A report by the CBC says two journalists killed in Somalia today had lived in Ottawa before returning to Somalia in 1999 to help build an independent press. There are numerous reports that Mahad Ahmed Elmi and Ali Iman Sharmarke were the targets of deliberate attacks in Mogadishu on Saturday. They operated Horn Afrik Media…
Busted by a 13-year old. Ouch. After a boy in Finland noticed pictures carried by Reuters looked like subs in the movie Titanic, the news agency was forced to admit the provenance of the images. Reported the Guardian: “footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually…
A website is a website is a website, argues Steve Safran in this column: The more tools we keep giving journalism, the more journalists keep arguing over the tools. What they don’t see is the toolbox …. News isn’t about our internecine squabbles over how to present it. We’re killing each other over methods. We’re…
Former Radio-Canada journalist Michel Morin was appointed this week as commissioner with the Canadian radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. Morin retired from Radio-Canada two years ago, after 34 years as a journalist, including as the chief editor of TV news for Radio-Canada and the French language news network RDI. Here’s the CBC story. Here’s the CRTC…
A couple of interesting items this week about corporate control of public information: A major U.S. telco censored two lines in a telecast of the band Pearl Jam. The lines were critical of U.S. president George W. Bush. From the response on Pearl Jam’s web site: AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s…
The behaviour of Yahoo and Google in China has long been controversial, because of allegations that the companies comply with Chinese censorship. Now Yahoo is on the hot seat before a U.S. congressional committee. An excerpt of a story in the Financial Times: A US congressional committee is investigating whether Yahoo intentionally misled Congress over…
From a report on the CBC web site: A survey conducted this July shows nearly nine out of 10 adult Americans believe there is too much coverage of celebrity scandals. Finally!!!!!Here’s the Pew report.
A story by Mike De Souza of CanWest concerns a report blaming mainstream U.S. media for “stalled international efforts to reach an agreement to fight climate change.” An excerpt of the story: The report, in the latest edition of a magazine published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, said there are multiple examples of major…
Weekend protests against Chinese repression of press rights by Reporters Without Borders included a giant flag flown in Paris showing the Olympic rings transformedinto handcuffs; a bicycle rally in New York with the “Beijing 2008” handcuffs graphic; a news conference in Beijing outside the building that houses the Beijing Organising Committee; and a news conference…
The NDP is charging political interference by the federal government, in the search for a president and a news chief for the CBC. Tom Long, the man apparently in charge of the CBC head-hunting task for the firm Egon Zehnder International, is a former Canadian Alliance leadership candidate and is well-connected to the top tiers…