MEPs and national MPs from the EU and Mediterranean countries have approved a resolution which ‘condemned the offence’ caused by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed as well ‘as the violence which their publication provoked.’ The two-day plenary session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, held in Brussels, also urged governments to ‘ensure respect for religious beliefs and to encourage the values of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism.’ Speaking during the parliamentary assembly, Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour insisted that the cartoons published in Denmark and other recent events showed the existence of a cultural deficit. Jordanian MP Hashem al-Qaisi also condemned the cartoons while remarking that it is not sufficient to deplore the cartoons as these things might occur again in another country. But Danish parliamentarian MP Troels Poulsen, reacting to extensive criticism on Danish society over the issue, insisted that Danish society is based on both freedom of expression and religious tolerance. He added that the government can not influence the media. The Danish MP also said the violent reaction to the cartoons was disproportionate. (EU.observer,March 31, 2006)
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A new mass-circulation daily will hit Austria’s news stands in September, its publisher Wolfgang Fellner announced late on Tuesday. The paper, Oesterreich (Austria), will be a tabloid and draws its inspiration from the USA Today. The new daily will be 20 per cent bigger than Austria’s current leading tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung, Fellner said. An initial 250,000 copies of Oesterreich will be published, and 650,000 copies of its Sunday edition, said Fellner, who is already a leading magazine publisher. Oesterreich will reflect the population’s ‘Austrian awareness,’ and will be easily distinguishable from the Kronen Zeitung, which sells 1m copies a day, Fellner said. With a readership of nearly 3m among an 8m Austrian population, the Kronen Zeitung is said to have the world’s highest circulation density. Fellner is also planning to publish a new daily sports newspaper entitled ‘World Championship Live’ for the soccer World Cup taking place in Germany in June, he said. (AKI News,March 30, 2006)
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Morocco’s leading publishing group will invest for the first time in the Gulf. Moroccan daily Le Matin will have a Gulf edition, the newspaper announced. Othman al-Omeir, the Saudi president of publishing group Maroc Soir, has reportedly met the king of Bahrain Hamad al-Khalifa to discuss the editorial plan. The daily reported that the project aims to initially attract 500,000 readers, the number of francophone residents in the Gulf. After the meeting, the king of Bahrain gave instructions to the information ministry to ‘facilitate the publication in Manama of the francophone daily,’ the paper reported on Monday. Othman al-Omeir, a former journalist who used to publish the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat, an Arabic language daily, bought the group in 2004 for MAD 150m (over EUR 13m). The publishing group owns French language daily Le Matin, Arab language paper Assahra al-Maghribiya and Spanish daily La Manana, as well as internet paper Morocco Times, published in English. Maroc Soir was the last paper thus far opened by the group, in November 2005. (AKI News,March 30, 2006)
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The number of journalists in China has doubled compared with 20 years earlier, official statistics show. Figures released by the General Administration of Press and Publication indicated that more than 700,000 people chose journalism as their career last year, 150,000 of them armed with a journalist certificate. According to the administration, Chinese journalists are increasingly entering the profession at a younger age, have a higher education, are from diverse ethnic groups and are divided equally along gender lines. ‘The overall quality of work from news workers has improved,’ Cheng Fangjun, a deputy director of the Changsha Evening News in Central China’s Hunan Province, said Monday. ‘They know how to better serve their readers or audiences,’ said Cheng, a winner of the ‘National Outstanding Journalist’ title. (China Daily,March 28, 2006)
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A Belgian journalist armed with a pistol and plastic explosives came within striking distance of French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Angela Merkel during last week’s EU summit, two Belgian newspapers reported Monday. Katleen Peeraer slipped past security checks into the Brussels summit venue on Thursday with a Baretta pistol in her baggage, and again on Friday with a bomb made of plastic explosives, and was able on more than one occasion to approach the two leaders while armed. A colleague separately brought bullets for the pistol into the hotel where European leaders were staying, the Het Laatste Nieuws/De Nieuwe Gazet and Het Belang van Limburg/Gazet van Antwerpen newspapers reported. A journalist for the programme Telefacts, broadcast on the Flemish-speaking VTM network, Peeraer presumably carried out the stunt in order to show up laxness in security procedures. (AFP, EU Business,March 28, 2006)
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Foreign and Belarussian journalists were injured during clashes between the opposition and police in Minsk on Saturday. These include a Belarussian state television cameraman and a reporter. Opposition supporters broke the camera and the man kicked him with their feet. Itar-Tass correspondent Andrei Fomin got a dislocation in the hand and his clothes were spoiled. Another Itar-Tass correspondent, Larisa Klyuchnikova, received light concussions. According to protesters, an American reporter from The Wall Street Journal got his hand injured in the clashes. (Itar-Tass,March 27, 2006)
