Newsworthiness

There is an Arabic TV channel dying to keep alive the debate on “mughamaraat” (adventures). Since the crippled cease-fire in Lebanon, there is a concerted attempt (otherwise, why are the viewers strangled with monotony?) to discredit the resistance fighters. So the “experts” are logging in many many-hours to prove to the Muslim public (which is no more for sale) that it was the unwarranted risk...

Mushrooming Television-training academies, which churn out TV journalists with shaky credentials, are rather like the kerb-side 'speedily speaking English teaching' schools whose alumni speak Inzamam-ul-Haq's English. That is why one hears of young enthusiastic journalists that BBC's Paul Donahar spoke about some years ago. Donahar described a young journalist chasing the former Home Minister...

LONDON - Newspapers, rather than websites and blogs, are seen as the most trustworthy source of information, according to a survey by interactive marketing firm Telecom Express. The report finds that traditional media brands are far more trusted than websites or blogs, with papers receiving 63% of the vote, TV topping the poll with 66% and just 36% for websites. Radio received 55% backing, while...

Many industry observers applauded Time magazine’s decision to deliver newsstand copies on Fridays and subscriptions by Saturdays. The switch from Mondays, starting in January, may lift the leading international newsweekly’s ad revenue, while stemming a decline in circulation. It is bold, requiring wrenching changes in an organization whose reach parallels the State Department’s. Let’s hear what...

If these were normal times, the American view of the conflict in Lebanon might look something like the street scenes that have electrified the suburbs of Detroit for the past four weeks. In Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Co. and the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, up to 1,000 people have turned out day after day to express their outrage at the Israeli military campaign...

The BBC's head of newsgathering has defended the corporation's coverage of the recent Middle East conflict, saying it was not considered necessary to precede its broadcasts with references to the censorship rules operated by both Israel and Hizbollah. Responding to criticism claiming that the BBC's coverage of the Lebanon conflict has been both too pro-Israeli and too pro-Hizbollah, Fran Unsworth...

CHICAGO: Newspapers are doing themselves and their readers a disservice by so strictly obeying the industry’s latest mantra, former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Richard C. Longworth argues. “Local news dominates, and it’s not just local, but ‘local, local, local’ they’ve gotta repeat it three times -- and it’s coming at the expense of the newshole for international news,” he says. The...

The mainstream media has had a hard time lately in its coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war, as the unofficial media—the bloggers—have been busy pointing out. The sharp-eyed blogger Charles Johnson spotted how a Reuters photo showing burning buildings had been photoshopped. The smoke rising from a damaged building, and the building itself, were copied over the photo—making the result of Israeli...

At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media. Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web...

Reuters has fired Lebanese freelance photographer Adnan Hajj after he transmitted at least two photographs from Lebanon that were doctored to make Israeli attacks seem more dramatic. The news agency said Monday it is investigating Hajj's other work and has withdrawn all of Hajj's photos, about 920 images, from its archives as a precaution. Hajj's career with Reuters unraveled Saturday after...