Results matching “can freely use s”

How can the media regain public trust as a credible source of news, participants contemplated at the 5th Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis. After years of propaganda, it is difficult for newly-free publications  in the Arab World to establish themselves as trustworthy sources of news, particularly when facing competition from blogs and social media.

Hussam Eddin Muhammed, columnist for Palestinian-owned, London-based paper Al-Quds al-Arabi, said that respecting the reader and the viewer is very important. There are both journalists who risk their lives to bring accurate news to the public, and then there are media that just offer incorrect news.  

Today the Associated Press opened the first fully-operated news bureau in North Korea from a Western news organisation, a press release announced. The international news wire's office in Pyongyang will be the first to offer, with a full-time staff, a video and text coverage from the country. The plan to open the bureau was announced last June.

According to the Guardian, the opening arrives after months of discussions with the Korea Central News Agency, inside which the new office will be based, and it was originally planned to open last December but it has been postponed after the death of leader Kim Jong-il.

The agency already had a video office in North Korea six years ago through its London-based Associated Press Television News (APTN) and it has been the only independent foreign media news agency operating in North Korea till now, as reported on the APTN website. 

Young bloggers, experienced journalists and human rights activists debated the role of net activism in the Middle East and North Africa on Wednesday, at a conference entitled "Internet and democratic change - Net activism, empowerment and emancipation", also going under the Twitter hashtag of #net4change. Following the dramatic events of earlier this year in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the phenomena of net activism is spreading across the region, and the whole world, possibly changing the face of activism forever.

The event was held in Stockholm, organised by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), in cooperation with the Julia Group, a non profit organization for a free and open internet.Speakers came from both inside and outside of the Arab region, and the day also included an evening discussion with prominent journalists and bloggers Dima Khatib and Sultan Al-Qassemi, who both covered the Arab uprisings closely and acted as a main source of information to their thousands of Twitter followers.

It is a common wisdom by now that any journalist needs to have an active presence in social media. But explicitly defining that presence has proved difficult: on the one hand, it can be argued that journalists should be able to express their opinions freely in social media, for example, without having to consider if they correspond with their employer's views; on the other, 

The relationship between Apple and the publishing industry hasn't been the smoothest one, but the tech giant has taken steps towards publishers lately. For one, it is giving a more prominent place for newspapers and magazines in the upcoming iOS operating system, which was announced on Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. IOS5 will include a feature called Newsstand, which will improve newspaper apps' exposure and present the user's newspaper app subscriptions in one location.

Yesterday, the press caught on the fact that Apple had quietly made changes to its much criticised in-app subscription guidelines. The most significant change related to app pricing. Mac Rumors was one of the first sites to report that Apple has now removed any specifications regarding pricing from the terms, allowing publishers to now set their prices freely. Previously, Apple had required that app subscriptions sold in the App Store had to be the "same price or less" with subscriptions the publisher offered outside the app.

UK libel laws - and their reform - are again coming into the limelight.

Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief of the Guardian, gave a lecture at London's City University where he discussed the road of the libel reform, highlighting the differing legal systems in the UK and US.

As the Guardian reported, Rusbridger cited the example of Wikileaks. The paper decided to partner with the New York Times in publishing the cables because it was scared of being prevented to do so by the British courts - being sued or injuncted - if it attempted to go forth alone.

"It seemed a good idea to harness the whole exercise to a country with extremely robust media laws rather than risk it all on the quicksands of the British legal system", he said. 

The International Press Institute (IPI) has recently visited Italy with the aim to explore the digital switchover and the pluralism landscape in the country.

IPI examined the potential challenges to the pluralism of Italy's audiovisual sector resulting from the country's digital switchover, and "suggested that pluralism may be bolstered by the switchover, if the value of pluralism is taken into strong consideration in the establishment of the criteria for the technological move", as the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) reported.

It was a follow-up visit of a first "Press Freedom Mission" conducted in November 2010 with the purpose of assessing restrictions on press freedom in Italy and other potential obstacles affecting journalists' ability to report freely, independently and without undue pressure, as IPI's website reported.

The Icelandic parliament, which is working on increasing press freedom in Iceland, passed a new media control law last Saturday. According to IceNews, 30 MPs of the parliament supported the legislation, while 14 were opposed to it and 19 MPs did not vote.

The new law seeks to protect children from obscene content and to ensure freedom of speech. For these aims, a new media committee will be created to mediate between the media, the public and government. The new law is the first of its kind in Iceland as it covers both the press and broadcast media.

The law has been met with criticism, however, arising also from the press. According to IceNews, DV, an Icelandic newspaper, reported that 2000 people have signed a petition that urges the president to veto the law, which would send it to a public referendum.