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Children and teenagers who are exposed to sex through the media are more likely to engage in sexual activity than those who are not, according to new research. A study by an American team has found a direct relationship between the amount of sexual content children see and their level of sexual activity or their intentions to have sex in the future. The survey, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health and online, claims that film, television, music and magazines may act as a kind of ’sexual super peer’ for teenagers seeking information about sex. It also suggests that the media have at least as great an influence on sexual behaviour as religion or a child’s relationship with their parents and peers. The study found that films, TV programmes, music and magazines usually portrayed sex as ‘risk-free’. Sex was usually between unmarried couples and examples of using condoms or other contraception were ‘extremely rare’. The study concluded: ‘Adolescence is a developmental period that is characterised by intense information-seeking, especially about adult roles and, given the lack of information about sexuality readily available to teens, adolescents may turn to the media for information about sexual norms.’ (The Guardian,March 23, 2006)
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BBC Japan shows a variety of BBC programmes with subtitles BBC Japan is to close down at the end of April because its Japanese distributor no longer has the financial backing to support the channel. The TV channel launched in December 2005 and features subtitled BBC shows including My Family and EastEnders. ‘We are hoping to announce shortly how BBC Japan’s loyal customers will be able to receive the channel in future,’ said BBC Worldwide’s Darren Childs. Distributor JMC will be unable to transmit the channel after 30 April. BBC Worldwide said it had not been consulted on the decision and that the situation was out of its control. The commercial arm of the BBC offers several other TV channels including international entertainment channel BBC Prime, BBC America and BBC Canada. (BBC News,March 22, 2006)
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The European Union’s executive office on Tuesday called on the governments of member nations to do more to get people online. If governments act now to boost investment in high-speed networks in remote and rural areas, all EU citizens could have such access by 2010, said Viviane Reding, the EU’s information technology commissioner. The European Commission hopes that subsidies for public-private undertakings from its EUR 70bn rural development fund will be used by governments to close the digital divide. One of the main challenges is making expansion into less-populated, rural areas commercially viable for internet service providers, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told a news conference with Reding. Only 13 per cent of the EU population of 450m people or about 25 per cent of households have broadband access, according to EU data. The Netherlands, Denmark and Finland have the highest penetration rates (between 20 and 25 per cent), followed by Sweden (19 per cent), Belgium (18 per cent), Britain and France (both 15 per cent) and Luxembourg (14 per cent). The other 19 nations are below the EU average of 15 per cent, especially the newcomer nations but also Italy and Spain, where broadband reaches only 10 per cent of the population. The EU has been pushing for expanded internet access as a way to increase productivity and growth. Leaders at a two-day EU summit opening Thursday in Brussels are expected to discuss ways to improve those efforts. (AP, ABC News,March 22, 2006)
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Swedish Foreign Minister quits
Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds has resigned following months of criticism that built to a crescendo in recent days. Freivalds said that the situation had made it impossible for her to do her job. ‘[On Monday evening] I held a press conference in Brussels on the election in Belarus and none of the journalists were interested in that issue. That was when I realised this is impossible,’ Freivalds explained. In recent days her position became untenable as it emerged that that she knew that a foreign ministry official contacted the internet hosting company which later closed the website of the Sweden Democrats. Speaking to journalists at the time, Freivalds had denied prior knowledge of this. However, on Monday it became clear that she had been consulted on the matter. Opposition leaders called for her resignation, saying that she had lost the confidence of the people. They were joined by the government’s ally, the Green Party. Freivalds had also faced months of criticism following her handling of the tsunami catastrophe. (The Local,March 22, 2006)
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Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds should resign for misleading journalists, say opposition parties. They say she did misled the public over how much she knew about her department’s contact with an internet hosting company that closed a website belonging to the Sweden Democrats. The forced closure of the Sweden Democrats’ site on February 9, after pictures of the prophet Muhammad had been published on it, was strongly criticised at the time. A foreign ministry official contacted the hosting company, Levonline, as did Sweden’s security police, S?po. Freivalds defended the foreign ministry’s contact with Levonline and said that it had simply been to inform the company of the consequences of publishing the pictures. At the same time, Freivalds denied that she had known of the contact in advance. That claim has now been contradicted in a statement sent by Carl Henrik Ehrenkrona, the head of the foreign ministry’s legal department, to the Chancellor of Justice, who is investigating whether the official was guilty of misconduct. ‘On February 8 an official in the department, after consultation with the foreign minister, contacted the company which hosted the website,’ wrote Ehrenkrona, according to the publication Riksdag & Departement. Swedish government bodies are banned in the constitution from getting involved in what newspapers, including web-based newspapers, write.
