Laura send me this innovative example of newspaper advertising. Notice how the saw are shaped by the zigzag knifes from the newspaper press. An amazing piece made by DDB&Co., Istanbul for World Wildlife Fund. The text on the ad says: “Not recycling this newspaper is the same as cutting down another three”.
Journalists interested in improving their coverage of war crimes or politics can download two new handbooks, free of charge. The Africa program of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) produced both manuals. ‘Reporting Justice: A Handbook on Covering War Crimes Courts’ includes information on coverage techniques and strategies, as well as sections on basic trial reporting, the history of war crimes trials, and existing international human rights law. The institute also is making available a handbook used for a radio course in political reporting, which it has been conducting in Uganda for freelance journalists. But the handbook also contains general information on political reporting and radio news coverage that could be useful to others. This handbook can also serve as a training tool, with exercises and comprehension questions at the end of different sections. The handbooks are available in English only at: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=o&o=special_index1.html.
(International Journalists Network,May 31, 2006)
North Korea has asked its capitalist neighbour in the south for help broadcasting television coverage of the World Cup. South Korea’s unification ministry, which is in charge of policy towards the North, would ‘positively’ consider the request, a ministry official said. South Korea previously helped the reclusive and impoverished communist state receive TV broadcasts of the 2004 Athens Olympics, the South’s broadcasting commission said. The Korea Broadcasting Commission declined to comment on whether it had initiated discussions with world soccer body FIFA on extending the broadcast rights to include the North. South Korea, which jointly hosted the 2002 finals with Japan, did not provide the North with rights for the games then, although the North’s state-run television showed some highlights. (Reuters,May 31, 2006)
Opposition to David Montgomery’s takeover of the German Berliner Zeitung has taken a new twist after the newspaper only appeared in a 12-page protest edition on Tuesday. The editorial staff decided to publish the edition following the appointment of Josef Depenbrock as editor-in-chief. Employees said Depenbrock, 44, formerly the editor-in-chief of the tabloid Hamburger Morgenpost, was hired as part of the new owners’ plans to relaunch the broadsheet Berliner Zeitung as a tabloid newspaper. The reduced edition was the latest and most extreme move yet by the editorial team, which has staged a series of protests since a group of international investors, headed Montgomery took over the publishing house that owns the Berliner Zeitung last autumn. A front-page story in the reduced edition said the protest was necessary to ensure ‘the maintenance of the quality and the editorial independence of the newspaper’. Earlier this month the German Journalists Association granted the paper’s editorial team its prestigious Press Freedom Award for resisting and protesting the Montgomery takeover. (Media Guardian,May 31, 2006)
The internet will overtake national newspapers this year to become the third biggest medium for advertising spending, according to a report today from Global advertising firm GroupM. It said the internet will take a 13.3% share of the media advertising market in 2006 compared with 13.2% for the printed versions of national newspapers.
It contrasts with last year’s 9.7% for the internet and 13.8% for national newspapers and propels the internet into third place behind regional newspapers and TV, which are forecast to take 19.6% and 28.8% this year respectively, writes The Irish Examiner.
The report highlighted the pressure on newspapers to develop new ways of winning advertising revenues as the growth of internet advertising eats into profits.
Report author Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM, said the internet will continue to rival regional newspapers as it develops stronger platforms for classified ads where there is “massive potential” for growth.
He said the growth of the internet could turn into a “critical assault” on newspaper profits.
