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News - National | 2017-04-21

Press Freedom

NATIONAL governments remain the single largest source of revenue for news organisations in Africa. In Rwanda, for example, a staggering 85-90% of advertising revenue comes from the public sector.

In Kenya, it's estimated that 30% of newspaper revenue comes from government advertising. In 2013, the government spent Ksh40 million in two weeks just to publish congratulatory messages for the new president, Uhuru Kenyatta.

But with a general election coming up this year in August, the Kenyan government has decided to stop advertising in local commercial media.

In a memo, reportedly sent to all government accounting officers, the directive was given that state departments and agencies would only advertise in My.Gov a government newspaper and online portal.

Electronic advertising would only be aired on the state broadcaster the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.

It's difficult not to characterise the withdrawal of state advertising from commercial media as punitive. Without this revenue stream newspapers are likely to fold.

Worse still, efforts to withdraw government advertising from commercial media can be interpreted as a worrying way to undermine the freedom of expression.

Starving news media of revenue is a means of indirect state control. This has been the case in countries such as Serbia, Hungary, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland.

But to fully understand the link between government spend on advertising and media freedom it's important to take a historical perspective.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The 1990s saw the adoption of multiparty politics in many African countries. This led to relatively liberal constitutions in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana, among others.

Since then, most African governments have grown anxious about their inability to control the local news agenda, much less articulate government policy.

For governments in countries such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and more recently, Tanzania, controlling the news agenda is seen as a means to stay in power. Views that compete with the state position are often cast as legitimising the opposition agenda.

This is part of a much broader strategy for political control which Africanist historians and political scientists have called the ideology of order. This is based on the premise that dissent is a threat to nation-building and must therefore be diminished.

The narrative was popularised by most post- independence African governments and empha- sised through incessant calls for what they liked to call unity.

In Kenya, former president Daniel arap Moi even coined his own political philosophy of peace, love and unity. Citizens were expected to accept this narrative unequivocally. Dissenting views were undermined through state-controlled media such as the Kenya Broadcasting Corpora- tion and newspapers such as the Kenya Times.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, African govern- ments conveniently used the nation-building argument to suppress legitimate dissent. Op- position was punished by imprisonment, forced exile and even death. This was common practice in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and in West Africa more generally.

The current political climate on the continent is premised on constitutional safeguards including the protection of free speech which make these kinds of punishments unlikely in the present day.

Many countries now have institutional safe- guards including fairly robust judicial systems capable of withstanding the tyranny of naked state repression.

As a result, the media is controlled in subtler ways and its violence is softer. It's against this background that I interpret the withdrawal of government adverts from the commercial media in Kenya.

CONTROLLING MEDIA BUDGETS

In Kenya, the decision followed a special cabi- net meeting which agreed that a new newspaper would be launched to articulate the government agenda more accurately.

The government also argued that the move was part of an initiative to curb runaway spending by lowering advert spend in Kenya's mainstream media and directing all the money to the new title.

A similar move was made in South Africa last year when the government's communications arm announced that it would scale down gov- ernment advertising in local commercial media.

Instead, advertisements would be carried in the government newspaper Vuk'uzenzele. The deci- sion withdrew an estimated US$30 million from the country's commercial newspaper industry.

The South African government also claimed that the move was made to reduce government spending. But critics have argued that the deci- sion was made to punish a media outlet that's been particularly critical of President Jacob Zuma's presidency.

In both countries the decisions have hit at a particularly hard time for the media industry, providing governments with the perfect tool with which to control the press.

WILL A FREE PRESS SURVIVE?

Commercial news media is going through a period of unprecedented crisis. The old business models are unable to sustain media operations as audiences adopt new ways of consuming news.

More than that, mass audiences are growing ever smaller. Newspapers particularly haven't been able to adapt to the changing pro le of the old versus the new newspaper reader.

The effect has been that newspapers are no longer as attractive to advertisers. As such, they have to rely a lot more on state money and patronage for survival.

To sidestep state control commercial media in Africa must rethink their business models and diversify their revenue streams.

It won't be an easy road but non-state media must also work hard to disrupt this re-emerging narrative of order. Nation states cannot revert to the dark days when government policy was singular and alternative viewpoints were silenced or delegitimised.

