Newsworthiness

The controversy over NBC's decision to broadcast the thoughts of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-hui illustrates the daily dilemmas faced by news journalists. Most of their British counterparts would find it difficult to justify withholding the tapes. 'We are not censors,' says John Ryley, Sky's head of news, succinctly summing up the consensus on this side of the Atlantic. But once the controversy...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In the rush to explain massacres like the one at Virginia Tech, experts including popular TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw dusted off a familiar scapegoat -- violent video games, movies and other media. "The mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose," McGraw said on CNN's Larry King Live. "Common sense...

New Delhi: From what the bride and the groom are wearing to where they are headed for their honeymoon, media is focusing on the most minute details of the Aishwarya Rai-Abhishek Bachchan wedding. But who decides when private matters become public? Now this is one big fat Indian wedding that you simply can't ignore. The world's most beautiful woman weds India's most eligible bachelor – that's the...

Students at Virginia Tech have objected to the widespread media coverage given to the videos, photographs and writings made by Cho Seung Hui in the days before and during Monday's massacre at the university, in which he killed 32 people and then himself. Planet Blacksburg, a news website maintained by students, announced last night that it would no longer publish Cho's name, while others...

The emergence of 24/7 television as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public’s news habits. But this has had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs. On average, today’s US citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public...

If you Googled "Virginia Tech shooting" or "Virginia shooting" this week, the Internet search engine served up dozens of links to news about the university massacre. Yet some media outlets weren't taking the chance of missing readers' attention by being bumped down the list. The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example, bought keyword ads that put their coverage into the prominent...

As the attack by a deranged gunman unfolded at Virginia Tech on Monday, one thing became increasingly clear: In many ways, and for a growing number of people, blogs and wikis -- and Facebook and MySpace -- are the new CNN. In the same way that reporters for the TV news network became a symbol of a new age, as they crouched on the rooftop of the Baghdad Hilton with their satellite phones while...

The author Hanif Kureishi accused the BBC of censorship last night, after it dropped a radio broadcast of his short story describing the work of a cameraman who films the executions of western captives in Iraq. Radio 4 cancelled a reading of Weddings and Beheadings, one of five nominations for the National Short Story prize due to be broadcast this week, after concluding the timing "would not be...

Top newspapers in the United States failed to challenge the George W Bush administration’s representation of the dimensions and immediacy of the threat of terrorism in their coverage of one of the major theatres of the “War on Terror,” according to a new study from the University of Maryland. The study concluded the press coverage of Pakistan was more independent and balanced than its coverage of...

MOSCOW — Police beat protesters and arrested hundreds in anti-government demonstrations in Moscow over the weekend, but the version on TV made for dull viewing: police rounding up marchers, and the detained filing calmly into trucks. Meanwhile, networks lavished attention on a pro-Kremlin event featuring throngs of youths in crisp white T-shirts and waving Russian flags. Rossiya TV opened its...