2005-2014

13 December 2005

America's super-rich: offended by luxury, 'under assault' by media

America's super-rich believe extravagant personalities such as Donald Trump and Paris Hilton are giving them a bad name, according to a survey of the country's wealthiest families. The study, which focused on 500 families with average liquid net assets of $28m (€23.3m, £15.8m), found 69 per cent of respondents thought wealthy people were portrayed negatively or somewhat negatively in the media...

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13 December 2005

EU's proposed ad rules back product placement

PARIS: The European Commission formally proposed broadcasting rules Tuesday that could impose new standards for online companies and shake up advertising standards by allowing product placements. The proposals, which many interest groups have criticized, are years away from approval, as they face major tests before the European Parliament and must also be approved by the European Union's 25...

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12 December 2005

Three Photographers Arrested At Ohio Rally

Police arrested three photographers who were covering a white supremacist demonstration and counter-demonstration in Toledo, Ohio, on Saturday. The photographers say they were arrested without warning, held for several hours along with the handful of demonstrators who were arrested, charged and released. One of the photographers says when police returned his camera, the memory card had been either...

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12 December 2005

The buying of the Indian ad industry

The ad business has had a long-standing love affair with India. Since the mid-1990s, global ad agencies have been steadily buying up local shops, and today the four giant conglomerates that dominate world advertising also control 96% of India's ad market. So that should mean their buying spree is over, right? Wrong. Lately all four have been prowling the streets of Bombay and Delhi for ancillary...

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12 December 2005

There's no Wikipedia entry for 'moral responsibility'

On Monday, in one of his now-weekly appearances on cable news defending the latest Wikipedia scandal, the project's figurehead Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales expressed his desire to find the anonymous internet user who had libeled John Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler, a former Robert Kennedy aide and newspaper editor wrote about his anguish a fortnight ago, describing how an edit to his Wikipedia biography...

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12 December 2005

Microsoft Mulls Paying Users of Its Search Engine

To improve the audience of Microsoft's Internet search engine, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates suggests using cash and various freebees as a lure. A Microsoft spokesperson adds that it's a possible service, but that Microsoft has no plans to introduce it. When a startup like Newsvine Inc., an online distributor of user-generated news, offers outright bribery to attract attention, it's one thing...

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12 December 2005

Yahoo's original news finds few readers

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It’s been a year since Yahoo CEO Terry Semel hired Lloyd Braun, former head of ABC Entertainment Television Group, to bring his Hollywood sensibilities to the portal and create what that new head of media said would be the Web’s own "I Love Lucy" moment. So far, it is a moment waiting to happen. News initiative As leader of the Yahoo media group, Mr. Braun has made a stab...

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12 December 2005

Staff cuts are a disgrace to journalism

Everyone trying to lose weight should know that the trick is to cut fat and not muscle. This is not a lesson media companies have learned. Last month, Private Capital Management, a $32-billion money management firm, issued a sell-or-be-gone ultimatum to the board of Knight Ridder, the second largest newspaper proprietor in the land. And Knight Ridder has just received preliminary takeover bids...

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12 December 2005

The ironies of source protection

The idea that reporters have a duty to protect their sources has an honored place in journalistic lore. It goes without saying that Woodward and Bernstein would never have burned Deep Throat. In The Insider, 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman is tormented by the possibility that the tobacco industry whistle-blower he tried to shield might be harmed. And now, one of the more troublesome issues in...

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12 December 2005

Muslim ire over Danish daily caricature of prophet

When Carsten Juste decided to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten in September, he could not have imagined the fallout that would drag on almost to the year-end. A Pakistani fundamentalist party has announced a bounty for murdering the Danish cartoonists. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) made an issue of it at its recent summit. Srinagar downed shutters...

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