Category: News

OPC board member Marcus W. Brauchli resigned as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal April 22 while Rupert Murdoch, the paper’s owner, was remaking some of The Journal’s contents. Murdoch bought Dow Jones & Company, The Journal’s parent, last December, and he is making the paper more of a general-interest paper with shorter articles, more coverage of politics, culture and sports, and fewer business articles on the front page.

The OPC news section of the site offers current industry news from Bulletin People columnist Al Kaff, and past issues of the Bulletin newsletter and Dateline magazine.

After contributing short features to People on a young man who founded an HIV awareness group and an interview with former CIA officer Valerie Plame, Richard B. Stolley, the magazine’s former editor, told The New York Times,  “I don’t have to interview the head of state to enjoy what I’m doing… ."

Fadel Shana, a Reuters cameraman, was killed April 16 during fighting between Israeli troops and Gaza militants. Just before his death, Shana, 23, was filming an Israeli tank in the distance and his final footage showed the tank firing a shell in his direction.

OPC members get a discount on Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It . Among the 44 journalists quoted in the book are OPC members Robert Nickelsberg, Time contract photographer; Scott Peterson, reporter, The Christian Science Monitor; Viviennce Walt, freelance writer; and former OPC member Liz Sly, reporter, Chicago Tribune.

In an April statement, the International Press Institute (IPI) expressed concern over the refusal of the United Nations to grant press passes to Taiwan journalists. For the past four years, Taiwan correspondents have been barred from covering the annual World Health Assembly on grounds that Taiwan is not a UN member.

An Iraqi judicial committee dismissed terrorism charges against AP photographer Bilal Hussein April 7, but he remained in custody at an American detention facililty. He has been detained for two years.

New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak was arrested in April on charges of covering Zimbabwe elections without government permission. He was held in jail five days and then released on bail of 300 million Zimbabwe dollars.

Four of the 14 George Polk Awards presented in April were for foreign news coverage. Leila Fadel, Shai Oster, Jim Sciutto, Angus Hines, Tom Murphy and Jeremy Scahill won.

A documentary film about Anna Politkovskaya was premiered this winter at the Berlin Film Festival.