MEDIABLAB NEWS DIGEST JAN 2: Putin Bhutto Sacha Cohen Melanie Phillips David Hicks
January 1st 2008 21:41
A compilation of MediaBlab news reports published since December 31
MARINER AND DESTRA MAY JOIN FORCES IN BEYOND INTERNATIONAL TAKEOVER
Two rival companies Mariner Financial and digital media group Destra, who have been in a bidding war to take control of TV and film production house Beyond International, may join forces, according to speculation in The Australian newspaper.
The Australian reported this morning that it understands the two parties held talks late in 2007 about initiating a bid involving a two-way carve-up of the company. Initial talks are believed to have foundered because Destra was looking to have a controlling interest of at least 50.1 percent, an outcome not satisfactory to Mariner, which also wanted to control the company.
Mariner's latest bid, which ended last month, was for $1.25 a share, valuing Beyond at $74.6 million. Destra launched an aborted push last month to raise funds for a rival takeover bid.
Beyond became a more valued acquisition after news broke that it had sold shows like Mythbusters to major overseas media outlets like the US Discovery Channel.
PACKER-CONTROLLED CONSOLIDATED MEDIA VALUATION MAKES IT AUSTRALIA’S THIRD LARGEST LISTED COMPANY
James Packer’s Consolidated Media Holdings has been valued at as much as $3.9 billion dollars, making it Australia’s third largest list media group by market capitalisation, behind News Corp and Fairfax Media.
The Australian reports that broking house Merrill Lynch’s media analyst Alice Bennett has put out a bullish report on the company, valuing at as much as $3.9 billion.
But even her mid-range valuation puts the value of the company, newly created out of the PBL empire, at about $3.4 billion, well above the company's $2.9 billion market capitalisation before the new year's break.
The report is the second to move well above market valuations in recent weeks. Last month, Shaw Stockbroking media analyst Greg Fraser has put a 12-month valuation target on the company of $5.20 a share, valuing the company at $3.6 billion.
RUSSIA’S PUTIN TO WRITE WEEKLY OP-ED COLUMN FOR NEW YORK TIMES
Russian President Vladimir Putin will write a weekly column for the New York Times op-ed page as of next Monday.
According to the Crooks and Liars website, “Times’ decision underscores the paper’s increasing willingness to showcase views of those who are less concerned with the constraining nature of reality and truth. But Rosenthal scoffed at such assertions.”
The Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal told Crooks and Liars, “The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected and brutal leader – and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that? The whole point of the op-ed page is to air a variety of opinions.”
“In further defending the hire, Rosenthal explained, ‘Look, Hitler and Stalin are dead. Pol Pot, too. Osama bin Laden tends toward the run-on sentence. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has trouble meeting deadlines. Musharraf told us he has too much on his plate right now to commit. Charles Manson’s parole board has repeatedly declined our requests for Chuck to pen a column for us while serving out his life sentence. Dick Cheney can’t write a sentence without dropping an F-bomb. And, well, let’s just say all options were off the table concerning President Bush.”
Crooks and Liars pointed out that Rosenthal’s last paragraph was “ironical.” Indeed.
DOCUMENTS REVEAL THAT THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION NEVER COVETED SBS TV
Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC has long been accused of wanting to takeover SBS TV, but cabinet documents released on New Year’s Day reveal that it turned down the Fraser government's invitation 30 years ago to make the rival public broadcaster its own.
The Australian reported that the documents show the ABC told the government that the money and staff on offer to assume control of the radio stations that were to form the core of the new ethnic broadcasting service were inadequate.
"The commission would not wish to have the responsibility for operating 2EA and 3EA on the present basis and, indeed, sees no particular advantage in the government transferring responsibility to the ABC unless the proposed changes can be made," the then ABC chairman, John Norgard, told telecommunications minister Eric Robinson in June 1977.
The ABC's decision, less than a month before SBS's well-publicised start date, forced the government to examine other administrative options and delay by six months the ethnic broadcaster's creation, this time as a separate statutory authority.
NEW START FOR NEW CEOS OF TWO MAJOR GLOBAL MEDIA COMPANIES IN NEW YEAR
New Years Day marked the start of a new era at two of the world’s biggest media companies.
On January 1, 2008 both Time Warner and Germany’s Bertelsmann AG came under new leadership.
At the German giant media company, Bertelsmann AG, new ceo Hartmut ‘Hart’ Ostrowski signed on. He was hand picked by the Mohn family, which fundametllay controls the company, which in turn controls companies like Columbia House, Random House, and 50 percent of music giant Sony-BMG.
The irreverent Media Wire Daily predicts that Hart will head “a serious push into digital, more consolidation and perhaps an exit from the music business not too far down the road.”
Jeff Bewkes, who signed on as Time Warner’s new ceo, was a popular appointment and the hope is that he will reinvigorate the cumbersome and a tad tired Time Warner machine.
His critical first 100 days on the job will be closely scrutinised by Wall Street.
MORE TRAGEDY STRIKES FAMILY OF AUSTRALIAN NEWSREADER WHO SUICIDED LAST NOVEMBER
The tragic Channel Ten TV newsreader Charmaine Dragun, who took her own life in November in Sydney, is in the hews again, with The Australian reporting that one of three truck drivers killed when a firestorm engulfed their convoy west of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia on Sunday was her uncle.
Lewis Bedford, a 60-year-old grandfather, was the brother of Dragun's mother, Estelle. Charmaine Dragun's body was found at the base of The Gap, a popular suicide spot, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, after she had apparently waged a long battle with depression.
