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A special Russian-language radio program is now available from Ukraine state broadcaster NRCU. The two-hour daily broadcast consists of news with cultural information and educational features produced by Radio Ukraine International. For coverage a 800 kW medium wave (1431 kHz) signal is directed east supported, of course, by web streaming.
In Ukraine there remain several ultra-high power medium wave transmitters, part of Soviet heritage. The 1431 kHz transmitter is located at the Nikolaev radio center facility in southern Ukraine. At one time it was rated at one megawatts. (See more about media in Ukraine here)
A bit more conventionally, Ukraine’s broadcasters are cautiously reentering the Donbass region. State media regulator National Council for Radio and Television has requested new FM frequencies, two for Donetsk and one for Lugansk. “With these new frequencies we want to make a special kind of program,” said Council chairman Yuri Artemenko, quoted by Telekritika (December 11).
Austria’s powerful public broadcaster ORF is making a “small request” to add another radio channel targeting young people. The Austrian government would need to approve “testing youth radio project FM21,” as explained by general director Alexander Wrabetz, Wiener Zeitung reported (December 10). FM21 would be available in eastern Austria under the DAB+ test rules, if approved, next year.
There is a vacuum to be filled, said Dr. Wrabetz. “We are under pressure from various commercial radio stations, which Ö3 cannot alone cope.” The ORF aggregate radio reach share – 74% according Radiotest H1 2014 figures - overwhelms private commercial radio and hit music channel Ö3, broadly targeting young people, has a 41% national market share among people 14 to 49 years. ORF also offers the Vienna-centric alternative music channel FM4. The proposed FM21 channel would target 14 to 21 year olds. (See Austria Major Radio Broadcasters in Resources here)
Public broadcasters have been sensitive in recent years to aging audiences, particularly for main general interest channels. Private-sector broadcasters have equally been sensitive toward public funding for more competitors.
Major news publishers in Spain were overjoyed when a new Intellectual Property Act, signed into law by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, guaranteed payments from search engines indexing headlines and links. Hopefully, they haven’t spent the money.
“It’s with real sadness that on 16 December we’ll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain,” wrote Google’s senior director for news and social products Richard Gingras on the Google Europe blog (December 11). An October meeting in Madrid between Google executives and Spanish publishers moved no stones; the Google team resolute in not paying for indexed snippets and publishers hammering for money. Many publishers in Spain were notified of the decision a day before the official announcement. (See more about Google vs publishers here)
Publishers in Belgium, Germany and France have lobbied lawmakers in recent years for force payments from Google and other search engine providers and news aggregators for indexing headlines, links and snippets. Publishers in Belgium and Germany relented when Google simply unhooked links to their content. Privately-owned search engine and news aggregators are not legally bound to index the entire world wide web.
The arrival in Brussels of US-style political reporting has taken a major leap forward with the Politico-Axel Springer European joint venture announced the acquisition of newspaper/portal European Voice, named several managers and editors and, more or less, set a spring 2015 roll-out date. Executive editor will be Matthew Kaminski from the defunct Wall Street Journal Europe. Politico Europe will be centered on Brussels doings with, they say, bureaus all over the continent.
According to the September announcement of the joint venture, big German publisher Axel Springer is providing the money, the Politico team expertise. Acquiring European Voice, founded then dropped by the Economist, and an events company from Shéhérazade Semsar-de Boisséson, who becomes managing director, gives ready access to print and web vehicles plus Brussels-based reporters. Though the earlier announce was quite circumspect, Politico Europe will most certainly be offered in the English language.
For years Brussels bureaucrats have howled about diminishing news coverage by major newspapers, agencies and networks. The European Commission partly funds the reasonably respected news portal EurActiv and often-bland television channel Euronews. Of course, the majors all have Brussels correspondents but coverage of the EU, like coverage of national European politics, is steeped in the tradition of polite policy analysis.
Politico upended political news coverage in the US with a very different focus: politics as a trade. Lobbyists and consultants, who they dance with and where they spend money, make headlines along with the politicians. Political operatives – and Brussels has thousands – scour Politico for the name-dropping. Politico’s DC reporters look for controversy, scandal, dirt and gossip with as many pictures as possible and they do not rewrite press releases.
Press/media freedom watchers are always looking out for three things: journalist rights, censorship and propaganda. Priorities vary slightly among the best known of these institutions but the big three grab attention. With their ability to shed light, the exemplary are praised, offenders shunned.