(The Local,March 21, 2006)
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The Bangladeshi government has created a fresh controversy by issuing a revised directive to tap mobile phone calls, prompting the operators to prepare for a legal battle against it. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) asked the mobile phone operators to record all conversations as well as to archive all text and multimedia messages and to make them available to the government whenever it wants. Sources said the government has realised its incapability to maintain and process a mammoth database of fast growing tens of millions of mobile users. It has allegedly prompted the BTRC to devise the idea of asking the mobile operators to do the intelligence agencies’ job instead. Sources said all operators have forwarded BTRC’s letter to their legal departments and all the CEOs are likely to meet soon to strategise a unified legal warfare against the telecoms regulator. ‘How can we install ‘lawful interception’ system when it is unlawful at the first place?’ commented a mobile operator’s high official requesting anonymity. (The Daily Star, Asia Media,March 21, 2006)
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Google is introducing a financial news, stock quote and chat service that seeks to shake up the online finance information market now dominated by internet media rivals and online brokers. The web search leader said late on Monday that it has begun offering a trial version of the service called Google Finance that uses a keyword search system to help consumers target information on public and private companies and mutual funds. Google Finance (http://finance.google.com) primarily provides financial news, stock quotes, charts and data. In its trial form, the site is far less comprehensive than established financial sites such as those from Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN America Online’s Money & Finance and TheStreet.com. One of the more novel features of the site gives user the ability to view financial news alongside historical price charts over various time frames. As the user zooms back in time, the news results change with the date. The site identifies financial stories within Google News, the company’s existing news search site that features articles from roughly 4,500 different sources. By contrast, Yahoo’s financial news relies on three dozen top editorial brands. And while Yahoo was the first of the major internet sites to incorporate blogging alongside news in its Yahoo News site, Google Finance is first to run blogs alongside financial news. (Reuters,March 21, 2006)
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Attacks by Mexican drug gangs and government harassment in several countries are having a chilling effect on the news media in Latin America, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), a hemisphere-wide media group said Monday. The IAPA, in its midyear report on press freedom in the hemisphere, denounced hostility toward news media by Argentina and Venezuela and the jailing of 25 journalists in Cuba. The IAPA said it was concerned with gang attacks, including a recent incident in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, that seriously wounded a reporter, that have forced some newspapers to avoid any reference to drug activities. Three journalists working in Latin America have been killed in the past six months and a fourth is missing and presumed dead, the IAPA said. The report also criticised Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government for ‘harassing and punishing the independent news media.’ ‘A so-called law of social responsibility for radio and television,’ the IAPA said, characterises dissent as tantamount to criminal conduct. (AP, ABC News,March 21, 2006)
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Chapter three of the cover story of the new edition of Columbia Journalism Review on The Philadelphia Inquirer is titled “Curse of the Golden Age,” referring to a period that, for the Inquirer, came in two stages during the seventies and eighties. First the Inky became a bold and creative insurgent newspaper under the legendary editor Gene Roberts. Then it killed off its afternoon competitor, the Bulletin, and embarked on what Roberts called the Alpha Plan. It set out to become a great regional paper of record, covering city and suburb, nation and world, with depth and flair. The Inquirer no longer has the resources for that kind of newspaper-of-record journalism and halfway measures don’t work. So editor Amanda Bennett, even as she waits to learn just what kind of owner will replace Knight Ridder, is trying something new. Or maybe something old, since she is reaching back to the early Roberts premonopoly version of the Inquirer for ideas.