Bedford was one of three truck drivers who died after authorities opened a roadblock at the goldfields town of Coolgardie, allowing their convoy to drive into the path of a bushfire.
The three men died in what truck drivers described as a swirling wildfire with 9 metre-high flames. Bedford and a friend were found dead in the sleeping compartment of the burnt-out double semi-trailer at midnight on Sunday.
AMERICAN NEW MAGAZINE LAUNCHES FALL TO 16 YEAR LOW
The New York Post reports that new American magazine launches in 2007 fell to just 650 titles, the lowest such tally in 16 years, according to Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi professor.
Husni said the last time there were less launches was in 1991, with a total of 553.
But Husni doesn’t embrace conventional wisdom that suggests this is due to the encroachment of the web, but suggests it could simply be due to an overcrowded market, not to mention overcrowded magazine racks in retail outlets.
He said, “I don't blame the internet. In 1980, we had 2,000 titles on newsstands. Now there are 7,200 titles on newsstands. I think the magazine industry is still alive and kicking."
He noted that the number of 2007 launches was trending even lower until the final months of the year. "The big publishers hit the brakes in the first half, but we saw a lot of small specialized publications appearing in the second half."
But Mediaweek in the US reports that on magazine sector showing growth is the men’s lifestyle magazine category, which itself rose 12.6 percent in the year, per the Mediaweek Monitor.
NEW ZEALAND GARDENER MAGAZINE READERS NO LONGER HALF-BAKED OVER HOME-GROWN
The spirit of the ‘70s lives on in New Zealand. Or perhaps New Zealand is still living in the ‘70s. Whichever, Lynda Halliman, editor of Gardener magazine is urging readers to follow her 2007 example and embark on the home grown path, becoming self-sufficient veggie-patch-wise.
Scoop.co.nz reports that she’s issued a challenge to Kiwis to get growing in 2008, and will help by providing weekly free advice for home growers and interactive mentoring via the magazine’s email service.
At the beginning of 2007, Hallinan made a public New Year's resolution to her readers to only eat homegrown fruit and vegetables, to cut her food miles to metres, and to spend no more than $10 a week on basics at the supermarket.
Her self-sufficiency efforts were so successful she was able to trade her surplus produce at the Auckland City Farmers' Market for non-home-growable stuff like steak and sausages.
"I've sown, grown and gloated my way through the seasons. And I've baked, boiled, brewed and bottled as if my life depended on it," she said
"I've done it – and now I want to help other New Zealanders learn how to give the 'good life' a go too."
Hallinan's self-sufficiency project featured on TV One's Sunday program and is the subject of a collector's edition of New Zealand Gardener called Homegrown.
Plus, starting on New Year's Day, New Zealand Gardener is launching a free weekly vegetable gardening email newsletter packed with advice for homegrown harvests.
The interactive Get Growing email will be sent out each Friday during 2008 and will focus on practical tips and tasks for the weekend, along with special offers, recipes and the opportunity to ask New Zealand Gardener's experts for advice.
INDIA POSTPONES GOVT AUCTION OF FM RADIO LICENCES FOR THE FOURTH TIME
India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has postponed the FM radio auctions for the fourth time in a row, and has now intimated that January 14 and January 24, 2008 will be the new dates.
According to exchange4media, sources said their applications were rejected on technical grounds and now the Ministry might take a re-look at some of the rejected applicants to give them a chance to participate in the bidding, especially after the High Court directive in the Radio Today case.
Exchange4media said, “The omissions in the current list of bidders include existing radio operators, Radio City and Radio Today. With the Phase III policies to be announced shortly, many operators feel that these bidding should be postponed to Phase III because then the policy would be clear, there would be a level playing field and the government would get more revenue.”
Couldn’t be any clearer than that, really.
The bidding among the 27 short listed private FM radio companies was originally scheduled for November 12 and November 26, 2007, but was cancelled just five days before the bidding. The bidding process requires eligible companies to quote three amounts for every vacant station (license) in the form of bank drafts. The highest financial bid will win the frequency. An initial payment of 50 percent of the bid amount has to be made at the time of receiving the letter of intent soon after the bidding.
AUSTRALIA JOINS CHINA IN CENSORING THE INTERNET BUT OF COURSE IT’S FOR THE PEOPLE’S GOOD
Widely-read international website TechCrunch reported that, “The Australian government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet.”
TechCrunch said, “The Labor Party’s policy was announced prior to the Australian election in November and was justified on the basis that the previous government’s policy of providing free copies of NetNanny to all Australian households who wanted it didn’t adequately protect children.”
As recently as the week prior to the election, Labor Party candidates said that the censorship wouldn’t be compulsory, and that the ‘clean feed’ would be opt-in, not opt-out. Monday’s announcement by Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy states that the censorship regime will be mandatory, although people will be able to opt-out of it.
As TechCrunch comments, “The problem of course then becomes if you opt-out questions will be asked as to why you want out, which in itself may lead to government monitoring.”
TechCrunch also questioned the meaning of “inappropriate material” that the government referred to, and said, “How far ‘inappropriate material’ may extend was not made clear, for example questioning government policy where it comes to Aboriginal people could be deemed to be discrimination under Australian law and hence blocked by the censorship regime. Worst still, bloggers or those (such as forum owners) who allow users to comment or post could find themselves blocked under this proposal should someone say or post the wrong thing. If there is one certainty in any country that implements broad scale censorship, once they start blocking content it doesn’t stop, and certainly every do-gooder group and special interest lobbyist will be wanting the government to add to the list.”