One of France’s most popular rappers will appear in court on Monday charged with offending public decency with a song in which he referred to France as a ’slut’ and vowed to ‘piss’ on Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle. Monsieur R, whose real name is Richard Makela, could face three years in prison or a EUR 75,000 fine after an MP from the ruling UMP party launched legal action against him over his album Politikment Incorrekt. When Daniel Mach, MP for Pyrénées-Orientales, heard the album last year, he proposed a law making it a criminal offence to insult the dignity of France and the French state. In November, when riots broke out in France’s run-down suburbs, another UMP deputy, Fran?ois Grosdidier, won the support of 152 MPs and 49 senators who demanded that parliament act against Makela’s lyrics. But by then Mach had taken a personal action against Makela for making and disseminating ‘violent and pornographic messages’ to which minors could get access. The case is the latest in a series of stand-offs between conservative MPs and rappers. In 2003, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and presidential hopeful, brought a criminal case against the rap band Sniper, saying their music was anti-semitic, racist and insulting. Makela, who was born in Belgium and came to France aged 14, said he did not target any particular group but rapped against ‘the system’. (The Guardian, May 29, 2006)
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products. Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items. The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items. The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. ‘Essentially it’s corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news,’ he said. (The Independent, May 29, 2006)
The German government’s parliamentary committee has confirmed allegations that Foreign Intelligence Agency (BND) agents illegally spied on journalists to expose their sources. The 180-page parliamentary report made public determined that measures taken by the BND against German reporters in an effort to shut off leaks violated the law. BND agents picked through the journalists’ rubbish and traced their research, the report stated. While none of the reporters were bugged, agents used other measures against them to try to uncover their sources, including stealing a box of his papers that one journalist had thrown away and tracing another’s research in the federal archive. After its publication, the German government announced that past and current BND employees would be investigated on the basis of the report. The head of the BND, Ernst Uhrlau, apologised to the media shortly after it was released and promised to take steps to prevent such abuses in future. (Deutsche Welle, May 29, 2006)
A Defense Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts in Iraq warns that paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories could damage American credibility and calls for an end to military payments to a group of Iraqi journalists in Baghdad, according to a summary of the investigation.
The review, by Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, was ordered after the disclosure last November that the military had paid the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based Pentagon contractor, to plant articles written by American soldiers in Iraqi publications, without disclosing the source of the articles. The contractor’s work also included paying Iraqi journalists for favorable treatment.
Though the document does not mention the Lincoln Group, Admiral Van Buskirk concluded that the military should scrutinize contractors involved in the propaganda effort more closely “to ensure proper oversight is in place.” He also faulted the military for failing to examine whether paying for placement for articles would “undermine the concept of a free press,” in Iraq, according to the summary.
Source: David S. Cloud, The New York Times
Taking their message to a state they don’t recognise, the Hamas prime minister gave an interview to an Israeli newspaper and his top aide spoke in Hebrew on the radio Tuesday. Danny Rubinstein of the newspaper Haaretz said Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh received him without an appointment, a rare gesture. Rubinstein told Israel Radio that he believes Hamas is reaching out to Israelis. Cabinet Secretary Ghazi Hamad was interviewed on Israel Radio, speaking in fluent Hebrew he learned in Israeli prisons. He made clear that recognizing Israel is not on the Hamas agenda, but that a long-term truce is possible if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the territories it captured in the 1967 Mideast War. Haniyeh and Hamad said Hamas would consider a truce with Israel, though both fell far short of recognising the Jewish state, accepting previous peace accords and renouncing violence. (AP ABC News,May 24, 2006)
AP Television News, headquartered in Britain, has opened a full-time office in North Korea, its representative Raphael Wober said. It has become the first Western TV company to get permission to work in North Korea on a permanent basis. The news followed four years of thorny negotiations with the state broadcaster Korean Radio and Television. Under an agreement reached between the sides, APTN crews will get an opportunity to come in North Korea on a regular basis, making films on condition of control by three staffers of Korean Radio and Television, which will constantly work at the bureau. APTN Executive Director Nigel Baker said at the unveiling ceremony in Pyong Yang: ‘The agreement for a full-time bureau now means we’ll be the only Western news organisation with regular coverage’. For many years APTN correspondents have been actively cooperating with Korean Radio and Television and are often invited to make video reports on major events in the country. As of the present moment, four foreign reporters work in North Korea on a permanent basis - three representatives of Chinese media (the Xinhua News Agency and the Renmin Ribao newspaper) and an Itar-Tass correspondent. (Itar-Tass, May 24, 2006)
The Iranian government closed one of its own newspapers Tuesday for publishing a cartoon that provoked riots among the Azeri minority.