* George Ogola, senior lecturer in journalism, University of Central Lancashire.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

View post:
Government adspend a weapon against media freedom in Africa? - Namibian

George Zimmerman is the Florida man who shot and killed 17-year old Trayvon Martin on 26 February 2012, launching heated public arguments over gun laws and racial profiling. He was found not guilty of Martin's death after a jury trial in 2013. George Zimmerman lived in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, a suburb of Orlando. He was an unofficial neighborhood watchdog, with a history of calling the local police force to report what he considered suspicious behavior. On a Sunday evening in February, Zimmerman spotted Martin, a teenager who was walking home from a neighborhood convenience store. Zimmerman called the police and was told he didn't need to pursue Martin. A short time later, some kind of altercation led to Zimmerman using his pistol to kill Martin. The incident achieved little notice when it first happened, but became a national story a month later, after Martin's parents hired an attorney and went public with the question: Why wasn't George Zimmerman arrested? Local police cited Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law for the use of guns as justification for letting Zimmerman walk, but a more vocal group suggested that Zimmerman had racial motives for pursuing Martin, who was black. A widely-publicized photo of the racially-mixed Zimmerman only muddied the waters (his father is of European descent, and his mother is of Peruvian descent). A national debate ensued, detached from what few facts were known about the case. Florida authorities launched an investigation and appointed a special prosecutor, and in late April of 2012 Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. His trial began on June 24, 2013; the case went to the jury on July 12th, and he was found not guilty the next day.

Read more:
George Zimmerman Biography (Crime Suspect) - Infoplease

Bill OReilly no longer has a job at Fox Newsafter allegations of him sexually harassing female colleagues caused activists to rail against the network and its advertisers earlier this month.

But OReilly, who has worked at Fox News since the network launched in 1996, was a source of controversy long beforeThe New York Times published its bombshell report on the accusations against him. The anchor has a history of making racist, sexist or otherwise inflammatory remarks none of which prompted companies to pull advertisements from his show.

Heres a look back at some of OReillys worst moments in his 20 years at Fox News.

In 2004, Andrea Mackris, who was then a producer at Fox News,sued OReillyfor sexual harassment. Her allegations, which can be found here,include multiple instances of OReilly making lewd remarks during phone conversations.

OReilly denied the charges, butsettled the lawsuit. As HuffPosts Michael Calderone wrote earlier this week, the suit had no lasting effect on OReillys career at Fox News.

In 2015, Gawker reported on court documents that showed OReilly had been accused of physically abusing his former wife, Maureen McPhilmy. According to the report, OReillys daughter allegedly claimed she had seen her father dragging McPhilmy down a staircase by her neck.

OReilly said the report was 100 percent false. An appeals court, however, awarded McPhilmy primarycustody of the estranged couples two children.

Last month, OReilly mocked Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) hair during a segment of Fox & Friends.

I didnt hear a word she said. I was looking at the James Brown wig, he said. Do we have a picture of James Brown? Its the same wig.

OReilly later apologized for his comments, while Waters took him to task during an interview with MSNBCs Chris Hayes.

I am a strong black woman, and I cannot be intimidated. I cannot be undermined, she said.

Last year, The OReilly Factor aired a five-minute segment featuring longtime producer Jesse Watters walking around New York Citys Chinatown and asking residents offensive questions.

The segment drew widespread condemnation for blatantly mocking Asian-Americans and promoting racist stereotypes. OReilly, however, stood by Watters and the decision to air the segment.

Hes not getting fired, OReilly said. We are a program that is not politically correct.

The Black Lives Matter movement is a frequent target of Fox News scorn, and OReilly is no exception. Hes claimed the group is killing Americans, called it a destructive movement and declared that very few white Americans respect it.

Hes also labeled the movement a hate America group and said Martin Luther King Jr. would not participate in the groups protests.

In a 2013 interview with former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), OReilly blamed the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, on how Martin was dressed at the time.

If Trayvon Martin had been wearing a jacket like you are and a tie like you are, Mr. West, this evening, I dont think George Zimmerman would have any problem, OReilly said. But he was wearing a hoodie and he looked a certain way. And that way is how gangstas look. And, therefore, he got attention.

Last July, OReilly argued that the then-president was incapable of fighting the Islamic State group because of his emotional attachment to the Muslim world, ties the anchor said had hurt the USA.

His argument largely hinged on photos appearing to show Obama attending his Muslim half-brothers wedding in the early 1990s, as well as information that his stepfather and father were Muslim (despite little evidence that Obama Sr. ever practiced Islam).

What we can tell you with certainty is that Barack Obama has deep emotional ties to Islam, OReilly said.

Carolyn Cole via Getty Images

In 2003, OReilly described undocumented immigrants from Mexico as wetbacks while discussing security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

During the segment, OReilly argued in favor of using military force at the border.

Wed save lives because Mexican wetbacks, whatever you want to call them, the coyotes, theyre not going to do what theyre doing now, so people arent going to die in the desert, he said.

OReilly later said he misspoke.

I was groping for a term to describe the industry that brings people in here. It was not meant to disparage people in any way, he toldThe New York Times.

