At the current rate by which graphical, interactive advertising is seeping onto cellular phones, analysts say most of the world’s 2.2 billion cellphone users could soon be tuning in to a 15-second ad spot before watching a video, sending a message or listening to a downloaded song between phone conversations. Because cell-service providers know extensive personal information about their customers – including their present whereabouts – they can reach people with highly tailored, current offers.
Main Source: New York Times

While Fox TV’s hit show 24 draws millions of viewers, it appears some are getting a little squeamish. The US military has appealed to the show’s producers to tone down the torture scenes because of the presumed impact they are having both on troops in the field and America's reputation abroad. Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan recently pleaded with the show’s producers to stop including scenes where protagonist Jack Bauer tortures information out of terror suspects, or to include instances when torture backfires.
Main Source: The Independent

Press freedom is quickly losing ground in the Middle East as authoritarian governments – many of them backed by the US – retreat from liberalization undertaken just a few years ago, for which the Bush administration claimed credit. This according to an annual report by the Committee to Protect Journalists that documents diminishing press freedoms worldwide, with Middle Eastern countries among the worst offenders. Journalists and activists have protested in several Arab capitals despite government intimidation.
Main Source: McClatchy Newspapers

A French satirical weekly defended itself in court Wednesday against defamation charges over reprinting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that last year stoked outrage and violence across the Muslim world. The case has drawn nationwide attention in a country with Europe's largest Muslim community and a strong commitment to freedom of expression and secularism.

The magazine, Charlie-Hebdo, is charged with "publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion." The charge carries a possible 6-month prison sentence and a fine of up to $28,530. In opening arguments the magazine’s director defended the decision to run the drawings, saying they were aimed "at ideas, not men."

Main Source: Associated Press

Stopping short of a full apology to outraged viewers, the candy maker Masterfoods USA has dumped a Super Bowl ad showing 2 men react in self-disgust after accidentally “kissing” over a Snickers bar. The US division of Mars killed the spot and took it off the Web Monday after queer-rights groups complained it promoted violence against gays. Critics were also upset about features on the website that showed NFL players reacting to the ad and offered alternate endings, one of which included physical violence between the characters.
Main Source: USA Today

A freelance videographer who's been imprisoned for 5 months for refusing to turn over his footage of a 2005 protest lost another bid for release. Joshua Wolf was held in contempt of court after refusing to turn videotape over to a federal grand jury investigating a G-8 summit protest where anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a police car and attacking an officer. The judge and prosecutor argued that the punishment still shows promise of breaking Wolf, who has steadfastly resisted testifying or turning over the tape.
Main Source: Associated Press

In a plea deal, the Army has dropped 2 misconduct counts from the upcoming court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, a US officer who refused deployment to Iraq. The dropped charges were for telling reporters – who will now not be forced to testify – that the Bush administration lied and the Iraq is illegal. In exchange, Watada will admit to the statements. He still faces up to 4 years in prison for other public statements and for not deploying with his brigade.
Main Source: Seattle Times

Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday, but no policy change is expected. Google was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the Chinese version of its search engine to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core Western markets.
Main Source: The Guardian

The headline blared in the Daily Princetonian, Princeton's student newspaper: a conservative political professor caught with a male prostitute. But the story isn’t true, and the professor is considering legal action. Fewer colleges are publishing joke issues as legal liabilities rise and national journalism groups advise against them. Because of their appearance and long life on the Internet, on which they appear less like satire, concerns increase even more.
Main Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

The First Amendment rights of high school and college journalists are up for debate in Washington state, as lawmakers consider whether young scribes should have the same free-press rights as their professional counterparts. Democratic Rep. Dave Upthegrove, has introduced a bill that would ensure student journalists aren’t censored, and would forbid public schools or universities to discipline or fire a student media adviser for refusing to censor students. Only a handful of states have passed such laws.
Main Source: Associated Press

A report on the website of Insight Magazine – owned by the same company as the Washington Times – claims associates of Sen. Hillary Clinton found Sen. Barack Obama attended a radical Muslim school in Indonesia. After it was picked up by Fox News the New York Post and CNN itself, CNN sent a reporter to Jakarta, where the school Obama attended from 1969 to 1971 was found to be religiously open and diverse. An interviewed classmate claims the school was the same when he and Obama attended.