State television reported that the national media supervisory body had closed the state-owned Iran “due to its publication of divisive and provocative materials.
The closure was indefinite, the television reported.
On Friday, the newspaper published a cartoon showing a cockroach speaking Azeri, the language of an ethnic group in northwestern Iran, reports Trend.
The cartoon touched off riots in that part of the country on Monday, and the unrest ended only after police used tear-gas on the crowd.
Culture Minister Saffar Harrandi appeared on state television and apologized for the cartoon.
Via http://www.trend.az
A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly - that was the future predicted by Google yesterday. Speaking at a conference for Google’s European partners, entitled Zeitgeist ‘06, on the outskirts of London last night Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking - artificial intelligence (AI). Google’s executives were also forced to defend their tactics. While suggesting the business could one day capture a 20 per cent share of the USD 800bn (EUR 626bn) global advertising market, Schmidt explained that the apparently scatter-gun approach to research that lets engineers spend a fifth of their time working on pet projects, also allows the company to innovate faster than any rival. Schmidt also attacked suggestions from some major US cable companies that providers of capacity-hungry internet services - such as video and TV - should be charged to run their services over the web. In fact Google is currently working on its own video tool that will allow broadband TV viewers to find the shows they want from the hundreds that are available across the world. Schmidt also had a few consoling words for the traditional media business which sees its profitability being utterly eroded by online rivals. He said usage of traditional media placed online is rising rapidly, but circulations - the revenue generator - are declining. ‘You don’t have a lack of audience problem, you have a business model problem,’ he said. (Technology Guardian,May 23, 2006)
More than one billion people in the world have access to the internet, with a quarter of them with broadband, or high-speed connections, according to a survey. The report by the firm eMarketer said the milestone of 1bn was reached in late 2005, and that nearly 250m households had broadband connections. The firm estimates that of these people, 845m use the internet regularly. The United States is still number one in terms of numbers of internet users with 175m, and broadband households, 43.7m. In terms of regions, however, Asia-Pacific has the largest number (315m) and is the largest broadband centre containing nearly 40 per cent of the world’s broadband households. Latin America was the fastest growing broadband region worldwide, achieving 70 per cent subscriber growth, the survey found. But it had just 70m people online. Europe had 233m people online and 55.2m broadband households. China had 111m users and 34.1m households with fast connections. The report was based on a number of industry surveys and data from the International Telecommunication Union and Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development. (AFP, Breitbart.com, May 22, 2006)
Åsk Dabitch Wäppling over at commercial-archive.com writes:
“Somewhere a disgruntled designer is lauging an evil laugh for getting away with this, I’m sure. Is this revenge for all those “logo bigger” requests? Hmmm?”
Click to enlarge.
“If you don’t read “Buttfuck” you need to get your head back in the gutter.”