The chapter is specific to the Inky’s situation, which is complex. But the notion of a curse from the golden days of the sixties, seventies, and eighties resonates beyond that newspaper. As we all know, trends in those years turned newspapers into economic powerhouses. The rise of the computer brought enormous labor savings, for example, while the fall of the afternoon dailies in city after city created lucrative advertising and readership monopolies. Consolidating newspaper chains saw the opportunities and went public, pulling in new money from investors. Ample profits and rising investment meant rising editorial ambitions in some places and fat, lazy days for others. Either way, the trends also created investor expectations of very high profit margins in the newspaper business, which would turn out to be a quite a curse indeed when those margins dipped.
That history is familiar. But another facet of the age of news monopoly gets less attention in newspaper circles: How much did the condition of editorial monopoly quietly undermine the journalism?
Source: Columbia Journalism Review
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A BBC-funded film about the Rwandan genocide billed as an ‘authentic re-creation’ of a real-life story, is facing criticism for exacerbating the trauma experienced by genocide survivors. Backed by the Rwandan government, shot on location in the country and to be premiered there this week, Shooting Dogs was intended to raise awareness of the conflict. Aid organisations are now saying that it was a shot with a lack of sensitivity so soon after the events. The film tells the story of a massacre at a school, L’Ecole Technique Officielle, during the genocide in 1994. It includes scenes in which machete-wielding Interahamwe militia close in on the building, hacking women and children to death. It was filmed where the atrocity took place, using many local people, including genocide survivors, as extras and members of the crew. Aid workers have expressed concern that some local people were traumatised by witnessing the reconstruction. On one occasion, students from a nearby school had to be taken to hospital and sedated when they suffered flashbacks after overhearing the chants and whistles of the angry mob. One member of the crew suffered a breakdown when he was taken back to the street where he had been forced to hide down a manhole for three months to escape the killers. (Media Guardian,March 20, 2006)
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Denmark’s top prosecutor said Wednesday he will not press charges against the newspaper that first published the Prophet Muhammad drawings that triggered deadly protests by Muslims worldwide. Director of Public Prosecutions Henning Fode upheld the decision of a regional prosecutor, who said the 12 cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten on September 30 did not violate Danish law. Fode’s decision cannot be appealed. But Fode’s ruling also noted there was ‘no free and unrestricted right to express opinions about religious subjects’ in Denmark. He said Jyllands-Posten had thus been wrong in writing that religious groups had to be ready to put up with ’scorn, mockery and ridicule.’ Fode’s office said it had received several appeals by organisations and individuals unhappy with the regional prosecutor’s decision. One of those groups, the Islamic Faith Community, said it was disappointed in Fode’s ruling and would consider raising the issue with The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. (AP, ABC News,March 16, 2006)
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In ‘Making communism fun! Urlike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl and the Konkret Files,’ Bettina Röhl, German journalist and daughter of Red Army Fraction (RAF) terrorist Urlike Meinhof, explores her parents’ early journalistic careers as editors of West German leftist magazine Konkret and their connections with the communist East. Röhl discovered comprehensive evidence in the Berlin Federal Archive that her parents’ avant-garde magazine was, at least until 1964, controlled and financed from an East Berlin cell of the underground Communist Party of Germany. To prevent an obvious identification with the German Democratic Republic, every effort was made to publish at least one anti-communist article in every issue of the magazine. At the same time, Röhl’s father was receiving DM 40,000 (about EUR 20,000) in cash from East Berlin for every issue he published. In her book, which will hit the bookstands in Germany this week, Röhl tries to understand why her mother turned from critical journalist to active terrorist. In 1970, Röhl’s mother helped revolutionary Andreas Baader escape from prison. The two became infamous leaders of the RAF, responsible for a series of robberies, kidnappings and bombings all over Germany. At least 30 people including prominent industrialists and businessmen were killed in RAF attacks.