TechCrunch finally fully puts the boot in by saying, “Notably, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was a former Australian diplomat in China, and speaks fluent Mandarin; given Australia’s boom is fuelled by mineral exports to China, it would seem that Australian government policies are now by China in return.”
The theme of Australian modelling itself on Chinese authoritarianism also came through in an ABC news story on Monday afternoon in a quote from Senator Conroy himself.
The ABC reported, “Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.
“Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.”
The ABC then reported that online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, “but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.”
He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.
"Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road," he said.
"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor government is going to disagree."
Meanwhile, in Queensland Brisbane Courier mail reader Maurie Drew wrote to the Courier Mail newspaper likening the Labor government to the Myanmar government over this issue.
He wrote, “It is interesting to note that the government is following the lead of the government of Burma in deciding what internet users may access.”
Drew, an oil explorer, was a long-time resident of Myanmar and his son Chris still operates out of Yangon.
PROFESSIONAL NEWS FOOTAGE OF BHUTTO SLAYING ATTRACTS SOLID NUMBERS ON YOUTUBE
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto drew large numbers of viewers to YouTube on the two days following the sad event, but, according to Online Media Daily, professional TV newscasts, some posted by the news organisations themselves, were by far the most popular content on the site.
A minute-long clip posted on the site by Al-Jazeera English drew about 185,000 views by about 24 hours after the attack. The second-most-popular YouTube clip was a reposting of news reports from Channel Newsasia, CNN, BBC that were recorded by the user simply training a camera on a TV, flipping between channels occasionally. This clip attracted over 177,000 views within the 24-hour period.
Dozens of postings attracted between 40,000 and 80,000 views. A report from BBC showing the chaos immediately after the shooting and suicide bombing attracted about 65,000 views in the same time, Online Media Daily reported.
A clip from Fox News, involving discussion of the implications for US foreign policy, attracted over 57,000 views. A CNN clip of the last footage of Bhutto, taken at the rally minutes before she was shot and killed, attracted over 38,000 views.
Online Media Daily commented, “Professional news content may have dominated the YouTube postings because there were no user-generated video clips to compete with it – at least, none have been posted so far.
“In the past, YouTube coverage of the hanging of Saddam Hussein included a mix of both professional and user-generated content. User footage, surreptitiously filmed by an observer with his cell phone, was far more controversial (and therefore popular) because it showed the actual hanging. Professional news outlets were more restrained in their coverage.
SACHA COHEN TO PLAY HIPPY RADICAL AND AUTHOR ABBIE HOFFMAN IN SPIELBERG FILM
Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Ali G and Borat has been persuaded by Steven Spielberg to play American anarcho-hippy radical and author Abbie Hoffman in a forthcoming film titled, The Trial of the Chicago Seven.
The Sunday Times reports that Cohen will portray Abbie Hoffman, “a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of pranks to campaign against the Vietnam war” for an expected fee of about pounds stg3 million (A$6.8 million.)
Cohen, 36, won international acclaim with the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and has now retired his Borat character.
The Trial of the Chicago Seven follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam-war ‘carnival’ that turned nasty. Demonstrators threw bricks, police responded with tear gas and the centre of Chicago was engulfed in flames. Curfews only escalated the violence.
After the clashes, independent investigators blamed eight police officers and eight protesters including Hoffman, who had already disrupted the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.
The police were not charged but the protesters were accused of inciting a riot. One was jailed for contempt, leaving the seven to fight the charges.
The later writer Norman Mailer, who testified for the seven, said it was a noisy televised clash between the old order and the burgeoning counterculture.
Hoffman became a cult celebrity who, later diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, killed himself with pills in 1989.
Cohen is still fighting writs for slander and fraud from several people sent up in the Borat movie, including the villagers of Glod in Romania where the opening sections of the film were shot.
CONSERVATIVES CLAIM FREE SPEECH IS UNDER ATTACK BY RICH SAUDIS AND BRITISH COURTS
The mainstream media in the US has largely ignored the issue, but conservative media outlets have been going gaga over the trend by Saudi billionaires to sue US authors for libel and defamation mostly in Britain rather than the US.
The pro-Saudis say they use British courts because they still offer protection against harmful and poor journalism; the opposing camp say British courts are misappropriated by ‘libel tourists’ intent on circumventing the American notion of free speech as invoked in the sacred US constitution.
Typical of the latter stream of thinking is Jed Babbin, online editor of Human Events who on Friday wrote, “Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada. They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America.
“ Muslims – individually and in pressure groups – are using British libel laws and Canadian ‘human rights’ laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and Mark Steyn prove the point.”
Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld is a cause celebre of the movement at the moment. She wrote the book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How to Stop It, and in that book she claims that Sheikh Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz, a Saudi who is former head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank, and some of his family had funded terrorism directly and indirectly.
Her appeal in a New York court against the British ruling was knocked back in December and that is why the issue is now doing the rounds again.
Jed Babbin writes, “Ehrenfeld is American, her book was written and published in America and she has no business or other ties to Britain. Under American law, the Brit courts would have no jurisdiction over her. But about two dozen copies of her book were sold there through the internet. Bin Mahfouz sued her for libel in the Brit courts where the burden of proof is the opposite of what it is in US courts: the author has to prove that what is written is true, rather than the supposedly defamed person proving it is false.
“Ehrenfeld refused to fight the case, saying the Brit courts have no jurisdiction over her. Mahfouz got a default judgment against her. The judgment also requires that there be no further ‘defamatory’ statements published in England and Wales.”
