Results matching “with national to f”

Following Saturday's crisis summit to discuss the plight of regional papers, the National Union of Journalists will be staging a coordinated "day of action" against pay freezes and rising job cuts.

The emergency summit meeting, following one of the worst weeks for job cuts in the industry, led union and newspaper representatives to agree to a series of moves in response to the job crisis.

Even though Internet-based media is gaining in popularity in Jordan, experts have said that the country's current legislative system may not be capable of regulate this new content. There is a growing demand for citizen news, and "traditional" news may become even less popular despite accuracy and accountability worries, writes The Jordan Times.

The saturation of news by Indian media during the Mumbai terrorist attacks is now a subject of debate for the country's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, who are charging that the intensive live coverage may have helped the terrorists.

Citizen journalists, who used the Internet to post updates and criticisms on services such as Twitter and Flickr, made the realm of Internet reporting an unparalleled sensation.  Traditional media were "too slow and inaccurate," citizen journalists said.

The Financial Times' Ben Fenton muses on the "unpalatable" prospects for newspapers, some radical, that signifies that the industry is "embracing changes that would once have been unthinkable."

Former editor of the Daily Mirror Piers Morgan said that all national newspapers will be free within 10 years, and his paper should be the kick-off to the transition, according to Press Gazette.

One month after its initial trial period, a meeting of about 30 editors will be held in Atlanta to hear about CNN's wire service.

CNN has made plans to broaden its service to provide coverage of national, international and possibly local events "on a smaller scale and at a lower cost" than the Associated Press, according to Editor and Publisher.

The National Union of Journalists representatives from the UK's "big four" newspaper groups will be holding a crisis summit Saturday following a "spate of job cuts across the regional press" in an attempt to offset an economic fallout.

In a debate organized by representatives of the European Commission in Russia and national news agency RIA Novosti, media's role as promoter of cross-cultural dialogue seemed to be the main theme. Additional discussions include reporting of the financial crisis.

Scotland houses an abandoned aerodrome, home to seven million issues of newspapers.  

The warehouse stocks papers that can be seen on back-issue-newspaper.co.uk. The company  has been running for five years and has sold about 30,000 back editions of UK and Irish national and regional newspaper titles each year.

The Associated Press suspended the use of US military photos on November 14th after the US Government body distributed doctored photographs of General Ann E. Dunwoody, the first female four star General in US history. This is the second hand out photograph that has been altered by the US army in a matter of months. The fact that a government institution would manipulate a photograph begs the question: can we trust what we see?

The Editors Weblog spoke to Santiago Lyon, the Director of Photography at AP about the events surrounding this suspension and the issue of photo manipulation.

First case - flag appears

Lyon reports that when Dunwoody was promoted, the AP searched for an image of the new General on a US military website that gathers photos of armed services personnel. Unable to locate a photograph, the AP contacted the website and requested a photograph and subsequently received a picture of the General by email. This photo showed Dunwoody with a US flag behind her (the photo on the right). The photo was immediately passed to the editing desk (all AP photographs go through at least one editing desk) where it was vetted and examined; it was then released onto the wire.  The San Antonio Express-News, a Texas-based local newspaper, contacted the AP alerting them to the fact that they had found a very similar image of Dunwoody on Google images, but with no US flag behind her (both photos shown above). Lyon and his team immediately investigated and discovered that a member of US military staff had added the US flag background and changed the number of stars on her uniform from three to four. The photograph was then immediately removed from the AP's wire.

Second case - superimposing a head
 
This was the second such incident involving the US army in a matter of months. The AP collects headshots of all the US personnel that have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and as part of this effort the AP received a photo that on closer inspection was not what it appeared. The army had the cut out the face of the dead soldier in question from one photo and superimposed it onto an existing mug shot with a uniform and an American flag in the background.

Lyon says, "Because this had been the second incident in as many months, we decided to suspend the use of US military photographs while we examined our own internal policies as well as have a conversation with the US military about what they were doing to these pictures and how this was unacceptable."

Army were, "at a loss to explain it"

Surprisingly when Lyon contacted the military to complain about this incident, it did not appear to accept the gravity of the situation. Lyon reports, "Initially they were a little bit defensive, claiming that this photo did not really alter the substance of the image. Our policy is of course zero tolerance, we do not accept that images be manipulated or that content be added or subtracted more specifically, unless there is a pressing need to for security reasons for example, and in that event we flag this." In further conversations, the army were, "at a loss to explain it." Lyon goes on to say, "I was shocked, but we wanted to deal with it as forcefully as possible and put it behind us."

The Pentagon later told the AP that they would redistribute their guidelines again to staff, which are also firm on the issue of manipulation. Lyon says, "They pretty much admitted that there had been a mistake and that they weren't proud about it, and that they wanted to work with us to try and ensure that this does not happen again."

