This is TV news?
Have you heard that authorities have arrested someone thought to be involved in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey? I`m being facetious, of course.
Can there be anyone in this entire country who doesn`t know that might-be murderer John Mark Karr has been flown back from Thailand and is being held in connection with the 1996 killing?
Or that, on the airplane trip, Karr wore a red short-sleeve shirt and black tie, sat without handcuffs in a business-class seat, had some champagne, a beer, and a glass of white wine, and nibbled on fried king prawns and roast duck?
Source: The Boston Globe 25 August 2006
No news is good news
Mushrooming Television-training academies, which churn out TV journalists with shaky credentials, are rather like the kerb-side `speedily speaking English teaching` schools whose alumni speak Inzamam-ul-Haq`s English. That is why one hears of young enthusiastic journalists that BBC`s Paul Donahar spoke about some years ago. Donahar described a young journalist chasing the former Home Minister, Indrajit Gupta and when he did catch up with Gupta, the first question was "Sir, would you say something?" And the second question was, "And, sir, who are you?" This was when TV was not what it is today.
There are over 350 TV channels in India today, a far cry from the single channel 20 years ago. India has become the third largest television market in the world. Along with Bollywood, radio, the newspapers and magazines, India is set to become one of the largest entertainment markets in the world. The global entertainment industry is expected to grow to $ 1.8 trillion by 2015 and India`s share will be $ 200 billion. There are 36 TV news channels in India and growing with the channels tying up with Bollywood films. News is likely to mutate into entertainment and the hunt for `Breaking News` and ratings will most definitely bring down credibility. Serious journalism will suffer.
In fact, one can see early signs of this when news gets sensational and unverified reports are pushed on to the screen, taken off the next day and forgotten. Even the responsible and staid mainstream print media, one of the best in the world, showed signs of succumbing to this temptation when they put out full-page hatchet jobs on individuals.
Source: The Hindustan Times 30 August 2006
Gaza captors of two journalists pressure U.S.
An unknown Islamic group on Wednesday issued a sweeping demand for the release of all Muslim prisoners held in the United States in exchange for two Fox News television journalists seized at gunpoint last week in Gaza. The group, calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades, had not claimed responsibility for the abductions or made any demands until Wednesday, when it released a statement along with a video of the two men, Steve Centanni, 60, an American based in Washington, and Olaf Wiig, 36, a cameraman from New Zealand.
More than a dozen Westerners have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip in the past two years, though in every case, they were released unharmed, and almost always within 24 hours. By contrast, the video and the demand for the release of prisoners on Wednesday echoed kidnappings by Islamic militant groups in Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere. And it was another sign of the worsening security situation in Gaza one year after the Israelis pulled out.
Moreover, the statement released Wednesday was the first time that kidnappers in Gaza had made a broad political demand that transcended the immediate Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We will give you one chance that will not be repeated — the liberation of Muslims detained in American prisons in exchange for the detainees in our hands," the statement said. "If you satisfy our condition, we will keep our promise."
Source: The New York Times 23 August 2006
New Yorker arrested for broadcasting Hizbollah TV
U.S. authorities have arrested a New York man for broadcasting Hizbollah television station al-Manar, which has been designated a terrorist entity by the US Treasury Department, prosecutors said on Thursday. Javed Iqbal, 42, was arrested on Wednesday because his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd. was providing New York-area customers with the Hizbollah-operated channel, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
It did not say how long Iqbal`s company had been providing satellite broadcasts of al-Manar, which the U.S. Treasury Department in March had designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, making it a crime to conduct business with al-Manar.
Iqbal has been charged with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the statement said. Federal authorities searched HDTV`s Brooklyn office and Iqbal`s Staten Island home, where Iqbal was suspected of maintaining satellite dishes, the statement said.
Source: Reuters.com 24 August 2006
Sri Lankan president demands media toes the line on the war
Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse held a meeting with editors and heads of media bodies on Wednesday ostensibly to explain the "current situation in the country". The real purpose of the meeting was to pressure those assembled to faithfully reproduce the government’s propaganda on its widening war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The fact that the meeting was called at all reveals a distinct nervousness. The media in Sri Lanka is already toeing the line. Virtually all reports of the war are based directly on government speeches and military statements. There is little first-hand reporting from the war zones and no opposition to the war in the editorials and commentary.
