Category Archives: Newspapers

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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‘Brilliant and versatile’ Observer and Guardian journalist Sarah Hughes dies at 48

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Hughes’ work ranged from hard-hitting overseas reports, to sport and television writing as well as candid accounts of coping with cancer

Tributes have been paid to Sarah Hughes, the Observer and Guardian journalist who has died from cancer.

Hughes, a mother of two, was a hugely respected journalist whose work ranged from hard-hitting and acclaimed overseas reportage, to the television and entertainment writing that she went on to specialise in.

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Sun investigator says he illegally obtained information about Meghan

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Dan Hanks claims he compiled 90-page report about actor early in her relationship with Prince Harry

A private investigator employed by the Sun has said he illegally accessed the Duchess of Sussex’s private information shortly after she met Prince Harry.

Dan Hanks, who lives in Los Angeles, told the website Byline Investigates that he compiled a 90-page report on the future member of the royal family in October 2016, shortly after the tabloid newspaper first became aware of her relationship with the prince.

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Mail on Sunday must publish front-page Meghan statement, court rules

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High court makes ruling after Duchess of Sussex’s victory in copyright claim against paper

The Mail on Sunday must publish a front-page statement declaring the Duchess of Sussex’s victory in her copyright claim against the newspaper over its publication of a letter to her estranged father, a high court judge has ruled.

In another win for Meghan in her privacy battle against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), publisher of the MoS and Mail Online, it has also been ordered to print a notice on page three of the newspaper, stating it “infringed her copyright” by publishing parts of her letter to Thomas Markle.

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Canada’s top newspaper group gambles on casino app to help fund journalism

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Torstar, which owns more than 70 papers, to launch gaming app to ‘support the growth and expansion of quality journalism’

As advertising revenues dry up and the outlook for print newspapers looks increasingly bleak, publishers around the world are constantly hunting for new and innovative ways to fund costly journalism.

Related: Why Toronto is taking action against a carpenter amid its homelessness crisis

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Microsoft urges US and EU to follow Australian digital news code

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Firm stood against Facebook and Google over plan to make tech giants pay news organisations

Microsoft is calling for the US and the EU to follow Australia in introducing rules that require technology companies to share revenue with news organisations and support journalism.

The company, which stood against Facebook and Google in supporting the proposal, argues that it is necessary to impose such a levy to create a level playing field between large tech firms and independent media organisations.

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Meghan wins privacy case against Mail on Sunday

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Judge gives summary judgment in favour of royal over extracts of letter to estranged father, Thomas Markle

The Duchess of Sussex has won her high court privacy case against the Mail on Sunday, hailing her victory as a “comprehensive win” over the newspaper’s “illegal and dehumanising practices”.

After a two-year legal battle, a judge granted summary judgment in Meghan’s favour over the newspaper’s publication of extracts of a “personal and private” handwritten letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.

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Two New York Times journalists leave paper over different controversies

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Staff memo said Donald McNeil, reporter who used racist slur on student trip, and Andy Mills, Caliphate podcast producer, departed

Two New York Times journalists have left the paper over separate controversies involving racist and sexist behavior, including its high-profile Covid-19 reporter Donald McNeil, following disclosures about his use of a racist slur while on a company-sponsored student trip.

The departures of McNeil and audio journalist, Andy Mills, a co-creator of the Daily podcast and a producer and co-host of the now partially retracted Caliphate podcast, come amid a wider reckoning across over racism and abusive behavior within American newsrooms.

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