WE NEWSPAPER hacks have been deluding ourselves. Outblogged by teen “citizen journalists”, outpaced by 24-hour celebrity-wrestling channels, no amounts of DVD giveaways can keep us relevant into 2006. If papers are to survive, we need to ditch this outdated obsession with “facts” and print the stories that genuinely get people talking.
Read the article by David Rowan, Times (UK).
Le Point, Le Monde and Les Echos were sued by ‘Rights of Non-Smokers’, after publishing photos of formula one drivers wearing overalls displaying tobacco logos.
They were fined about $1000 each, plus more than $3000 in damages to the anti-smoking group.
It is also reported that the European Commission has warned governments including Spain and Hungary to not introduce motor sport-specific legislation to dodge the new Europe-wide tobacco advertising laws.
The countries have been warned that they could face prosecution in the European Court of Justice.
More at F1 Central
Merry Christmas everyone! Untill December 26. you can find me at Sao Miguel in the Acores. Bye bye :-)
Fresh figures from Internantional Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations shows, among a lot of boring things, the top 50 of mens magazines worldwide by circulation, title and origin.
Playboy is still worlds nr. 1 magazine for the grown up gentleman. But do not forget to be cool whereever you are - this list will help you. For example be sure to get your copy of ‘Motor’ next time you are in Oslo or the largest mens mag in south America ‘Gaceta Hipica’ when in Venezuela. If you go to Egypt there are a lot of choices, maybe you should go for ‘Oil & Gas’?
Largest Mens Magazines in the world:
1. Playboy 3,215,000 USA
2. Maxim 2,541,000 USA
3. Men’s Health & Sports 1,678,000 USA
4. Libro Vaquero 800,000 Mexico
5. Hombres y Héroes 800,000 Mexico
6. FHM 620,000 UK
7. Libro Policiaco 550,000 Mexico
8. El-Bait 446,000 Egypt
9. Playboy 418,000 Japan
10. Motor 397,000 Norway
11. Enigma 353,000 Egypt
12. Frontera Violenta 300,000 Mexico
13. Flash Kalam Alna 294,000 Egypt
14. Loaded 290,000 UK
15. Coupé 280,000 Germany
16. Maxim 273,000 Germany
17. Maxim 250,000 UK
18. Men’s Health 244,000 Germany
19. Men’s Health 235,000 Italy
20. Gaceta Hipica 228,000 Venezuela
21. FHM 220,000 Germany
22. Men’s Health 219,000 UK
23. Loghat Al Asr 207,000 Egypt
24. Men’s Health 200,000 Mexico
25. Oil & Gas 182,000 Egypt
26. Kelmtna 176,000 Egypt
27. Party 167,000 Egypt
28. GQ 165,000 Italy
29. Playboy 161,000 Germany
30. Max 161,000 Italy
31. FHM 160,000 France
32. Vot tak! 150,000 Ukraine
34. Alam Comp & intrnt 147,000 Egypt
35. CKM 143,000 Poland
36. Front 142,000 UK
37. Russia XXL 140,000 Russia
38. Playboy 126,000 Poland
39. GM 125,000 Thailand
40. Playboy 120,000 Taiwan
41. Maximal 120,000 France
42. FHM 120,000 Philippines
43. Boss 120,000 Thailand
44. Men’s Health 112,000 Russia
45. Playboy 105,000 Russia
46. Vi Menn 104,000 Norway
47. Maxim 103,000 Poland
48. Max 103,000 France
49. Edar 103,000 Egypt
50. Playboy 102,000 Romania
Dutch Conservative MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is bringing out a new Submission film. In Part III, God himself will play the main role, Hirsi Ali says in the Christmas issue of De Groene Amsterdammer weekly. A month ago, it was made known that Hirsi Ali had finished the script for Submission II, which tackles the issue of discrimination against homosexuals within Islam. That part is the sequel to the film that the MP made with filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was assassinated three months after Submission I was shown on TV. Submission I was a polemic against the oppression of women in the Islamic culture. Submission II will appear in the course of 2006. When Part III will appear is not yet clear. Hirsi Ali believes the last part will be the most difficult:
‘Because who will be able to play Allah?’