The European Space Agency (ESA) will provide one-third of the EUR 120m funding for a new satellite system, which will enable Europeans to access broadband in the most inaccessible places. The satellite, to be called HYLAS (Highly Adaptable Satellite, but also Heracles’ lover and Argonaut in ancient Greek mythology), will give broadband cover to 22 European countries, specifically targeting those areas that current communication routes have failed to reach. The Hylas satellite will also distribute television of HD (high-definition) quality to the bulk of Europe. Broadband is by no means universal in Europe. The satellite solution enables all of the inaccessible areas to be accessible at once. The satellite will finally give between 150,000 and 300,000 potential broadband users the chance to use fast internet, following the satellite’s launch in 2008. The Hylas broadband system will contribute towards meeting Lisbon agenda goals, which include increasing broadband internet connections in homes. The system will most likely be used in villages, where a single receiver and modem, with a cost of EUR 150 to 225, will provide enough broadband for several homes, making the costs competitive with existing solutions. (Cordis, Welcome Europe, May 18, 2006)
Every year, the UN’s Department of Public Information (DPI) unveils its list of the world’s 10 most under-reported stories, implying that politics, murder and sex scandals still take precedence over poverty, peace-building or economic development. The list, released by the United Nations Monday, covers a wide range of stories - from the plight of asylum seekers and refugees in ongoing conflicts to earthquake relief and post-war reconstruction - that received little or no play in the world media. According to the DPI, the ten stories the world should hear more about include post-war reconstruction in Liberia; the new challenges faced by bona fide asylum seekers; the upcoming historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo; children caught in the ongoing conflict in Nepal; and the compounding effects of a drought threatening to undermine stability in war-devastated Somalia. The list also singles out several other stories under-reported by the world media: the plight of millions of refugees living in limbo; the problems of relief efforts in the aftermath of the South Asian earthquake and tsunami; the alarming number of children in conflict with the law; the collaborative solutions that have prevented conflicts over scarce water resources; and renewed violence that threatens to undermine the peace process in Cote d’Ivoire. (IPS News,May 17, 2006)
The first independent non-commercial Kurdish television station said it had started broadcasting to the Middle East via satellite from an undisclosed location near Stockholm on Monday. ‘This is the first independent Kurdish TV station aimed at all Kurds, and the first to broadcast in both Kurdish dialects and Persian,’ Kurdo Baksi, a spokesman for the channel, told AFP. The station, Rojhelat TV, broadcasts two hours of news stories daily from around the world, with particular focus on the Middle East and Iran. Rojhelat also plans to broadcast news, pictures and film sent in by individuals in Iran, Baksi said. Most of Rojhelat TV’s 20 staff members are Kurds from Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The channel is keeping the location of its premises secret for security reasons. (The Local,May 16, 2006)
More about this at medianetwork.blogspot.com
A novel penned by Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the 2003 invasion that ended his dictatorship will be released for the first time abroad in a Japanese translation, the publisher said on Friday. The heavily symbolic novel, about an outsider who plots to overthrow a town before eventually being defeated by an Arab warrior, has only been released in Iraq, but with its author’s name removed. The book, whose Arabic title translates as Damned One, Get Out of Here, will go on sale in Japan under the title The Dance of the Devil on May 19. Translated by a Japanese journalist, it will cost JPY 1,500 (EUR (EUR 10.50). Saddam, 69, who is being tried on charges of crimes against humanity, finished writing the novel just before the US-led military attack in March 2003. The novel had been expected to be out in Jordan last year but the government prevented publication on the grounds that it could hurt relations with neighbouring Iraq. (AFP, Middle East Times, May 15, 2006)
Retired poet S. Hussein is planning for a carrer as international bestseller novelist.
