Media News - Wednesday, April 16, 2008

France targets anorexia in media

The French National Assembly has passed a groundbreaking bill which seeks to criminalise the promotion in the media of extreme thinness. The bill targets pro-anorexia websites and publications that encourage girls and young women to starve themselves. It will affect websites, fashion houses, magazines and advertisers. If approved by France's upper house, those found to have encouraged severe weight loss could be fined up to EUR 45,000 and face three years in prison. French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said the proposed law would help stop advice on how to become ultra-thin being spread through pro-anorexia sites on the internet. The law could also affect the fashion industry and magazine editors who publish photographs of extremely thin models. If the bill is passed by France's upper house, the Senate, in the coming weeks offenders could face jail sentences of up to two years and EUR 30,000 in fines. A three-year term and EUR 45,000 in fines could be sought against offenders if the incitement was found to have lead to death. The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says that with 40,000 anorexics in France, many parliamentarians feel the law cannot come soon enough. (BBC News)

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Condemned Afghan journalist wins right to appeal death sentence

A young Afghan journalist, sentenced to death in January for spreading feminist criticism of Islam, has been granted an appeal, according to one of the international organizations monitoring his case. The writer, Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, 23, was transferred on March 28 from prison in the remote province of Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, to the capital, Kabul, according to Jean MacKenzie, program director in Afghanistan for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. The move, Mackenzie said in a telephone interview, was accompanied by promises from officials in the government of President Hamid Karzai that Kambakhsh would be freed. MacKenzie credited international protests in the wake of the death sentence as a key factor in getting Kambakhsh out of the control of regional religious and secular authorities. She also said that within Afghanistan, protests in several cities organized by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a banned group, had made local citizens aware of the case. News of the ‘trial' and death sentence sparked protests from human rights and journalists' organizations, including International PEN, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Committee and Reporters Without Borders. (Bloomberg)

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Journalists group appeals for unrestricted Olympics coverage

An international journalists group appealed to Chinese authorities on Monday to stop interfering with coverage leading up to the Beijing Olympics. The group said journalists have been threatened for reporting on the disturbances during the torch relay around the world and the unrest in Tibet. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) began a four-day visit to China to make its case in person. The Brussels-based group is to meet with Chinese government and media officials as well as with foreign correspondents. The IFJ said its mission will discuss with the Beijing Olympic Committee how to ensure journalists can be protected and exercise the right to report without interference during the Games. The IFJ mission is made up of representatives of journalist groups from Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. The IFJ represents over 600,000 journalists in 120 countries. (AP via Expatica Belgium)

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USA sees drop in number of newspaper journalists

The number of newspaper journalists in the US fell last year by almost 5 per cent to a low of 52,600, the lowest it has been for almost 25 years and the biggest drop in 30 years. The new figures, released by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, reflects the attrition going on in the America media. The figures also reflect the continuing - and sometimes controversial - debate over the number of ‘minority’ journalists employed by US papers. Actually the number of ‘journalists of colour’ - as ASNE puts it - did not decline over the past year. The number held steady at between 13 and 14 per cent. But this is still regarded as not satisfactory because it still does not match the percentage of minorities in the whole American population . About one-third of Americans are classified as members of a racial or ethnic minorities and in four states they make up more than 50 per cent of the population. When ASNE first launched its annual newsroom census in 1978 the target was to achieve parity by the year 2000. When it fell short it set a new goal of 2025. Now because of the increasingly rapid growth of racial and ethnic minorities, and a slowdown in the hiring of minority journalists, it is seen as unlikely that even the new deadline will be achieved. Minority journalists, the report adds, are most likely to be reporters, with only 11 per cent holding executive or supervisory jobs. Men still outnumber women in newsrooms, by almost two to one. (Press Gazette)

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MySpace launches Korean service

MySpace Tuesday moved in on one of the world's most competitive social networking markets, rolling out a localised version for South Korea. The News Corporation-owned site has, like the rest of MySpace's 28 other regional versions, been customised to appeal to the Korean market with a simplified design, local TV and music content and a new ‘minilogs’ feature - diary notes that can be customised with animations and colours. A dedicated gallery will display the best ‘skins’ - style templates - by Korean designers, allowing users to customise their profiles. Recent figures from comScore put MySpace at 107m users globally per month, representing one in eight of the world's web users, and the website has been aggressively expanding its network. However, the site faces stiff competition in South Korea, where local site Cyworld is reportedly used by as much as 90 percent of the country's under-20s. South Korea is a key market because it is one of the world's most advanced web audiences, with near universal broadband distribution and high-speed connections available to nearly one third of the 48m population. A report last year by Ipsos Insight found South Koreans to be the world's most regular social network users, with 55 percent accessing such sites every month, compared with 24 percent in the US. (The Guardian)

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CBS launches citizen journalism upload site

CBS has quietly launched a citizen journalism website where members of the public can upload video and still images of newsworthy events from their mobile phones. The launch of Cbseyemobile.com follows the launch of similar sites by other US TV networks to glean photos and video from members of the public to use in their news programmes. CNN soft-launched its own citizen journalism upload site iReport 18-months ago. It has since been forced to expand the site to accommodate the high volume of material that is being submitted. The CBS mobile site was soft-launched last week without any promotion or senior staff talking about their aspirations for their new development. It's expected that the 'sell' to the public will come once the site has been up and running for a few weeks. The launch site has limited the social features, allowing users to just leave comments and ranking stories according to number of views. CBS is looking primarily for images of breaking news, weather, sports and politics from the public on the site and is already populating it with some of its own content to encourage further uploads. (Journalism.co.uk)

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