Send Medianews mailing list submissions to
[email protected]
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://twiar.org/mailman/listinfo/medianews_twiar.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can reach the person managing the list at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Medianews digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Pakistan gets its first satellite broadband IP hub
(George Antunes)
2. New York Bets on High-Tech to Aid Upstate (George Antunes)
3. WHERE the devil is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? (George Antunes)
4. Web site automates fake boarding passes (George Antunes)
5. Firefox 2.0 (Monty Solomon)
6. FCC commissioners speak out against media consolidation
(George Antunes)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 10:52:47 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Pakistan gets its first satellite broadband IP
hub
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed;
x-avg-checked=avg-ok-56ED659A
Pakistan gets its first satellite broadband IP hub
Indo-Asian News Service
2006/10/27 3:21:45
http://www.teluguportal.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=19108
Islamabad, Oct 27 (IANS) Pakistan is now on the satellite broadband hub
with the commissioning of the Infosat 51F.
Comstar ISA Ltd, a leading satellite service provider, Thursday announced
the completion of the installation, testing and commissioning phase of the
hub in Karachi.
The hub is now commercially available to users throughout the country,
Pakistan Times newspaper quoted company officials as saying.
The Infosat I-Direct Hub has been installed in the country in collaboration
with Infosat Communications. Infosat is a Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE)
subsidiary and the largest broadband satellite operator in Canada.
With the commissioning of the hub, Infosat completed the first phase of its
investment in Comstar and formally took control of 22 percent shareholding
in Comstar ISA Ltd. This is first of its kind investment by a satellite
services company in Pakistan.
Sami Bajwa, CEO and president of Comstar, said Infosat Connect services
were being launched in Pakistan would aim to offer the same level of
service that customers in North America have been accustomed to.
John Robertson, president and CEO of Infosat Communication, said Infosat's
substantial investment in Pakistan both in terms of equipment and human
resources proves his organisations commitment to Pakistan.
"We are here to stay for the long term," Robertson was quoted as saying.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 10:56:36 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] New York Bets on High-Tech to Aid Upstate
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed;
x-avg-checked=avg-ok-56ED659A
October 28, 2006
New York Bets on High-Tech to Aid Upstate
By STEVE LOHR
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/technology/28chips.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print
EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. ? New video game consoles from Sony and Nintendo will
soon join Microsoft?s year-old Xbox 360 on store shelves. Most of the
microprocessor chips that animate the three machines are being made not in
Asia but in a factory here, surrounded by woods, 70 miles north of Midtown
Manhattan.
Inside, the factory is filled with hundreds of chip-making tools that are
fed by plastic pods, riding on overhead tracks and carrying pristine
silicon wafers, in an elaborate symphony of production.
Engineers and operators, wearing head-to-toe nylon suits and surgical
gloves, monitor the machines from laptop computers, constantly tweaking the
system to generate faster output with fewer defects.
This sprawling I.B.M. factory offers a glimpse of the kind of manufacturing
in which the United States still excels: the automated production of
advanced technology, requiring highly skilled workers ? but not a lot of them.
The modern factory is also an important part of an ambitious
business-and-government effort to create a thriving industrial cluster in
upstate New York, based on microelectronics and nanotechnology, the science
of manipulating materials at the molecular and atomic level.
The other pillar of the plan is the Albany NanoTech complex, a research and
development center at the State University of New York at Albany, nearly
100 miles north of East Fishkill.
State and local governments are betting big on this high-tech vision, with
grants, tax breaks and other subsidies of more than $1 billion, mainly in
the last five years. More government backing has been pledged. That bet may
already be paying off. There are recent signs, from big-company investments
to the birth of small start-ups, to suggest that the technology cluster is
gaining momentum.
But nurturing high-technology hubs, development experts say, is tricky, and
simply making big investments in factories and labs is no guarantee of success.
The real goal, they add, is to build gradually a network of people and
companies with technical, design, financial and entrepreneurial expertise ?
one that pursues a whole range of high-tech opportunities instead of being
dependent on a particular product, factory or industry niche.
Silicon Valley, they note, no longer relies on silicon factories for its
prosperity. Product design, software, services and financing account for
most of the 490,000 high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley.
?Manufacturing alone is not where competitive advantage lies in the long
run,? said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information at the
University of California, Berkeley, and author of ?The New Argonauts:
Regional Advantage in a Global Economy.?
?The key for upstate New York, or any other region, is the ability to build
the set of social and institutional relationships that encourage innovation.?