(Deutsche Welle,March 15, 2006)
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The international community was last week again outraged by the closure of two more blogs in China, when censors apparently targeted Massage Cream, run by Beijing journalist Wang Xiaofeng, and Milkpig, penned by a journalist in Guangzhou. Yet there was something strange about this most recent action. Milkpig did not usually tackle sensitive issues, while Massage Cream was primarily known for commenting on the news using ’sophisticated metaphors’. Nevertheless, Reporters Without Borders condemned the unplugging of Massage Cream and Milkpig, only to find out their ‘closure’ was part of an elaborate joke. The international community was not laughing. To Milkpig’s credit, the blogger has since apologised. ‘I like to make jokes but apparently this time it didn’t make everyone laugh. My intention was not to make fools of you. I don’t want you or the foreign media to think that.’ (South China Morning Post, Asia Media, March 14, 2006)
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A study of US news media concludes that consumers have more places than ever to get their news but fewer stories are being covered and with less depth. The Project for Excellence in Journalism made the observations in its annual State of the News Media report, which analyses coverage in US papers, television broadcasts and websites. The study was released Sunday. The report notes as an example that Google News offered users a menu of 14,000 stories on one day that was analysed - but the stories covered only 24 subjects. ‘It?s an illusion of more information but it?s actually a lot of repetition,’ said Tom Rosenstiel, who is the project’s director. The project is supported by the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Pew Charitable Trusts, an organisation concerned with issues of public interest. Its latest report says declining readership has forced news operations to cut back on journalists, noting that the number of reporters in some cities is only half of what it was 25 years earlier. (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,March 14, 2006)
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American media minnow McClatchy jumped from eighth place in the US newspaper market to second yesterday with the USD 4.5bn (EUR 3.7bn) acquisition of larger rival Knight Ridder, owner of the San Jose Mercury and Philadelphia Inquirer. The deal sounded a note of confidence in the US local newspaper market where advertising revenue has been coming under intense pressure from online alternatives such as Google. McClatchy, which is paying in cash and shares for the company and assuming USD 2bn (EUR 1.6bn) of debt, plans to sell off a dozen of Knight Ridder’s 32 newspapers including the Inquirer and Mercury as well as The Philadelphia Daily News, because it does not believe it can increase sales of the titles. The combined group will have 32 daily newspapers and 50 non-daily publications, after McClatchy’s planned sell-off, with a combined daily circulation of about 3.2m. It will be the second largest US newspaper publisher in circulation terms, behind Gannett, whose 91 papers have 7.3m daily paying readers. (Media Guardian,March 14, 2006)
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To teach fact-finding skills, professors at the University of Minnesota have turned a fantasy computer game into a tool for journalism students. Instead of slaying monsters and gathering gold, the players tackle sources and gather information. The game graphics have been modified to look like a modern town, the fictional Harperville. A train has derailed, spilling toxic ammonia, and the players, who are sent out to cover the story, dig up information by going to the library, government offices or talking to a retired train engineer at the bar. For each step of a conversation, the players have four choices of what to tell to the interview subjects, ranging in attitude from assertive to tentative. If players are too brash, the interview subjects will say ‘Excuse me, I don’t like your attitude,’ and end the conversation. The goals of the game are not only to reinforce the thinking process behind information gathering and distinguishing between different types of sources, but also to teach etiquette, said Nora Paul, director of the university’s Institute for New Media Studies. (AP, ABC News,March 10, 2006)
Instead of slaying monsters and gathering gold, the players tackle sources and gather information.
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T-Mobile, the mobile wing of the German telecoms company Deutsche Telekom, is planning to broadcast 20 matches of this summer’s World Cup. Mobile phone customers will pay EUR 2 a day, or EUR 7.50 per month for the package, which will also include programming from MTV. British mobile provider O2 is planning a similar venture to coincide with the World Cup, but with a smaller group of users. Coming on the heels of successes with Asian mobile phone users, European companies are wondering if a World Cup year will bring the breakthrough they have been waiting for. Ever since the establishment of UMTS networks across Germany enabled users to do everything from downloading video clips to checking e-mail, telecoms companies have been trying in vain to get customers to purchase the extra services. Among the 80m mobile phone users in Germany, only 2.3m have phones capable of exploiting the various UMTS features - though 9m are expected this year. Analysts are sceptical about the number of people who will actually take advantage of the World Cup offers by T-Mobile and O2. Though 100,000 customers tuned in to watch a live broadcast of a Robbie Williams concert last fall, interest in football, which does not play well on a small screen, could be limited. (Deutsche Welle,March 10, 2006)
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Prince Alwaleed ibn Talal, the chief executive of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company, has officially launched an Islamic satellite channel seeking to project Islam as a religion of moderation, the Arab News online daily reports. Al-Resalah (The Message) has been broadcasting informally since last Wednesday. At a press conference on Monday, Prince Alwaleed said the 24-hour channel would target an Arab audience, especially young people, by projecting ‘our Arab heritage through a modern medium.’. Al-Resalah will be the forerunner of a future English-language Islamic channel for Western audiences. The prince said the new Islamic network would provide a platform for a dialogue on religious, social and economic issues affecting everyday life, but its priority would be to counteract the misconceptions of Islam in other societies. Tarek Alsuwaidan, the channel?s general manager, said that 40 per cent of the programmes would be youth oriented, 30 per cent would target women and families, and 10 per cent would focus on children, Arab News reports. (AKI,March 08, 2006)
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Chinese readers bought nearly every copy of the inaugural edition of Rolling Stone in Beijing yesterday.
