Media News - Thursday, August 09, 2012

NYPD and Microsoft launch advanced citywide surveillance system

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has unveiled a new crime-fighting system developed with Microsoft – and revealed that the city will take a cut of the profits if it is sold to other administrations. The innovation will allow police to quickly collate and visualise vast amounts of data from cameras, licence plate readers, 911 calls, police databases and other sources. It will then display the information in real time, both visually and chronologically, allowing investigators to centralise information about crimes as they happen or are reported. But, though it has many screens, maps, and flashing visuals that make it look like science fiction, the new technology has a distinctly un-Hollywood name: the Domain Awareness System. Developed by Microsoft engineers working with New York police officers, DAS will allow a host of activities to be carried out, such as spotting a suspicious vehicle and being able to track its recent movements or use cameras to track back and see who left a suspicious package. It features live video feeds, huge databases of recent crime patterns and can take input direct from the field in real time via things like 911 calls or police radios. Part of the deal with Microsoft will result in the city of New York taking a 30 percent cut on any profits that the computer firm gets from selling the technology to other cities in America or around the world. Such partnerships with the private sector, especially in sensitive areas like law enforcement, are not without their critics who are concerned about introducing a profit motive into the traditional domain of public social policy. (The Guardian)

Murdoch to invest in Dutch cable soccer broadcaster

Rupert Murdoch's international media business, FOX International Channels (FIC), is to buy a majority stake in a Dutch cable television soccer broadcaster, in a deal media reports said was worth around EUR 1bn. FIC will acquire a 51 percent stake in Eredivisie Media & Marketing CV (EMM), which holds the rights to broadcast Dutch league soccer, the Dutch company said in a statement on Wednesday. The move into Dutch sports broadcasting by the media mogul comes as he was forced out of some publishing activities in the United Kingdom, where his newspapers were hit by a phone-hacking scandal. The companies did not provide financial details, but Dutch media reports said the investment was worth around EUR 1 bn through 2025 and included EUR 60m in debt. The Dutch acquisition has been unanimously approved by EMM's shareholders, the statement said. EMM was established in 2008 by the 18 Dutch league clubs and media company Endemol. (Reuters)

New York Times poised to offload how-to site About.com

The New York Times has announced that it is poised to sell the resource guide About.com, ending a costly and ill-fated attempt to extend its online publishing business. AllThingsD first reported that the Times is looking to sell About.com to the online Q&A business site Answers.com. The NYT bought About for USD 400m in 2005. The Times confirmed that it is in late stage talks to sell About, but said "negotiations are ongoing, and there can be no assurances that an agreement will be reached or that a transaction will be completed." The Times made a net loss of USD 88.1m in the second quarter, as a USD 194.7m write-down on the value of About wiped out gains from paying subscribers and a small increase in revenues. About.com produces articles and how-to videos on a topics from finance and physics to astrology and pet care. Its revenue fell 8.7 percent to USD 25.4m last quarter, and it posted an operating loss of USD 186.8m. Answers.com, set up by internet entrepreneur Bill Gross in 1998, is similar to About and calls itself "the most trusted place for answering life's questions." Answers, which is based in St Louis, did not respond to requests for comment. (The Guardian)

Italian journalists jailed for libel

Two journalists working for an Italian daily newspaper have been sentenced to four months in prison on a charge of criminal defamation. Orfeo Donatini and Tiziano Marson, respectively a reporter and editor of the newspaper Alto Adige, were convicted of defaming a politician in an article published in 2008. Alto Adige is published in the city of Bolzano in the south Tyrol. A report written by Donatini alleged that Sven Knoll, a member of Bolzano's provincial council, had participated in a neo-Nazi summit. The claim was based on a police report and also appeared in Italy's national weekly, L'Espresso. Knoll complained that he had been defamed and lodged a criminal defamation complaint. The journalists were initially acquitted but the case was reviewed by the court of cassation, and referred back to the Bolzano tribunal. On 20 June, Donatini and Marson were convicted of "defamation through the press", sentenced to four months in prison and ordered to pay EUR 15,000 in compensation. Their cause has been taken up by the London-based human rights organisation, Article 19, which has been campaigning for some time against the criminal defamation provisions in the Italian penal code. (Article 19/IFEX via The Guardian)

Google’s Internet search engine to pull info from users’ Gmail accounts in latest expansion

Google is creating an information bridge between its influential Internet search engine and its widely used Gmail service in its latest attempt to deliver more personal responses more quickly. The experimental feature unveiled Wednesday will enable Google’s search engine to mine the correspondence stored within a user’s Gmail account for any data tied to a search request. For example, a query containing the word “Amazon” would pull emails with shipping information sent by the online retailer. Blending email information into general search results could raise privacy worries. Google is trying to mitigate that by showing Gmail results in a collapsed format that users must open to see the details. For now, users must sign up to participate. Google is treading carefully as it hooks Gmail up to its Internet search engine. The new feature initially will be available to 1 million Gmail users who sign up at http://g.co/searchtrial. That’s a small fraction of the more than 425 million Gmail accounts that have been set up since Google launched its free email service eight years ago to compete against the offerings from Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. (Washington Post)

70 journalists killed in six months

At least 70 journalists and support staff were killed while on assignment in the first half of this year, making it one of the bloodiest periods of recent times. Fifteen were confirmed dead in Syria alone between January and June, according to the biannual Killing The Messenger survey of news mediacasualties produced for the International News Safety Institute (INSI) by the Cardiff school of journalism. The next worst countries were Nigeria, where seven unidentified newspaper staff were killed by a bomb, Brazil, Somalia, Indonesia, where five journalists died in a plane crash, and Mexico. The toll compares with 124 for the whole of 2011 and 56 for the first seven months of last year. And 70 may be a conservative figure as INSI has recorded the deaths of an additional 30 news people where it was unclear whether the killings were related to their work. The survey also highlighted that the great majority of news media deaths occur in countries during supposed peacetime. Forty-three journalists died in countries officially at peace, victims mostly of vicious criminals, and often abetted by corrupt security forces, politicians and business interests. Impunity remains the big problem. The rate of impunity for murder of a journalists has remained constant at around 90 percent globally for the past 10 years - undoubtedly fuelling more of the same. (INSI via The Guardian)

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

Terms of service and Privacy policy.

Copyright © 1992- 2013 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