In November 21, 2007 Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz’s solicitors, Laurence Harris and Kendall Freeman, published a letter in the Spectator which first of all criticised the Observer’s journalist Melanie Phillips for her report the day before.
The letter opened with the statement, “Sir: If Melanie Phillips had checked her facts – or checked with the subject of her article – she would have avoided making assertions about Mr. Khalid Bin Mahfouz which are wrong ('The Lights go out in Britain', 20 November).
Mr. Bin Mahfouz - who has publicly condemned terrorism -- has not used English libel laws ‘to suppress evidence about the alleged links between Saudi financing and terrorism,’ but to shed much-needed light on this topic. “By openly confronting stories that had linked him to funding of terrorism through his role as head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bin Mahfouz has demonstrated convincingly that there is no factual basis for these claims. He has not sued 30 publications, as Ms Phillips suggests, but four.
“In dozens of other instances, publications that have repeated these allegations have promptly and publicly apologised, usually without any threat of litigation, because it was evident from material publicly available that there was no evidence to support these sensational and extremely defamatory claims.
”Much of this material is summarised by Mr. Justice Eady in his Judgment against Rachel Ehrenfeld (posted at Really Long Link
“As the Court made clear, Ms. Ehrenfeld is indeed ‘fighting a lonely battle,’ not against ‘libel tourism,’ as Phillips suggests, but against the truth. Rather than check her facts, defend her statements in open court, or acknowledge her mistakes, Ehrenfeld hides behind a claim to free speech. Thank goodness, the legal lights remain on in Britain to expose such harmful journalism.”
In Human Events, Jed Babbin said that with this letter “bin Mahfouz’s lawyers gloated over their victory against Ehrenfeld… ‘harmful journalism’ is what tyrants and despots call free speech, especially political speech that condemns their affronts to freedom. The ‘legal lights’ Mahfouz’s lawyers see is the bonfire they made of the Magna Carta. Thanks to Mahfouz and his ilk, the light of free speech is extinguished in Britain.”
Part of what Justice Eady said in his November 3, 2005 ruling was:
“Cherif Sedky also drew my attention to an article in the Jerusalem Post of 19 January of this year written by Caroline Glick. It refers to the first defendant as ‘Mahfouz's most recent victim’ and again takes the point that she is lacking in financial clout so as to be able to defend herself in Britain and says that she would be hard pressed to ‘emerge victorious given Britain's pro plaintiff libel laws’. It is said that ‘Mahfouz uses his vast wealth to intimidate his critics into silence with a threat of financial and professional ruin.’
“The purpose of this exercise is fairly obvious, namely to give the impression that any judgment of the English court is of little significance and does nothing to establish that the allegations are false. That is why it is so important, as the claimants appreciate, to go through such allegations as have been made against them in the past on behalf of these defendants in order to demonstrate their lack of merit. That is why this judgment has gone to such length. It is not a purely formal process and the declaration of falsity which I propose to grant shortly is not an empty gesture
“The claimants are anxious for it to be made absolutely clear that the defendants have had every opportunity to defend these proceedings by means of a plea of justification if they thought it appropriate. All they have been able to advance, it is said, is material of a flimsy and unreliable nature, and the claimants have taken the trouble to demonstrate its lack of merit.”
Human Events is a conservative weekly magazine that was founded in the US in 1944, and takes its name from the first sentence of the US Declaration of Independence, which reads "When in the course of human events..."
Ironically, while the magazine casts itself as a defender of free speech and champions Ehrenfeld’s book, the magazine is notorious for publishing a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The list is comprised of:
1. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
3. Quotations by Chairman Mao Zedung, by Mao Zedung
4. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey (aka The Kinsey Report.)
5. Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, by August Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GOVT TO COME DOWN “LIKE A TONNE OF BRICKS” IF DAVID HICKS SELLS HIS GUANTANAMO BAY STORY
South Australian Premier Mike Rann has issued a blunt warning to David Hicks and his family that they will not be allowed to circumvent proceeds-of-crime law and profit from the sale of his story.
The Australian reported that Rann said yesterday any payment to Hicks, even through a third party, would be an "absolute affront" to the public.
"We would be extremely angry if there was any attempt to subvert a law which is designed to prevent people from profiting from someone who was involved in supporting terrorism," Rann told The Australian.
"We would come down like a tonne of bricks on anyone that tried to subvert this law. My message to the family is he can tell his story - he has a right to tell his story – but we do not want to see, basically, people making a buck out of this."
According to The Australian, Hicks's father Terry has suggested it might be possible for his son to negotiate payment for his story from a book publisher or news media organisation and then donate the proceeds to charity.
Rann pre-empted this, declaring, "It is still profiting."
Hicks was imprisoned in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay for taking up arms with terrorists in Afghanistan before and after the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001.
SOUTH KOREA PASSES IPTV LAW TO PERMIT REAL-TIME BROADCASTING VIA BROADBAND
South Korea's National Assembly passed a law allowing telcos to offer real-time broadcasting over their broadband networks, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It said the parliament passed the law on Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV, according to the National Assembly's web site.
KT Corp and Hanarotelecom Inc, the country's two largest broadband-service operators by sales, are set to launch IPTV services as a new source of revenue amid slowing growth in traditional broadband and telephone markets.
This follows Friday’s MediaBlab report that China will release a policy on online video sharing and broadcasting next year, according to Interfax China Online.
Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry, told local media at an annual national information conference that the policy will be the first to be jointly issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
At present, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television regulates TV and online video broadcasting, while the Ministry of Information Industry regulates internet content providers, and an official from Ministry of Information Industry regulation department said that at present, it is hard to tell which businesses should be regulated by which bureaucracy in the online video sector.
MARINER AND DESTRA MAY JOIN FORCES IN BEYOND INTERNATIONAL TAKEOVER
Two rival companies Mariner Financial and digital media group Destra, who have been in a bidding war to take control of TV and film production house Beyond International, may join forces, according to speculation in The Australian newspaper.
The Australian reported this morning that it understands the two parties held talks late in 2007 about initiating a bid involving a two-way carve-up of the company. Initial talks are believed to have foundered because Destra was looking to have a controlling interest of at least 50.1 percent, an outcome not satisfactory to Mariner, which also wanted to control the company.
Beyond became a more valued acquisition after news broke that it had sold shows like Mythbusters to major overseas media outlets like the US Discovery Channel.
PACKER-CONTROLLED CONSOLIDATED MEDIA VALUATION MAKES IT AUSTRALIA’S THIRD LARGEST LISTED COMPANY
James Packer’s Consolidated Media Holdings has been valued at as much as $3.9 billion dollars, making it Australia’s third largest list media group by market capitalisation, behind News Corp and Fairfax Media.
The Australian reports that broking house Merrill Lynch’s media analyst Alice Bennett has put out a bullish report on the company, valuing at as much as $3.9 billion.
But even her mid-range valuation puts the value of the company, newly created out of the PBL empire, at about $3.4 billion, well above the company's $2.9 billion market capitalisation before the new year's break.
RUSSIA’S PUTIN TO WRITE WEEKLY OP-ED COLUMN FOR NEW YORK TIMES
Russian President Vladimir Putin will write a weekly column for the New York Times op-ed page as of next Monday.
According to the Crooks and Liars website, “Times’ decision underscores the paper’s increasing willingness to showcase views of those who are less concerned with the constraining nature of reality and truth. But Rosenthal scoffed at such assertions.”
The Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal told Crooks and Liars, “The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected and brutal leader – and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that? The whole point of the op-ed page is to air a variety of opinions.”
“In further defending the hire, Rosenthal explained, ‘Look, Hitler and Stalin are dead. Pol Pot, too. Osama bin Laden tends toward the run-on sentence. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has trouble meeting deadlines. Musharraf told us he has too much on his plate right now to commit. Charles Manson’s parole board has repeatedly declined our requests for Chuck to pen a column for us while serving out his life sentence. Dick Cheney can’t write a sentence without dropping an F-bomb. And, well, let’s just say all options were off the table concerning President Bush.”
Crooks and Liars pointed out that Rosenthal’s last paragraph was “ironical.” Indeed.
DOCUMENTS REVEAL THAT THE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION NEVER COVETED SBS TV
Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC has long been accused of wanting to takeover SBS TV, but cabinet documents released on New Year’s Day reveal that it turned down the Fraser government's invitation 30 years ago to make the rival public broadcaster its own.
The Australian reported that the documents show the ABC told the government that the money and staff on offer to assume control of the radio stations that were to form the core of the new ethnic broadcasting service were inadequate.
"The commission would not wish to have the responsibility for operating 2EA and 3EA on the present basis and, indeed, sees no particular advantage in the government transferring responsibility to the ABC unless the proposed changes can be made," the then ABC chairman, John Norgard, told telecommunications minister Eric Robinson in June 1977.
The ABC's decision, less than a month before SBS's well-publicised start date, forced the government to examine other administrative options and delay by six months the ethnic broadcaster's creation, this time as a separate statutory authority.
NEW START FOR NEW CEOS OF TWO MAJOR GLOBAL MEDIA COMPANIES IN NEW YEAR
New Years Day marked the start of a new era at two of the world’s biggest media companies.
On January 1, 2008 both Time Warner and Germany’s Bertelsmann AG came under new leadership.
At the German giant media company, Bertelsmann AG, new ceo Hartmut ‘Hart’ Ostrowski signed on. He was hand picked by the Mohn family, which fundametllay controls the company, which in turn controls companies like Columbia House, Random House, and 50 percent of music giant Sony-BMG.
The irreverent Media Wire Daily predicts that Hart will head “a serious push into digital, more consolidation and perhaps an exit from the music business not too far down the road.”
Jeff Bewkes, who signed on as Time Warner’s new ceo, was a popular appointment and the hope is that he will reinvigorate the cumbersome and a tad tired Time Warner machine.
His critical first 100 days on the job will be closely scrutinised by Wall Street.
MORE TRAGEDY STRIKES FAMILY OF AUSTRALIAN NEWSREADER WHO SUICIDED LAST NOVEMBER
The tragic Channel Ten TV newsreader Charmaine Dragun, who took her own life in November in Sydney, is in the hews again, with The Australian reporting that one of three truck drivers killed when a firestorm engulfed their convoy west of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia on Sunday was her uncle.
Lewis Bedford, a 60-year-old grandfather, was the brother of Dragun's mother, Estelle. Charmaine Dragun's body was found at the base of The Gap, a popular suicide spot, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, after she had apparently waged a long battle with depression.
Bedford was one of three truck drivers who died after authorities opened a roadblock at the goldfields town of Coolgardie, allowing their convoy to drive into the path of a bushfire.
