MEDIABLAB DAILY DIGEST APR 21: MURDOCH DECLARES WAR; PERSON EXITS INDIA; SMOKING JESUS NEWS
April 22nd 2008 02:23
NEWSWEEK DECLARES THAT MURDOCH HAS DECLARED WAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ye Gods, it’s war. Newsweek has gone all dramatic with its current issue plugging its lead story as ‘Murdoch, Ink.’
The blurb says, “With a redesigned Wall Street Journal, mogul Rupert Murdoch is launching an old-fashioned newspaper war against The New York Times. Not since William Randolph Hearst took on Joseph Pulitzer have we seen such a fight.”
Step right up folks, for the knock down drag’em out of the century. And who said newspapers were down for the count?
Meanwhile the New York Post reports that Mayor Mike Bloomberg may emerge as a white knight for The New York Times. Bloomberg aides are reportedly encouraging him to consider merging financial-information giant Bloomberg LP with the Times, which is under pressure from dissident shareholders to revive ad sales and unload assets to boost its sagging share price.
Meanwhile Folio reports that The New York Times magazine released its first-ever "green issue" — a "low-carbon catalogue" of ideas for environmentally-conscious living boasting a slew of new advertisers — Sunday.
But, MediaBistro reports, in what's becoming increasingly common for magazines that publish "green issues" — and increasingly irritating to bloggers and "green publishing" experts that monitor them — it was not printed on recycled paper.
PEARSON UNLOADS ITS STAKE IN INDIA’S BUSINESS STANDARD
While the race is on to invest in Indian media, Financial Times owner Pearson has unloaded its 13.85 percent stake in India's daily business newspaper Business Standard.
The Guardian reports that Pearson has decided to give up its shares in the newspaper four years after it became the first foreign company to make a major investment in an Indian business title.
The two papers had collaborated for more than a decade before Pearson bought the stake in 2004, with FT articles regularly featured in the Business Standard. The Indian title will continue to use FT content until the end of the year.
A statement printed on the front page of the Business Standard said, "Infina Finance Private Ltd, an associate of the Kotak Mahindra group, has acquired the 13.85 percent stake in Business Standard Ltd from Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times.
"Business Standard and the FT have also realigned the licence agreement between the parties whereby Business Standard will continue to have access to FT content till the end of the year.
"BSL and the FT have had a fruitful association for 15 years, and each wishes the other well in its future plans."
Pearson will continue to publish the FT's Asian edition in India, while the company also operates its Penguin book publishing and Pearson Education businesses in the country.
Pearson's decision to sell its stake in Business Standard follows its exit from various ventures in continental Europe as it concentrates on developing the FT as a global brand.
NEW YORK TIMES TIPS A BUCKET ON BUSH ADMINISTRATION OVER MANIPULATION OF TV NETWORK MILITARY ANALYSTS
The George W. Bush administration has manipulated military analysts working for leading US television networks to generate favorable coverage of the war in Iraq and other issues, The New York Times reported on its website on Saturday.
AFP reported that the newspaper said in trying to achieve its goal, the administration exploited not only ideological and military allegiances but also a powerful financial dynamic, namely the fact that most of these analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on television.
Military analysts, who regularly appear on TV commenting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are usually retired high-ranking military officials. But what is never disclosed to viewers, the paper said, is that the men represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all contractors seeking hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration's war on terror, the report said.
According to the report, the Bush administration has used this fact to transform the analysts into an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. (
A GREAT LEAP FOR VIETNAM AS IT ROCKETS INTO THE SATELLITE AGE
AFP reports that Vietnam “blasted into the satellite age on Saturday “ when a rocket launch from the European space agency in French Guiana propelled its first orbiter into space, allowing it to beam home telecoms data and television signals.
The blast-off represents one great leap for communist Vietnam, a developing country with patchy phone coverage that only introduced the internet a decade ago. The satellite project, worth around USD 300m dollars, will seek to close the communication - and economic - gap between urban Vietnam and the other 70 percent of the population who live in the countryside, said Deputy Information and Communications Minister Tran Duc Lai.
He said, “The geography of Vietnam is very complicated with a lot of remote areas, a lot of high mountains, a lot of island. A satellite can provide all kinds of services - telecom, Internet, radio and TV broadcasting - to every corner of the country.”