A spokesman for Clinton denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim and called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Main Source: CNN

Critics of Pres. Hugo Chavez are raising alarms that the leftist Venezuelan leader’s stated intention not to renew the broadcast license of a private TV station is a sign that the country’s media landscape will narrow. Chavez accuses the station of involvement in the 2002 coup attempt against him, though there appears to be no evidence of a direct conspiracy. Ever since, Chavez has held a grudge against RCTV, the oldest private broadcaster in Venezuela. When the station’s license runs up in May, Chavez says, the signal will be “nationalized.”
Main Source: Associated Press

After last year's White House Correspondents Association dinner host Stephen Colbert drew mixed reactions to his sharp critiques of Pres. Bush and the press, event organizers appear to be going for a less-combative approach, choosing impersonator Rich Little for the pending April event. Steve Scully, president of the White House Correspondents Association that hosts the annual affair at which elite journalists, politicians and other personalities rub elbows, cited the slogan for the Washington Gridiron Dinner, which says, "singe, don't bun."
Main Source: Editor & Publisher

The Somali government has relaxed a ban on 4 major media outlets it had closed down as martial law was declared across Somalia, media owners said. The 24-hour closure came amid official complaints the outlets – including 2 of Somalia's largest private broadcasters and a local Aljazeera station – favored Islamists ousted by an Ethiopian-led, US-backed offensive. Radio stations of HornAfrik and Shabelle Media Network were on-air after meeting with the government. The broadcasters, including Koranic radio IQK, deny favoring the Islamists.
Main Source: Reuters

The US-backed interim Somali government, with new emergency powers in hand to suppress chaos left in the absence of Islamist militias driven underground last month, ordered 4 major media outlets to shut down Monday. The government's national security agency sent the closure order by letter to HornAfrik Media, Shabelle Media Network, the Koranic radio station IQK and the local office of Aljazeera TV. Managers at HornAfrik and Shabelle, among the country's biggest nongovernmental broadcasters, both confirmed they shut down as ordered.
Main Source: Reuters

From across the border in Poland, a radio station is broadcasting around the clock to Belarus, giving the ex-Soviet republic one of its few sources of news not controlled by the Belarus government. Supported by the Polish Foreign Ministry and the Open Society Institute founded by billionaire George Soros, Radio Racja uses Web technology to mix popular music with propaganda in both Belarussian and Russian. Government critics welcome Radio Racja's efforts to break the state media monopoly but say its impact so far has been limited.
Main Source: Reuters

In a bid to clamp down even harder on the Internet in Iran, the hardline government has demanded the registration of all websites and weblogs in the country by March 1, drawing objections from many Iranian bloggers who say the move violates free speech. Over the last few years, the government has banned and filtred thousands of websites without explanation. But the new law is specific about what kinds of content are not allowed, and it demands website registrars provide personal information about themselves.
Main Source: InterPress Service

Iraq’s Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqi government and the US military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media. Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, finally admitted in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by the AP.

US and Iraqi officials, bolstered by right-wing critics of Iraq news coverage, had used the alleged non-existence of Capt. Hussein as evidence that news outlets were manufacturing “bad news” about the war, particularly to exaggerate sectarian violence. For six weeks, the AP had failed to produce proof of Hussein’s existence. Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who originally denied Hussein was a police official, refused Thursday to state how long his office had known it was wrong.

Khalaf told the AP that an arrest warrant had been issued for the captain for having contacts with the media in violation of the Ministry's regulations. Hussein told the AP on Wednesday that he learned the arrest warrant would be issued when he went to work on Thursday. His phone was turned off Thursday and he could not be reached for further comment.

Main Source: Associated Press

The FBI has abandoned its effort to recover government documents leaked to Jack Anderson, a longtime investigative reporter who died in December 2005. The documents, which some officials said might have contained classified information, were among the late columnist's confidential papers. They touched off a dispute between the FBI and the journalist's family and biographer. At the heart of the dispute were concerns about government investigations of reporters and whether they might violate constitutional protections of the press.
Main Source: Associated Press

Already facing a legal challenge for alleged copyright infringement, Google's crusade to build a massive digital book library has triggered a spat with an alternative project promising better online access to the world's books, art and historical documents. A group called the Open Content Alliance favors a less-restrictive approach to prevent the digitization of books from being controlled by a massive commercial entity.
Main Source: Associated Press

Iraqi leaders said they have launched a probe into a gruesome video of Saddam Hussein's controversial hanging that has triggered angry protests from the country's Sunni minority 3 days after the execution. As government officials began their investigation, thousands of Sunnis continued demonstrations in and around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. An official close to PM Nouri Al-Maliki said the inquiry would find out who secretly filmed Saddam's execution with a mobile phone in plain sight of guards and then distributed it.
Main Source: Agence France-Presse