On Wed 16 March the Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, detained by the Lybian authorities for a fortnight, was finally released. He was picked up in the coastal town of Sabratha on 2 March, along with Andrei Netto, a correspondent for the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S Paulo.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed to Press Gazette his role in the negotiation, giving credit to Turkey for helping facilitate the release and to Libya for letting them leave the country. 

Be careful what you write when supposedly commenting under the guise of anonymity. The news site may not be so anonymous after all, especially if there's a defamation suit involved.

This is what is currently happening in Indiana. Stories ran in The Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis Business Journal last year about the halting of Junior Achievement of Central Indiana expansion at its northeast-side headquarters over questions about missed payments to contractors and unaccounted-for grant money stemming from the time former CEO, Jeffrey Miller, had the job. In response, Miller and his wife, Cynthia, filed a defamation suit against Jennifer Burk, who is the current chief executive of Junior Achievement; Brian Payne, who is president of Central Indiana Community Foundation; and both of their organizations. But they then amended the complaint to include as many as nine other people and three entities as defendants because of anonymous comments made on three news media websites last year. The media websites belong to The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis Business Journal, and WRTV (Channel 6).

The Daily Mail's website Mail Online continues to attract more and more visitors: the latest ABCe figures show that the paper had just over 56 million browsers in January, more than 3 million a day. This puts it up 56% on last year, reported Press Gazette.

Second in line is the Guardian, with 39.5 million, and behind that the Telegraph with 32 million. The Guardian is up 10.1% compared to last year and the Telegraph up just 0.7%. 

The morning panel of WAN-IFRA's conference in Paris on managing sport news, "Make sports news the mainspring of your growth," started with reflections on trends and future perspectives: multimedia and social media tools emerged as the main points.

As Matt Kelly, Publisher of Mirror Group Digital (UK) and chairman of the conference, underlined, social media shows how important is building a relationship with readers. Cristiano Ronaldo's Facebook page has around 20 million fans, he said, and this is an extraordinary example about how social media are an incredible tool that make it possible to have a real interaction with fans, who are, after all, the readers. 

Clay Shirky, well-known 'Internet Guru' and New York University professor, believes that both journalism and democracy in general have much to gain from the "cognitive surplus" that the new media world is giving us. Technological developments mean that journalism has the potential to be at its best, if it can find a way to support itself. Shirky was speaking at an event organised by Microsoft's Regard sur le numérique (Eye on digital) project in Paris.

The idea behind the Cognitive Surplus - the title of Shirky's 2010 book - is that as we switch from passive television watchers to online content creators, there is so much content in all its different forms being generated at all times that we should be able to make this valuable, particularly in light of our interconnectedness.

The public is no longer simply consuming information supplied by those with authority, but is generating it and the way in which it comes together can actually make a difference. Shirky brought up the example of Ushahidi, a crowd-sourcing platform which allows anybody to contribute reports that are then marked on a maps - on post-election violence or rigging, for example, or on storm damage - and hence creates a useful resource out of scattered pieces of information.

Another example of this kind of 'citizen as sensor' process, or "coordinated voluntary participation" is something like SeeClickFix, a US-based website which encourages the public to point out problems in their local area, such as pot holes or burnt out street lights, and this can then provide local governments with information about where they need to take action.

Recent events in the Middle East have shown how by sharing and spreading information, groups can coordinate amongst themselves to take action without the involvement of any formal organisation. Libya has banned football games, Shirky said, out of a fear that such a gathering of people could spark protests of the sort seen in Egypt and Tunisia.

This idea of the importance of the individual and the community doesn't mean that this is the end of professional journalism, Shirky said. Referring to the current uprisings in the Middle East, where social media and blogs have been hailed as both a catalyst and a useful source of information about the protests, Shirky recalled the impressive coverage by Al Jazeera (so impressive, in fact, that the Egyptian government has taken it off the air and shut down its bureau) which exemplifies the need for professional coverage of events.

But professional media can use this willingness to supply information and content to their advantage. "Sometimes the crowd knows best," Shirky said, and indeed, news organisations can often gather abundant photographs and eyewitness accounts from their readers to supplement their reports. Since the steps taken by the Egyptian government, Al Jazeera has urged bloggers and others in the country to contribute eyewitness reports of the uprisings. 

The opportunities that the active, social web and the resulting cognitive surplus provide make this a "golden age of journalism," Shirky said, "except for the money."
 
With regards to this crucial issue - how to fund high-quality professional journalism - Shirky said that at the moment, we cannot rely on the market to provide a sufficient amount of journalism; there must be some kind of subsidy. A functioning democracy requires more journalism than citizens are prepared to pay for, he continued.

