Category Archives: Media

Indian press groups call for investigation after journalist’s body found in septic tank

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Mukesh Chandrakar had reported on alleged corruption in the construction industry and had a popular YouTube channel

Indian media rights groups have called for an investigation after the body of a missing journalist was found hidden in a septic tank.

Mukesh Chandrakar, 32, was a well-known freelance journalist in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh who contributed to some of the country’s biggest news channels. He had also widely reported on alleged corruption in the construction industry on his popular YouTube channel.

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Italy presses Iran for immediate release of journalist held in Tehran

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Foreign ministry summons ambassador as Cecilia Sala reportedly tells family she sleeps on floor of prison cell

Italy’s foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador on Wednesday and urged the immediate release of an Italian journalist held in solitary confinement in Tehran.

Cecilia Sala, a 29-year-old freelance journalist for Il Foglio newspaper and a podcaster, reportedly spoke of the harsh conditions of her detainment in the notorious Evin prison, including having to sleep on the floor of her cell without a mattress.

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Johnnie Walker, BBC radio DJ, dies aged 79

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Pioneering presenter was best known for hosting Sounds of the 70s and the Radio 2 Rock Show

The veteran BBC DJ Johnnie Walker has died at the age of 79, it has been announced.

Walker, who hosted Radio 2’s Sounds of the 70s and the Radio 2 Rock Show, began his career as a pirate DJ in the 60s on the offshore station Swinging Radio England, then Radio Caroline, before joining Radio 1 in 1969. He left the station after causing controversy by describing the Bay City Rollers as “musical garbage” and clashing with his bosses over an insistence on playing album tracks.

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‘Everyone is crazy about tennis’: Sinner’s success inspires Italy to pick up rackets

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Italians are taking to the court with factors including the pandemic and broadcasting also said to be fuelling enthusiasm

At the age of 47, diehard AC Milan fan Ninni Licata has hung up his football boots in exchange for a tennis racket.

Like thousands of Italians in recent years, Licata has been unable to resist the lure of a game that for years had been relegated to the sidelines of the country’s national sports, overshadowed by football and Formula One.

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‘Everyone is crazy about tennis’: Sinner’s success inspires Italy to pick up rackets

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Italians are taking to the court with factors including the pandemic and broadcasting also said to be fuelling enthusiasm

At the age of 47, diehard AC Milan fan Ninni Licata has hung up his football boots in exchange for a tennis racket.

Like thousands of Italians in recent years, Licata has been unable to resist the lure of a game that for years had been relegated to the sidelines of the country’s national sports, overshadowed by football and Formula One.

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TV bosses should dare to flout Ofcom rules, says Grange Hill creator Phil Redmond

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Producer says ‘courage has gone out of broadcasting’ and audiences want to see grittier issues

The creator of some of Britain’s best-loved soaps has said the “courage has gone out of broadcasting” and suggested that television bosses should not be afraid to flout Ofcom rules.

Phil Redmond – the brains behind Hollyoaks, Grange Hill and Brookside – said there was “too much risk aversion” in television, with producers afraid to upset regulators even if it meant pleasing audiences.

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Five Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strike on van in Gaza

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Men were asleep in marked press vehicle, say witnesses, as renewed hostage negotiations reach impasse

Five Palestinian journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in central Gaza, their employer has said, while Israel has also struck several areas in Houthi rebel-controlled Yemen in air raids.

Faisal Abu al-Qumsan, Ayman al-Jadi, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed al-Lada’a were sleeping in their broadcasting truck, marked as press, when it was targeted in a direct strike by the Israeli military, witnesses told Palestinian media. Another 32 people were killed in other Israeli pre-dawn strikes across the territory, the local health ministry said.

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Journalists strike over proposed sale of Observer to Tortoise Media

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Forty-eight-hour strike, first at Guardian in more than 50 years, to take place on Wednesday and Thursday

Journalists at the Guardian and the Observer are holding a 48-hour strike in protest at the proposed sale of the Observer newspaper to Tortoise Media.

The strike, the first at the Guardian in more than 50 years, is due to take place on Wednesday 4 December and Thursday 5 December.

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Michael Rowland to leave ABC News Breakfast after ‘15 years of 3am starts’

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The 55-year-old is the program’s longest serving male co-host, and hinted in September that he was ‘looking forward to something less intense’

After 15 years of waking up at 3am to host ABC News Breakfast, Michael Rowland is calling it quits.

The co-host of the public broadcaster’s breakfast offering has told viewers his final show will be on 13 December, followed by a long break.

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What are the allegations against MasterChef’s Gregg Wallace?

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A slew of accusations have emerged of inappropriate remarks and behaviour dating back as far as 19 years

Gregg Wallace has been accused of making sexualised jokes and other inappropriate remarks towards a range of women dating back nearly two decades.

The 60-year-old MasterChef presenter announced last week that he was stepping back from the BBC show amid an investigation into his conduct. Wallace’s lawyers have said it is entirely false to suggest he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.