In a move seen as threatening to the First Amendment rights of journalists, the US Army has subpoenaed journalist Sarah Olson to testify at the January 4 pre-trial hearing in the court-martial of Lt. Ehren Watada, the first officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. The Army placed another journalist, Dahr Jamail, on the prosecution witness list. Both journalists oppose the Army’s attempt to compel their participation in the hearing, on grounds that forcing journalists to testify against their sources violates press freedom.
Main Source: Bay Area Indymedia

Want to see the decline of news media right before your very eyes? Read Claudia Parsons’ story “Iraqi soldiers eat frogs, rabbit at handover ceremony.” I’m vegan and I still think the story of an entire province’s security being transferred from US to Iraqi forces is far more important than the twisted fraternity pranks of six rowdy troops biting the heads off live animals. Claudia disagrees. She knows spectacles sell copy.
Main Source: Reuters

In an article titled “Vegetables nearly as dangerous as under-cooked meat, study says,” Scripps Howard is actually citing its own “study of federal outbreak records.” Not exactly the peer-reviewed methodology we favor. Because vegetables were the direct cause of 19,000 illnesses, while meat and “byproducts” caused 22,600 in a 5-year period, we’re supposed to conclude that veggies are “nearly as dangerous” as meat.

The article makes no mention of the fact that the meat industry is the actual source of nearly all of these illnesses. Neither does it take into account that we come into contact with far more uncooked vegetables than undercooked meat, which renders their headline a serious deception. Lies don’t matter, though, as long as they sell copy, right? This article is pretty much advocacy journalism, lobbying in the narrative voice for stricter regulation of commercial vegetable handling, ignoring completely the problem’s source: animal carcasses and feces. –BD

Main Source: Scripps Howard News Service

According to a science-fiction-style Reuters article, “Tooth tells a tale in UN probe of Lebanon killing,” researchers have developed a profile of former PM Rafik Hariri’s assassin – from a single tooth and “33 tiny bits” of burned flesh said to be from the killer’s body. As if trying to bolster the legitimacy of the dead-ended investigation looking to connect Syrian officials to the supposed “suicide” bombing that killed Hariri, Reuters shows exactly zero skepticism about these bizarre claims. Funny read if you’ve got a minute to blow. –BD
Main Source: Reuters

The number of journalists jailed worldwide for their work rose for the second year with Internet bloggers and online reporters now one third of those incarcerated, a US-based media watchdog said Thursday. A Committee to Protect Journalists census found a record 134 journalists were in jail on December 1 – an increase of 9 over 2005 – in 24 countries with China, Cuba, Eritrea and Ethiopia the top 4 violators. The US is holding 2 journalists without charges, and a blogger remains in custody for refusing to turn over video.
Main Source: Reuters

The legal battle brewing between Universal Music and MySpace could shape the broader commercial relationship between traditional media companies and a new generation of Internet start-ups that rely on them for content. Last month Universal accused MySpace of infringing its copyrights by allowing its customers to post Universal videos without permission. The fight takes place on uncertain legal ground as the legislation at the heart of the debate was written years before social networking sites such as MySpace even existed.
Main Source: Financial Times

The largest union at Philadelphia's 2 biggest daily newspapers is planning to launch an online newspaper to compete with the company website if workers go on strike after midnight tonight. Employees from the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News would contribute local content that will be edited and posted online. In competing with Philly.com, the union's would sell ads and function like an online news site, covering major stories as well as the strike itself, said Inquirer newsroom’s chief steward.
Main Source: Associated Press

The US Supreme Court refused Monday to shield the New York Times and 2 of its reporters from a prosecutor's probe into who leaked word of planned raids on 2 Muslim charities 5 years ago. The decision clears the way for federal prosecutors to review the phone records of the reporters for several weeks in the fall of 2001 to uncover the leak. The Times maintains it has a First Amendment right to protect the confidentiality of its sources. The Supreme Court has never squarely upheld such a right.
Main Source: LA Times

NBC News says it will begin referring to sectarian strife in Iraq as a "civil war" after a particularly deadly series of attacks in Baghdad. The LA Times was the first major news organization to adopt the description in October; no other major media outlet has made the phrase a matter of policy. The White House has exerted pressure on media not to use the term, journalists said, which led to newsroom caution. An NBC anchor explained news executives had concluded that the current fighting met the definition of a civil war.
Main Source: LA Times