The Somali-born MP has been under security protection for two years against Muslims who want to kill her, writes NIS News.
Ayann Hirsi Ali are preparing the third Submission movie: Submission - Megamission? Submission - the return of Allah? - This makes me wonder.. If The prophet someday decides to return to the earthly, could he appear on TV? Maybe he would have to wear a burga not to be depicted and transmitted all over the world in todays hypercomplex information society…
UPDATE!
Help Hirsi find the person to play Allah in Submission III. Who would you suggest? Send me a comment and I will publish the best of them later and send the suggestion to Hirsi and her crew.
The United States has tied with Myanmar (the former Burma) for sixth place among countries that are holding the most journalists behind bars, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Each country is jailing five journalists. The United States is holding four Iraqi journalists in detention centers in Iraq and one Sudanese, a cameraman who works for Al Jazeera, at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. None of the five have been charged with a specific crime.
This year, China topped the list of countries with the most journalists — 32 — in jail, many of them for activity on the Internet. This is the seventh year in a row in which China has led the list. Fifteen of the Chinese journalists are being held under national-security legislation for writing critically about the Communist Party online, the report said. A total of 125 writers, editors and photojournalists were held in jails around the world on Dec. 1, 2005, the report said. The tally is 3 higher than were held on Dec. 1, 2004, but it is not the highest number in the 25 years that the committee has been keeping track. The highest was 182 journalists jailed in 1995.
Source: Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/media/14journalists.html
Merry Christmas!
US Fox News channel was ordered to alter its coverage of the riots in France after a Saudi prince with shares in its parent company News Corporation complained to Rupert Murdoch. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul aziz Al-Saud told a conference in Dubai he had telephoned Murdoch after seeing a strapline on the news channel describing the disturbances as ‘Muslim riots’.
‘I picked up the phone and called Murdoch and said that I was speaking not as a shareholder, but as a viewer of Fox. I said that these are not Muslim riots, they are riots,’ Campaign Middle East magazine quoted the prince as saying.
‘He investigated the matter and called Fox and within half an hour it was changed from ‘Muslim riots’ to ‘civil riots’.’ The prince said his intervention had been an example of how Muslim people can change the portrayal of their religion in the western media - although few Fox viewers will have his contacts. (Media Guardian, December 13, 2005)
Today I got an email from the Kurdish Satelitte Channel that broadcasts here from Denmark:
There has been a systematic campaign, organised by the Turkish authorities, to compel European countries (particularly Denmark) to prevent free and democratic Kurdish broadcasting. Their aim is to close down the independent Kurdish Satellite channel, ROJ TV. These attempts coincide with the European Union’s efforts to promote democratic reform and free broadcasting in Turkey. We, the undersigned, condemn the Turkish Government’s anti democratic campaign. We urge the Danish Government and European Union member states to resist Turkish pressure and protect free speech in Europe and Turkey.
Please provide your signature in form of a comment to this call (in any language), by clicking on the comment link at: http://rojtv.blogspot.com/
Hey what’s wrong with Turkey anyway?
Is the Turkish Government really demanding a Danish TV-station closed?
The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned Danish travellers to Pakistan of increased hazard, after a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish cartoons of Muslim prophet Mohammed escalated into a bounty being placed on the heads of the cartoonists. Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoon drawings of Mohammed in September, sparking angry reactions from Denmark’s Muslim population and a number of Muslim countries. A bounty of DKK 50,000 (EUR 6,713) had been put on the head the cartoonist responsible for the drawings, daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported on Friday.
