BBC poll on press freedom

"World opinion is divided on the importance of having a free press, according to a poll conducted for the BBC World Service.

Of those interviewed, 56% thought that freedom of the press was very important to ensure a free society.

But 40% said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press's freedom to report news truthfully.

Pollsters interviewed 11,344 people in 14 countries for the survey.

In most of the 14 countries surveyed, press freedom (including broadcasting) was considered more important than social stability."

Read more

Helen Clark and the media

This is one of many more stories likely to appear in the months to come. The question it asks is can Helen Clark win a fourth term for Labour?

There has surprisingly been no discussion of a succession to Helen Clark. This article sets up what are likely to be the terms of the narrative surrounding her leadership.

From The Press via stuff.co.nz:

"Combining David Lange's intelligence and frankness with ferocious discipline, she has dominated New Zealand's political stage as few before her.

On December 10, Clark marks her eighth year as Prime Minister.

Assuming the Government goes full-term (beyond mid-October next year), she could next year move into fifth place in the ranks of our longest-serving premiers – led by Richard Seddon, followed by William Massey, Keith Holyoake and Peter Fraser.

By then she will have led the Labour Party for nearly 15 years. She has been the most popular prime minister of modern times.

So an assessment of Clark's legacy may seem premature.

Aged just 57, she has her eyes on a fourth term next year – a feat if achieved that would place her government alongside Peter Fraser's as the only other Labour administration to have done so.

Early in her premiership, British Labour MP Austin Mitchell quipped that governing New Zealand didn't seem enough of a test for Clark's abilities, and suggested she take a subcontract role running Scotland or Norway.

Yet three terms on, Clark is facing a challenge even for her formidable skills.

Her government appears old and tired. Mired in minor scandal for much of the time since the last election, Clark has been forced to spend her time fighting fires."


Read more...

See also Colin Espiner's article on the topic

Ohio Paper Portrays Iranians As Cockroaches Fleeing Sewer

Read more...

Fairfax Media

From scoop.co.nz (owned by Fairfax media):

"Fairfax Media has strengthened its position as the country’s most influential media company with the number of New Zealanders being reached by its newspapers, magazines and online platforms increasing.

The latest Nielsen readership survey ending June 2007 for newspapers and magazines show Fairfax Media print publications are read by 2.7 million or 84.6%1 of New Zealanders aged 15 years+, an increase of 60,000 readers year on year. "

Read more...

Keith Ng and Internet adversting

From Public Address blog:

"The reason for their existence is contextual advertising. Advertisers will pay a premium for space in subject-specific sections, because those readers are easier to sell to. For example, if you're reading car reviews, you're more likely to be someone actually looking to buy a car, and so a car ad is worth more, because more sales are likely to result from it. Same with travel sections and airlines, etc."

Read more...

Changing Nature of News

From The Press on 16 April 2007:

"The EPMU's national secretary, Andrew Little, says New Zealand journalism is "under attack" and that the public should be worried about the quality and breadth of the news and information it can expect to receive. Appropriately, given that prediction, the union chose Black Friday to launch its "OurMedia!" campaign on the steps of APN's corporate headquarters in Auckland. "Irrespective of populist views about journalists," says Little, "we are reliant on good reporting and good broadcasting for understanding of what is happening in our communities and promoting public debate on important issues. This is an issue the wider public needs to understand."

Under APN's outsourcing proposal, for example, news and other copy from the company's provincial papers (including in Whangarei, Tauranga, Hawkes Bay, Rotorua and Wanganui) would be sub-edited, along with that of the Herald and the Listener magazine, by a pool working in what the union predicts will be a "factory-like" set-up somewhere in Auckland's industrial outlands. It is, Little argues, a recipe for mistakes and loss of local colour and distinctiveness, a short-term money saver that long term will inevitably "dumb down" the product and undermine the public's confidence in what they are reading.

"But the key decision-makers are in Australia. They don't have the local connections," he says."

Read more...

Website of EPMU, the trade union fighting the sub-editing contracts

The Australian on Murdoch

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is saying:

"This deal means more media consolidation and fewer independent voices, and it specifically affects the local market in New York City…What's good for shareholders of huge media conglomerates isn't always what's good for the public interest or our civic dialogue...We should immediately conduct a careful factual and legal analysis of the transaction to determine how it implicates specific FCC rules and our overarching statutory obligation to protect the public interest. I hope nobody views this as a slam dunk."

Read more...

