WORLD
February 21, 2009 | Times Wire Reports
Turkey's main opposition party and leading journalists association accused the prime minister of trying to muzzle the press, after the government hit the country's biggest media company with a fine of about $500 million for an allegedly late tax payment. Opposition lawmaker Atilla Kart said the fine faced by media mogul Aydin Dogan was an attempt to silence critics before local elections in March. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has said the issue is about tax code violations, not press freedom.
NATIONAL
December 28, 2008 | JAMES RAINEY
Yes, we reporters might get stuck covering the late shift or -- egad! -- a parade. When disaster strikes or a source calls back on deadline, the nights can be long. Newspaper layoffs and hard economic times can cast a pall over just about everything we do. But those concerns seem a piffle every time I read dispatches from around the world about journalists who, fighting for the story, also must fight for their lives.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 12, 2008 | Catherine Saillant, Saillant is a Times staff writer.
The Ventura County Star was rebuffed Thursday in its efforts to quickly overturn a judge's order to withhold publication of a story that details the slashing death of a 6-year-old boy last year. Legal experts and the newspaper's editor said the ruling earlier this week by Superior Court Judge Ken Riley is a clear violation of 1st Amendment protections. But Riley, who was out of town, declined to hold an immediate hearing and set one for Monday.
WORLD
October 10, 2008 | Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer
Spacious and airy, the newsroom of the National seems a newfangled journalistic field of dreams, with its stylish furniture, flat-panel monitors and roomy, uncluttered desks. Though the new United Arab Emirates newspaper has a daily circulation of only 70,000 to 90,000, it has grand ambitions and leaders who are bullish on print journalism. "Don't panic!" editor Martin Newland advises his counterparts in the West. "Don't head to the hills yet.
NATIONAL
August 10, 2008 | From Times Wire Reports
FBI Director Robert Mueller has apologized to the editors of the Washington Post and New York Times for improperly obtaining phone records of the newspapers' reporters while investigating terrorism four years ago. A Post reporter and researcher and two Times reporters were working in Indonesia and writing about Islamist terrorism at the time.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 2, 2008 | Stuart Pfeifer and Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writers
Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona's request to file a secret motion to move his corruption trial out of Southern California violates the 1st Amendment's free-press protection, a media attorney argued Thursday. Carona's attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford to keep their motion to move the trial sealed because releasing it would create additional inflammatory publicity about the case.