TV WEEK: DAN RATHER’S NEW JOB

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=10325

AMERICAN MEDIA: STAY RESOLUTE

Rem Rieder of the American Journalism Review says press principles must be defended:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4148

WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF SECRECY?
Wasserman in the Miami Herald

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/15003083.htm

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH GROSSES ON

Geordie writes on Daily Kos:

” This weekend, An Inconvenient Truth brought in $1.16 million, bringing its total to $15.04 M. This means it’s the 4th highest grossing documentary ever, after F911, March of the Penguins, and Bowling for Columbine. What does this mean?

Well, the bad news is the theater count went down 25 screens, so perhaps it will not play any more widely than it already is.

But the good news is that the drop in grosses from last weekend to this is less than that of any other movie above it in grosses except for the kid cartoon Cars - although there’s considerably irony in that juxtaposition, I guess. More good news - it’s 7th in per theater audience average, meaning “Truth” is still putting butts in the seats at the multiplex, and continuing thereby to spread the word about our planetary crisis.”

EJC: GEORGIAN TV ANCHOR QUITS ON AIR

“A leading Georgian TV presenter and news executive quit her job while on the air. Eka Khoperia announced her resignation while hosting her nightly political talk show and cited government pressure as her reason.

It reinforces growing concern about dwindling media freedoms under Mikheil Saakashvili, the president since 2003.

Khoperia, head of news at Rustavi-2, told viewers on Thursday night: ‘This is my last programme and I am quitting the channel.’ The show went abruptly off the air after a commercial break.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2006/07/journalist_resigns_from_georgi.html -

MONITORING THE WORLD CUP—MEDIA TENOR

”A seven-country wide study of television news reports on the 2006 World Cup by Media Tenor Research Institute in Bonn shows that the four semi-finalists had been among the favourites from the very start, with the exception of France.

Semi-finalists Germany, Italy and Portugal received positive media ratings throughout the review period – 9th to 30th June 2006 – together with Brazil and Ghana who received similar positive ratings and good coverage but did not make it to the semi-finals. France appears to have taken the media by surprise while Argentina, usually a World Cup favourite, received relatively more negative media ratings than the other favourites.

Media Tenor’s analysis of over 3,500 TV news reports in the US, France, Britain, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa and Germany shows that France received generally neutral coverage in the UK, Italy and South Africa, positive but relatively low ratings in France and predominantly negative coverage on German television. Ironically, French TV gave the German team the most positive ratings from all 32 teams.

On English TV, it was Italy who got the most positive coverage followed by Brazil and Germany. The English team received relatively low positive coverage on UK television, in contrast with French television that rated the English team second and Italian television that rated it third.

On Italian television, Argentina received the most positive ratings followed by Spain, England and Brazil. Germany, England and especially France were relatively more critical of Argentina, although the overall ratings for the Argentina team remained positive.

Portugal received the highest ratings in Switzerland, which placed Germany second and its own team third in media ratings. South African Television gave Brazil the highest ratings, followed by Germany and Ghana. Germany TV gave its own team the highest positive ratings, the only media to do so to its own home team. US television, which gave little coverage to the World Cup in its news bulletins, was especially critical of its home team.

On the lower end of the scale, the media was quite uniform in its negative ratings, differing only in the amount of media coverage it allocated to teams that generally did not fare well at the World Cup. Costa Rica, the US and Iran were among the most negatively rated.

Media Tenor also analysed the news time exposure of World Cup sponsors. Coverage of sponsors like Deutsche Bahn AG, Coca-Cola, Emirates Airlines, EnBW and Continental was very poor while media ratings of the sponsors were mixed.”

THE WORLD CUP AND THE NOOSHERE

Theologian Leonardo Boff sees the World Cup’s global appeal in deeper terms:

”…It is the emergence of a new phase of the process of evolution, that went through cosmogenesis, burst into biogenesis, spread out into anthropogenesis and now is taking a new leap, forward and upwards, with noogenesis.

“This expression, noogenesis, was created in the XIX century by British born geologist Eduard Suess, (1831-1914), and later adopted by the well known Russian biologist Vladimir I. Vernadsky, (1863-1945), one of the first to formulate the theory of Gaia. It was disseminated by the French geologist, paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (1881-1955).

Teilhard, who was profoundly familiar with the evolutionary process and was an attentive observer of historical phenomena. He had observed that the world network of communication, through the economy, the means of information, the cultural exchanges and the encounters among peoples and persons, was creating the material bases for a new stage in the evolutionary process. Not only things, material goods and spiritual goods are exchanged, but above all, a new spiritual energy is being accumulated and a new state of consciousness is being generated, ever more complex and internalized in the minds of persons and institutions. Teilhard called this phenomenon «planetization», becoming one of the first to use this expression.

“What is being realized now–Teilhard observed–is an extension of something very ancestral that represents the progressive complexity of reality. It simultaneously implies a process of internalizing and of growing levels of reflex consciousness. After the human being, there is humanity. In the present phase, there is a persistent appearance of the consciousness that we form a species, the human, a great collective community, the varied human family. During the time when millions will be watching the final game, billions of neuron connections in the brains of those persons will occur, all unified around the movement of a ball. That syntony generates an extraordinarily potent energetic wave that modifies the estate of the Earth and of humanity. The noosphere constitutes exactly that phenomenon, where body, mind and spirit form a superior synthesis.”

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FROM THE UN—A NEEDED NEW PARTNERSHIP

”In a bid to create greater awareness of the challenges facing the world’s poorest nations, the United Nations envoy for the Least Developed Countries Anwarul K. Chowdhury launched a ‘Global Media Compact’ in partnership with the media company, MediaGlobal.

“The ‘Compact’ aims to encourage international and local media companies to increase their coverage of development issues in developing countries through innovative media initiatives.

“Mr. Chowdhury appealed to editors and owners of newspapers to feature stories that would raise international awareness on issues of poverty, disease and hunger in least developed countries.

Http://www.mediaglobal.org

FROM MAKING NEWS TO HYPING IT

Norman Mineta, President Bush’s Transportation Secretary and the man who grounded all civilian aircraft after 911 has left the Administration. His new gig is with a powerful PR firm:
http://www.prweek.com/us/news/article/568593/Mineta+leaves+Department+Transportation+H-K

FOR BACKGROUND ON MEDIA AND ISRAEL

http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/sociology/units/media/israel.htm