After first lady Michelle Obama made some emotional observationsin 2016 about what it was like as a black woman to live in a house built by slaves, OReilly seized the opportunity to mansplain that, actually, those slaves had it pretty good.

Slaves that worked there were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802, he said. However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor. So, Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House, but there were others working as well.

After former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson sued Fox News chief Roger Ailes for sexual harassment (leading to his ouster), Fox News personality Megyn Kelly also came forward with allegations against the executive.

OReilly addressed the allegations on his show andcriticized Kelly for her decision to speak out.

If somebody is paying you a wage, you owe that person or company allegiance. You dont like whats happening in the workplace, go to human resources or leave, he said. And then take the action you need to take afterward if you feel aggrieved. There are labor laws in this country. But dont run down the concern that supports you by trying to undermine it.

Kelly left the network for NBC less than two months later.

While OReillys stance on same-sex marriage appears to have shifted over the years, hes previously claimed that legalizing gay weddings would be a slippery slope toward allowing humans to marry animals, including ducks, goats, dolphins and turtles.

Laws that you think are in stone theyre gonna evaporate, man, he said in 2005. Youll be able to marry a goat you mark my words!

Continued here:
Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Career Was Rife With Years Of Offensive Comments - Huffington Post

Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

Aaron Hernandezs defense attorney Jose Baez (center) spoke to the media in Boston on Thursday.

Theres a reason the name Jose Baez might sound familiar.

The defense attorney who represented Aaron Hernandez made headlines Thursday after he accused the state of improperly holding Hernandezs brain, saying family members want it studied to see whether he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

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Baez has quite the storied past himself. He has been involved in many high-profile cases, including famously winning acquittal for Florida mom Casey Anthony.

Heres a look at a few of the high-profile cases Baez has been involved in:

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Baez gained fame during Anthonys 2011 trial on charges that she murdered her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony was acquitted of first-degree murder and other felonies but convicted of four misdemeanors. The case garnered national media attention after photos showed Anthony partying in the days after her daughters disappearance.

The announcement came hours after Hernandezs attorney accused the state of withholding the brain illegally.

At the trial, Baez suggested that the little girl drowned and that Anthonys father, George, helped cover that up and sexually abused his daughter. Her father has denied the accusations.

Baez sat down with ABCs Barbara Walters after the case, telling her during the interview: After I heard not guilty, I had a moment. I thought, My life is going to start to change.

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After handling the Anthony case, Baez went on to co-write Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story. The book was a New York Times bestseller, according to Amazon.com.

On Baezs website, the lawyer said he has been called the most hated lawyer in America, and that he wears that title like a badge of honor.

Baez, who has two Florida-based branches of his law firm, had reportedly been considered by George Zimmerman to be hired as his defense attorney. Zimmerman became a household name after he was accused of killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was African-American and unarmed, in February 2012. Months later, a report by HLN, citing a friend, said Zimmerman considered Baez but hired Mark OMara instead because Zimmerman was worried about retaining a lawyer connected to the Anthony trial. Zimmerman was ultimately found not guilty.

However, that wasnt the end of Baezs involvement in the case. He was hired in 2012 by Chris Serino, the lead detective in Zimmermans murder trial, according to the Miami Herald. Serino had reportedly quietly filed an arrest affidavit after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed, even as his chief publicly said there wasnt enough evidence to make a case, according to the Miami Herald.

Baez represented a 12-year-old girl who was charged in connection with the suicide death of Rebecca Sedwick, 12, who jumped to her death in September 2013 after she was bullied online by more than a dozen girls, according to Fox News. (One of the girls charged whom Baez did not represent appeared to brag about the bullying online, posting afterward to Facebook: Yes, I bullied Rebecca and she killed herself but I dont give a [expletive], officials said.)

Both girls, including the 12-year-old Baez represented, have been charged with stalking, but those charges were dropped in November 2013, according to NBC News.

It was announced in June 2016 that Baez would represent Hernandez in his double murder trial, along with Harvard Law professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. (The former pro football star was represented by Boston attorneys Michael Fee, James L. Sultan, and Charles Rankin in the previous murder trial of Odin L. Lloyd.)

During jury selection, Baez whom Globe reporter Travis Andersen described as a flashy litigator used rhetorical flourishes throughout the week as he pressed jurors on whether they could judge Hernandez fairly.

During the trial, Baez aggressively attacked star prosecution witness Alexander Bradleys credibility, deriding him on the stand as a killer nicknamed Rocky because you rock people to sleep. Bradley had told jurors he was driving Hernandezs Toyota 4Runner when the athlete reached across him and fired five shots into the victims BMW in the early morning hours of July 16, 2012.