The Pakistani group offering the reward mistakenly believes that the 12 cartoons were created by just one person
Jyllands-Posten had no comment about the bounty placed on the cartoonists’ heads. Danish authorities immediately informed the Pakistani government about the death threats and the bounty promised by the party, which is described as nationalistic and fundamentalist. Ever since the demonstrators marched through the streets of Islamabad, the party has been spreading its message through the media and flyers. (The Copenhagen Post,December 13, 2005)
Scroll further down to see all the Mohammed cartoons or follow this link
Want to pretend you’re Rupert Murdoch? Then Media Mogul is just the thing — the new board game that intends to put the likes of Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble in the shade. … Whether we work in the media or just take an interest in how it works, few of us have not dwelt occasionally on what it must feel like to stand in the shoes of a media mogul such as Rupert Murdoch, Richard Desmond or Marjorie Scardino. This Christmas it will be possible to experience the adrenalin surge of owning our own media empires and we won’t need a team of investors behind us. Being in charge of a media operation is often glibly referred to as “owning the train set”, but it is an old-fashioned board game that now offers all-comers the chance to make like Rupert.
[From BoardGameGeek review]:
A Machiavellian game of media rivalry, Media Mogul thrusts players into the role of international tycoons seeking to spread their own operations over the globe. Winning over audiences with your television, radio and newspaper media with quality content is a key element, but it won’t directly bring you victory. Lucrative advertising contracts are needed for you to profit from your media operations, but they bore and repel your audiences, requiring you to balance profit and sustainability at all times.
A television channel owned by Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blocked the broadcast Thursday of graphic footage of Italian troops in a firefight with insurgents in Iraq, on the grounds that it would mislead the public. Berlusconi’s Mediaset, which owns the Italia 1 channel, said the video taken by a carabinieri officer during a firefight with insurgents in southern Iraq in 2004 was ‘very confused,’ and ‘provides a representation of Italy’s military’s presence in Iraq which is far from everyday reality.’ However, the six-minute video was broadcast by the 24-hour news channel of state broadcaster RAI and Italian newspapers Friday gave widespread coverage to the video and Mediaset’s decision to block its transmission. The footage shows an Italian patrol returning fire after coming under attack and features one soldier shouting: ‘See that one running, take him out,’ and another saying ‘Look at that bastard moving, get him.’ (Middle East Online,December 12, 2005)
Responding to a complaint by the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) over twelve caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September, Louise Arbour - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - has appointed two UN experts on racism to carry out a detailed investigation into what Arbour characterizes as a “disrespect for belief.”
Why did Jyllands-Posten publish the cartoons? The Copenhagen Post explains: “Jyllands-Posten called for and printed the cartoons by various Danish illustrators, after reports that artists were refusing to illustrate works about Islam, out of fear of fundamendalist retribution. The newspaper said it printed the cartoons as a test of whether Muslim fundamentalists had begun affecting the freedom of expression in Denmark.”
In case you never saw the Muhammad drawings
:
UPDATE!
Please join the debate here: http://forum.newspaperindex.com
Newspapers vying for a Pulitzer Prize, the top honour in American print journalism, can now include material published online as part of their entries, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced Wednesday. The new rules come as newspapers increasingly rely on their websites to disseminate, support, and enhance their work, even as print circulation declines. ‘It’s a very significant change,’ said Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzers. ‘This reflects the growing importance of online content, but, at the same time, print remains very important, and I think the Pulitzer competition now reflects a blend of print and online, which is what most newspapers are seeking to achieve these days.’ The competition’s Public Service category, considered the most prestigious, has since 1999 allowed an online presentation to be part of entries. But the 13 other journalism categories will allow online content for the first time. The new guidelines will apply to the 2006 awards, which cover work in 2005. The 2006 Pulitzer Prizes will be announced April 17. (Editor and Publisher,December 08, 2005)