Yet some coverage of the military`s atrocities and its indiscriminate attacks on civilians has inevitably slipped into the Colombo and international media, not simply from pro-LTTE reports but the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and various non-government organizations. As a result, there have been concerns expressed in military circles about losing the propaganda war, and calls for the suppression of "LTTE disinformation".
Source: Asia Tribune 19 August 2006
China gives Times researcher three years
A Beijing court on Friday morning unexpectedly dismissed a state secrets charge against a researcher for The New York Times but sentenced him to three years in prison on a lesser, unrelated charge of fraud. The verdict against the researcher, Zhao Yan, 44, spared him a prison sentence of 10 years or longer and also served as a blunt rebuke to the investigation by state security agents. Agents began detaining Mr. Zhao almost two years ago and accused him of leaking state secrets to The Times. He has consistently stated that he is innocent of both charges.
"On the charge against the defendant Zhao Yan that he provided state secrets abroad, the evidence is insufficient," the court ruling read. "The charge for this crime cannot stand, and this court does not accept it." Mr. Zhao’s lead defense lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said, "This is the way they proclaim someone innocent."
The case has attracted international attention, including lobbying from President Bush. The verdict had been postponed, and some legal experts had suggested that the final result would be as much a political decision by high-level government officials as a legal one.
Source: The New York Times 25 August 2006
Al-Jazeera`s tricky balancing act
What do people in the Middle East think five years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks? To get a quick snapshot, I paid a visit here to Ahmed Sheikh, the editor in chief of al-Jazeera television. It was reassuring, in a perverse way, that he views the situation in his region the same way that most Americans would -- as a dangerous mess.
Sheikh told me he had been mulling this week how al-Jazeera should cover the Sept. 11 anniversary. "Five years after that catastrophe, the Arab world is much more divided than it used to be," he reflected. "The image of Islam has been tarnished to a great extent. We are weaker than we used to be against Israel. Development is absent." When he stands back and looks at the region, Sheikh says, "All the threads and problems are intertwined. It`s very difficult to trace where they begin and end."
Source: Washington Post 23 August 2006
Google to expand services for business users
Moving beyond search technology, Google plans to expand its services for business users providing them with a special software package, which will include e-mail, calendar, chat programmes and a special website development tool for companies. The move is a "starting point" for Google in catering to business users, its Vice President and General Manager Dave Girouard was quoted by The New York Times as saying.
Initially, the package will be free, but later this year Google plans to begin selling a version that includes additional features as well as technical support.
While the e-mail programme, Gmail, is currently supported by online advertising, the other three programmes contain no advertising, the report said.
Source: Press Trust of India 28 August 2006
The newspaper industry: More media, less news
Newspapers are making progress with the internet, but most are still too timid, defensive or high-minded
The first thing to greet a visitor to the Oslo headquarters of Schibsted, a Norwegian newspaper firm, is its original, hand-operated printing press from 1856, now so clean and polished it looks more like a sculpture than a machine. Christian Schibsted, the firm`s founder, bought it to print someone else`s newspaper, but when the contract moved elsewhere he decided to start his own. Although Schibsted gives pride of place to its antique machinery, the company is in fact running away from its printed past as fast as it can. Having made a loss five years ago, Schibsted`s activities on the internet contributed 35% of last year`s operating profits.
News of Schibsted`s success online has spread far in the newspaper industry. Every year, says Sverre Munck, the executive vice-president of its international business, Schibsted has to turn away delegations of foreign newspaper bosses seeking to find out how the Norwegians have done it. "Otherwise we`d get several visits every month," he says. The company has used its established newspaper brands to build websites that rank first and second in Scandinavia for visitors. It has also created new internet businesses such as Sesam, a search engine that competes with Google, and FINN.no, a portal for classified advertising. As a result, 2005 was the company`s best ever for revenues and profits.
Source: The Economist 24 August 2006
New study ranks newspapers on crucial `integrated` readership
NEW YORK More people are exclusively reading newspapers online, growing readership anywhere from 2% to 15%, a new study from Scarborough Research finds.
This is the second report from the marketing research firm that looks at the increasingly important weekly-integrated newspaper audience -- readers of print, online or both -- for the 12 months ending 2005. Scarborough based the study on the largest papers in the top 25 Designated Market Areas (DMA) in the U.S.
"When we look at individual markets, the general trend is that the online audience is growing -- not by leaps and bounds -- but growing [while] the print audience is on a slow and steady decline," said Gary Meo, senior vice president, print and Internet services at Scarborough.
Source: Editor and Publisher 25 August 2006
(Compiled by Dr I Arul Aram)