Information has always been something which people are happier to share freely with others and upon which they put less monetary value than on an object or a service. Shirky said that fighting illegal music sharing will be a relatively fruitless mission because online music has now effectively become information, and people are now willing to share it. Copyright has more impact when applied to an object.

What does this mean for news? For years, people have been happy to buy newspapers (objects), and now seem pretty happy to buy mobile applications, as these are in a sense objects also, or at the very least services. But they are unlikely to buy pure information online, in an intangible format. So in order to persuade people to pay for news, should news organisations focus on presenting their stories in the form of an object?  What is the best way to do this in a rapidly evolving digital age?

Or will some kind of subsidy, be this from other services or products offered, donations or government assistance, continue to be necessary to support journalism?

UK councils will not be able to charge newspapers for freedom of information requests, the Guardian's Roy Greenslade reported today. The communities and local government minister Eric Pickles said in a statement yesterday that "If town halls want to reduce the amount they spend on responding to freedom of information requests they should consider making the information freely available in the first place."

Pickles noted that 90 councils had already published details of spending of over £500 online, which he sees as beneficial both as a recognition of the public's right to know, and because "openness and transparency is absolutely critical to root out waste and inefficiency."

An article by David Cohn on PBS.org, analysed six new "journalism startups".  The startups were Kommons.com, Storyful, the Local:East Village, Emphas.is, Ebyline and ThankThis.com.

Kommons was started by Cody Brown, who, with a co-founder, taught himself how to code and "iterated like mad," states Cohn.  He compares Kommons to 10questions.com or Yoosk.com and to be part of the site, the person using it has to be asked a question.  Brown is also trying to steer the main idea of the site away from "journalism," Cohn said.  "Brown is avoiding 'journalism' baggage while still providing a community with tools that can serve its news and information needs.  As I've said before, we may not call it 'journalism' in the future, but if it still meets the news and information needs of a community, more power to it," Cohn adds.

Storyful is another recent journalism startup.  Storyful is a site that creates "collaborative storytelling," but Cohn said that the site is similar to sites like GroundReport, NowPublic and GlobalPost, and that it will "re-invent the wheel."  "While I encourage participatory storytelling in any form including pro-am, which is how I interpret them, we need to make sure that new ground is forged," Cohn states.  

The European Newspaper Publishers' Association (ENPA), together with the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the World Editors Forum, have welcomed the landmark ruling of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the protection of journalistic sources.
    
In an appeal decision issued last week, the Grand Chamber of the court unanimously upheld the rights of journalists across Europe to protect their sources of information.

"The decision reaffirms a continent-wide commitment to press freedom and guarantees the media's fundamental right to confidentiality, and has halted the erosion of source protection," the organisations said in a statement.

Italy is experiencing an almost complete 24-hour news blackout today as news outlets join together in a strike against a bill that proposes a type of gagging law which has become known as the Alfano law. The law would limit the ability of police and prosecutors to intercept and record phone conversations, and would stop journalists from publishing transcripts of these. Journalists fear that the law has been put forward to protect politicians from scandal, most notably the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

"Italian journalists are called together to a type of extraordinary protest that will express itself in a 'loud' news silence on the 9 July, against the rules of the "interceptions bill" which severely limits the right of the citizens to know the progress of judicial trials, inflicting grave limitations on the free circulation of news," said the Federazione Nationale di Stampa Italiana (the Italian federation of newspapers.)

The news 'silence' is intended to represent the daily silences that such a law would impose on the press, the FNSI website explained. An editorial on the site of left-leaning daily La Repubblica specified that the initiative "is not a corporate strike, but a protest to protect the citizens, who are denied by law the right to be freely informed." Corriere della Sera echoed this sentiment, stressing that its journalists were giving up a day's salary not for economic reasons, but for a "civil battle," adding that by taken part in the strike "we hope to contribute to making our country and its politicians aware of the dangers represented by the proposed legislation to the democratic and constitutional rights of all our citizens who want to know what is going on around them."

Arianna Ciccone, co-founder and co-director of the International Journalism Festival told the Editors Weblog that she believes the proposed law "is using privacy as an excuse to try to protect a caste [of politicians]." She is one of a team of Italian journalists who have created a website called 'Valigia Blu' or Blue Suitcase, named after the bag in which she carried signatures protesting an incorrect statement made on a TG1 news programme. The site's editors decided to use the day of the strike to "post articles, recordings and videos that explain the law and what will happen to our freedom if it is definitively passed."