Der Spiegel, famed throughout decades for rooting out corruption and the vagaries of errant politicians, admitted Saturday some staff had been working for the government intelligence service. In an article in Monday’s edition, released in advance, the weekly - considered a watchdog of press and democratic freedoms in postwar Germany - said one staff member in a regional bureau had been working for the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) as recently as last autumn. Another filing from war zones around the world had likewise been providing information to the BND on a colleague working for Focus, a rival weekly news magazine. The BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence- gathering agency, has in effect admitted to committing ‘mistakes,’ thereby appearing to confirm indirectly that it had been spying on German journalists. The revelations appeared Friday in the Munich newspaper S?ddeutsche Zeitung. Quoting from Der Spiegel’s own article, it said the BND had kept several journalists under surveillance for some years in order to find out the source of leaks from the BND to the press. (AFP, Deutsche Welle,May 15, 2006)
The turkish version of Newspaper Index is now online: http://www.newspaperindex.com/tr/
Bulgarian officials have expressed ‘deep concern and worry’ after a newspaper published cartoons that satirised Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, and his country’s justice system at a time when five Bulgarian nurses are facing a new trial in Tripoli. The 12 cartoons were published last week by the national newspaper Novinar. One shows a woman in an Islamic veil with a condom over her head. In another, Qaddafi, holding a devil’s trident, stands over a boiling pot of soup with nurses’ caps floating in it. A third shows Qaddafi calculating his next move over a chessboard with nurse-shaped chess pieces and barrels of oil. The drawings, which drew a sharp response from Libya, raised concern here about the retrial of the nurses, who along with a Palestinian doctor have been accused of intentionally infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV. The nurses were sentenced to death by firing squad in May 2004. The ruling was overturned in December. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry quickly issued a statement expressing concern about ‘the offensive cartoons.’ But Novinar went on to send the drawings to the 100 or so newspapers worldwide that reprinted the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that were published this year by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Among those that have now reprinted the Bulgarian cartoons are Courrier International in France and Milliyet in Turkey. (International Herald Tribune,May 12, 2006)
MediaScrape, the first global information network using web technology to deliver free, all-video broadcast news clips, has launched at www.MediaScrape.com. MediaScrape says it is the first internet TV News Network to digitise analogue TV broadcasts in a format that is 100 per cent high quality video, on-demand, translated on location, interactive, free, searchable and archived. ‘This is a breakthrough in news information as MediaScrape delivers all foreign clips from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific in their original format and language, providing a virtual platform for multi perspectives on single issues and unbiased top world and regional stories,’ said Tyler N Cavell, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of MediaScrape. Unlike other news sites, MediaScrape features all three interactive capabilities - message boards, blogs and user-submitted content, including video, photos, text and audio. MediaScrape has signed agreements with leading national and international video news agencies and wholesalers, including Associated Press, Canadian Press and Dogan News Agency (81 bureaus worldwide). Presently subtitled in English, the news clips will soon be available in other languages. (Media Network Blogspot, MediaScrape,May 11, 2006)
The Venezuelan Congress will investigate if a cartoon published recently in a Caracas daily constitutes ‘a subliminal message or a direct order’ to stage an assassination attempt on President Hugo Chavez, a lawmaker said on Wednesday. The full Congress will discuss the matter on Thursday, and ‘very probably’ will ask that judicial authorities act to determine if the cartoon is a call to kill the country’s leftist populist president, the pro-Chavez Calixto Ortega said. Last Friday, the daily El Mundo published a cartoon in which a woman is on the telephone listing the series of kidnappings, murders and other criminal acts that have stirred up and shocked the country in recent weeks. In addition, the cartoon figure says that ‘this president is a violent man,’ allegedly attributing to Chavez some measure of responsibility for the wave of public insecurity. The person on the other end of the line asks the woman, ‘What’s the solution?’ and she responds, ‘Kill him!’ (EFE News, El Universal.com,May 11, 2006)