British and US diplomats have protested to the Libyan government after two international satellites were illegally jammed, knocking off air dozens of TV and radio stations serving Britain and Europe and disrupting American diplomatic, military and FBI communications. Among stations hit were digital broadcasts by Five, BBC World, CNN International, US sports channels, cable TV networks and 23 radio stations. The jamming started on September 19 after the launch in London of a small British and Arab-owned commercial radio station broadcasting on human rights and freedom of speech issues to Libya. Ten minutes after the station - initially known as Sout Libya - went on air a transponder carrying the station was jammed for 50 minutes along with other stations. The jamming stopped when Sout Libya stopped broadcasting. The station relaunched as Sowt Alamel, this time through a new satellite called Telstar 12. As a precaution, the broadcasts were sent to the US first, and then beamed up to Telstar, making it impossible for anybody to jam it, except from America. Yet the moment it went on air, the jamming started again, knocking out the other stations without affecting Sowt Alamel. The station has now voluntarily agreed to suspend its service. (The Guardian,December 08, 2005)
The number of internet users in India will shoot to 100m in two years from the current 38.5m, an industry study said. The number of internet users has soared 54 per cent from 25m users in 2004-2005. The catalyst for this growth was the rise in online shopping for airline and rail tickets, books and home appliances, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said Wednesday. The association said the forecast was based on increasing use of e-commerce and online communication. The e-commerce market was likely to grow to INR 23bn (EUR 425m) by 2006-2007 from the present INR 11.8bn (EUR 218m), the trade group study said. The association conducted the survey in October and polled 882 people who shopped online from cyber cafes. It offered no margin of error. The number of cybercafes in cities and towns across India moved from 18,000 in 2001 to 105,350 this year, the study said. (AP, ABC News,December 08, 2005)
European publishers warned Tuesday that they cannot keep allowing Internet search engines such as Google Inc. to make money from their content. “The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years,” said Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference. His stance backs French news agency AFP, which is suing Google for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news Web sites.
“It is fascinating to see how these companies ‘help themselves’ to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people’s content,” he said. “This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.”
The news section of Google’s Web site doesn’t display ads. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based company depends on visitors clicking on ads in other parts of its Web site to generate a substantial portion of its revenue, which totaled $4.2 billion through the first nine months of this year. Responding to Balsemao’s remarks, Google spokesman Steve Langdon said:
“Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web.” Google removes Web sites from its news index if a publisher doesn’t want the content listed, Langdon said.
Source: Helena Spongenberg, The Associated Press via Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051206/ap_on_hi_te/europe_internet
Communist Cuba deported a Polish journalist on Saturday two days after police detained her for interviewing dissidents while visiting as a tourist, a Polish diplomat said, adding that Cuban police had seized their notes and deleted pictures from a digital camera. Anna Bikont, who works for Gazeta Wyborcza, one of Poland’s most widely circulated newspapers, was put on an Air Lauda flight to Milan by immigration police, the diplomat said . Her colleague and travel companion, Nelly Norton, a dual national Swiss-Italian psychologist who works as a journalist, was also expelled. President Fidel Castro’s government has expelled several European journalists this year to prevent them from reporting on dissent. In May, two Italian and three Polish journalists who travelled to Cuba to cover a rare meeting of pro-democracy activists were deported. Cuba requires foreign reporters who enter Cuba as tourists to abstain from practicing journalism. (Reuters, ABC News,December 06, 2005)
CNN.com launched Monday the CNN Pipeline, an on-demand broadband video service, ‘designed to revolutionise the way people view news online.’ The cable news company said the Pipeline service gives users control of multiple live video streams, CNN’s video archives and on-demand news clips from CNN’s newsgathering operation around the world. (CNN,December 06, 2005)
Norwegian TV pastor Jan Hanvold urges his Christian viewers to pray for the collapse of Norway’s fledgling government. The preacher from the TV-Visjon Norge channel finds the new left-center ‘Red-Green Alliance’ unacceptable, even though he has no major grudge against two of the three coalition partners.
‘The Labour Party and the Centre Party we can swallow, but the Socialist Left stands for a de-Christianising stance that we just cannot support,’ Hanvold said on his live programme on Thursday evening,
the Christian newspaper Magazinet reports. ‘Several Christians have asked to pray for the government, but I pray for a Cabinet crisis,’ Hanvold said. The recent Socialist Left party call to boycott Israel was the final straw.
‘We cannot pray and bless such a government, so I urge all Christians sitting and watching to pray for a government crisis,’ Hanvold said.
