Media News - Wednesday, May 14, 2008

U.S. bill would require captioning for Internet video

Nearly two decades after the U.S. government began requiring television networks to provide text captions for hearing-impaired viewers, there is a move afoot to set the same standard for Internet video. Representative Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, is backing a bill that would require major producers of Internet videos to add captions as well as ‘video description’ soundtracks that describe the on-screen action for blind people. The measure would also force changes in the design of television and telephone equipment to make the devices more accessible to the disabled. The bill would require TV networks in the United States to provide captioning and video description tracks when they stream their shows over the Internet. In addition, video description tracks would be made mandatory for traditional TV broadcasts. About half of U.S. Internet users now watch video online, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. While many log on to watch amateur videos at sites like YouTube, a growing number view prime-time programming from the four major broadcast TV networks and many cable TV channels. Few of these video streams include captions. (International Herald Tribune)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Newsday sold to Cablevision

US cable TV company Cablevision has acquired New York tabloid Newsday in a deal valuing the newspaper operation at USD 632m (EUR 407m). The cable operator, which secured the deal with Newsday's parent company Tribune, will also take ownership of amNY, a free paper distributed in New York City. Cablevision will pay USD 612m for a 97 percent stake in Newsday, plus an additional USD 18m in prepaid rent for some facilities. Tribune will keep a 3 percent stake worth USD 20m. The cable company trumped media barons Rupert Murdoch and Mortimer Zuckerman to take control of the Long Island daily, which has a circulation of 387,000. Newsday was put up for sale after a takeover of its parent company, Chicago-based Tribune, by the property magnate Sam Zell a year ago. Zell's USD 8.2bn buyout of Tribune left the group with debt of more than USD13bn, some of which can now be paid down thanks to the Newsday deal. Tribune is the second largest US newspaper publisher after Gannett and also owns the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. (The Guardian)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

French publishing group sets up rival to Wikipedia

France has long battled against the Anglophone cultural invasion and now it has thrown down a virtual gauntlet. Larousse, the French encyclopaedia created more than 150 years ago, is launching its own – it would say improved – version of Wikipedia. Its first, free-access, online encyclopaedia will have the same contributor function but, to try to surmount the inherent problem of unreliability of articles, which can be modified by anyone at any time, Larousse has introduced some constraints. Users who want to contribute have to sign up and their names will then appear on the article they submit. Unlike on Wikipedia, anonymous contributions are not allowed, and once written, contributions become protected. Alongside the user-written pieces, Larousse will be making available 150,000 articles from its universal encyclopaedia, plus 10,000 images. Larousse is promising more in the future, along with the inclusion later this year of hundreds of video clips from channels such as National Geographic. (The Independent)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Taliban ban TV in Afghan province

Taliban insurgents have ordered residents of a province near the capital Kabul to stop watching television, saying the networks were showing un-Islamic programs, officials and local media said on Tuesday. The order is the last in a wave of curbs that the resurgent militants have announced in areas they are active. A senior Afghan information ministry official, Najib Manelai, said that dozens of masked men with weapons entered mosques in Logar province at the weekend and threatened residents against watching television. Media reports quoted residents as saying that the Taliban imposed the ban because TV networks were showing programs that were ‘un-Islamic and anti-Afghan culture.’ While in power from 1996 until their ouster in 2001, the Taliban Islamists had banned television, music and cinema. More than a dozen private TV networks and scores of radio stations have been launched in Afghanistan since their fall. The information ministry along with security forces was taking action against the Taliban move, minister Manelai said, without giving details. (Reuters via Washington Post)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Spanish court drop charges against U.S. soldiers in journalist’s death in Iraq

Spain's National Court said Tuesday it had dropped charges against three U.S. soldiers who opened fire on a Baghdad hotel in 2003, killing a Spanish journalist. The soldiers had been charged with homicide and a crime against the international community — defined under Spanish law as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during war time — for the death of TV cameraman Jose Couso, killed when a U.S. tank shell hit the Baghdad hotel where he and other journalists were staying. A Ukrainian cameraman working for the Reuters news agency, Taras Portsyuk, also died. Prosecutors argued that the firing of a tank shell was not a crime but an accident of war. The court agreed, citing insufficient evidence and saying: ‘The intentional element is missing in the action.’ It added that it could not be ruled out that the tank had acted in the belief, wrongly or rightly, that there had been enemy fire and, as such, it was an act of war. Couso's family was expected to appeal the decision, the private news agency Europa Press said. (AP via International Herald Tribune)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

Boris Johnson axes Mayor’s newspaper The Londoner

London mayor Boris Johnson has axing The Londoner, the monthly newspaper published by the London Mayor's office. The newly-elected Conservative mayor described the move as the first attempt to cut ‘unnecessary funding’ of the Mayor’s Office's publicity budget. Johnson's office claims the Mayor's Office would have spent GBP 2.9m on the newspaper this year had Ken Livingstone been re-elected. The new administration pledged to use some of the money saved — around GBP 1m per year — to plant 10,000 trees in London's most deprived areas by 2012. Johnson announced the closure of the newspaper, distributed to three million homes across Greater London, at a tree-planting scheme in Brixton. (Press Gazette)

Bookmark this : | Listen to this article | Sphere: Related Content

• Home |
• Seminars  |
• Events |
• Media Landscape |
• Newsroom|
• Media News|
• Resources

Terms of service and Privacy policy.

Copyright © 1992-2007 European Journalism Centre. All rights reserved.

Valid XHTML and CSS.

European Journalism Centre

Sonneville-lunet 10
6221KT Maastricht
The Netherlands

Tel. : +31 43 325 40 30
Fax : +32 2 400 42 20

E-mail: info[at]ejc.net