ROVE WATCH

The Washington Post reports today:

”Time Reporter Called a Key to Rove’s Defense In Leak Probe

“The reporter for Time magazine who recently agreed to testify in the CIA leak case is central to White House senior adviser Karl Rove’s effort to fend off an indictment in the two-year-old investigation, according to two people familiar with the situation.
“Viveca Novak, who has written intermittently about the leak case for Time, has been asked to provide sworn testimony to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the next few weeks after Rove attorney Robert Luskin told Fitzgerald about a conversation he had with her, the two sources said….:”

IRAQ COVERAGE AVOIDS KEY ISSUES

Jason Salzman writes in the Rocky Mountain News: “Politics of war go unacknowledged; In stories about casualties, families not asked crucial questions about war’s costs.”

”If your son died in Iraq, would you want reporters to ask what you think of the war? Should the U.S. pull out? Should we stay the course? How do you feel about the sacrifice? What about the growing opposition?

“Many of the dailies’ stories about grieving military families in Colorado don’t answer these questions.

“They contain little or no information about what military families think about the politics of the war.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4267554,00.html

FRANCE NOW HAS NEWS CHANNEL

” With little publicity, France plunged yesterday into the global mediawar. After CNN, Al-Jazeera and the BBC, the world will soon gain anotherround-the-clock television news channel, this time beamed from Paris andreflecting French perspectives. The new station’s name is hardly catchy:Chaine Francaise d’Information Internationale (French InternationalInformation Channel) or CFII for short.

Although the new company started operating yesterday, actual broadcastswill still take some time. So the new TV channel will arrive after thelaunch of the BBC’s new Arabic station, and well after Al-Jazeera itself starts broadcasting in English to the world….

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=34357 - The Straits Times, Asia Media

CANADIAN TV ON MEDIA DEATHS—WHERE ARE U.S. CHANNELS?

”TARGETS”

“More journalists have already died in Iraq than were killed in the entire Vietman War. The war in Iraq has put the journalists covering it in an impossibly perilous situation today. Never before have journalists themselves become such a major target in a conflict.

“What has the war in Iraq done to journalists? What has it done to the process of newsgathering? Award-winning Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and war correspondent Maziar Bahari follows the heart-stopping stories of Scott Taylor and other journalists as they cover the war in Iraq.”

http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/targets.html

WHEN? Thursday December 1 at 9pm on CBC-TV, repeating Saturday December 3 at 8pm ET on CBC Newsworld

CENSORSHIP IN RUSSIA (Via Sarah Meyer)

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15712

“is particularly important because of the new laws passed in the Duma last week,which is a Putin clampdown on human rights.”

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes934.html