Media News - Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Journalism in Argentina loses in the fight between the government and the media: CPJ report

Journalism is the biggest loser in the confrontation between the government of Argentina and some of the country’s biggest media companies, according to a recent report from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The report, published on Sept. 27 and put together by journalist Sara Rafsky, of the organization’s Americas program, discusses some of the possible interests that each of the parties involved may be defending and that put into question the objectivity of political and economic information that citizens receive. One of the most notable confrontations is between President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Grupo Clarin, the country’s largest media conglomerate and owner of the most widely read newspaper in the country, Clarin. In Argentina, awarding official publicity is not regulated and there aren’t criteria for its distribution. According to the report, the arbitrary and discriminatory distribution of government publicity should be prohibited so it can’t be used to reward or punish media outlets. According to the study “Quid pro quo: Government publicity in Argentinaand its multiple facets,” conducted by the non-profit organization Poder Ciudadano and quoted in the CPJ report, the government didn’t award practically any publicity to Grupo Clarin between May and Oct. 2011. The report pointed out that the situation is more difficult for small media outlets in the country’s municipalities because often their only sustenance is official publicity. (Knight Center)

Government bullies investigative reporters, private broadcasters in Trinidad and Tobago, says IPI

The International Press Institute (IPI) decried government harassment of investigative reporters in Trinidad and Tobago and accused the islands' communications ministry of abusing a dormant broadcasting rule, reported the organization on Thursday, Oct. 4, and Friday, Oct. 5. Journalists Denyse Renne of the Trinidad Guardian and Asha Javeed of the Trinidad Express were the targets of a government-led smear campaign to instill “fear and self-censorship” after they reported on a legal scandal involving the Caribbean country's National Security Minister Jack Warner, reported IPI. The Vienna-based organization reported that the journalists were the subject of widely circulated anonymous e-mails making allegations against their private lives. Meanwhile, Trinidad and Tobago’s Communications Minister Jamal Mohammed announced a plan requiring private radio and television broadcasters to transmit official government messages without compensation, reported IPI. The proposal would require private broadcasters to air government messages up to five minutes once an hour between 6 am to 6 pm. The proposed rule is based on a 2005 broadcast concession allowing the government to “reasonably declare any matter or event to be of public interest and require the concessionaire to broadcast [it],” according to IPI. To date, the islands' government has never enforced the rule. If Trinidad and Tobago goes through with the broadcast rule, it will join Venezuela and Ecuador in requiring private media to carry official messages at no cost. (Knight Center)

UK: Mobile advertising hits GBP 500m in 2012

The explosion in popularity of smartphones, tablets and the app revolution has fuelled a more than doubling in mobile advertising to GBP 500m this year – just four years after the sector struggled to attract GBP 25m. UK mobile advertising grew a staggering 132 percent in the first six months of this year to GBP 181.5m, according to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Breakneck growth is continuing in the second half – fuelled by the popularity of Apple and Google's app stores as smartphone ownership nears 60 percent of the UK's adult population – with forecasts putting UK mobile spend at as much as GBP 511m for the full year. In 2011, the IAB put mobile ad spend at GBP 203m. Mobile display and video advertising almost doubled in the first six months this year to GBP 50m, with mobile search soaring by more than 150 percent to GBP 132m. Mobile search accounts for almost three-quarters of all UK mobile ad spend. Total UK internet advertising spend rose 12.6 percent year on year in the first six months to GBP 2.59bn, comfortably on track to pass GBP 5bn for the year. The total digital display advertising market, including mobile, rose 10.6 percent in the first half to GBP 591m. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the rise of digital display advertising, albeit not on mobile, has been Facebook. Enders Analysis puts Facebook UK's full-year ad revenues at GBP 236m, a healthy 35 percent year-on-year rise. The biggest segment of the internet advertising market continues to be paid-for searches, which are dominated by Google. Spend on search advertising rose 16 percent in the first half to crack GBP 1.5bn, a 60 percent share of the overall market. (The Guardian)

US: Media General exits newspaper business; raises political ad revenue forecast

Media General Inc exited its nearly two-centuries-old newspaper business by selling the Tampa Tribune, and raised its revenue forecast for political advertising on its TV stations due to stronger-than-anticipated demand in key election battlegrounds. The company expects to get USD 57 million to USD 58 million this year from political advertisements, higher than the USD 50 million it had expected, boosted by the U.S. presidential election and hotly contested Senate races this year. Media General has stations in four states that are key to the presidential election - Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina. This year's political advertising during the presidential election could net revenue of USD 2.8 billion in local TV revenues, Moody's Investors Service said last month. The company sold almost all its newspapers to Berkshire Hathaway in May for USD 142 million to focus on its broadcast business. The sale of the Tampa Tribune to Revolution Capital Group for USD 9.5 million completes Media General's switch to a broadcast television and digital media company. The newspaper, which has been with Media General since 1927 and has won a Pulitzer in 1966, has an average Monday to Friday circulation of about 144,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. (Reuters)

Julian Assange to publish book about freedom and the future of the internet

Confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London after being granted asylum, the WikiLeaks founder has announced he is to publish a new book about the internet, freedom and what he terms "the resistance". The book, entitled Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, will be published in paperback and electronically on 26 November, the US publisher OR Books told the New York Times. Three "cutting-edge thinkers and activists from the frontline of the battle for cyberspace" are listed as co-authors: US-based Jacob Applebaum, Jeremie Zimmermann from France and German Andy Muller-Maguhn. The text is largely based on a transcript of an interview Assange conducted with the three others for an episode of his TV show, The World Tomorrow, broadcast in June on the Russian state-funded channel RT, Zimmermann told the Guardian. But he said there would be "plenty of added content". (The Guardian)

Twitter makes account searches easier with Profiles Directory

Twitter has made it easier to find its millions of users on search engines by launching a new "Profiles Directory" tool. The directory lists all user accounts alphabetically and includes profiles with numbers and non-Latin character names. Twitter did not formally announce its new directory but instead quietly debuted the feature on the bottom of its homepage. "We launched this a few weeks ago," a Twitter spokesperson told CNET, "to help people find the accounts they're looking for with various search engines." The tool was most likely created to get Twitter into more searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other engines --rather than be particularly useful to the social network's users, according to Search Engine Land. The tool should be helpful in attracting advertisers because more search engine traffic usually means more page views, which is something advertisers look for in clients. (CNET News)

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