The three men died in what truck drivers described as a swirling wildfire with 9 metre-high flames. Bedford and a friend were found dead in the sleeping compartment of the burnt-out double semi-trailer at midnight on Sunday.
AMERICAN NEW MAGAZINE LAUNCHES FALL TO 16 YEAR LOW
The New York Post reports that new American magazine launches in 2007 fell to just 650 titles, the lowest such tally in 16 years, according to Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi professor.
Husni said the last time there were less launches was in 1991, with a total of 553.
But Husni doesn’t embrace conventional wisdom that suggests this is due to the encroachment of the web, but suggests it could simply be due to an overcrowded market, not to mention overcrowded magazine racks in retail outlets.
He said, “I don't blame the internet. In 1980, we had 2,000 titles on newsstands. Now there are 7,200 titles on newsstands. I think the magazine industry is still alive and kicking."
He noted that the number of 2007 launches was trending even lower until the final months of the year. "The big publishers hit the brakes in the first half, but we saw a lot of small specialized publications appearing in the second half."
But Mediaweek in the US reports that on magazine sector showing growth is the men’s lifestyle magazine category, which itself rose 12.6 percent in the year, per the Mediaweek Monitor.
NEW ZEALAND GARDENER MAGAZINE READERS NO LONGER HALF-BAKED OVER HOME-GROWN
The spirit of the ‘70s lives on in New Zealand. Or perhaps New Zealand is still living in the ‘70s. Whichever, Lynda Halliman, editor of Gardener magazine is urging readers to follow her 2007 example and embark on the home grown path, becoming self-sufficient veggie-patch-wise.
Scoop.co.nz reports that she’s issued a challenge to Kiwis to get growing in 2008, and will help by providing weekly free advice for home growers and interactive mentoring via the magazine’s email service.
At the beginning of 2007, Hallinan made a public New Year's resolution to her readers to only eat homegrown fruit and vegetables, to cut her food miles to metres, and to spend no more than $10 a week on basics at the supermarket.
Her self-sufficiency efforts were so successful she was able to trade her surplus produce at the Auckland City Farmers' Market for non-home-growable stuff like steak and sausages.
"I've sown, grown and gloated my way through the seasons. And I've baked, boiled, brewed and bottled as if my life depended on it," she said
"I've done it – and now I want to help other New Zealanders learn how to give the 'good life' a go too."
Hallinan's self-sufficiency project featured on TV One's Sunday program and is the subject of a collector's edition of New Zealand Gardener called Homegrown.
Plus, starting on New Year's Day, New Zealand Gardener is launching a free weekly vegetable gardening email newsletter packed with advice for homegrown harvests.
The interactive Get Growing email will be sent out each Friday during 2008 and will focus on practical tips and tasks for the weekend, along with special offers, recipes and the opportunity to ask New Zealand Gardener's experts for advice.
INDIA POSTPONES GOVT AUCTION OF FM RADIO LICENCES FOR THE FOURTH TIME
India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has postponed the FM radio auctions for the fourth time in a row, and has now intimated that January 14 and January 24, 2008 will be the new dates.
According to exchange4media, sources said their applications were rejected on technical grounds and now the Ministry might take a re-look at some of the rejected applicants to give them a chance to participate in the bidding, especially after the High Court directive in the Radio Today case.
Exchange4media said, “The omissions in the current list of bidders include existing radio operators, Radio City and Radio Today. With the Phase III policies to be announced shortly, many operators feel that these bidding should be postponed to Phase III because then the policy would be clear, there would be a level playing field and the government would get more revenue.”
Couldn’t be any clearer than that, really.
The bidding among the 27 short listed private FM radio companies was originally scheduled for November 12 and November 26, 2007, but was cancelled just five days before the bidding. The bidding process requires eligible companies to quote three amounts for every vacant station (license) in the form of bank drafts. The highest financial bid will win the frequency. An initial payment of 50 percent of the bid amount has to be made at the time of receiving the letter of intent soon after the bidding.
AUSTRALIA JOINS CHINA IN CENSORING THE INTERNET BUT OF COURSE IT’S FOR THE PEOPLE’S GOOD
Widely-read international website TechCrunch reported that, “The Australian government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet.”
TechCrunch said, “The Labor Party’s policy was announced prior to the Australian election in November and was justified on the basis that the previous government’s policy of providing free copies of NetNanny to all Australian households who wanted it didn’t adequately protect children.”
As recently as the week prior to the election, Labor Party candidates said that the censorship wouldn’t be compulsory, and that the ‘clean feed’ would be opt-in, not opt-out. Monday’s announcement by Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy states that the censorship regime will be mandatory, although people will be able to opt-out of it.
As TechCrunch comments, “The problem of course then becomes if you opt-out questions will be asked as to why you want out, which in itself may lead to government monitoring.”
TechCrunch also questioned the meaning of “inappropriate material” that the government referred to, and said, “How far ‘inappropriate material’ may extend was not made clear, for example questioning government policy where it comes to Aboriginal people could be deemed to be discrimination under Australian law and hence blocked by the censorship regime. Worst still, bloggers or those (such as forum owners) who allow users to comment or post could find themselves blocked under this proposal should someone say or post the wrong thing. If there is one certainty in any country that implements broad scale censorship, once they start blocking content it doesn’t stop, and certainly every do-gooder group and special interest lobbyist will be wanting the government to add to the list.”
TechCrunch finally fully puts the boot in by saying, “Notably, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was a former Australian diplomat in China, and speaks fluent Mandarin; given Australia’s boom is fuelled by mineral exports to China, it would seem that Australian government policies are now by China in return.”