RUSSIAN NEWSPAPER SHUT DOWN AFTER POKING ITS “SNOTTY NOSE” INTO PUTIN’S PRIVATE LIFE AND CREATING “EROTIC FANTASIES.”
Moskovsky Korrespondent, the newspaper that first reported rumours of a marriage between Vladimir Putin and Alina Kabaeva, a 24-year-old gymnast, has closed, shortly after the President told journalists it was unacceptable to pry into his private life with “snotty noses and erotic fantasies.”
Putin strongly denied that he had divorced his wife Ludmilla and planned a June wedding with Ms Kabaeva.
The owner of the paper, Alexander Lebedev, had said he thought the story was ‘nonsense’ and the editorial team admitted there was no factual basis to the story. The head of the paper's parent company, Artem Artemov, told journalists the paper was being ‘temporarily halted’ due to its lack of profitability, and insisted there was no political subtext to the decision.
The independent reports that most Russian media obey the Kremlin line that Putin's private life is off limits.
The saga started when Putin faced questions about his personal life at a press conference while standing along side Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, also weeks away from a new job.
FollowTheMedia reported that “Italian media has created an entire industry around Mr. Berlusconi’s personal life. Photos of ‘bimbo eruptions’ pop up every few months to the delight of all.
“So when Mr. Putin faced a Russian reporters question about the story at the press conference celebrating the end of several days in Italy, Mr. Berlusconi “mockingly pretended to mow down the offending reporter with a machine gun, then jokingly proposed swapping the Russian press with the Italian press,” said ABC News Australia. A Reuters photographer caught the moment.
FollowTheMedia reported, “Without a hint of irony, Moskovsky Korrespondent was ‘suspended’ (Friday April 18), its editor Grigory Nekhoroshev ‘resigning,’ according to Interfax. Owner (and billionaire) Aleksandr Lebedev wrote a front page editorial, apparently before shutting down the newspaper, calling the report “nonsense” and based on “the OBS news service…one babushka says.” Lebedev said he’d been away fishing. Deputy editor Igor Dudinsky told Reuters the paper would be looking for “a new concept.”
GROWING PROTEST IN CHINA AGAINST CNN’S COVERAGE OF OLYMPIC ISSUES
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing movement to protest against CNN's coverage of China has generated its own website, theme song and now, it seems, army of hackers.
On Friday, the Time Warner-owned Cable News Network website experienced problems that prevented users from accessing the site –
what appeared to be a "denial of service" attack instigated by hackers. Users trying to access CNN.com were unable to do so, at least temporarily, in some Asian markets, including Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and mainland China.
CNN said that it "took preventive measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt our website".
It added that a small number of users in Asia were affected and it was working to restore access quickly.
No one has taken credit for Friday's outage, but Chinese hackers on internet bulletin boards have called for attacks on the site in recent days.
SMOKING JESUS NEWSPAPER SHUT DOWN IN MALAYSIA
A Malaysian Tamil-language newspaper that was suspended from publishing for a month last year for running a front page picture of Jesus Christ smoking a cigarette, has now been shut down by the government.
The newspaper, Makkal Osai, or People’s Voice which catered to ethnic minority Indians, received a letter from the Home Ministry last Wednesday saying its operating license would not be reviewed.
No reason was given in the letter, but Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar later said the paper broke ministry guidelines, but would not elaborate.
The paper’s news editor, BR Rajan said the shutdown occurred as punishment for the paper’s critical coverage of social and political issues.
The paper gave wide coverage to opposition rallies and the Indian activists who marshalled 20,000 ethnic Indians to protest last November against racial discrimination in Malaysia.
Earlier this year, the government sent the paper a “small reminder” to tone down its coverage of the India protest movement.
Ethnic Indians make up 8 percent of Malaysia’s 27 million people.
REUTERS PALESTINIAN CAMERAMAN MY HAVE BEEN DELIBERATELY TARGETED AND KILLED BY TANK FIRE SAYS HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
A Palestinian cameraman killed by tank fire in the Gaza Strip this week may have been deliberately targeted by Israeli forces, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.
AFP reports that the group said its on-site investigation of Wednesday's death of Fadel Shana, 23, indicated an Israeli tank crew fired "recklessly or deliberately" at the Reuters news agency cameraman and his soundman.
“According to witnesses and footage taken from Shana's own camera, there was no military activity by Palestinian militants at the scene of the attack, the Human Rights Watch report said.
