Archive for May, 2005

DTV and the public interest

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

I received an interesting mail today about digital television that highlights the manner in which digital broadcasters are neglecting the public interest. The release, which I include below, comes from the Media Policy Program of the Campaign Legal Center and is tied to a campaign to pressure congress to ensure ...

Support for Irish community radio

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

The BCI has launched the final stage of the Community Radio Support Scheme for this funding year. There's €25,000 available with applications due by 20th June. According to the press release:This round is focused on individual station development. The stations can apply for funding for internal and external evaluation and ...

Call for participants – radio show

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

As many of my Urbana-based readers (and even you Champaign people) will know I'm involved with a group that's starting a new (licensed) radio station shortly - WRFU FM. I'm pulling together a group to work on a media analysis show. We hope to cover more than just the U.S. ...

Women’s rights in Turkey

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

"These programmes touch a raw nerve", said the RTUK's head, Fatih Karaca, in support of the closures. "They discuss family, children, marital relations - sensitive topics to Turks - in an indecently open way."If you're interested in the public/private sphere division, women's rights or the role of talk shows in ...

Saddam, Geneva and the UK

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

Given that I understand Saddam to be in the custody of the coalition authorities, which includes the UK, does the UK have a legal duty to prevent the publication of photographs of Saddam? That is, does the requirement that a prisoner not be exposed to ridicule cover not only the ...

IFEX on Uzbekistan and the press

Wednesday, May 18th, 2005

Via IFEX:As reports trickle in about the indiscriminate killing last weekend of hundreds of protesters in Uzbekistan's northeastern city of Andijan, IFEX members say authorities are maintaining an information blockade by expelling journalists from the town and obstructing foreign television news broadcasts. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports several incidents ...

O’Dea is war profiteer

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

Those who don't obsessively check funferal stories for comments may have missed a comment on my post about the cost of military flyovers that pointed to this Indymedia article. It reports revelations in Village magazine about some interesting share dealings:According to the current issue of Village Magazine (p17) our Minister ...

Irish courts restrict physical access

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

Over at the Tuppenceworth blog Simon has posted a thoughtful and important piece about pending 'security precautions' at the Four Courts in Dublin:The front door to the Four Courts is the symbol of the public's access to justice. It is the physical manifestation of the means by which the citizens ...

(Lack of) coverage of Uzbekistan

Sunday, May 15th, 2005

I rarely watch network news. I generally use television for entertainment and it rarely occurs to me to browse by the news channels. The only real exception is when I'm in a hotel, where the news channels tend to outnumber the others. The problem is that news channels also tend to ...

EU commissioner in constitution/holocaust controversy

Saturday, May 14th, 2005

There's a strange piece in EU Observer today about a controversial passage in a speech by EU Communication Commissioner Margot Wallström:In the original version, Commissioner Wallström was to say "Yet there are those today who want to scrap the supranational idea. They want the European Union to go back to ...