La Repubblica editor-in chief Ezio Mauro explained to the EW that cases take a long time to come to trial in Italy- four to six years, sometimes up to ten - which means that if the law were to pass preventing reporting on ongoing cases, this could mean such an absence of information that the public could end up voting in an election while having no idea if the candidates involved had been charged with a crime. He believes that with this law, the government is trying to "break the circuit between those in power, the magistrates who investigate, the newspapers who provide the news and the citizens who get informed, and can therefore understand and judge."

As well as participating in the strike, La Repubblica has appeared with the front page blank, and encouraged young people to send in photos of themselves with post-it slogans representing gags to protest the law.

TG1, a news channel from the state-run RAI network, is also participating in the strike online, but is broadcasting its 13.30 and 20.00 news shows.

Il Post, an online-only news site founded earlier this year joined the newspapers in striking, though with some reticence about the method chosen. A note on the site explained that "we would have preferred more constructive and exemplary protest initiatives, but suggestions made to this end were not taken on and therefore we are adhering to the decision taken, as we share the reasoning." The site is instead offering readers a selection of articles from the press over the years, to demonstrate the value of good journalism and "because a strike is not only an absence."

La Stampa's management was also unhappy with the method chosen as it denied citizens of news for a day, and appealed to the FNSI to find an alternative. FNSI secretary general Franco Siddi replied that he believed a strike was the type of protest which most effectively made the seriously of the situation evident.

Il Giornale, owned by Berlusconi's brother Paolo, is the only national daily to appear on the newsstands and to update its website today. Editor Vittorio Feltri explained in a video clip on the newspaper's site that although Il Giornale also disapproves of the gagging law, it believes that the "biggest mistake in responding is to put the gags on ourselves." He continued, "the newspaper is on the newsstand for the readers, but also for the journalists who work here and don't want to relinquish the right to express themselves."

Is striking a legitimate protest to such a law? The symbolic significance is clear, but should citizens be deprived of news for a day? What if there was a major disaster or similar event? The argument that it is the only way to bring the public's attention to the implications of the law is valid, but it is unclear whether it will have the desired effect.

The Italian media is one that is largely dominated by television, with Internet access at a lower level compared to several other western European countries. Berlusconi controls, through direct ownership or influence on the state run channels, a large proportion of the television network available. He has a confrontational relationship with the press, having called for boycotts from readers and advertisers of papers which are critical of his policies, and having sued several papers. Various press freedom demonstrations have taken place in the country, but as yet little has changed.

The recent debate over the gagging law seems to have led to support for pushing for better press freedom from an unexpected corner. Gianfranco Fini, co-founder of Berlusconi's ruling party the Popolo della Libertà (Freedom People) said earlier this week during as speech to the Italian media regulation body Agcom that  "a great democratic country needs to have strong, free and authoritative news and in a great democratic country, the press is never free enough." He continued "we still need to introduce ... further rules to protect access to sources of information."

Will Italy's tenuous press freedom status be improved?

Following overwhelming backlash over Facebook's new not-so-private privacy settings, The Online Journalism Review reports a surprising advantage to the nature of Facebook's new less private policies. While Facebook's former policies restricted what could be seen on the networking site, the new policies allow for any Internet user to search information posted by Facebook users. In particular, youropenbook.org is a site specifically devoted to allowing Internet users to freely search postings on Facebook. For journalists, such a site presents an opportunity to acquire instant access to the opinions of the public on any current event.

The British government has announced its plans to overhaul libel law to make it harder for foreigners to initiate libel cases in the UK, and to start a project to protect investigative journalism, according to MediaGuardian.

The legal recommendations will be included in a libel reform bill to be introduced to parliament if Labor returns to power after the election. These recommendations build on the work of a libel working group the British Ministry of Justice established early this year. The working group's final product, a report on the state of libel in the UK that was released this week, calls for new libel laws to achieve a fair balance between protecting reputations and ensuring freedom of expression.

Italian daily La Repubblica has launched a new paid version of its iPhone application, providing new content and services. In the eight months since the original app was launched, it has been downloaded by 150,000 users.

New offerings include editorials and in-depth articles from La Repubblica's top journalists, and "the best from the print paper on the debates and analysis surrounding the news."

The new version provides push notifications, alerting the user about breaking news even if the application is closed, or sending them messages when their selected football team scores a goal. Using key words of a reader's choice, the application will collect and save relevant articles that it finds to create a kind of press review.

Editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger made clear his feelings on paywalls and the growing importance of social media during the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp lecture yesterday, entitled 'Does journalism exist?' The Guardian reproduced the text of the lecture here.

Hugh Cudlipp was an editor at the Daily Mirror from the early 1950s to early 1970s,
a period in which, as Rusbridger pointed out, newspaper editors' key challenge was producing good editorial content, rather than trying to come up with a new business model, which is a top issue confronting all editors now.