As a cautionary example, Ms. Saxenian points to the once-promising effort
to develop a high-tech cluster around Intel?s big chip plant outside
Portland, Ore., which seems to have stalled in the last few years.
In upstate New York, as in the nation, pockets of growth are not going to
reverse the long-term decline in manufacturing jobs.
The United States remains the world?s top manufacturer in terms of the
value of goods produced. But the gains, especially in high-tech products,
have come from more efficiency. From 1990 to 2005, the number of
manufacturing jobs in New York State fell by 41 percent, to 580,000.
?This upstate cluster ? no matter how successful ? is not going to create a
lot of manufacturing jobs, and it is not going to be an answer for the
problem we have in upstate New York of the shrinking job base in
traditional blue-collar manufacturing,? said Richard Deitz, a senior
economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?s Buffalo branch.
Still, the early progress in upstate New York is encouraging. In the last
year alone, employment at the Albany NanoTech complex has doubled to nearly
1,400. The nanotechnology center, a modern building sheathed in bluish
mirror-glass and metal, now covers 450,000 square feet, and construction of
a 250,000-square-foot building nearby is scheduled to begin later this year.
More than 100 companies have engineers working at the
industry-and-university research center. The roster includes big chip
makers, like I.B.M. and Advanced Micro Devices, as well as two leading
foreign makers of semiconductor equipment, Tokyo Electron of Japan and ASML
of the Netherlands, which also have set up research operations at the
Albany complex.
The evolving cluster helped sway Advanced Micro Devices when it chose to
build a $3.2 billion computer chip factory in Saratoga County, north of
Albany. The company made the decision this year, after weighing competing
bids from other states and from Asian nations.
?Being close to strategic partners, like I.B.M., and to the research and
knowledge base that is building up around Albany was incredibly important,?
said Susan Snyder, vice president for government relations at Advanced
Micro Devices.
Most of the investment has been by big companies so far. But the Albany
complex has also helped or given birth to small technology companies and
start-ups nearby, like Starfire Systems, Applied NanoWorks and Evident
Technologies.
?This is beyond pump-priming now,? said Alain Kaloyeros, a physicist who is
the chief administrative officer of the College of Nanoscale Science and
Engineering at SUNY-Albany.
Mr. Kaloyeros sees the combination of the research center along with the
corporate investment in Albany and East Fishkill as the beginning of ?a
huge knowledge-generating machine,? which should attract more investment,
skilled workers, scientists and students.
That is certainly the hope, and expectation, of state government leaders
who have heavily subsidized the plan. The subsidies are intended to be a
cooperative investment with industry, rather than a giveaway, according to
state officials.
One standard, state officials say, is that corporate investment should
exceed government support by a ratio of at least three to one. ?It should
be driven mainly by the private sector,? said Jeffrey Lovell, senior policy
adviser to Gov. George E. Pataki.
The Albany nanotechnology complex passes that test. About $3 billion has
been invested in the complex so far, mainly for costly tools and equipment
needed for research and development. The private spending has totaled $2.5
billion, while the state has invested $500 million in its push to add high
technology as an engine of the state capital?s economy, which relies
largely on government and related services.
The state?s bid for the planned Advanced Micro Devices factory shows the
rationale for government support for high-technology ventures. The state
has agreed to provide the company with $900 million in grants and tax
credits. A.M.D. is expected to employ about 1,200 people at the factory,
which works out to a hefty $750,000 of state subsidy for each job created.
But state officials argue that the factory will create 3,600 full-time jobs
when services and support for the factory are included. And thousands more
construction workers will work on the project.
The overall impact will be to add $2 billion to the region?s economy over
10 years, mostly in wages, from the employment linked to the factory,
estimates John M. Bacheller, executive vice president of the Empire State
Development Corporation.
In East Fishkill, the state and local governments pledged tax breaks,
grants and incentives of $660 million to ensure that I.B.M. built its
factory, which opened in 2002, in the region. I.B.M. had alternatives, but
it was inclined to locate in its traditional manufacturing territory and
not far from its research labs in Yorktown Heights, as long as the state
helped out.
The new $3 billion factory came after a long period of contraction by
I.B.M. in the lower Hudson Valley, where the company had employed more than
30,000 in the 1980s. That was the heyday of the mainframe, an era of
computing that I.B.M. dominated. In Dutchess County, home to the company?s
big operations in Poughkeepsie and Fishkill, entire neighborhoods were made
up of I.B.M. families.