Sometimes veiling their “coverage” as public-interest reporting, but more often simply gushing over the idea, so-called news organizations flocked to cover the industry-created “phenomenon” known as “Cyber Monday.” Recently invented by a literal ad-agency conspiracy, the consumer holiday falls on the first Monday after Thanksgiving. And the ad-driven media, of course, have a profit-driven motive to fawn over the pseudo-event – so they do. A few outlets were clever enough to disguise their coverage as a warning about potential fraud or privacy invasion.
Main Source: The Times of London

The Arabic satellite television news channel Aljazeera has launched its new English-language station. At 3 p.m. GMT, a screen graphic with a clock ticking down the minutes gave way to a photo montage of major news stories from recent years. The US government has criticized and even militarily attacked Aljazeera. Many in the Arab world consider the station too pro-Western. The new channel will be available to 80 million homes in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia. In the US, it will only be available on the Internet.
Main Source: BBC

In a case that media lawyers say has broad implications for press freedoms, a jury found Tuesday that a newspaper columnist falsely wrote in 2003 that the chief justice of the Illinois State Supreme Court had traded his vote for a political favor, and that the writer had acted with malice. The chief justice brought the case against Bill Page, a former columnist for the Kane County Chronicle. The paper’s lawyers complained that the trial judge did not allow them to argue that as a columnist, Page was not held to the standards of a reporter.
Main Source: New York Times

If you want to know the truth of what happened at the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education yesteray, or in the day or so since, you're simply going to have to wait. The story is so muddled, and so many sources are saying wildly different things, that it is impossible to tell at this point with any significant certainty. But that hasn't stopped the corporate media from running with it, sometimes without even acknowledging alternate versions of the "truth," and often stating facts as truism without even attributing sources.

Depending who you read, there were 40 to 150 people taken hostage. Five or 6 Baghdad police officials have been arrested, by various authorities. The gunmen were dressed as soldiers or special police. All but 2 of the hostages have been released... or "up to 70" are still held. Iraqi police either freed the hostages in daring raids, or they were found freed, or both, or neither. The contradictions and discrepencies go on and on.

Main Source: Wire Reports

The only news agency to bite the latest attempt by racist scientists to demonstrate an intelligence gap between blacks and whites, UPI greedily regurgitated a by researchers in Ontario purportedly showing that blacks are (still) dumber than whites. Never mind the numerous contextual critiques of such claims or criticism of IQ tests, UPI wholly failed to seek other sources, note that races are not monoliths, or examine racist public policies that result from such claims.
Main Source: United Press International

The US Army’s influential Military Times newspaper group is calling on Donald Rumsfeld to resign for the "failure" of his military strategy. The blunt message accuses him of losing touch with military leadership and the US public. Bush commended Rumsfeld last week for doing a "fantastic job," but several conservatives who supported the invasion are now publicly criticizing the handling of the conflict. The New York Times offered an additional blow to Bush’s party, saying that for the first time it was endorsing no Republicans for Congress.
Main Source: The Independent

A federal judge upheld an order requiring the New York Times to disclose a columnist's confidential sources as part of a libel lawsuit filed over its coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Former Army scientist Steven Hatfill sued the Times, arguing that a series of articles by columnist Nicholas Kristof falsely implicated him in the anthrax mailings that killed 5 people in late 2001. The judge said Hatfill's right to move forward with his lawsuit outweighed the limited immunity Virginia gives reporters from disclosing sources.
Main Source: Associated Press

Though far from the worst mainstream piece on the Sandinista leading current presidential election, this article still refers to “former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega.” While technically accurate, a more relevant description would mention he was elected with two-thirds of the vote in a closely monitored 1984 ballot. But that might make it harder for readers to stomach the next paragraph about how the US “trained and financed Contra rebels to fight Ortega's Sandinista government in a 1980s civil war that killed 30,000 people.”
Main Source: Reuters

Despite the potential to be a tough sell to advertisers, the long-anticipated launch of an English-language version of the controversial Aljazeera network is expected Nov. 15 in the US. A network representative declined to provide any details on which US markets the network will be available in, or which cable or satellite operators might carry it, or even whether any advertisers had signed up. The network will be ad-supported, but backed by the wealthy Emir of Qatar.
Main Source: MediaDailyNews

A special new Pentagon unit is aimed at influencing 24-hour news outlets and websites around the world to counter what it considers derogatory publicity, according to a memo. The focus will favor so-called new media, such as the Internet and blogs. It would also work to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows. The Pentagon plan, under development for months, comes as US voters prepare to decide next week whether the Republicans continue their control of Congress.
Main Source: Associated Press

