EF writes: “Oh dear. Dan Rather has chosen an unfortunate graphic to promote his new news program on HD NET.”

http://www.adrants.com/2006/11/grenade-needed-to-force-viewership-of-dan.php

OTHER MEDIA NEWS OF NOTE

Murdoch ‘Deplores’ Anti-U.S. Sentiment

Anti-Americanism is rising, fueled by the unpopularity of the Iraq war, says media chief Rupert Murdoch at a dinner in Australia. He warns Australians against allowing doubts about the Bush administration to fester. “Wars end,” he says. “Administrations come and go.”

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20759635-1702

AP Photog Still Behind Bars

The United States is reported to be holding about 13,000 people in military prisons in Iraq, but only one of them is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Since his arrest more than seven months ago, no formal charges have been brought against Bilal Hussein (who is not related to Saddam). The AP has urged military officials to either free him or put him on trial, but so far they have declined.

Tom Curley, the AP’s president and CEO, says whenever the military has given specific details, the AP has taken them seriously and tried to investigate. Some of those investigations showed that the claims “were false or total exaggerations,” he says. “I have no problem saying the Pentagon lied to us more than once.”

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4227

Danish Journos on Trial

The editor-in-chief and two reporters at one of Denmark’s largest newspapers went on trial Monday for publishing classified intelligence reports about former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s weapons program.

A former intelligence officer has previously been sentenced to prison for leaking the documents in the case, which is viewed in Denmark as a landmark test of media freedom.

Niels Lunde, the Berlingske Tidende newspaper’s top editor, and reporters Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen, face charges of publishing confidential government documents, which is punishable by fines or up to two years in prison.

In February and March 2004, Bjerre and Larsen wrote a series of articles based on leaked reports from the Danish Defense Intelligence Service. The reports said there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction during Saddam Hussein’s rule _ one of the main reasons behind the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003381393

Borat Not So Funny

The name of this remote Romanian village means “mud,” and that’s exactly what angry locals are throwing at comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen used Glod’s Gypsies as stand-ins for Kazakhs in his runaway hit movie, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Now offended villagers are threatening to sue the film’s producers for paying them a pittance to put farm animals in their homes and perform other crude antics.

Residents and local officials in the hardscrabble hamlet 85 miles northwest of Bucharest said Tuesday they were horrified and humiliated to learn their abject poverty and simple ways were ridiculed for a movie now raking in millions at box offices worldwide.

“We thought they came here to help us — not mock us,” said Dana Luca, 40, sweeping a manure-stained street lined with shabby homes of crumbling brick and corrugated iron sheeting.

“We haven’t got anything here. We haven’t got running water. We can’t even bathe,” she said. “We are poor people, but we are still people.”

Nicolae Staicu, leader of the 1,670 Gypsies, or Roma, who eke out a living in one of the most impoverished corners of Romania, said he and other officials would meet with a public ombudsman on Wednesday to map out a legal strategy against Cohen and “Borat” distributor 20th Century Fox.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003381829

New TV talk show featuring Jews, Muslims and Christians

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=17278&intcategoryid=