Archives 2005-1014: News
The extent to which the internet has changed the media landscape is revealed in a survey conducted for A1 Telekom Austria by Zukunftsinstitut. According to the study of residential customers, Austrians on average spend just over three hours per day online, 11 per cent of which is via smartphones. Among younger users, mobile phones and the Internet have long since replaced television as the dominant medium. This is demonstrated by the extremely high figures among the so-called "digital champions... MORE
This is a story of two disasters and their respective coverages in the US media: that of the Katrina hurricane disaster and the Haiti earthquake. Each disaster was covered differently in the US news media, researcher Jennifer Petersen has found. The bottomline was this: the disaster in New Orleans became, over the course of the coverage, a catastrophe, an exception, whereas the earthquake in Haiti was depicted as a crisis to be managed. In the case of the former, in the midst of utter chaos,... MORE
Hakimeldostu Mehdiyev, the correspondent of the Institute for Reporter Freedom and Safety (IRFS) in Sharur, in the north of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, has been charged by the district prosecutor’s office with “diverting electricity” under article 189-1 of the criminal code. Sanan Pashayev, the official in charge of the investigation, made Mehdiyev signed an undertaking that he would not leave the Sharur district. The charge carries a maximum fine of 3,000 manat (2,600 euros), which... MORE
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its call to the judicial authorities to drop all charges against BBC correspondent Urinboy Usmonov, whose trial began on August 16 in the northern city of Khujand. “Usmonov’s claims of being tortured while in detention are shocking,” RSF said. “They must be the subject of a serious investigation and those responsible should be punished. Unfortunately this is just the latest in a long list of irregularities since his... MORE
Harassment of the independent newspapers Narodnaya Volya and Nasha Niva continues despite last month’s withdrawal of a legal bid to have them closed. They have each been fined 14 million roubles (2,000 euros) for the warnings they had received from the information ministry in recent months. Narodnaya Volya has said it intends to appeal. “Two weeks after giving the two newspapers encouraging signs, the authorities have put on a new show of force by imposing a fine that penalizes journalistic... MORE
Severe restrictions have been placed by the Propaganda Department on media coverage of the high-speed train crash on July 23 in the southeastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, in which 39 people were killed, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Wang Qinglei, a producer with state-owned China Central Television, was fired on July 27 because of his investigative coverage of the crash. The previous day, his News 1+1 programme was suspended without advance warning... MORE
Security officials in Nakhchivan – an autonomous Azerbaijani exclave between Armenia and Iran – have been harassing journalists in an attempt to impose a news blackout on a death in detention and the disappearance of four other young people who had been summoned for questioning, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “After eliminating almost all the sources of news and information, Nakhchivan’s security services are carrying out intolerable human rights... MORE
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned last week’s seizure of all 40,000 copies of Izvestia Kaliningrada , a weekly published in Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad. It was the latest example of regional governors abusing their power to silence media that annoy them. “We are disturbed to see this form of censorship used more than once in a short space of time,” RSF said. “By confiscating newspaper issues, local authorities are deliberately suppressing... MORE
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa made a threat in a phone call to the chairman of The Sunday Leader , Lal Wickrematunge, on July 19 because of an article reporting that China had given the president and his son, parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa, money to be used “at their discretion.” “We are extremely shocked that the president personally phones journalists in order to threaten them.” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “It is unacceptable that The Sunday... MORE
NATO carried out airstrikes on the Tripoli headquarters of the state-owned national TV broadcaster Al-Jamahiriya and two of its installations on July 30. According to Al-Jamahiriya, three of its journalists were killed and 21 others were wounded in the airstrikes but this could not be immediately verified. The impossibility of immediate verification is yet another reminder of the difficulty of establishing what is happening in a war when there are no journalists on the ground or their ability... MORE
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