The Israeli military announced that it was opening an inquiry into Shana's death but strongly denied that the camera crew had been deliberately targeted.
"The cameraman was in a combat zone at a time when our forces were coming under fire," a spokeswoman said.
"Allegations that the Israeli army targeted the journalist are completely baseless. The Israel Defence Force makes every effort to avoid casualties among those not implicated in acts of violence.”
TOPLESS AUSTRALIAN EDITOR WRESTLES BOTTOMLESS INTRUDER IN FRONT OF HIS TEENAGE DAUGHTER’S WINDOW
An Australian provincial newspaper editor became a legend in his own front page when he wrestled a half-naked intruder for 20 minutes after he discovered him lurking at his teenage daughter's window.
Geelong Advertiser editor Peter Judd confronted the man just after 6am after receiving a phone call from his distressed daughter, who was woken by the man's attempts to break into the family's Geelong West house.
He arrived home to the sight of a man at his back door, naked from the waist down.
"I got out of the car and went around the corner and standing against the back glass door was this skinny bloke in his early 20s with no pants on. All he was wearing was a singlet and he was just standing there looking at me," Mr Judd said.
"I yelled at him to leave but he didn't go. He just kept trying to get into the house.
"I then tried to get him off the verandah to get him going and he became really agitated and became really abusive. He then ripped my shirt and we moved around to the carport and there was a bit of a wrestle."
Enraged, Mr Judd pinned the intruder to the ground before his partner arrived to help.
Together the pair subdued the man until police arrived about 6.20am.
The paper ran reams of virtual transcript of what transpired between the editor and the naked man, with the editor reporting such things as
“He spoke, but made no sense. Incomprehensible, crazy stuff. Except a moment of coherence when he mumbled: "I'm naked".
It was a fair chance he was on ICE - crystal methamphetamine hydrochloride - which can make a user difficult to understand.
He knew he had been banging on the doors and windows of the house, his clothes ditched somewhere else.
He knew enough.
And he still wanted to go inside.
Why wouldn't he just leave?
…The adrenalin was washing away and I felt my strength weakening, waning. I had to work harder to keep the intruder pinned when I heard my partner's car pull up a few metres away.
She was shocked to see me, shirt ripped off my back, holding a half-naked man to the ground.
"Help me hold him," I said.
"But be careful. He's naked."
Our prisoner was not going anywhere and relaxed his fight to a torrent of abuse.
"Why are you naked?" I said several times in succession.
"Where are your clothes?"
Ye Gods, it’s war. Newsweek has gone all dramatic with its current issue plugging its lead story as ‘Murdoch, Ink.’
The blurb says, “With a redesigned Wall Street Journal, mogul Rupert Murdoch is launching an old-fashioned newspaper war against The New York Times. Not since William Randolph Hearst took on Joseph Pulitzer have we seen such a fight.”
Step right up folks, for the knock down drag’em out of the century. And who said newspapers were down for the count?
Meanwhile the New York Post reports that Mayor Mike Bloomberg may emerge as a white knight for The New York Times. Bloomberg aides are reportedly encouraging him to consider merging financial-information giant Bloomberg LP with the Times, which is under pressure from dissident shareholders to revive ad sales and unload assets to boost its sagging share price.
But, MediaBistro reports, in what's becoming increasingly common for magazines that publish "green issues" — and increasingly irritating to bloggers and "green publishing" experts that monitor them — it was not printed on recycled paper.
PEARSON UNLOADS ITS STAKE IN INDIA’S BUSINESS STANDARD
While the race is on to invest in Indian media, Financial Times owner Pearson has unloaded its 13.85 percent stake in India's daily business newspaper Business Standard.
The Guardian reports that Pearson has decided to give up its shares in the newspaper four years after it became the first foreign company to make a major investment in an Indian business title.
A statement printed on the front page of the Business Standard said, "Infina Finance Private Ltd, an associate of the Kotak Mahindra group, has acquired the 13.85 percent stake in Business Standard Ltd from Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times.
"Business Standard and the FT have also realigned the licence agreement between the parties whereby Business Standard will continue to have access to FT content till the end of the year.
"BSL and the FT have had a fruitful association for 15 years, and each wishes the other well in its future plans."
Pearson will continue to publish the FT's Asian edition in India, while the company also operates its Penguin book publishing and Pearson Education businesses in the country.