Hernandez, who was serving a life sentence for killing Odin L. Lloyd in 2013, was acquitted last week of committing a double murder in 2012. Five days later, he was found hanged inside his cell at the states maximum security prison in Shirley.

No, Baez did not represent James Holmes, who went on a rampage in a Colorado movie theater in 2012, leaving 12 people dead and 70 injured. However, Baez did reportedly represent victim Marcus Weaver, who was shot during the attack, as well as the mother of Rebecca Wingo, 32, who was fatally shot, according to TMZ.

Continued here:
Jose Baez has been involved in a string of high-profile cases - The Boston Globe

The man who set up the most popular social network in Russia axed all of his online friends in one fell swoop on Monday. Having them, he wrote, was so 2010. That may be a sign of the times: Predictions from a few years ago that social networks would lose ground to messenger apps appear to be coming true.

Mr Pavel Durov has often been called Russia's Mark Zuckerberg because he set up a Facebook clone called VKontakte, which quickly beat the original in Russia because it became the medium for sharing pirated movies and music. Mr Durov lost control of the network long ago, and the piracy is somewhat less rampant, but VK is still far ahead of the competition in its home country.

Mr Durov, meanwhile, has funded the development of a messenger app, Telegram. Based in Berlin and structured as non-profit, the messenger has about 100 million monthly active users - formidable, yet far fewer than industry leaders such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger (which claim a billion users each). He explained his decision to purge: Everyone that a person needs has long been on messengers. It is pointless and time-consuming to maintain increasingly obsolete friend lists on public networks. Reading other people's news is brain clutter. To clear out room for the new, one should not fear getting rid of old baggage.

Mr Durov is right when he says everyone is on messengers these days. Back in 2015, messengers overtook social networks in terms of total active users. And back in 2014, when Facebook separated Messenger from its main offering, Mr Zuckerberg himself acknowledged the trend, saying that "messaging is one of the few things people do more than social networking". And the growth of messengers is faster than that of social networks: Facebook Messenger's mobile audience increased by 36 per cent between July 2015 and June last year, while Facebook's grew by 19 per cent, according to Comscore's mobile app report.

By measures that register actual human engagement - rather than fake accounts and bot activity - Facebook does not seem to be growing at all. Last year, its users generated about 25 per cent less original content than in 2015. The time users spent on Facebook dropped from 24 hours in mid-2015 to 18.9 hours in February, Comscore reported.

There is no reliable data on why humans are less enthusiastic about social networks today than a couple of years ago. But, chances are, it has to do with fatigue from living in a public cage, irritation with the growing amount of invasive advertising and, perhaps, belated privacy concerns, as advertising often seems to follow browsing histories and the content of supposedly private messages. Then, there is the prevalence of low quality content and the potential of being confronted by disturbing acts of video streaming. A grisly murder video posted to Facebook on Easter Sunday is only the latest example of vaunted Facebook algorithms being powerless to police the vast network and cut off dangerous exhibitionism that, incidentally, is only a step away from what any social network addict does with his private life.

There is no reliable data on why humans are less enthusiastic about social networks today than a couple of years ago. But, chances are, it has to do with fatigue from living in a public cage, irritation with the growing amount of invasive advertising and, perhaps, belated privacy concerns, as advertising often seems to follow browsing histories and the content of supposedly private messages.

Messengers are a safer ground: They are about personal communication, not broadcasting. Mr Zuckerberg, who has been touring the United States in what some see as a pre-presidential campaign and, others, as a series of focus groups to turn Facebook into a community-building tool, appears to have seen this trend coming long ago.

Facebook, after all, owns the two most popular messenger apps. If the numbers keep shifting from social networks to messengers, advertisers will figure out that something is wrong with the platforms they have been paying for. YouTube's advertising boycott is likely just a precursor of things to come, including better analysis of usage and engagement metrics. When the ad-based social network model is challenged - or even before that - Facebook will be forced to monetise its messenger offerings. That may undermine the quality of these products, as advertising did with the social networks.

Snap, now forced to make money as a public company, may already be experiencing the fallout. The time users spend on it is declining.

After having hijacked user attention and advertising money from professional content producers, social networks may be facing a reality check. As people figure out what they want from the digital revolution, there may be far less money in facilitating content sharing than in creating the content itself. Instead of submitting to the mercy of Facebook's massive audience, traditional publishers should have faith that the public will always demand professionally crafted content, no matter where it is shared. The social networks may look like all-powerful intermediaries now, but they may not be around forever.

BLOOMBERG VIEW

See the article here:
Social networks may not be around forever - The Straits Times