Democracy Now on Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones

From a broadcast of Democarcy Now:

"AMY GOODMAN: On this issue of media consolidation, I wanted to bring in Craig Aaron, spokesperson for Free Press in Chicago. Craig, can you talk about what this means in the media landscape right now, the number of holdings that Rupert Murdoch has?

CRAIG AARON: Well, you know, it’s an immense amount of holdings at this point. You know, several decades ago, there might have been fifty corporations that controlled what we see, hear, watch every day. Now we’re down to probably about five that really dominate the vast majority of information and news. And so, this gives one company and one man an immense amount of power.

You know, if this deal goes all the way, which all indications are that it will, Murdoch will control, you know, a national broadcast network, a cable news channel and one of the few remaining daily newspapers that really set the national news agenda. So among this small handful of outlets that really set the agenda every day across the country in all the papers and all the local television stations, suddenly Rupert Murdoch, who is very clear he’s always going to put his personal ideology and his personal business interests before the quality of news, he’s going to have an incredible amount of influence over that news agenda."

Read more...

Listen to the show...

Murdcoh buys Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal

From The New York Times:

"Mr. Murdoch has shown in the past that he is willing to experiment, even knock over some sacred cows. In an interview with The Times earlier this year, Mr. Murdoch mused aloud about The Journal, saying, for instance, that he did not have time to read longer articles during the week and might like to swap out the paper’s Pursuits section on Saturdays with a glossy magazine. More recently, he told Time magazine that he was not sure about the offbeat front-page stories known internally as “A-Heds” that are a plum for reporters to write."

Read more...

Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal

From The New York Times:

"Murdoch Seen to Win Control of Dow Jones
Rupert Murdoch appeared today to have gained enough support from the deeply divided Bancroft family to buy Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion...

For Mr. Murdoch, the prospect of acquiring The Journal represents the pinnacle of his long career building the News Corporation into a $28 billion global media empire that already includes more than 100 newspapers around the world, satellite broadcast operations, the Fox television network, the online social networking site MySpace and many other properties.

It also signals the end of an era for Dow Jones and the controlling Bancroft family, an intensely private clan that had allowed The Journal to operate independently and become one of the nation’s most prominent and trusted newspapers, even as its finances deteriorated.

The three dozen members of the Bancroft family had engaged in an intense debate about The Journal’s future. Some argued vociferously that Mr. Murdoch would damage the newspaper’s credibility, while others said that his offer was too good to pass up at a time when the newspaper industry has been struggling."

Read more...

Read also...

And from the Wall Street Journal where journalists have been very skeptical about the deal.

Goodbye to Newspapers?

From The New York Reviews of Books, an article by Russell Baker reviewing When the Press Fails: Political Power and the New Media from Iraq to Katrina by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston University of Chicago Press

"The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect. Courts that once treated it like a sleeping tiger now taunt it with insolent subpoenas and put in jail reporters who refuse to play ball with prosecutors. It is abused relentlessly on talk radio and in Internet blogs. It is easily bullied into acquiescing in the designs of a presidential propaganda machine determined to dominate the news.

Its advertising and circulation are being drained away by the Internet, and its owners seem stricken by a failure of the entrepreneurial imagination needed to prosper in the electronic age. Surveys showing that more and more young people get their news from television and computers breed a melancholy sense that the press is yesteryear's thing, a horse-drawn buggy on an eight-lane interstate....

Rupert Murdoch of course has long spread melancholy in newsrooms around the world, but it was the disclosure in May that the Bancroft family, which controls The Wall Street Journal, might be ready to sell him their paper for five billion dollars that really struck at journalism's soul. The sale of another newspaper is common enough these days, but The Wall Street Journal is not another newspaper. It is one of the proudest pillars of American journalism. Like The New York Times and The Washington Post, it has for generations been controlled by descendants of a founding patriarch.

Family control has sheltered all three newspapers from Wall Street's most insistent demands, allowing them to do high-quality—and high cost—journalism. It was said, and widely believed, that the controlling families were animated by a high-minded sense that their papers were quasi-public institutions. Of course profit was essential to their survival, but it was not the primary purpose of their existence. That one of these families might finally take the money and clear out heightens fears that no newspaper is so valuable to the republic that it cannot be knocked down at market for a nice price. Murdoch at the Journal is a dark omen for journalists everywhere. When the sign in the shop window says "Everything For Sale," it is often followed by "Going Out Of Business."

Read more...

and an earlier article called "The End of News"