The theme of Australian modelling itself on Chinese authoritarianism also came through in an ABC news story on Monday afternoon in a quote from Senator Conroy himself.
The ABC reported, “Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.
“Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.”
The ABC then reported that online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, “but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.”
He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.
"Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road," he said.
"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor government is going to disagree."
Meanwhile, in Queensland Brisbane Courier mail reader Maurie Drew wrote to the Courier Mail newspaper likening the Labor government to the Myanmar government over this issue.
He wrote, “It is interesting to note that the government is following the lead of the government of Burma in deciding what internet users may access.”
Drew, an oil explorer, was a long-time resident of Myanmar and his son Chris still operates out of Yangon.
PROFESSIONAL NEWS FOOTAGE OF BHUTTO SLAYING ATTRACTS SOLID NUMBERS ON YOUTUBE
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto drew large numbers of viewers to YouTube on the two days following the sad event, but, according to Online Media Daily, professional TV newscasts, some posted by the news organisations themselves, were by far the most popular content on the site.
A minute-long clip posted on the site by Al-Jazeera English drew about 185,000 views by about 24 hours after the attack. The second-most-popular YouTube clip was a reposting of news reports from Channel Newsasia, CNN, BBC that were recorded by the user simply training a camera on a TV, flipping between channels occasionally. This clip attracted over 177,000 views within the 24-hour period.
Dozens of postings attracted between 40,000 and 80,000 views. A report from BBC showing the chaos immediately after the shooting and suicide bombing attracted about 65,000 views in the same time, Online Media Daily reported.
A clip from Fox News, involving discussion of the implications for US foreign policy, attracted over 57,000 views. A CNN clip of the last footage of Bhutto, taken at the rally minutes before she was shot and killed, attracted over 38,000 views.
Online Media Daily commented, “Professional news content may have dominated the YouTube postings because there were no user-generated video clips to compete with it – at least, none have been posted so far.
“In the past, YouTube coverage of the hanging of Saddam Hussein included a mix of both professional and user-generated content. User footage, surreptitiously filmed by an observer with his cell phone, was far more controversial (and therefore popular) because it showed the actual hanging. Professional news outlets were more restrained in their coverage.
SACHA COHEN TO PLAY HIPPY RADICAL AND AUTHOR ABBIE HOFFMAN IN SPIELBERG FILM
Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Ali G and Borat has been persuaded by Steven Spielberg to play American anarcho-hippy radical and author Abbie Hoffman in a forthcoming film titled, The Trial of the Chicago Seven.
The Sunday Times reports that Cohen will portray Abbie Hoffman, “a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of pranks to campaign against the Vietnam war” for an expected fee of about pounds stg3 million (A$6.8 million.)
Cohen, 36, won international acclaim with the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and has now retired his Borat character.
The Trial of the Chicago Seven follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam-war ‘carnival’ that turned nasty. Demonstrators threw bricks, police responded with tear gas and the centre of Chicago was engulfed in flames. Curfews only escalated the violence.
After the clashes, independent investigators blamed eight police officers and eight protesters including Hoffman, who had already disrupted the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.
The police were not charged but the protesters were accused of inciting a riot. One was jailed for contempt, leaving the seven to fight the charges.
The later writer Norman Mailer, who testified for the seven, said it was a noisy televised clash between the old order and the burgeoning counterculture.
Hoffman became a cult celebrity who, later diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, killed himself with pills in 1989.
Cohen is still fighting writs for slander and fraud from several people sent up in the Borat movie, including the villagers of Glod in Romania where the opening sections of the film were shot.
CONSERVATIVES CLAIM FREE SPEECH IS UNDER ATTACK BY RICH SAUDIS AND BRITISH COURTS
The mainstream media in the US has largely ignored the issue, but conservative media outlets have been going gaga over the trend by Saudi billionaires to sue US authors for libel and defamation mostly in Britain rather than the US.
The pro-Saudis say they use British courts because they still offer protection against harmful and poor journalism; the opposing camp say British courts are misappropriated by ‘libel tourists’ intent on circumventing the American notion of free speech as invoked in the sacred US constitution.
Typical of the latter stream of thinking is Jed Babbin, online editor of Human Events who on Friday wrote, “Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada. They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America.
“ Muslims – individually and in pressure groups – are using British libel laws and Canadian ‘human rights’ laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and Mark Steyn prove the point.”
Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld is a cause celebre of the movement at the moment. She wrote the book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How to Stop It, and in that book she claims that Sheikh Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz, a Saudi who is former head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank, and some of his family had funded terrorism directly and indirectly.
Her appeal in a New York court against the British ruling was knocked back in December and that is why the issue is now doing the rounds again.
Jed Babbin writes, “Ehrenfeld is American, her book was written and published in America and she has no business or other ties to Britain. Under American law, the Brit courts would have no jurisdiction over her. But about two dozen copies of her book were sold there through the internet. Bin Mahfouz sued her for libel in the Brit courts where the burden of proof is the opposite of what it is in US courts: the author has to prove that what is written is true, rather than the supposedly defamed person proving it is false.
“Ehrenfeld refused to fight the case, saying the Brit courts have no jurisdiction over her. Mahfouz got a default judgment against her. The judgment also requires that there be no further ‘defamatory’ statements published in England and Wales.”
In November 21, 2007 Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz’s solicitors, Laurence Harris and Kendall Freeman, published a letter in the Spectator which first of all criticised the Observer’s journalist Melanie Phillips for her report the day before.