(Aftenposten,December 05, 2005)
The military acknowledged Friday in a briefing for a ranking Senate Republican that news articles written by information operations staff in Iraq had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media and not always properly identified. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters that senior US commanders in Iraq were trying to get to the bottom of a programme that apparently also paid monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists. He said that Pentagon officials had told him that the articles or advertisements were intended to counter disinformation in the Iraqi news media that was hurting the American military’s efforts to stabilise the country. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said contractors like the Lincoln Group had been used to market the articles to reduce the risk to Iraqi publishers, who might be attacked if they were seen as being closely linked to the military. (The New York Times,December 05, 2005)
Dar Es Salaam - The Tanzanian government has suspended two newspapers, one of them owned by an opposition presidential candidate, for allegedly violating the law, officials said on Saturday.
The office of Prime Minister Fredrick Sumaye said Tanzania Daima, a radical daily tabloid, has been ordered to stop production and distribution for three days.
Another newspaper, Amani, was suspended for 28 days, it said.
Police have been directed to enforce the suspensions, which come less than two weeks ahead of general elections.
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee summoned top Pentagon officials to a closed-door session on Capitol Hill on Friday to explain a reported secret military campaign in Iraq to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media. The White House also expressed deep concerns about the program. Senior Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had not yet received any explanation of the program from top generals in Iraq, including Gen. John P. Abizaid, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the three most senior commanders for Iraqi operations. After reports about the program circulated this week, General Casey initially protested that it should not be discussed publicly because it was classified. One senior Pentagon official said, however, that General Casey was told that response was inadequate. The official asked for anonymity to avoid possible reprisals for disclosing the general’s reaction. At a briefing with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, responded to a barrage of questions about the program, which military contractors and officials said also pays friendly Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.
“We’re very concerned about the reports,” the White House spokesman said. “We have asked the Department of Defense for more information.”
Source: Eric Schmitt and David S. Cloud, The New York Times
The world’s media has been criticised for being too negative in its reporting of environmental issues. Continual coverage of destruction was making people switch off, delegates at the International Media and Environment Summit (Imes) in Kuching, Malaysia, were told this week.
‘Largely reactive stories on the environment do not grab the public in the way that political or economic stories do, unless they are controversial and negative,’ said Ong Keng Yong, the Secretary General of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
Former UK ambassador to the UN, Sir Crispin Tickell, however, argued that the media had a difficult job. Reporters had to span ‘the long and rickety bridge’ between science and politics, he said, adding that scientists often used a complicated vocabulary, while people in the political world wanted ‘black and white answers’. Opening the conference on Wednesday, Alan Thompson, the Chief Executive of News World International, said he hoped the gathering would lead to ‘more dialogue than squabbles’, noting that ‘it is all very simple - the media leads to public awareness, public awareness leads to public opinion, public opinion leads to public policy.’ (BBC News,December 02, 2005)
Save the rainforrest - read newspapers online…
Mental health professionals in the US have highlighted the emergence of a new psychiatric problem on a par with alcoholism, drug abuse or obsessive gambling: internet addiction disorder. It occurs when an American office worker who should be focussing on the tasks at hand is spending hours playing fantasy football on the computer instead. Or when an executive is so attached to his handheld device that he checks it last thing at night and then consults it the moment he opens his eyes in the morning. According to estimates in The New York Times yesterday, as many as 10 per cent of the 189m internet users in the US could be addicted. Hilarie Cash, who heads Internet/Computer Addiction Service near Seattle, has identified a specific chemical rush, a dopamine high, which can be generated by even something as simple as receiving an email. There are many definitions of internet addiction disorder. One by Jennifer Ferris, a psychologist from Virginia, points to seven telltale signs such as a thirst for ever more time spent online, trembling or even involuntary finger movements when the users is away from the computer, dysfunctions in day-to-day relations with friends and co-workers and, at the extreme, the loss of a job or a marriage because of excessive internet use. It is estimated that American fantasy football alone was costing US employers USD 200m in lost productivity every season. (The Independent,December 02, 2005)
Now Newspaper Index has teamed up with the legendary russian newspaper Pravda as official information partner. You will find a link to Newspaper Index and all pages of the english version of Pravda and Newspaper Index now has a tiny banner pointing to Pravda on all pages.
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