NEW YORK: Kashmiri photojournalist Masrat Zahra on Thursday received the Peter Mackler prize for courageous and ethical journalism thanks to her coverage of women impacted by decades of unrest in India-held Kashmir. “To work in this industry is to bring the truth,” the 26-year-old journalist said during a virtual ceremony. Zahra’s work shines a light on the stories of women …

By one measure, just 3% of Muslims live in countries that are freer than the world average In his writings Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish-born author and columnist has argued there is no logical reason why Islam should not thrive in conditions of personal liberty. After all, in a much-debated verse, the Koran insists that “there is no compulsion in religion”. …

An official of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), who went missing from Islamabad last week, returned home on Tuesday night, family and police sources told media. SECP Joint Director Sajid Gondal himself also took to Twitter to announce his return. “I am back and safe, and I am thankful to all friends who were worried for me.” Police sources said …

By Heather Kelly For the past 12 years, Salman Khan has been touting online learning as the future of education. But even he didn’t imagine us crashing into that future so suddenly and with little time to prepare. Now millions of schools are starting the fall semester with distance learning over laptops and tablets to minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus, while many others have …

A conversation with Anna Mortimer By KATYA PODKOVYROFF LEWIS This episode is the first in a new IJNotes series on mental health and journalism. From crime scenes and road accidents to natural disasters and wars, journalists often report on the frontlines of the world’s most challenging events. Today, journalists around the world are working overtime to cover the COVID-19 pandemic.  Covering these …

Political leaders, media and human rights bodies condemn the abduction of the senior journalist   Herald Report   Islamabad: Journalist Matiullah Jan returned home late Tuesday night, nearly 12 hours after he was abducted from Sector G-6, a highly secured locality of the capital city in broad daylight, family sources said. Earlier on Tuesday, Matiullah Jan, known for his criticism …

Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact. by Helen Lewis Tumbrels are rattling through the streets of the internet. Over the past few years, online-led social movements have deposed gropers, exposed bullies—and, sometimes, ruined the lives of the innocent. Commentators warn of “mob justice,” while activists exult in their newfound power to change the world. Both groups …

Youngsters start #Internet4GilgitBaltistan campaign; pictures of students sitting on mountaintops with books and laptops highlight issue, reports Gulf News Herald Report A campaign for digital rights #Internet4GilgitBaltistan, launched by a group of techno-savvy student and social media activists last week continues to attract international media attention. Gulf News on Thursday published a report on the telecom crisis. However, the telecom service provider and …

by Beena Sarwar The country’s most prominent media owner-editor is detained and incarcerated. The image-conscious prime minister ignores a letter from United Nations officials about the detention, which Time magazine lists among the “10 ‘Most Urgent’ Cases of Threats to Press Freedom in the Age of Coronavirus.” The media tycoon is held for over 100 days without charge; five bail hearings are postponed, and the bench assigned …

  Most people who know Noam Chomsky know him equally as a giant in academic linguistics and a longtime Leftist dissident and political commentator. Only a committed few, however, read much of his work in either — or both — fields. He is one of those thinkers whose major concepts enter the discourse unmoored from their original context. Phrases like “universal grammar” …

Herald Report Islamabad: A digital rights watchdog has expressed concern at the difficulties being faced by students in attending online classes due to lack of Internet facilities in the rural area of Pakistan and mountainous regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir. The organisation has urged the government to provide an appropriate recourse for the students who are unable to access e-learning modules during …

Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian journalist and activist whose online work helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, has been sentenced to death for his actions following what Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called a “grossly unfair” trial. A Revolutionary Court “considered that the 13 charges [against Zam] were the equivalent of the charge of spreading ‘corruption on earth’ and therefore passed the death …

DID we really need Cynthia Ritchie to tell us how wonderful Pakistanis are or how beautiful Kaghan and Naran are? Why should we be more impressed with or inclined to believe foreign accounts of our own country? Last April, the Pakistani government rolled out the red carpet for foreign travel bloggers at the Pakistan Tourism Summit held in Islamabad but …

Harris Khalique, secretary-general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in an interview to The News on Sunday’s Wajeeha Haider, talks about the rights and privacy situation in the country during the ongoing pandemic, his concerns regarding state-sponsored surveillance and the many ways in which the government could have better handled the situation. The News on Sunday (TNS): The pandemic has posed …

by Frud Bezhan & Daud Khattak Pakistan has suffered an identity crisis since it was forged out of the bloody partition of British colonial India in 1947. To fill the void, Pakistan’s political and military elite have promoted an Islamic identity and imported values from other parts of the Muslim world, observers say, while shunning their own Indian subcontinent heritage. Pakistan’s military …