Media

Is That "Anti-war Left" or "Anti-gay Right"?

Media Matters caught Sean Hannity on Tuesday blaming the "anti-war left" for protesting at the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. In reality, the protesters were members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka, Kansas, which claims that terrorism and other disasters are divine retribution against America for the "sin" of tolerating homosexuality.

No

TV Watch Takes On Conservative TV Watchers

Tired of being picked on by religious media watchdog groups, big media is fighting back with its own advocacy group. NBC Universal, Viacom and News Corp. have launched the group TV Watch to "advocate parental controls and oppose government intervention" into TV programming, the Dallas Morning News reports.

No

Spinning the Money Markets

In a two-part series on Australian corporate PR, an investment banker explained that investor relations campaigns are carefully planned. "At morning conference calls, there's always a lot of talk on which journalist is a softer touch and who will be more favourably disposed and who has particular relationships with the other side," an investment banker said. The spokesman for one large corporation explained that they used external PR consultants for "media management of senior commentators.

No

Chinese Reporters Fight Pay to Praise Plan

Chinese moneyA leading state-run newspaper in China has scrapped a controversial appraisal system in which reporters would get paid more if they pleased the Communist Party's central propaganda department. The plan prompted a rebellion by the paper's reporters, one of whom posted an open letter condemning it on the Internet.

No

Justifying Shooting

Following the revelation that British police gave out false information about the shooting of a terrorism suspect who turned out to be innocent, Simon Hattenstone urges greater skepticism about official police accounts. After the shooting of Brazilian student Jean Charles Menezes, police claimed that he had been wearing an unseasonably bulky, padded jacket that might be concealing a bomb, and that he ran from police and vaulted a ticket barrier at a subway station before being shot dead.

No

Indian Givers

Indian rupeesPublic relations "is coming of age" in India, writes Ramesh Narayan, the founder of an advertising agency in Mumbai. Its emergence has been accompanied by some shady practices, such as press confererences where reporters receive a "press kit which contained relevant material and a gift. ... Considerable time was spent in deciding what gift should be purchased.

No

Pages

Subscribe to Media