But when I.B.M.?s fortunes plummeted in the early 1990s, production lines
were shut and the company?s employment in the region fell to less than
14,000. In Dutchess County, unemployment nearly tripled to 11 percent.
The East Fishkill factory ? built on a site where I.B.M. closed a chip
production line in 1993 ? has helped stabilize the region?s economy by
attracting other private investment and skilled workers. The county?s
unemployment rate is down to 4 percent and house prices are rising.
A couple of years ago, there was a lot of open space on the factory?s
production floor. But now it is packed full of silicon-processing machines,
each self-enclosed and airtight, about 500 and counting. More are being
installed in an adjacent annex building.
Output at the East Fishkill factory has more than doubled in the last three
years, and 80 percent of the production is for outside customers like the
video game makers. I.B.M. makes microprocessors for its own big computers,
but that work does not fill the new operation. To be profitable, it relies
on doing tailored design and manufacturing in collaboration with industry
partners like Sony.
The microprocessors made for Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are shipped to
Asia, where contract assemblers, mostly in China, put together the video
game consoles. Many of those consoles end up on the American market.
The I.B.M. factory runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, employing more
than 2,000 people, including maintenance and administrative workers. The
few hundred people on the factory floor at any one time often have skills
seemingly more suited to a research lab than a production line. Ph.D.?s are
thick on the floor, and even machine operators with two-year degrees from
technical schools must constantly upgrade their skills.
Joseph Lawson, a senior operator, recalled the days, more than two decades
ago, when he dipped silicon wafers into chemicals by hand. ?Now it?s all
automated,? he said. ?The tools are amazing, and the training never stops.?
In addition, 250 engineers and managers from partner companies work at the
I.B.M. factory. They have come from Japan, Germany, Singapore and elsewhere.
Takayuki Kurihara, a 32-year-old software engineer for Tokyo Electron,
moved to Fishkill in 2002. He beat out 10 other candidates for the job.
?What I.B.M. is doing here is very high-tech, and this factory is in the
spotlight in my industry in Japan,? Mr. Kurihara said. ?Many people want to
come here.?
Local officials are trying to lure more companies.
The appeal, said Anne N. Conroy, president of the Dutchess County Economic
Development Corporation, is being surrounded by a growing pool of skilled
people and industry partners.
?It?s the cluster that attracts them,? she said.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 11:00:06 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] WHERE the devil is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed;
x-avg-checked=avg-ok-56ED659A
October 28, 2006
Anyone Seen the Mormon Choir?
By DAN MITCHELL
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/business/28online.html?ref=technology&pagewanted=print
WHERE the devil is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?
For years, it seemed as if SoundExchange, the nonprofit organization that
handles royalty payments for musicians whose work is streamed over the
Internet and broadcast on satellite radio networks, didn?t know. The group
insists that it tried hard to find the choir and about 9,000 other artists
who still hadn?t been paid. A few months ago, SoundExchange posted the list
on its Web site, giving artists a deadline of Dec. 15 before they lose
their money forever (soundexchange.com).
Some people have criticized SoundExchange saying it has sat on its hands.
Who, they ask, doesn?t know that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is in Utah?
And how hard can it be to find the Olsen twins? The list has received a lot
of publicity online, and the Olsens, the Mormons and others have been paid,
but not without criticism directed at SoundExchange.
Writing for the Web site of the political newsletter Counterpunch, Fred
Wilhelms, a lawyer who helps musicians with royalty payments, accused
Sound-Exchange of moving slowly on purpose. ?What happens to the money they
can?t pay because they can?t find the person to pay?? he asked. ?They get
to keep it themselves. Nothing succeeds like failure? (counterpunch.org).
SoundExchange denies the accusation. In a letter responding to an article
in The Los Angeles Times, the organization?s executives said they had
?engaged in numerous outreach campaigns? that managed to get payments to
25,000 artists last year. As for the difficulties tracking down well-known
musicians, they said ?a number? of the artists on the list ?simply have
failed to respond to our notifications? (latimes.com).
For SoundExchange, the timing of the negative attention couldn?t be worse.
It is fighting before the Library of Congress (loc.gov) to remain the sole
distributor of the royalties. Would-be competitors including Royalty Logic
would like to get into the field (royaltylogic.com).
For the most part, the amounts in question aren?t very impressive ? so far.
Just 75 of the artists whose music streamed from 1996 to 2000 are owed $500
or more. But the amounts are growing every year, and the future of the
business looks bright, as both streaming audio and satellite broadcasting
become more popular. According to SoundExchange, royalties will total more
than $40 million next year. (Downloaded music, as from iTunes, isn?t involved.)
