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December 19, 2013

A policeman stands guard outside the office of the outspoken Southern Weekly newspaper after their reporters went on strike over a scraped new year editorial in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in this January 9, 2013 file photo. - Reuters pic, December 19, 2013.Early next year, Chinese journalists will have to pass a new ideology exam to keep their press cards, in what reporters say is another example of the ruling Communist Party's increasing control over the media under President Xi Jinping.

It is the first time reporters have been required to take such a test en masse, state media said.

The exam will be based on a 700-page manual being sold in bookshops. The manual is peppered with directives such as "it is absolutely not permitted for published reports to feature any comments that go against the party line", and "the relationship between the party and the news media is one of leader and the led".

The impact of increased control in the past year has been chilling, half a dozen reporters at Chinese state media told Reuters, mostly on condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions for talking to the foreign media without permission.

"The tightening is very obvious in newspapers that have an impact on public opinion. These days there are lots of things they aren't allowed to report," said a journalist at a current affairs magazine.

China has also intensified efforts to curb the work of foreign news organisations. Both the New York Times Co and Bloomberg News have not been given new journalist visas for more than a year after they published stories about the wealth of family members of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Xi Jinping, respectively.

The General Administration of Press and Publication, a key media regulator, has said via state media that the aim of the exam and accompanying training is to "increase the overall quality of China's journalists and encourage them to establish socialism as their core system of values".

It did not respond to questions from Reuters about the exam or press freedom in China.

Traditionally, Chinese state media has been the key vehicle for party propaganda. But reforms over the past decade that have allowed greater media commercialisation and limited increases in editorial independence, combined with the rise of social media, have weakened government control, academics said.

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china-media-control-reuters-191213.JPG

Now that Nelson Mandela has finally been laid to rest, its worth reflecting not only on an historically significant figure, but the crucial truths an international media has sought to bury, says John Hilley.

Bush and Bono paying their respects to Mandela

And, in the wake of that relentless distortion of Mandelas life and cause, its an urgent reminder of the need for a radical new media, completely released from the constraints of corporate control.

The treatment of Mandelas death and memorial has shown just what a vital service state-corporate journalism performs in disguising systemic crimes, whitewashing elite offenders and mythologising those deemed useful to that selective narrative.

Or, rather, its shown precisely none of this to a public massively smothered by political and media groupthink.

Notable here has been the focus on Mandelas capacity for forgiveness, an honourable character trait, of course. Yet, as pinpointedly shown by Media Lens, emotionally potent over-simplifications have been used here to twisted effect. Thus:

many journalists have rightly praised Mandelas forgiveness. But the state-corporate system also has a generous capacity for excusing torturers, dictators, terrorists, and even former enemies like Mandela anyone who serves the deep interests of power and profit in some way.

So, while in life and death Hugo Chavez whose revolutionary movement sought to resist Western-corporate dictate was damned and derided as an egotistical tyrant, Nelson Mandela whose African National Congress embraced that neoliberal agenda was forgiven and hailed as a saintly liberator.

Another welcome antidote to this choice media adulation can be found in Greg Palasts fine dissection of the rampant hypocrisy and dollification of Mandela, laying bare the real story of how, beyond the standard media narrative, his triumph over political apartheid came at the cost of a continued and deepening economic apartheid.

Like Media Lens, Palast also corrects the much-vaunted line on Mandelas ready forgiveness:

Read more from the original source:
Mandela coverage – the urgent need for corporate-free media

We downgrade our recommendation on Liberty Media Corp. ( LMCA ) to Underperform based on its disappointing third quarter of 2013 financial results. Both the top and the bottom line fell below the respective Zacks Consensus Estimate. We do not find any near-term growth catalyst for the company. Currently, Liberty Media carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

Why the Downgrade?

Liberty Media is steadily restructuring its business model, targeting to control several subscription-based businesses. We believe that the strategic investment in several subscription-based companies will make the company's overall financials volatile. Liberty Media currently controls a 27.3% stake in Charter Communications Inc. ( CHTR ), the fourth largest pay-TV operator in the U.S.

Liberty Media is aggressively pursuing an idea so that Charter Communications can acquire Time Warner Cable Inc. ( TWC ), the second largest cable MSO (multi service operator) in the U.S. However, Charter needs to raise at least $25 billion for this takeover, which will significantly leverage the company's balance sheet.

Even if Charter succeeds to raise that amount from the market, other competitors such as Comcast Corp. ( CMCSA ), Cox Communications and several private equity firms may offer more attractive bids for Time Warner Cable.

Liberty Media's businesses are susceptible to rapid technological changes. Large cable TV operators are increasingly deploying digital TV networks, which are gradually gaining huge market traction. Increasing deployment of personal video recorders, video-on-demand technology and IPTV network are systematically changing the distribution and viewing habits of the common people.

The multi-channel video market in the U.S. is almost saturated. Roughly, 87% of the TV households in the U.S. are multi-channel TV subscribers. It is not easy to lure customers from competitors since every operator is offering innovative packages.

CHARTER COMM-A (CHTR): Free Stock Analysis Report

COMCAST CORP A (CMCSA): Free Stock Analysis Report

LIBERTY MEDIA-A (LMCA): Free Stock Analysis Report

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Liberty Media Down to Underperform - Analyst Blog

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda.

The theory posits that the way in which news is structured (through advertising, media ownership, government sourcing and others) creates an inherent conflict of interest which acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the "propaganda model" views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a productreaders and audiencesto other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature".[1] The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:

The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. In versions after September 11, Chomsky and Herman updated the fifth prong to instead refer to the War on Terror and antiterrorism, although they say it operates in much the same manner.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.[2]

The size and profit-seeking imperative of dominant media corporations are said to create a bias. The authors point to how in the early nineteenth century, a radical British press had emerged which addressed the concerns of workers but excessive stamp duties, designed to restrict newspaper ownership to the 'respectable' wealthy, began to change the face of the press. Nevertheless there remained a degree of diversity. In postwar Britain, radical or worker-friendly newspapers such as the Daily Herald, News Chronicle, Sunday Citizen (all since failed or absorbed into other publications) and the Daily Mirror (at least until the late 1970s) regularly published articles questioning the capitalist system. The authors posit that these earlier radical papers were not constrained by corporate ownership and were therefore free to criticize the capitalist system.

Herman and Chomsky argue that since mainstream media outlets are currently either large corporations or part of conglomerates (e.g. Westinghouse or General Electric), the information presented to the public will be biased with respect to these interests. Such conglomerates frequently extend beyond traditional media fields and thus have extensive financial interests that may be endangered when certain information is publicized. According to this reasoning, news items that most endanger the corporate financial interests of those who own the media will face the greatest bias and censorship.

It then follows that if to maximize profit means sacrificing news objectivity, then the news sources that ultimately survive must be fundamentally biased, with regard to news in which they have a conflict of interest. In the United States, regulations require that broadcasters disclose such conflict of interest.[citation needed]

The second filter of the propaganda model is funding generated through advertising. Most newspapers have to attract advertising in order to cover the costs of production; without it, they would have to increase the price of their newspaper. There is fierce competition throughout the media to attract advertisers; a newspaper which gets less advertising than its competitors is at a serious disadvantage. Lack of success in raising advertising revenue was another factor in the demise of the 'people's newspapers' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population while the actual clientele served by the newspaper includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. According to this filter, the news is "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the content and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Stories that conflict with their "buying mood", it is argued, will tend to be marginalized or excluded, along with information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interests. The theory argues that the people buying the newspaper are the product which is sold to the businesses that buy advertising space; the news has only a marginal role as the product.

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Propaganda model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia