Media

Prime-Time Smear Campaign

"By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria," writes Eric Boehlert, "NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor's life." University of South Florida computer science professor Sami Al-Arian received death threats and lost his job after conservative Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly revived discredited, years-old allegations from self-styled terrorism expert Steve Emerson th

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Advertisers Look To TV Programming To Promote Products

"Some of the nation's largest corporate advertisers, seeking greater control over television, are proposing to create their own shows to air on the major broadcast networks," the Los Angeles Times writes. With network advertising revenues down, some TV executives are open to corporate sponsored shows. Both Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola are developing TV shows to promote their products. Ford's "No Boundaries" premieres on the WB network in March. Coca-Cola's "Stepping Stones" is set for NBC's summer season.

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What's Wrong With This Picture?

Mark Crispin Miller examines the growing power of the world's 10 largest media multinationals: AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media. "The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole," he observes.

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World In Crisis, Media In Conflict

The Media Channel, a nonprofit, public-interest Website dedicated to media issues, features ongoing and up-dated coverage of the global "War on Terrorism" and how it continues to threaten both journalism and journalists. The web digest looks at how media worldwide are coping with danger, trauma, censorship and bias.

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What Recession?

"The American economy has officially entered what promises to be the worst recession since the early 1980s and, conceivably, the worst since World War II," writes economist Robert J. Samuelson. "But you'd hardly know from the media, which have treated the economic story as a sideshow. ... Editors have subconsciously delegated their jobs to Wall Street," which refuses to stop hyping over-valued stocks. "Editors would no doubt resent being cast as Wall Street's lackeys. But that is the effect."

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Advertising Downturn Bites the Media

The terror attacks have made what was already a severe advertising downturn even worse for cash-strapped publications. Advertisers are taking advantage of the downturn by nibbling away at editorial independence, asking for more marketing freebies, better placement and bigger discounts. Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Rose describes how the Ford Motor Company pressured Rolling Stone publisher Rob Gregory to offer free publicity for a music tour promoting the Ford Focus.

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Another Casualty of September 11?

Many San Francisco listeners were outraged when media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications fired San Francisco radio personality David Cook (AKA "Davey D"). Cook was fired after leading a heated anti-war debate on his program. Was he the latest casualty of growing intolerance to independent views?

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Let's Not Talk About Arsenic

Newspapers in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Boston, including chains owned by the publishers of The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Herald, are refusing to carry a paid advertisement criticizing retail giant Home Depot for selling lumber treated with dangerous amounts of arsenic, according to a news release from the Healthy Building Network and the Environmental Working Group.

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