In the meantime, has anyone seen Men Without Hats? SoundExchange has a
check for them.
Evil Makes Good The Nazis created it, the South African apartheid regime
put it to work and now the world might benefit from it.
?It? is the Fischer-Tropsch process (fischer-tropsch.org), a chemical
method of turning natural gas and coal into liquid fuels. As Daniel Gross
puts it in an article in Slate (slate.com), ?Nazism, apartheid and
international sanctions created a fuel source that might never have existed
in a better world.?
Sasol was South Africa?s state energy company under apartheid, when it used
the process in response to the refusal of oil-producing nations to sell to
the regime. Now privatized, it has been gaining market share as oil prices
have risen.
But the Fischer-Tropsch process, and Sasol itself, face enormous
challenges, Mr. Gross reports, not the least of which is the high cost of
converting coal in the face of competition from the giant oil companies.
The Coming of the iPod Five years ago this week on Metafilter, there was a
discussion of what Apple?s forthcoming big ?breakthrough product? could
possibly be. ?Perhaps a device for breaking through things. A drill or
something,? joked one participant. ?A Reality Distortion Field generator
that runs on AA batteries,? wrote another, perhaps a Windows fan
(metafilter.com).
Others were a bit closer, like the person who guessed it would be ?an
integrated off-the-shelf home audio (even video) solution that you can
control with your home computer (i.e. your Mac) that would get more people
hooked on the Apple brand. It?s a concept that would work well with the new
Apple stores that have been opening up.?
Indeed.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 11:08:57 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Web site automates fake boarding passes
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed;
x-avg-checked=avg-ok-56ED659A
Web site automates fake boarding passes
Graduate student says terrorists could easily circumvent no-fly list
By Joshua Freed
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:57 p.m. CT Oct 27, 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15449482/
MINNEAPOLIS - A computer security student says terrorists would have no
trouble getting around the government?s no-fly list, and to prove it he set
up a Web site that prints fake boarding passes.
The passenger name on the fake boarding pass is ?Bin Laden/Osama,? although
travelers can put in their own name ? or a fake one ? and change the flight
information, too.
Christopher Soghoian, a 24-year-old doctoral student at Indiana University,
said he set up the site to prove that the Transportation Security
Administration isn?t taking airline security seriously.
Others have pointed out before that savvy computer users could modify an
airline Web page to print fake boarding passes, but Soghoian took it a step
further and automated it.
?Before, any 12-year-old could have done it,? Soghoian said on Friday. ?Now
any 30- or 40-year-old could do it as well.?
Soghoian said terrorists on the no-fly list could use a fake boarding pass
to avoid the no-fly list because IDs are only checked when the passenger
passes through TSA screening. So someone could use a fake boarding pass
with an ID that matches and get through the screening.
They?d then need a real boarding pass ? presumably bought under a fake name
? to get on the plane.
There also have been reports of travelers flying without an ID at all. That
?essentially means the no-fly list does not work,? Soghoian said.
TSA spokesman Christopher White said other security measures are in place,
including metal detectors, even if someone boards under a fake name. He
condemned the Web site.
?The Web site really has the potential to promote illegal activity,? he
said. ?Showing fraudulent documents to get through security is against the
law.?
Soghoian said he built his Web site to mimic Northwest Airlines boarding
passes because he had one handy after flying Northwest earlier this week.
He said he has nothing against the airline.
Soghoian said the fake boarding pass couldn?t get anyone onto a flight ? as
long as the airline?s computers were working ? because the bar code
wouldn?t match the other information on the pass.
Northwest spokesman Roman Blahoski said the airline immediately notifies
the TSA and law enforcement agencies if it discovers a fraudulent boarding
pass.
Soghoian said taking nail clippers and liquids away from travelers is just
giving them a false sense of security, and that he?s trying to show where
the real threats are.
?When they say ?For security reasons,? everyone shuts up, everyone follows
the rules, and no one questions authority. And I don?t think that?s right,?
he said.
He said no one from the government had complained to him about the site, yet.