On the cover of the first edition in Chinese of the American bible of pop culture is Cui Jian, the godfather of Chinese rock and roll. Featuring the 44-year-old rock star was a bold choice. Cui only last September played his first public concert in China in 12 years, to nearly 10,000 fans in the Workers’ Stadium in Beijing.
The magazine features Jay Chou, a pop star from Taiwan, Nigo, a Japanese hip hop artist and Muzimei, a Chinese blogger famous for her sex diary, to round out its Asian input. More than half of the content is translated from the U.S. edition.
… Robby Yung of One Media, based in Hong Kong, which publishes the magazine under licence, said that it would rely more on strong writing and photo-journalism than the pop and gossip of its English-language sister publication. “We feel Chinese music and arts are maturing rapidly and that a Chinese edition will be viable.”
Source: Jane Macartney, The London Times
Don’t forget that www.newspaperindex.com have had a chinese version long before Rolling Stones: Link
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The US military will continue to pay Iraqi media to publish reports favourable to American forces following an investigation into the controversial practice, Army Gen. George Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq said on Friday. The investigation ‘found that we were operating within our authorities and responsibilities,’ he said. Some members of the US Congress raised questions about the payments when it was revealed in December that Iraqi journalists and newspapers were being paid to use articles produced by the military. Casey said he had not issued an order to halt the payments. ‘And, right now, based on the results of the investigation, I do not intend to in the near term,’ he said. The US military has argued it is important to counter what it calls misinformation and propaganda spread by insurgents. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last month that he was mistaken when he stated several days previously that the military had stopped paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles. (Reuters, ABC News,March 06, 2006)
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At least six million books, documents and ‘other cultural works’ are to be put online and housed in the European Digital Library by 2010, the European Commission said Thursday. The commission it would help fund part of a network of digitation sites and study copyright issues that might arise. The library will be based on the infrastructure of an existing network that allows access to digital resources already held in national libraries. The commission, which first announced plans for the library last September, said it should have the full collaboration of national libraries by the end of the year. Two million books, films, photographs, manuscripts and other works should be online through the library by 2008 and the figure would rise to six million by 2010 as more and more libraries, archives and museums plug in. US Internet search giant Google triggered an international race to build an online library when it announced plans in December 2004 to digitise books and documents from a handful of big libraries. US Internet and software giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon have since announced separate plans while France, angry that private companies took the lead, has pushed for the creation of a public digital library. (AFP, Deutsche Welle,March 03, 2006)
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Reading newspapers appears to promote academic achievements among schoolchildren, according to a Finnish follow-up of the international PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study. The report suggests that reading newspapers even boosts skills in mathematics. The high rate of newspaper readership in Finland is seen as one factor why Finnish young people score high in a comparison of OECD countries. The follow-up study, which was commissioned by the Finnish Newspapers’ Association, is based on material collected in 2003, involving about 6,000 Finnish schoolchildren at 15 years of age. The best results in all areas of knowledge were achieved by pupils who read newspapers several times a week. Newspaper readership correlated most with the mathematical skills of girls. According to the study, reading newspapers among young people has remained largely unchanged in the past three years. About 60 per cent of young people said in both 2000 and 2003 that they read newspapers several times a week. (Helsingin Sanomat ,March 01, 2006)
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