06 May 11 | Uncategorized
So the Press Complaints Commission wants to regulate the tweets of newspapers and their reporters. It is a logical step, as the commission continues to track the old print titles in their march into electronic space. The editors’ code of practice it tries to enforce, after all, applies to journalists and does not restrict itself to one mode of delivery. (more…)
20 Apr 11 | Americas, Mexico
Community radio station have grown more popular in Mexico in the last few years creating conflicts with private radio networks. It is expected new laws which will either expand or retract the operating room for these low wattage radio stations will be included in an upcoming revision of television and radio legislation in Mexico. In the last few months, private radio station owners have lobbied the Mexican Congress about the increasing popularity of the community radio stations.
In early April, the Chamber of Deputies organised a forum on the challenges posed by the community radio movement, which was attended by both friends and foes of the community radios. During one of the panels at the event, representatives of Mexico’s Radio and Television Chamber (CIRT), which represents major radio station owners, asked the Mexican government to ensure there was no uneven competition between private radio stations and community radios. Emilio Nassar of the CIRT said that after subsidies, the community radios could be better situated economically than the private for profit stations.
Nassar insisted that “the independence with which the industry works today in Mexico, allows plurality, content diversity and editorial autonomy. Everything can be said on radio”. So why are the community radios necessary, he asked rhetorically.
Back in December 2009, radio station owners used a full page newspaper advertisement to argue that permitting the operation of community radios could produce a Chavez-style government in Mexico. A claim rejected by AMARC-Mexico, an NGO that promotes community radio. Community radio stations have been targeted by politicians in the regions too. In January, the government of Veracruz detained a radio director for operating his Radio Diversidad without a license. A detention that prompted the Human Rights Commission for Mexico City to express concern about the “criminalisation of community radios”. A fear echoed by many working in community radio as politicians debate their future.
10 Apr 11 | Uncategorized
One of the oddest strands of the WikiLeaks story in the US over the past year — and this week marks the one-year anniversary of the release of the “collateral murder” video that first launched the site to fame — has been the reaction of other journalists. Traditional media outlets would seem to share much in common with the whistle-blowing site, most importantly the core public-service mission of holding power accountable.
US media outlets, though — and even those that have worked alongside WikiLeaks — have been among the outfit’s harshest critics.
“They’ve been joining — even leading — the chorus calling for the prosecution of WikiLeaks,” liberal columnist Glenn Greenwald said Friday at the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston. He held particular scorn for New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, who has been on a public speaking circuit lately trying to draw a distinction between the responsible Gray Lady and its troubled “source.” (Just imagine, suggested Christopher Warren, of the Australian Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, if every journalist had to pass the personality test to which Julian Assange has been held.)
Theories abound as to where all the hostility comes from, and it does seem to be unique to the American media. In it’s simplest form, it may be rooted in pure competitive jealousy. But Greenwald and several other panelists Friday pointed to a more worrisome strand in the US media psyche — a fear of illegitimate interlopers among the professional class of “gatekeepers.”
This could have dangerous consequences, Warren warns. When US media outlets like the New York Times insists on calling WIkiLeaks a “source” and not a media partner, they make it easier for the government to deny WikiLeaks — or any organisation like it in the future — the institutional protections afforded the press.
Australian journalists get this, Warren said.
“They understand that if we allow WikiLeaks to be singled out,” he said, “it’s a threat to every person who seeks to practice independent journalism.”
One of the other great ironies of this story is that, as Harvard professor Yochai Benkler has pointed out, government officials and traditional-media critics have come down all the harder on Wikileaks as it has grown more responsible, and come more to resemble a traditional media organisation than a mere document-dumping one. From the “collateral murder” video to the Iraq war logs, to the Afghan diaries to the diplomatic cable cache, WikiLeaks has evolved in how it releases documents, whom it gives them to and what gets redacted.
Today, it functions an awful lot like a media outlet in that sense — but a media outlet that differs from the Times, in Greenwald’s eyes, in that it feels no deference to the US government.
01 Feb 11 | Uncategorized
Financial Times editor Lionel Barber’s Hugh Cudlipp Lecture, delivered last night, managed to fit the many and varied dilemmas facing the UK press into a short and entertaining speech.
It is pretty much accepted by anyone in possession of a press card that print media is in decline; but Barber points out that this a very much a western world phenomenon. In some markets, print is thriving:
These figures largely reflect a western disease: the virus has yet to strike the world’s biggest countries, China and India; and it is not true of many emerging countries such as Brazil, where the appetite for news in all forms is growing fast.
Since 2005, for example, the number of paid-for Indian daily newspaper titles has surged to 2,700, according to the World Association of Newspapers. The circulation of Hindi papers rose from less than 8m in the early 1990s to more than 25m last year. Meanwhile, the total circulation of Brazilian newspapers has expanded by 1m over the past decade to 8.2m, with steamy tabloids among the biggest beneficiaries.
Barber goes on to question why US and UK newspapers are suffering. Could it be because the press is a little too close to those it is meant to scrutinise?
In hindsight, Watergate was a curse as well as a blessing for American journalism. The courageous reporting of the Post and the New York Times – coupled with the favourable Supreme Court rulings on publication of the Pentagon Papers – were landmarks for the interpretation of First Amendment rights and the freedom of the press. But they also encouraged the cult of celebrity and media self-absorption.
In the words of Eric Alterman, as reporters became more sophisticated and respected, the top rank came to be regarded as the social equal of those people they were reporting on such as Senators and CEOs. Some came to identify more closely with their subjects rather than with their readers. In short, they joined the Establishment.
Does this apply to Britain?
[…]I believe we have entered our own period of media self-absorption, driven partly by our industry’s financial difficulties. Second, we have in recent years witnessed if not exactly a merger of the media and political class, certainly an increasingly intertwined relationship which, I suspect, does not necessarily serve the interest of either.
Today, many members of the political elite in Britain have all worked in or with the media industry. David Cameron worked in a commercial TV company. Jeremy Hunt ran a publishing business. Michael Gove was a newspaper columnist. Boris Johnson was a magazine editor (and still writes a weekly newspaper column). Ed Miliband was a TV researcher. And Ed Balls was an editorial writer for the FT.
This new social network in Britain may be more informal than formal, but it still comes across as far too cosy. Arguably, our elected representatives have become a tad too respectful toward broadcast and print media.
Many would argue that the web has broken up the influence of this network, with the exploits of Wikileaks in 2010 blowing traditional media out of the water. But Barber, quoting New York Times editor Bill Keller, questions this narrative:
Keller’s observation that Assange was primarily a source is highly pertinent. That plain fact should tamp down the fevered debate over whether WikiLeaks spells either the end of diplomacy or a new age of journalism. Like Keller, I believe it does neither.
Barber is also quite scathing on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal:
The suspicion must remain that News Corporation assumed that it enjoyed enough power and influence in Britain to make the phone hacking controversy go away.
Of interest to Index readers is this line, which will have to be borne in mind as the government’s defamation bill comes before parliament:
Many MPs are itching to retaliate for the humiliation of the expenses scandal, but statutory regulation would be a grave step in the wrong direction.
Press freedom is woven into the fabric of our nation. We do not want to go down the same road as countries such as Argentina, Hungary and South Africa which have adopted or are about to adopt new laws curbing press freedom. Democracy, it should be remembered, is not just about holding elections.
There is a case for rebalancing the right to privacy and the protections offered by Britain’s overly onerous libel laws which are weighted in favour of the well-heeled plaintiff. But Westminster should also tread carefully with regard to privacy, lest the rich and famous, on and off the football field, become untouchable.
READ THE FULL TEXT HERE
