Newsworthiness

The Press Council of India (PCI) is readying guidelines to check the "paid news" trend in the country. PCI Chairperson Justice G N Ray told The Indian Express that on the anvil could be proposals that suggest that if the Council adjudicates over a complaint and censures a newspaper, the same would have to be carried on the front page of the newspaper. That apart, if a newspaper is censured twice...

The better a politician looks, the more his chances of appearing on television, says a new study. Dr Yariv Tsfati, Dana Markowitz Elfassi and Dr Israel Waismel-Manor surveyed the coverage of all members of the 16th Israeli Knesset on Israeli television channels 1, 2 and 10. In parallel they had the appearance of each member of Knesset -based on their official website photos - rated by Dutch...

The AP Stylebook has released its new social media guidelines, including the official change from"Web site" to "website" (a move first reported back in April) and 41 other definitions, use cases and rules that journalists should follow, according to Mashable.com Among the more interesting changes -- at least from a grammar and style standpoint -- are separating out "smart phone" as two words...

Expressing concern over the alarming proportion of paid news in the Indian media, the Election Commission on Thursday directed officials to closely monitor poll-related media reports. In a communication to the state election commissions, the Election Commission of India described paid news as a serious electoral malpractice, Asia News International (ANI) has reported. "The recent phenomenon of...

“The phenomenon of ‘paid news' goes beyond the corruption of individual journalists and media companies. It has become pervasive, structured and highly organised and in the process, is undermining democracy in India.” So finds the draft report of inquiry conducted into the phenomenon by the Press Council of India to be discussed by the full Council on April 26 in Delhi. The Hindu has obtained a...

The Press Council of India has found two newspapers, Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran, guilty of publishing advertisements masquerading as news before the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. The decision in the case, along with all the case papers, has been sent to the Election Commission for further action. These newspapers published a one-sided news item in the form of an advertisement in favour of...

Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife, Princess Maxima, have sought a court injunction against the Associated Press to force it to stop distributing recent photos of them and their five-year-old daughter, Princess Catharina-Amalia, at an Argentine ski resort. “We fully support the Associated Press’s freedom to cover and photograph any subject it considers newsworthy,” Reporters Sans...

CNN has asked cable operators in the US that carry its channel to block a commercial, produced by liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, which critiques CNN's Lou Dobbs, the New York Times has reported. CNN managers said in a morning staff meeting on Tuesday that the channel had invoked unspecified agreements with operators to stop the ad from running. The ad accuses Dobbs of “promoting the...

The Supreme Court has rejected a plea for putting curbs on the media and television channels from conducting sting operations. It held that any attempt to control and regulate the media from outside was likely to cause more harm than good, the Hindu has reported. A Bench consisting of Justices BN Agrawal, GS Singhvi and Aftab Alam, in its 175-page judgment in the RK Anand case, said: “It is not...

More than 1,000 publishers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Dallas Morning News have signed on to participate in the Fair Syndication Consortium, a model built to help publishers receive compensation for their content, Editor & Publisher has reported. AdBrite, an online marketplace to buy and sell advertising, has agreed to work with the consortium to help partners...