The news that Alaa Seif Al Islam, Cairo’s most famous blogger, will be kept in jail for two weeks has provoked consternation among Egyptian websurfers and reformist circles. Alaa, 23, was arrested along with other activists on Sunday. His blog manalaa.net, founded with his wife Manal and dedicated to current affairs and politics, receives some 2,000 visitors a day. According to fellow bloggers, Alaa was arrested for protesting against the detention of other campaigners, mainly students, who had rallied against disciplinary measure on two judges who had denounced electoral fraud in December’s general elections. Earlier this year, Alaa received an international award for his virtual diary on the web. After the clashes in Alexandria six months ago Abdel Karim, an Egyptian blogger, was arrested. But he was released 18 days later, after numerous protests to the Egyptian embassies abroad and the American embassy in Cairo. Bloggers seem to be taking the same action in the case of Alaa. (more…)
Kurt Volker, the US deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs in the US State Department, said late Thursday that media channels belonging to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) in Europe should be declared part of terrorist organisations and must be closed down. Delivering a speech at a US House of Representatives meeting discussing emerging threats in Europe, Volker labelled the PKK a threat to Europe’s security. He also said that his delegation has been to European capitals and requested that PKK media channels be closed. Delivering a speech at the meeting, Ihsan Bal, head of the International Strategic Research Organization (ISRO) Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, stated that last month’s events in Diyarbakir, a Kurdish city in the southeast, were provoked by Danish-based pro-Kurdish Roj-TV. Roj-TV is widely known for its close links with the PKK. Turkey has been urging the Danish authorities to close down the TV channel, but Danish officials have refused, claiming it would be contrary to freedom of expression. (The Anatolian,May 08, 2006)
More about ROJ-TV from this blog:
http://blog.newspaperindex.com/2005/12/13/save-roj-tv-the-kurdish-satellite-tv/
http://blog.newspaperindex.com/2005/11/08/turkey-wants-ban-on-danish-based-kurdish-tv-station/
A Pentagon research team monitors more than 5,000 jihadist websites, focusing daily on the 25 to 100 most hostile and active, US Defence officials told the US Congress on Thursday in a briefing about how terrorists use the internet. And the makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants to exhort Muslim youths to take up arms against the US, officials added. The team includes 25 linguists, who cover multiple dialects of the Arabic language and provide reports on events sparking anger on extremist websites, Dan Devlin, a Pentagon public diplomacy specialist, said Thursday. Officials said extremist propaganda is used to recruit jihadist fighters and supporters aged 7 to 25. But ‘we’ve seen products that are aimed at ages even lower than 7,’ testified Pentagon contractor Ron Roughhead. His company wasn’t identified, for security reasons. Tech-savvy militants from al-Qaida and other groups have modified war video games so that US troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defence Department officials and contractors testified. (AP, Reuters, msnbc.com,May 08, 2006)
At newspaperindex.com we have done this for months in a smaller scale:
http://blog.newspaperindex.com/2005/10/21/newspaper-index-proudly-presents-the-who-did-it-terrorist-guide/
It is the latest twist in the budding niche of mobile marketing. Sometime in the next few weeks, French billboards will be able to speak to your mobile phone - but only with your permission. When participating users are near an active advertisement - it could be part of a billboard or a bus shelter poster - their phones will automatically receive a notice that a digital file can be downloaded. The information could range from a ring tone or short video to a discount voucher. ‘With this project, we are really starting to create the personalised digital city,’ said Albert Asseraf, director of strategy, research and marketing at JCDecaux, the outdoor- advertising company behind the project. JCDecaux, for an undisclosed amount, purchased the exclusive license to the technology, which was developed over the past decade by the government- run French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (Inria). The potential shortcomings would be apparent in any large public space that might have many digitally enabled posters close to one another. (International Herald Tribune,May 08, 2006)
The Kremlin has decided to employ a multi-agency team led by US-based public relations firm Ketchum to improve foreign media coverage of the July Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, an unprecedented step for Russia. Russia, which was admitted to the club of leading industrialised nations in 2002, is chairing the G8 for the first time this year. A senior Kremlin official, Dmitry Peskov, was quoted as saying by the business daily Vedomosti on Tuesday that the recent Ukraine gas conflict showed the need to sharpen Russia’s PR skills.
‘We explained our point of view then, but no one listened to us. Maybe if we had worked then with a major PR agency, it would have all turned out differently,’ he said.
Former Kremlin deputy chief of staff Alexei Volin said the decision to seek Western assistance was remarkable. But he warned that even a slick PR drive would not overcome critical foreign media coverage ‘because of the inability of most Russian officials to communicate with the media.’ (The Moscow Times,May 04, 2006)
Here is a selection of illustrations by French cartoonist Michel Cambon on the theme of the jailing of journalists on occasion of World Press Freedom Day. Thanks WAN/Cambon! (more…)
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