The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report for the 6-month period ending September 2006 confirm yet again that major metros are struggling to show growth. This is the fourth consecutive semi-annual report to register a severe drop in daily circulation and – perhaps more troubling to the industry – Sunday copies. The estimated decline was 2.8% for daily circulation for all reporting papers; up from 1% in recent years. Sunday papers declined 3.4%. Daily newspapers typically continue to turn significant profits.
Main Source: Editor & Publisher

Liberal bloggers have made targets of 50 or so Republican candidates in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific critical news articles, it is possible to exploit Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results. The bloggers have selected 50 articles from what they consider “credible” sources to which they hope to steer unsuspecting Web browsers.
Main Source: New York Times

Some poor countries, such as Mauritania and Haiti, improved their record in a global press freedom index this year, while France, the US and Japan slipped further down the scale of 168 countries rated, the group Reporters Without Borders said yesterday. The news media advocacy organization said the most repressive countries in terms of journalistic freedom – such as North Korea, Cuba, Burma and China – made no advances at all.

Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the US now stands at 53, having fallen 9 places since last year. "Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism,'" the group said.

Main Source: Washington Post

Okay, so this isn’t the crime of the century, but I’ve been wanting to put someone in the Doghouse for this practice. Reuters ran this piece about YouTube deleting 30,000 files after copyright complaints from a Japanese media consortium. Pretty straightforward story, but Reuters’s only source was the consortium. “YouTube officials could not immediately be reached for comment.” Was this story so pressing that it had to hit the wire “immediately”? How did they verify the number of files deleted? Was there some impending danger to readers?
Main Source: Reuters

A new Republican Party television ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to "call me" is drawing charges of race-baiting. Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr., who hopes to become the first black senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy.
Main Source: LA Times

Under an agreement reached with the US Justice Department, pundit Armstrong Williams will pay $34,000 to settle a case over a contract he received from the Education Department to promote Pres. Bush’s education agenda. The case did not target the ethics of the contract, which involved promoting the No Child Left Behind Act. Williams will admit no wrongdoing, but will repay money the DoJ found he had overbilled. The Government Accountability Office found in 2005 that the deal violated a ban on "covert propaganda."
Main Source: USA Today

In a story couched as hard news, the Monitor placed all the blame for this month’s massive upsurge in violence on insurgents bent on distorting the meaning of Ramadan. Beyond a good deal of editorializing couched as reporting, the main oddity here is the failure to note a corresponding increase in US and Iraqi government raids during the same period. It was the US that chose Ramadan as the time to conduct a massive offensive in Baghdad, supposedly to smoke out insurgents and death squads – an action many predicted would incite violence.

The article also notes that Pres. Bush “did admit… that the violence may have an impact on US elections,” treating it as a fact that needed to be conceded by a stubborn president – never mind that the GOP is using that “admission” as a forefront talking point in its political campaigning, insinuating that the insurgents are essentially voting Democrat with their offensive.

Main Source: Christian Science Monitor

An audit by the Pentagon inspector general has concluded that an American military propaganda campaign to plant favorable articles in the Iraqi news media did not violate laws or Pentagon regulations, but it was not properly supervised by military officials in Baghdad. The report said that the secret program was lawful and did not constitute a “covert action.” But it concluded that military officials in Baghdad violated federal contracting guidelines by failing to keep adequate records on the contract.
Main Source: New York Times

One of the founders of Wikipedia is set to launch a rival to the collaborative Internet encyclopedia, in an attempt to bring a more-orderly approach to organizing knowledge online. Wikipedia – which is available to be written and edited by anyone on the Internet – is one of the most visible successes of mass collaboration on the Web, with many of its 1.4 million articles appearing high in search results. However, its openness has also drawn charges of unreliability and left it vulnerable to disputes between people with opposing views.

The latest venture from Larry Sanger, who helped create Wikipedia in 2001, is intended to bring more order to this creative chaos by drawing on traditional measures of authority. Though still open to submissions from anyone, the power to authorise articles will be given to editors who can prove their expertise, as well as a group of volunteer “constables”, charged with keeping the peace between warring interests.

Main Source: Financial Times

The liberal talk-radio network Air America filed for bankruptcy protection this weekend after talks with a creditor broke down. Air America, which was set up in March 2004 to counter the country's Right Wing-dominated talk medium, is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This would allow the network to continue broadcasting while it seeks to tackle its financial problems. In its filing, Air America said it had lost about $40.9 million since its launch.
Main Source: The Guardian