Pearson's decision to sell its stake in Business Standard follows its exit from various ventures in continental Europe as it concentrates on developing the FT as a global brand.
NEW YORK TIMES TIPS A BUCKET ON BUSH ADMINISTRATION OVER MANIPULATION OF TV NETWORK MILITARY ANALYSTS
The George W. Bush administration has manipulated military analysts working for leading US television networks to generate favorable coverage of the war in Iraq and other issues, The New York Times reported on its website on Saturday.
AFP reported that the newspaper said in trying to achieve its goal, the administration exploited not only ideological and military allegiances but also a powerful financial dynamic, namely the fact that most of these analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on television.
Military analysts, who regularly appear on TV commenting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are usually retired high-ranking military officials. But what is never disclosed to viewers, the paper said, is that the men represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all contractors seeking hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration's war on terror, the report said.
According to the report, the Bush administration has used this fact to transform the analysts into an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. (
A GREAT LEAP FOR VIETNAM AS IT ROCKETS INTO THE SATELLITE AGE
AFP reports that Vietnam “blasted into the satellite age on Saturday “ when a rocket launch from the European space agency in French Guiana propelled its first orbiter into space, allowing it to beam home telecoms data and television signals.
The blast-off represents one great leap for communist Vietnam, a developing country with patchy phone coverage that only introduced the internet a decade ago. The satellite project, worth around USD 300m dollars, will seek to close the communication - and economic - gap between urban Vietnam and the other 70 percent of the population who live in the countryside, said Deputy Information and Communications Minister Tran Duc Lai.
He said, “The geography of Vietnam is very complicated with a lot of remote areas, a lot of high mountains, a lot of island. A satellite can provide all kinds of services - telecom, Internet, radio and TV broadcasting - to every corner of the country.”
RUSSIAN NEWSPAPER SHUT DOWN AFTER POKING ITS “SNOTTY NOSE” INTO PUTIN’S PRIVATE LIFE AND CREATING “EROTIC FANTASIES.”
Moskovsky Korrespondent, the newspaper that first reported rumours of a marriage between Vladimir Putin and Alina Kabaeva, a 24-year-old gymnast, has closed, shortly after the President told journalists it was unacceptable to pry into his private life with “snotty noses and erotic fantasies.”
Putin strongly denied that he had divorced his wife Ludmilla and planned a June wedding with Ms Kabaeva.
The owner of the paper, Alexander Lebedev, had said he thought the story was ‘nonsense’ and the editorial team admitted there was no factual basis to the story. The head of the paper's parent company, Artem Artemov, told journalists the paper was being ‘temporarily halted’ due to its lack of profitability, and insisted there was no political subtext to the decision.
The independent reports that most Russian media obey the Kremlin line that Putin's private life is off limits.
The saga started when Putin faced questions about his personal life at a press conference while standing along side Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, also weeks away from a new job.
FollowTheMedia reported that “Italian media has created an entire industry around Mr. Berlusconi’s personal life. Photos of ‘bimbo eruptions’ pop up every few months to the delight of all.
“So when Mr. Putin faced a Russian reporters question about the story at the press conference celebrating the end of several days in Italy, Mr. Berlusconi “mockingly pretended to mow down the offending reporter with a machine gun, then jokingly proposed swapping the Russian press with the Italian press,” said ABC News Australia. A Reuters photographer caught the moment.
FollowTheMedia reported, “Without a hint of irony, Moskovsky Korrespondent was ‘suspended’ (Friday April 18), its editor Grigory Nekhoroshev ‘resigning,’ according to Interfax. Owner (and billionaire) Aleksandr Lebedev wrote a front page editorial, apparently before shutting down the newspaper, calling the report “nonsense” and based on “the OBS news service…one babushka says.” Lebedev said he’d been away fishing. Deputy editor Igor Dudinsky told Reuters the paper would be looking for “a new concept.”
GROWING PROTEST IN CHINA AGAINST CNN’S COVERAGE OF OLYMPIC ISSUES
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing movement to protest against CNN's coverage of China has generated its own website, theme song and now, it seems, army of hackers.
On Friday, the Time Warner-owned Cable News Network website experienced problems that prevented users from accessing the site –
what appeared to be a "denial of service" attack instigated by hackers. Users trying to access CNN.com were unable to do so, at least temporarily, in some Asian markets, including Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and mainland China.