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‘Historic step’: what the UK papers say after landmark vote on assisted dying

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Newspapers across the board cover the historic vote prominently, but with some more enthused about the outcome than others

Front pages in the UK on Saturday were dominated by the step taken by MPs toward legalising assisted dying in England and Wales by backing a bill that would give some terminally ill people the right to end their own lives.

The Guardian splashed with the news, describing it as a “historic vote” that paves the way for assisted dying, along with a photo of emotional supporters of the bill embracing.

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Canadian media companies sue OpenAI in case potentially worth billions

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Litigants say AI company used their articles to train its popular ChatGPT software without authorization

Canada’s major news organizations have sued tech firm OpenAI for potentially billions of dollars, alleging the company is “strip-mining journalism” and unjustly enriching itself by using news articles to train its popular ChatGPT software.

The suit, filed on Friday in Ontario’s superior court of justice, calls for punitive damages, a share of profits made by OpenAI from using the news organizations’ articles, and an injunction barring the San Francisco-based company from using any of the news articles in the future.

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Australian-style social media ban for under-16s ‘a retrograde step’, say UK charities

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Child safety experts say similar move in Britain would penalise young people for the failings of tech companies

Child safety experts have warned the UK government against enacting an Australian-style social media ban for children under 16, which they called a “retrograde step” that would “do more harm than good”.

On Thursday, Australia became the first country in the world to ban under-16s from using social media platforms. The move was supported by a large majority of the Australian public – but academics, politicians and child rights groups said it could backfire, driving teenagers to the dark web, or make them feel more isolated.

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China sentences journalist to seven years on spy charges, family says

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Dong Yuyu was detained in 2022 after meeting Japanese diplomats named agents of ‘espionage organisation’

A veteran Chinese state media journalist has been sentenced by a Beijing court to seven years in prison on espionage charges, his family has said.

Dong Yuyu, a senior columnist at the Communist party newspaper Guangming Daily, was detained in February 2022 along with a Japanese diplomat at a Beijing restaurant.

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Reddit overtakes X in popularity of social media platforms in UK

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Discussion platform takes fifth place in rankings and is the fastest growing large social media platform in the UK

Reddit, the American online discussion platform, has overtaken X to become the fifth most popular social media platform in the UK, according to the communications watchdog.

Ofcom said Reddit, where users post on discussion threads within topic-based communities, was visited by 22.9 million UK adults in May this year, compared with 22.1 million on X.

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Israeli government orders officials to boycott left-leaning paper Haaretz

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Ministers also ban government advertising from critical newspaper that is widely respected internationally

Israel’s government is set to punish the country’s leading left-leaning newspaper, Haaretz, by ordering a boycott of the publication by government officials or anyone working for a government-funded body and halting all government advertising in its pages or website.

In a statement on Sunday, the office of Shlomo Karhi, the communications minister, said that his proposal against Haaretz had been unanimously approved by other ministers.

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Meta is ‘reckless’ in ‘need-to-know situations’, Canada warns Australia as it braces for early bushfire season

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Heritage minister says Facebook made ‘room for misinformation’ after turning news off in 2023 as Australia mulls actions that could lead to Meta doing the same

Twelve months on from Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season unfolding during a news blackout on Facebook, the nation has warned Australia about Meta’s “reckless” behaviour during “need-to-know situations”.

An early start to Australia’s bushfire season is looming for swaths of the country, with large parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory, the south-west of Victoria and south-east corner of South Australia facing higher risk, according to an official assessment in September.

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Jimmy Lai trial: key points from media mogul’s testimony on first day

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Detained pro-democracy activist spoke for first time about charges against him under Hong Kong national security law

Jimmy Lai, the detained pro-democracy activist and media mogul who is the target of Hong Kong’s most high-profile national security case, took the stand in court on Wednesday. For the first time since he was detained in December 2020, Lai spoke publicly about the charges against him, for which he faces spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Four years after his arrest, the 77-year-old seemed older and not as strong as he used to be. His first words – swearing an oath on the Bible – were delivered hoarsely.

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough brushes off backlash to his meeting with Trump

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Morning Joe host accuses critics of being disconnected from ‘the real world’ amid outcry over Mar-a-Lago visit

The Morning Joe star Joe Scarborough brushed off criticism of last week’s meeting with Donald Trump in Florida amid reports that the get-together was motivated by the liberal news network show host’s fear of retribution from the US president-elect.

Scarborough, along with his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, revealed during Monday’s broadcast that they personally met with Donald Trump last week to “restart communications” following their unrelenting opposition to his campaign for the White House.

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Guardian Australia wins Walkley innovation award for Gaza interactive

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Story showcasing text messages between Palestinian friends at start of Israel-Gaza war claims gong at 69th annual awards

Guardian Australia has claimed an award for innovation at the 69th annual Walkley awards for excellence in journalism.

At the awards evening in Sydney on Tuesday, a team of Rafqa Touma, Ariel Bogle, Mostafa Rachwani, Nick Evershed, Andy Ball, Christelle Basil and Shelley Hepworth claimed the category for digital media innovation for the Leaving Gaza interactive.

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