The letter opened with the statement, “Sir: If Melanie Phillips had checked her facts – or checked with the subject of her article – she would have avoided making assertions about Mr. Khalid Bin Mahfouz which are wrong ('The Lights go out in Britain', 20 November).
Mr. Bin Mahfouz - who has publicly condemned terrorism -- has not used English libel laws ‘to suppress evidence about the alleged links between Saudi financing and terrorism,’ but to shed much-needed light on this topic. “By openly confronting stories that had linked him to funding of terrorism through his role as head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bin Mahfouz has demonstrated convincingly that there is no factual basis for these claims. He has not sued 30 publications, as Ms Phillips suggests, but four.
“In dozens of other instances, publications that have repeated these allegations have promptly and publicly apologised, usually without any threat of litigation, because it was evident from material publicly available that there was no evidence to support these sensational and extremely defamatory claims.
”Much of this material is summarised by Mr. Justice Eady in his Judgment against Rachel Ehrenfeld (posted at Really Long Link
“As the Court made clear, Ms. Ehrenfeld is indeed ‘fighting a lonely battle,’ not against ‘libel tourism,’ as Phillips suggests, but against the truth. Rather than check her facts, defend her statements in open court, or acknowledge her mistakes, Ehrenfeld hides behind a claim to free speech. Thank goodness, the legal lights remain on in Britain to expose such harmful journalism.”
In Human Events, Jed Babbin said that with this letter “bin Mahfouz’s lawyers gloated over their victory against Ehrenfeld… ‘harmful journalism’ is what tyrants and despots call free speech, especially political speech that condemns their affronts to freedom. The ‘legal lights’ Mahfouz’s lawyers see is the bonfire they made of the Magna Carta. Thanks to Mahfouz and his ilk, the light of free speech is extinguished in Britain.”
Part of what Justice Eady said in his November 3, 2005 ruling was:
“Cherif Sedky also drew my attention to an article in the Jerusalem Post of 19 January of this year written by Caroline Glick. It refers to the first defendant as ‘Mahfouz's most recent victim’ and again takes the point that she is lacking in financial clout so as to be able to defend herself in Britain and says that she would be hard pressed to ‘emerge victorious given Britain's pro plaintiff libel laws’. It is said that ‘Mahfouz uses his vast wealth to intimidate his critics into silence with a threat of financial and professional ruin.’
“The purpose of this exercise is fairly obvious, namely to give the impression that any judgment of the English court is of little significance and does nothing to establish that the allegations are false. That is why it is so important, as the claimants appreciate, to go through such allegations as have been made against them in the past on behalf of these defendants in order to demonstrate their lack of merit. That is why this judgment has gone to such length. It is not a purely formal process and the declaration of falsity which I propose to grant shortly is not an empty gesture
“The claimants are anxious for it to be made absolutely clear that the defendants have had every opportunity to defend these proceedings by means of a plea of justification if they thought it appropriate. All they have been able to advance, it is said, is material of a flimsy and unreliable nature, and the claimants have taken the trouble to demonstrate its lack of merit.”
Human Events is a conservative weekly magazine that was founded in the US in 1944, and takes its name from the first sentence of the US Declaration of Independence, which reads "When in the course of human events..."
Ironically, while the magazine casts itself as a defender of free speech and champions Ehrenfeld’s book, the magazine is notorious for publishing a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The list is comprised of:
1. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
3. Quotations by Chairman Mao Zedung, by Mao Zedung
4. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey (aka The Kinsey Report.)
5. Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, by August Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GOVT TO COME DOWN “LIKE A TONNE OF BRICKS” IF DAVID HICKS SELLS HIS GUANTANAMO BAY STORY
South Australian Premier Mike Rann has issued a blunt warning to David Hicks and his family that they will not be allowed to circumvent proceeds-of-crime law and profit from the sale of his story.
The Australian reported that Rann said yesterday any payment to Hicks, even through a third party, would be an "absolute affront" to the public.
"We would be extremely angry if there was any attempt to subvert a law which is designed to prevent people from profiting from someone who was involved in supporting terrorism," Rann told The Australian.
"We would come down like a tonne of bricks on anyone that tried to subvert this law. My message to the family is he can tell his story - he has a right to tell his story – but we do not want to see, basically, people making a buck out of this."
According to The Australian, Hicks's father Terry has suggested it might be possible for his son to negotiate payment for his story from a book publisher or news media organisation and then donate the proceeds to charity.
Rann pre-empted this, declaring, "It is still profiting."
Hicks was imprisoned in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay for taking up arms with terrorists in Afghanistan before and after the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001.
SOUTH KOREA PASSES IPTV LAW TO PERMIT REAL-TIME BROADCASTING VIA BROADBAND
South Korea's National Assembly passed a law allowing telcos to offer real-time broadcasting over their broadband networks, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It said the parliament passed the law on Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV, according to the National Assembly's web site.
KT Corp and Hanarotelecom Inc, the country's two largest broadband-service operators by sales, are set to launch IPTV services as a new source of revenue amid slowing growth in traditional broadband and telephone markets.
This follows Friday’s MediaBlab report that China will release a policy on online video sharing and broadcasting next year, according to Interfax China Online.
Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry, told local media at an annual national information conference that the policy will be the first to be jointly issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
At present, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television regulates TV and online video broadcasting, while the Ministry of Information Industry regulates internet content providers, and an official from Ministry of Information Industry regulation department said that at present, it is hard to tell which businesses should be regulated by which bureaucracy in the online video sector.
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