As a result, the AP has now strengthened its internal policies with regard "hand-out" images (images that it receives from non-AP staff and external bodies). "We have instituted a more rigorous policy of examining those images now, at least two editors have to examine the images closely and if there is any doubt at all, the image is then held pending further examination." Previously, the standard procedure was to examine all images but not in the kind of minute detail that they do now with hand out images. Lyon reports that the AP receives vast numbers of these hand out images from various bodies, including the police, industry and so forth. AP staff know its strict zero tolerance policy for photo manipulation, but is it something that these external organisations adhere to?

In recent weeks not only do we have the AP case, but also the issue of a French Government minister and a disappearing and reappearing diamond ring. A Le Figaro front-page photo of Justice Minister Rachida Dati was doctored to erase a substantial diamond ring she was wearing. The practise of photo manipulation is nothing new: in 1942 Mussolini had a horse handler removed from a photograph of him sitting on a horse in order to make him look more heroic.

As long as there has been photography, there have been photo manipulations. However, with advanced technology and increased use of photo shop, it is now easier to achieve and harder to detect. Lyon says, "It is the click of a mouse and you can add or subtract things from a photo quite easily. What that means for an organisation like ours, whose whole reputation is based on the voracity of the information and telling the truth, is that we have to be ever vigilant." These incidences raise the question of how often these doctored images make it onto our front pages - unintentionally in the case of AP and intentionally in the case of Le Figaro  - as we generally only hear of this when the culprits are caught out. Can we now trust what we see? "You see images that are printed by others and are you always sure of the truthfulness of what you are looking at? It's hard to say. Sometimes you look at an image and you wonder," say's Lyon on the issue.

Lyon says that the Dunwoody image has highlighted the problem to AP. "What this has done is that it has shown us the need to be as vigilant and as careful as possible with hand out images from third parties whose provenance we cannot be 100% sure of. It has heightened our vigilance."

Today's newspaper reader is well aware that anything can be done with an image, even if it is just from their experiences watching the magic of CGI at their local multiplex. However, this is an arena where they expect the full trickery of the camera to be on display, the public does not expect it when they open the newspaper.

Due to the Internet and various other factors, "there has been a huge increase in the number of images that are being sent by international news agencies. 20-years ago we were probably sending 100 images a day in a 24-hour period. Now we are closer to sending 3,000 images in a 24-hour period. When you do the maths, the news agencies are handling close to a million images a year. That's a huge amount of imagery." This increase in distribution and use of photographs highlights the need for there to be strict rules on the doctoring of photographs. The role of a photojournalist is to capture a story for the reader, to bring a story to life, and to tell the truth. Just because we have the technology to do something, it  doesn't mean we should.

Source: AP, Straits Times, National Press Photographers Association, Ethics of Digital Manipulation, Daily Tech

According to The Guardian, UK's free daily Metro, is being redesigned with smaller headlines, extra pages of celebrity news and fewer pages devoted to listings.  

The editorial/advertising ratio will remain the same and the listings that were previously in the print version will move to the paper's website.

With an impending closure of two local newspapers, seven state legislators have written to state Economic Development Commissioner Joan McDonald for a meeting to determine how to save them, The Hartford Courant reports.

The all-Democratic delegations from Bristol and New Britain are trying to save the New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press, who will be shut down soon after Christmas if a buyer is not found.

The Journal Register Co. is faced with a "huge advertising decline at papers nationwide" and "slumping" state and national economics, and is seeking new ownership of the titles.

A letter from the legislators said that neither community could "afford the loss of jobs that these closures would mean."

Source:  Hartford Courant

Foreign journalists and editors often face problems establishing themselves in the United Arab Emirates. 

The government "licenses all new publications and approves editors," in addition to adding pressure and suppressing sensitive stories, making the launch of new papers relatively impossible.  

The National, an Abu Dhabi-based daily, is breaking that mold.  Martin Newland is the only non-Emirati editor-in-chief in the country, the Guardian reports.

Several paper manufacturers have reported to Media Bistro that they will not be raising their rates in 2009, giving the financially strapped industry a break in costs.

The high rates of newsprint have contributed to "a wave of downsizing in the beleaguered newspaper industry." 

The ban imposed on the circulation of daily newspaper the Daily Islam has been lifted by the Sindh government, provided that the newspaper not publish material that could "inspire terrorism," according to AsiaMedia.

The government withdrew the ban on several conditions: that the paper not contain material to "inspire Jihadi outfits and youths to carry out terrorist attacks," any material that may "hurt sentiments of people belonging to any sect, religion or country," or "harm national integration."

The paper must also submit three copies to the "home department" of the government each day for review, according to the report.

Source:  AsiaMedia

News Corp.'s Europe and Asia CEO James Murdoch has blamed the economy for stalling the development of the News International headquarters in east London, according to Paid Content.

The site was scheduled to expand, renovating the space to fit in other News Corp. members such as Dow Jones, MySpace and Harper Collins in the same complex, as well as national newspapers The Times, the Sunday Times, The Sun and News of the World.  

This transition would have made integration for News Corp's media brands easier, and created "synergies where possible," facilitating access between organizations.   

There has not been an updated timetable of when work will recommence at the Wapping HQ.

Source:  Paid Content