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11 September 2012 | The Guardian

Dozens of Kurdish journalists face terrorism charges in Turkey

The biggest media trial in Turkey's history has begun in what human rights groups say is an attempt by the government to intimidate the press and punish pro-Kurdish activists. A total of 44 Kurdish journalists appeared in court in Istanbul on various terrorism charges, including accusations that they have supported the KCK, an illegal pan-Kurdish movement that includes the PKK, the armed Kurdistan Workers' party. Of those, 36 have been in pre-trial detention since December. The hearing was delayed after the defendants made an attempt to defend themselves in Kurdish, their mother language, a request denied by the judge. Twelve of the defendants are said to have led a terrorist organisation and 32 are accused of being members of a terrorist organisation. Prosecutors have demanded prison sentences ranging from seven and a half to 22 and a half years. More than 100 journalists are currently in jail in Turkey, more than in Iran or China. Many of them work for Kurdish media outlets. About 800 more face charges and many journalists have been fired or have quit their jobs because of direct or indirect pressure from the Turkish government.

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11 September 2012 | The Guardian

France’s richest man Bernard Arnault sues Liberation newspaper over ‘insult’

France's richest man, Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury group, is suing the leftwing newspaper Libe'ration for publicly insulting him. Arnault launched a lawsuit on Monday after the paper carried a large photograph of the business tycoon with the headline "Casse-toi riche con!" (Get lost, rich jerk) on its front page. The headline echoed the former president Nicolas Sarkozy's insult to a farmworker who refused to shake his hand at the national agricultural show. Sarkozy told the man: "Casse-toi pauv' con!" (Get lost, poor jerk). The Liberation story referred to Arnault's announcement that he was seeking Belgian nationality just a day before President Francois Hollande confirmed a 75 percent tax band for those earning more than EUR 1m a year. Lawyers for Arnault, ranked the world's fourth richest man with a net worth of around USD 41bn by Forbes magazine, announced in a statement that he was suing Libe'ration for public insult over the headline, which he described as vulgar and violent.

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11 September 2012 | Knight Center

Chilean government decides to close state newspaper, La Nacion

In a statement released on Friday, Sept. 7, the Chilean state newspaper's union announced the government's decision to close La Nacio'n, according to the AFP. The Chilean government decided to call a shareholders' meeting on Sept. 24, to discuss, among other things, the closure of the newspaper La Nacion, according to Radio U Chile. The Union of Chilean Journalists said that the closure of the newspaper "is the culmination of an attack on press freedom" that Chilean President Sebastian Pinera has waged since his election, reported La Nacion. According to the Union of Chilean Journalists, Pinera campaigned on the promise to close La Nacion if he won the election, the website added. Since 2010, La Nacion's only distribution was online after Pinera canceled its print edition, citing economic concerns. That same year, the Union of Chilean Journalists proposed transforming the newspaper, which is 70 percent owned by the state, into an autonomous public media outlet with mixed financing.

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11 September 2012 | Reuters

Swedish journalists released by Ethiopia - diplomat

Two Swedish journalists were released by Ethiopia on Monday after being pardoned earlier in the day by the government which had jailed them for assisting an outlawed rebel group, a diplomatic source told Reuters. The source said the journalists were released from prison in the afternoon and had boarded a plane bound for Sweden. "They have boarded the plane already, they were released a few hours ago," the Western diplomatic source told Reuters at Addis Ababa airport. Other sources at the airport confirmed to Reuters that the plane had departed with the journalists on board. Reporter Martin Schibbye and photographer Johan Persson were arrested in July, 2011, after entering the country from neighbouring Somalia with fighters from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebel group. A government source told Reuters earlier on Monday that the two had been pardoned along with more than 1,900 other inmates, adding that the decision was approved before the death of the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who died on Aug. 20.

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11 September 2012 | AP

US: Nielsen shows how people use TV differently

The number of U.S. homes that don't get traditional television service continues to increase, but that doesn't mean they don't have TVs. The Nielsen company said in a report issued on Tuesday that three-quarters of the estimated 5 million homes that don't get TV signals over the airways or through cable, satellite or telecommunications companies have televisions anyway. Many of these homes are satisfied to use their TVs for games or get programming through DVDs or services like Netflix or Apple TV, said Dounia Turrill, senior vice president for client insights at Nielsen. The company's report shows how the nature of TV service is slowly changing. Before the percentage started declining about three years ago, more than 99 percent of TV homes received the traditional TV signals. Now that has dipped just below 96 percent. Part of the decline is also economic — service deemed expendable by people struggling to make ends meet, Nielsen said. Because of the changes, Nielsen is considering redefining what it considers a television household to include people who get service through Netflix or similar services instead of the traditional TV signals, Turrill said.

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11 September 2012 | Knight Center

End of daily circulation is only way to keep New Orleans’ newspaper profitable, says executive

Just two weeks before The New Orleans Times-Picayune will trim its print schedule back to three days a week, making the Big Easy the biggest U.S. city without a daily newspaper, one of the newspaper's executives has acknowledged that declining advertising revenues was a factor in shifting their focus online. Ricky Mathews, president of Advance Publications' Nola Media Group, told the Wall Street Journal that a 10 percent drop in revenue could force the Times-Picayune out of a profitable position, unless drastic cost-cutting was imposed. Advance.net Chairman Steven Newhouse told Andrew Beujon from Poynter.org in early August that the Times-Picayune was a profitable newspaper, an important factor in the company's ability to fund quality journalism while also improving its Nola.com website. Advance raised a storm of criticism in May when it announced it would reduce the Times-Picayune's print schedule to three days a week — Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays — starting Oct. 1. In his Sept. 9 story for the Journal, Keach Hagey wrote that Mathews has spent his summer dealing with readers' and advertisers' anger, a wrath that "is largely based on the widespread misconception that the Times-Picayune is doing fine financially." Print advertising sales at the Times-Picayune have declined steadily in the past four years, a trend echoed across the newspaper industry.

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