?If I get a letter from the government telling me to take it down, then
I?ll take it down straightaway,? Soghoian said.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15449482/
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 22:49:39 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Firefox 2.0
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 22:25:43 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] FCC commissioners speak out against media
consolidation
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed;
x-avg-checked=avg-ok-56ED659A
Page A - 2
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/28/MNGE8M1UUP1.DTL
FCC commissioners speak out against media consolidation
Public views on agency rules aired at Oakland forum
By Joe Garofoli
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 28, 2006
As the Federal Communications Commission reviews its rules on media
ownership, commissioner Michael Copps urged Friday that the process be more
open than it was in 2003, when the commission "eviscerated" ownership rules
"without seeking meaningful input from the American people."
Though the changes were largely overturned by a federal court, Copps warned
350 people at a community forum in Oakland that "we're right back at Square
1. Big Media hasn't gone away; their lobbyists haven't gone away; and
they're still marching behind their 'Pied Piper of Consolidation.' ''
Copps and commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, the five-member panel's only
Democrats, appeared at the California State Conference of the NAACP to
rally interest in media consolidation issues at a forum sponsored by the
NAACP and several progressive organizations.
The FCC will hold five more official hearings nationwide on consolidation,
and could vote as early as March on any changes. Copps and Adelstein, who
oppose further consolidation, plan to hold a dozen similar unofficial
forums elsewhere.
While there is more awareness of the issue after the 2003 battle over media
consolidation, the two commissioners' path this time will be equally
difficult. Not only are they outnumbered by Republicans on the panel, both
said that they are also having a hard time getting information from their
own agency about what studies the FCC is conducting on consolidation issues.
"I can't get information (from the FCC) about what's going on," Adelstein said.
The commissioners got earfuls Friday from the activists, media watchdogs
and community leaders who lined up to tell them how media consolidation is
hurting their constituencies.
In an interview beforehand, Copps said, "Minorities are being misserved by
the excesses of Big Media."
The new-media revolution may often be portrayed as a democratizing force,
but it hasn't closed the digital divide for people of color, said Malkia
Cyril, director of the Oakland-based Youth Media Council.
"Sure, people of color are in the news, but as crime suspects," Cyril said
Friday. "This is about being able to have more local control over the media
outlets."
The FCC is reviewing several rules governing how many television and radio
stations an entity can own in one market; the commission's limitations on
owning a full-service broadcast station and a newspaper in the same market;
and its regulations on radio and television station cross-ownership. The
commission will also ask the public whether it should retain its ban on
mergers between the top four broadcast networks.
In 2003, the commission voted to make it easier for a single company to own
a radio station, newspaper and TV station in the same region. In a rare
bipartisan showing, both the House and the Senate voted to oppose the FCC's
decision, and 3 million people contacted the commission to complain.
That coalition needs to rise again, the commissioners said.
That's because, Copps said, "Americans get their input and develop their
views about all these other critical issues filtered through the funnel of
Big Media."
In 2004, a federal court overturned the change that would have permitted
greater ownership concentration of television and radio stations in a
single market. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in
Philadelphia also found that while the FCC was within its rights to roll
back a ban on a single company owning both a TV station and a newspaper in
the same region, it asked the FCC to review its decision.
The FCC is seeking input in response to both the court's request, as well
as part of its quadrennial review of its media ownership policy as required
by the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Some in Friday's audience, like Cyril, worried about the effect recent
newspaper consolidations would have on the Bay Area news scene, as two
major media companies control virtually all of the region's newspapers. New
York-based Hearst Corp. owns The Chronicle. Denver-based Media News
recently purchased the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times
from Knight-Ridder.
In a complex transaction, Hearst provided financial backing for MediaNews'
purchase of some other papers in exchange for an unspecified stake in
MediaNews properties outside the Bay Area. An antitrust lawsuit challenging
the Hearst-MediaNews arrangement is scheduled to be heard in federal court
in San Francisco in April.
Last week, the Mercury News announced plans to reduce its newsroom staff by
40 jobs, or about 14 percent of its editorial staff of 280.
The media ownership in radio isn't much better. According to FCC data, of
the 12,844 radio and television stations that filed the correct reports,
women owned 3.4 percent and minorities 3.6 percent of the outlets.
"Should we really be surprised, given the sad state of minority media
ownership, when the coverage and characterization of minorities in our
media are so distorted?" Copps said. "Should we really be surprised when so
much of local news coverage is reduced to 'if it bleeds it leads' -- and
important issues about minorities and their achievements and problems
receive so little coverage?"
Page A - 2
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/28/MNGE8M1UUP1.DTL
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Medianews mailing list
[email protected]
http://twiar.org/mailman/listinfo/medianews_twiar.org
End of Medianews Digest, Vol 75, Issue 1
****************************************
