Media News - Monday, March 31, 2008

Ireland to review media merger laws - minister

The Irish government is setting up an advisory group to review legislation governing media mergers, Minister Micheal Martin for enterprise, trade and employment said in a statement on Sunday. The Observer newspaper reported that Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien plans to buy Dublin-based newspaper owner Independent News & Media and sell its loss-making UK title, The Independent. O'Brien has criticised IN&M's management harshly in the past year, alleging cronyism at the company which is dominated by the O'Reilly family, who in turn branded O'Brien a ‘dissident shareholder’ on Thursday. Executive Chairman Anthony O'Reilly owns almost 27 percent of the company and his son Gavin is chief operating officer. O'Brien owns 21 percent of the group. The company has argued that the rules that prevent individuals or companies from owning large cross-holdings in print and radio needed to be tightened, the Irish Examiner newspaper said. The Department of Enterprise however denied that its inquiry had been spurred by IN&M's actions, adding that it had been planning the announcement for weeks, the Irish Times reported. (Reuters)

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Newspaper ad revenue down 7.9 percent

Newspaper advertising revenue fell 7.9 percent in 2007, the second-worst year in more than half a century, the Newspaper Association of America said on Friday. Those figures include continued growth in online advertising. Until last fall, the industry appeared headed for a less severe decline. But as the economy slowed, newspapers suffered a particularly bad fourth quarter — the peak period for ad sales — with revenue down 10.3 percent from a year earlier. Revenue from ads in printed newspapers dropped 9.4 percent for the year, the biggest drop in any year since 1950, the period charted by the association. Internet ad revenue on newspaper sites rose 18.8 percent, a marked slowdown from the torrid pace of the previous three years, when it averaged 30 percent annual growth. Online ads accounted for just 7.5 percent of all newspaper ad revenue in 2007, evidence that it will be years before digital growth outweighs the print slump. (New York Times)

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Classified memo reveals government strategy for ‘managing’ foreign journalists

Reporters Without Borders has obtained a classified memo from Chinese sources that sets out the behaviour that government officials should adopt with foreign journalists before and during the Beijing Olympic Games. It tells them to display openness but also to try to control and influence the international media’s coverage. Dating from 2007 and entitled ‘Working recommendations for reinforcing management efficiency after the ’Rules for interviews by foreign journalists during the Beijing Olympic Games and their preparatory period’ take effect,’ the memo obtained by Reporters Without Borders consists of instructions from the national authorities to those in charge of a province (including the local propaganda department and public security) on how to handle public relations and control press coverage. The introduction explains that the aim of the recommendations is to respond to China’s needs during the holding of the Olympic Games. The public relations plan has six parts: creating an interview strategy, improving the news release system, building a propaganda system for foreign media, creating positive opinion online, controlling opinion in a crisis and training officials in public relations. (Reporters Without Borders)

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Three suspects in Russian reporter’s murder arrested in Tajikistan

Police in Tajikistan have arrested three suspects in the murder of Russian television reporter Ilyas Shurpayev, an informed source in the Tajik Interior Ministry said on Sunday. Shurpayev, a reporter from Russia's volatile North Caucasus republic of Daghestan who worked for Russia's state Channel One, was found stabbed and strangled in his rented Moscow apartment on March 21. ‘On Saturday, interior ministry officers detained three Tajik nationals suspected of murdering Shurpayev. The Mukhamadiyev brothers were arrested on Saturday morning in the Vakhdat district, 15 km east of Dushanbe, while the third suspect, Masrurdzhon Yatimov, was detained Saturday night in the Shakhrinav district, 45 km west of the capital,’ the source said. Yatimov is believed to be the main suspect in the murder, the source said. On the same day that Shurpayev's body was found, Gadzhi Abashilov, the head of Daghestan's state-run television station, was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his car. Investigators have linked Abashilov's murder to his professional activities, but the motivation behind Shurpayev's murder remains uncertain. (Ria Novosti)

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Threats push anti-Qur’an film Fitna offline

The anti-Qur’an film Fitna made by Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been removed from LiveLeak, the British website where it was being shown. In its place is an official statement by the website saying the film was removed because of very serious threats to staff. The statement speaks of a sad day for freedom of speech but insists that the safety of the website’s staff has to come first. There have been a growing number of protests by people whose work features in the film. Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard says he wants his prominently featured cartoon of Mohammad to be removed from the film and says Geert Wilders never asked his permission to use it. Broadcaster Robbie Muntz says he is considering taking legal action because the film includes an excerpt of him interviewing murdered film director Theo van Gogh. Rapper Salah Edin also plans to take Geert Wilders to court because the film features a photograph of him dressed as Theo van Gogh’s killer, Mohammed Bouyeri. (Radio Netherlands via Media Network Weblog)

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Europe-wide radio net in aliens search

Scientists are finalising plans to link radio wave detectors in five countries and create a device sensitive enough to pick up signals from worlds the other side of the galaxy. By connecting banks of detectors in fields across Britain, France, Holland, Sweden and Germany, astronomers aim to create a radio telescope that will have the accuracy of a machine the size of Europe. They believe it could solve some of the universe's most important secrets - including the discovery of radio broadcasts from intelligent extraterrestrials. 'This system works by collecting radio waves over a range of frequencies,' said cosmologist Robert Nichol of Portsmouth University. 'These can then be analysed using arrays of computers which can identify patterns from the data streaming from our detectors. The project - known as Lofar (low frequency array) - was launched in Holland several years ago, but has attracted the attention of other European astronomers. All have agreed to build their own banks of detectors, which can then be linked to those in Holland. (The Guardian)

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More recent Media News:

• 28/03/08 - Newspapers in Slovakia protest media legislation
• 28/03/08 - UN rights council deplores media portrayal of Islam
• 28/03/08 - Belarusian security agents arrest EU-funded journalists
• 28/03/08 - Dutch government rejects parliamentarian’s anti-Islam movie
• 28/03/08 - Dueling media forums set for Venezuela
• 28/03/08 - U.S. experts find oldest voice recording, from 1860
• 27/03/08 - Monks burst in on Tibet news briefing
• 27/03/08 - Egypt editor given six-month sentence for Mubarak rumours
• 27/03/08 - NATO launches TV channel in bid to polish image
• 27/03/08 - Thomson shareholders approve takeover of Reuters
• 27/03/08 - AFP Offering Video for Olympics and Euro Championship
• 27/03/08 - BBC revamps news and sport sites
• 26/03/08 - BBC website ‘unblocked in China’
• 26/03/08 - Yahoo joins OpenSocial
• 26/03/08 - Deutsche Welle develops new coproduction with Algerian broadcaster EPTV
• 26/03/08 - Moroccan newspaper boss fined for libelling prosecutors
• 26/03/08 - Senior al-Jazeera staff quit English service
• 26/03/08 - Cuba censors cyber critic with block on island’s popular blog
• 25/03/08 - State-run Chinese media ignores Olympic torch-lighting protests
• 25/03/08 - Google tells FCC of ‘white space’ airwave plans
• 25/03/08 - A new tool from Google alarms sites
• 25/03/08 - Japanese Ministry to hold special courses for handling foreign press
• 25/03/08 - U.S. satellite radio merger gets antitrust OK
• 25/03/08 - Czech far-right party offers to show Dutch anti-Quran film

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