CNN said that it "took preventive measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt our website".
It added that a small number of users in Asia were affected and it was working to restore access quickly.
No one has taken credit for Friday's outage, but Chinese hackers on internet bulletin boards have called for attacks on the site in recent days.
SMOKING JESUS NEWSPAPER SHUT DOWN IN MALAYSIA
A Malaysian Tamil-language newspaper that was suspended from publishing for a month last year for running a front page picture of Jesus Christ smoking a cigarette, has now been shut down by the government.
The newspaper, Makkal Osai, or People’s Voice which catered to ethnic minority Indians, received a letter from the Home Ministry last Wednesday saying its operating license would not be reviewed.
No reason was given in the letter, but Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar later said the paper broke ministry guidelines, but would not elaborate.
The paper’s news editor, BR Rajan said the shutdown occurred as punishment for the paper’s critical coverage of social and political issues.
The paper gave wide coverage to opposition rallies and the Indian activists who marshalled 20,000 ethnic Indians to protest last November against racial discrimination in Malaysia.
Earlier this year, the government sent the paper a “small reminder” to tone down its coverage of the India protest movement.
Ethnic Indians make up 8 percent of Malaysia’s 27 million people.
REUTERS PALESTINIAN CAMERAMAN MY HAVE BEEN DELIBERATELY TARGETED AND KILLED BY TANK FIRE SAYS HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
A Palestinian cameraman killed by tank fire in the Gaza Strip this week may have been deliberately targeted by Israeli forces, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.
AFP reports that the group said its on-site investigation of Wednesday's death of Fadel Shana, 23, indicated an Israeli tank crew fired "recklessly or deliberately" at the Reuters news agency cameraman and his soundman.
“According to witnesses and footage taken from Shana's own camera, there was no military activity by Palestinian militants at the scene of the attack, the Human Rights Watch report said.
The Israeli military announced that it was opening an inquiry into Shana's death but strongly denied that the camera crew had been deliberately targeted.
"The cameraman was in a combat zone at a time when our forces were coming under fire," a spokeswoman said.
"Allegations that the Israeli army targeted the journalist are completely baseless. The Israel Defence Force makes every effort to avoid casualties among those not implicated in acts of violence.”
TOPLESS AUSTRALIAN EDITOR WRESTLES BOTTOMLESS INTRUDER IN FRONT OF HIS TEENAGE DAUGHTER’S WINDOW
An Australian provincial newspaper editor became a legend in his own front page when he wrestled a half-naked intruder for 20 minutes after he discovered him lurking at his teenage daughter's window.
Geelong Advertiser editor Peter Judd confronted the man just after 6am after receiving a phone call from his distressed daughter, who was woken by the man's attempts to break into the family's Geelong West house.
He arrived home to the sight of a man at his back door, naked from the waist down.
"I got out of the car and went around the corner and standing against the back glass door was this skinny bloke in his early 20s with no pants on. All he was wearing was a singlet and he was just standing there looking at me," Mr Judd said.
"I yelled at him to leave but he didn't go. He just kept trying to get into the house.
"I then tried to get him off the verandah to get him going and he became really agitated and became really abusive. He then ripped my shirt and we moved around to the carport and there was a bit of a wrestle."
Enraged, Mr Judd pinned the intruder to the ground before his partner arrived to help.
Together the pair subdued the man until police arrived about 6.20am.
The paper ran reams of virtual transcript of what transpired between the editor and the naked man, with the editor reporting such things as
“He spoke, but made no sense. Incomprehensible, crazy stuff. Except a moment of coherence when he mumbled: "I'm naked".
It was a fair chance he was on ICE - crystal methamphetamine hydrochloride - which can make a user difficult to understand.
He knew he had been banging on the doors and windows of the house, his clothes ditched somewhere else.
He knew enough.
And he still wanted to go inside.
Why wouldn't he just leave?
…The adrenalin was washing away and I felt my strength weakening, waning. I had to work harder to keep the intruder pinned when I heard my partner's car pull up a few metres away.
She was shocked to see me, shirt ripped off my back, holding a half-naked man to the ground.
"Help me hold him," I said.
"But be careful. He's naked."
Our prisoner was not going anywhere and relaxed his fight to a torrent of abuse.
"Why are you naked?" I said several times in succession.
"Where are your clothes?"
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