.
Carl Gardner
London

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