Reports the Globe and Mail: “The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. is behind an unprecedented flood of complaints to Canada’s information watchdog.“The latest annual report from Information Commissioner Robert Marleau says his office received 536 complaints about the public broadcaster in 2007-2008, more than any other department or agency of government.“And more than 90 per cent of…
A tidbit in a Guardian blog ponders a new trend — APIs — in big media. In the next few weeks, notes blogger Jemima Kiss, The New York Times API “will make the whole website “programmable, organisable”, adding layer of mash-ups to NYTimes content,” while Telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk are also in the game. “There’s an…
Here’s a good-looking headline we don’t see every day: “Foreign journalists free to report on China quake”
In the category of scary corporate big brotherism: “Germany was engulfed in a national furor over threats to privacy on Monday, after an admission by Deutsche Telekom that it had surreptitiously tracked thousands of phone calls to identify the source of leaks to the news media about its internal affairs,” reported the New York Times.
Megan McArdle offers a succinct analysis of the transition from print to web in a piece posted at The Atlantic’s website. She accuses many “commentators on the changing media landscape (of having) an unjustified fetish for newsprint.” Her points include: — Of YouTube: “If people want to tune out the news, no one can compel…
New CBC/Radio-Canada president Hubert Lacroix says the CBC needs $215-million more federal money as well as a seven-year funding plan, reported Sun Media. Speaking to a conference of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, Lacroix asked Ottawa to designate an extra $40 per Canadian in annual funding, compared to the current $33 per Canadian.…
From CBC.ca: A Canadian magazine will be making history Thursday — Canadian Geographic is publishing its annual environment issue on paper made from wheat, a first for a North American magazine.The issue is being printed on sheets made with wheat straw — what’s left of wheat after the grain harvest.The magazine says adding agricultural waste…
“Though the Iraq war is arguably the most significant act of American foreign policy in decades, it is often invisible at home,” writes Damien Cave. Surprise comes through strongly in the New York Times reporter’s diary, about what it’s like to return to America after a tour in Iraq. “Welcome home, I think: Four doses…
With Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, with Canadian money funding projects, what obligations does Canada — and do Canadian journalists — have to prevent abuse of authority by the government we help prop up? This story reveals the travesty that is Afghanistan’s “democracy.” How can a country claim to be democratic when it uses its…
A story in the New York Times looks at how disobedience by numerous reporters, who covered the Chinese earthquake against direct orders, challenged — and broke down — China’s censorship system. An excerpt: The earthquake has tested this country in many ways, including a death toll that has steadily climbed into the tens of thousands…