Media

In Ghana, a reporter goes to a press conference, and inside her press packet, there’s a brown envelope containing the equivalent of a $20 bill. Not surprised, she slips it into her purse before heading back to the office to write up the event. In Russia, public relations agency sends out a bogus press release about a fictitious company. Thirteen publications swallow the bait and agree to run the release just like a story, but only after demanding payment ranging from about $125 to nearly $2,000...

Those who rely on Fox News are more inclined to believe rumours, a study looking at the behavioral patterns of viewers of reports pertaining to the Ground Zero mosque in has concluded. According to the study, a typical viewer who reported a low reliance on Fox News believed 0.9 rumors on average, while a similar respondent with a high reliance on Fox believed 1.5 rumors – an increase of 66 percent. On the contrary, people who relied heavily on CNN or NPR believed fewer false rumors. High...

With Egypt’s parliamentary elections drawing closer, the Hosni Mubarak government has begun cracking down on the media. The moves include clamping down on broadcasts of live shows and the manipulated sacking of a prominent newspaper editor. Egypt’s High Committee for Elections has not yet announced an exact date, but the elections are expected to be held in November. Mubarak, 82, has not yet announced his intention to contest, but speculation is rife that he would prop up his son Gamal. The...

Morocco's topselling Arabic language weekly Nichane, which had taken up in the past taboo subjects like monarchy and Islam, closed shop last week blaming "the highest circles of power" for organising a boycott of advertisers. The trouble for the magazine began last year after Nichane, its French-language sister publication TelQuel and France's Le Monde newspaper conducted an opinion poll on the monarchy. The poll, which found that King Mohammed VI had done a good overall job in the first decade...

The story now in Moscow is about two groups of journalism students making calendars for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin aimed at his 58th birthday. The first posed in saucy lingerie, the second has hit back with a hardhitting realistic one. The first calendar, called "Vladimir Vladimirovich, We love you. Happy Birthday Mr Putin," featured 12 journalism students of Moscow State University (MGU). The 259-ruble ($8.73) calendar, which hit the markets on Tuesday, came with captions like “You...

A good 15 years later, it still remains bad news for women. Women constituted less than a quarter (22 per cent) of the people heard or read about in the news (i.e., as news subjects) across all topic categories in India. Only 12 per cent of news stories have women as the central focus (i.e. focussed specifically on one or more women). If that's not enough, only 5 per cent of the news stories highlight gender equality or inequality. Worse still, nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of the news stories...

When a law does not exist pertaining to an issue at hand, good journalists abide by a sense of ethics. Good journalists, of course, are an endangered species. The debate regarding whether rape victims should be named is not a new one. But most news establishments in the West have clear policies against publishing victims’ names. Legally, rape victims’ names are part of public records, specifically those dealing with law enforcement and the court system. But good journalists typically avoid...

Good news: Mainstream media reporting is more likely to deter young people from using illicit drugs than encourage their use. Bad News: Types of reports most likely to have the strongest impact on young people are underrepresented in the media. The revelation comes from a study conducted by the Drug Policy Modelling Programme (DPMW) at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at the University of New South Wales, Australia, which measured the impact of media reports on illicit drugs...

Not only do journalists worldwide accept bribes but often reporters and editors are the instigators, extorting either for publishing favourable stories or for not publishing damaging ones, a new report states. A report Cash for Coverage: Bribery of Journalists Around the World by the Washington DC-based Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) calls it "a single problem with many faces." In South Africa, a journalist admitted in an affidavit that he and several others had set up a media...

An Indian court has defended sting operations as a means to expose corruption. The Delhi High Court on Friday quashed criminal proceedings against two journalists who unearthed a sensational scam involving Members of Parliament (MPs) in 2005. Hearing the petition of journalists Aniruddha Bahal and Suhasini Raj, Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra observed that “charging the petitioner under offence of the Prevention of Corruption Act would amount to travesty of justice”. Justice Dhingra said every...