In another example of news organizations jumping the gun as false information spreads like wildfire across Twitter, U.S. media outlets prematurely reported the death of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, driving home the lesson that "social media tools do not need to force news organizations to compromise their standards," according to The New York Times.
Following the Mexican Electoral Court's decision to investigate more than 60 radio and television stations for interviewing candidates for the governorship of the state of Michoacán, the National Congress of the Radio and Television Industry sent a letter to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE in Spanish) asking for clarification of the rules regarding the broadcasting of debates, reported the newspaper Milenio.
Controversial businessman Rupert Murdoch's media giant News Corp. and Colombia's RCN Televisión announced a partnership to launch a Spanish-language television channel in the United States to compete with Univision and Telemundo, reported The Wall Street Journal.
Despite the Internet's essential role in journalism today, few reporters take the issue of cyber security seriously. Recent cyber attacks on journalists in Venezuela reinforce the fact that the Internet is not without its risks.
For the third time in the past year, the Associated Press (AP) has updated its social media guidelines, this time to deal with correcting erroneous tweets and deleting tweets, as well as proper procedure for designating a re-tweet, according to a press release from the news agency.
In its first study of online journalism in Colombia, the Consejo de Redacción, or Newsroom Council, (CdR in Spanish) looked at who is producing online journalism in this South American country and how. The report found that since Colombia first connected to the Internet on July 4, 1994, online media have become "the protagonists of a quiet revolution in Colombia."
In protest of two Congressional bills that critics contend amount to censorship of the Internet, Wikipedia announced that it will go dark on Wednesday Jan. 18, reported The New York Times.
After Canadian Twitter users defied a decades-old ban by tweeting last year's election results before polls had closed throughout the country, the government announced Friday, Jan. 13 -- via Twitter, no less -- the repeal of the section of the Canada Elections Act that prohibits the broadcast or transmission of election results before all ballots have been cast, reported the Huffington Post Canada.
A military judge has recommended that Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks, face a court martial, reported the Los Angeles Times on Thursday, Jan. 12.
Connecticut's Journal Register newspaper company has experienced its second round of plagiarism accusations in less then three months, reported Poynter. On Tuesday, Jan. 10, editor Matt DeRienzo revealed that a Jan. 5 front-page sports story in the Fairfield Minuteman plagiarized verbatim articles from two competing newspapers.