The German affiliate of Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) poured scorn on international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) general director Peter Limbourg in September for concluding an agreement for cooperation with Chinese State broadcaster CCTV. Quite vexed, RSF Germany general director Christian Mihr asked Herr Limbourg to step down from the RSF Germany board of trustees, which he did at the end of November. (See more about press/media freedom here)
”This cooperation is not in line with the mission of Deutsche Welle because CCTV is a part of the repressive state apparatus against Chinese journalists,” was the response from RSF Germany (September 25). ”DW should not try to increase its reach at the expense of freedom of the press.” Herr Mihr was asked to name somebody else from DW as a trustee, which he refused saying the issue is with the DW Executive Committee and not just Herr Limbourg. (See more about international broadcasting here)
The DW editor’s committee has sided with RSF Germany. “Many colleagues have expressed full support for the goals of RSF and consider Deutsche Welle a natural partner,” said a judiciously written letter from the editor’s committee to RSF, quoted by tagesspiegel.de (December 8). “We hope to continue the cooperation between DW and RSF in this spirit.” DW employees have been on edge since Herr Limbourg presented a new strategic plan that includes budgetary reappropriation to accommodate an English-language TV news channel.
It’s neither secret nor surprise that digital media in China is a hot commodity. The huge internal market is increasingly wired and wealthy, in relative terms. And so, the Chinese digital media market is exciting to watch, particularly to those watching the money.
Revenue growth rates of China’s digital media leaders – Baido, Tencent, Qihoo and Sina – are “eroding US dominance,” opined a report by Boston-based research consultancy Strategy Analytics. “A red-hot Chinese Internet market is challenging the historical dominance of US companies,” Strategy Analytics director for digital media Michael Goodman. “The fact that there are about 2.5 times more Chinese than Americans online is a big factor so they’ve been able to hit such heights solely in a domestic market. The big question, and the key threat to US global dominance, is whether they can translate this success outside China.” (See Strategy Analytics presser here)
Baido and Tencent are well-known outside China; the former providing search and everything else Google-esque, the later an ISP. Enumerating first half 2014 revenues, Strategy Analytics Digital Media Index ranks Tencent 4th in the world (US$ 5.4 billion) and Baido 6th (US$3.4 billion). Google ranks number one, again, at US$ 31.4 billion, followed by Amazon (US$10.3 billion) and Facebook (US$5.4 billion). Qihoo is an internet security provider and Sina is a web portal offering, among other products, the Twitter-esque Weibo short messaging service. Oddly – very oddly – Chinese online retailer Alibaba received not a mention. (See more about media in China here)
Google more or less backed out of the Chinese market in 2009, citing censorship and hackophobia. On the other hand the dominant mobile operating system in China is Android. This is giving Google a different entry point, through the Google Play app store it seems.
Facebookistan great leader Mark Zuckerberg delighted a Chinese student audience recently by speaking a few words of Mandarin. That did not even nudge the Chinese block on Facebook, which “cannot” change, said Chinese Minister for Cyberspace Administration Lu Wei. Minister Lu paid a low-key visit recently to Silicon Valley, exact date unknown, and was photographed with Mr. Zuckerberg, Tim Cook (Apple) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon), reported Reuters (December 8)
Of the US$86 billion earned by the top 44 digital media companies, 77% came from advertising. The quarterly Digital Media Index only reports from required filings of publicly traded companies.
Ukraine’s parliament, restructuring itself after recent elections, created a Ministry of Information Policy and appointed former television news producer Yuri Stets to lead. He explained the mission as coordinator of general media policy, including “information warfare threats” and streamlining government external communications, reported Telekritika (December 3). He would try to reintroduce Ukrainian media in territories seized by the Russian Federation.
The howling media freedom watchers worldwide and some media workers in Ukraine conjured George Orwell. “In a democratic society, the media should not be regulated by the government,” said Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF) secretary general Christophe Deloire. “Putting the government in charge of information policy would be a major retrograde step that would open the way to grave excesses.” (See more about press/media freedom here)
“Ukraine just created its own version of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth,” noted OSCE media representative Dunja Mijatovic, quoted by Ukraine state radio (December 3). “This is not the way to counter propaganda,” a reference to the seemingly ubiquitous information management apparatus of the Russian Federation.
Keeping the theme alive, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) described the formation of Ukraine’s Ministry of Information Policy as “Orwellian,” in a joint statement posted on respective websites (December 4). “No further action should be taken without full consultation of the Ukraine media community and journalists unions.”
The conventional wisdom of press/media freedom absolutists begins and ends with the speaker’s right to present what they will. The public, so goes underlying assumptions, will figure out fact from fiction and in liberal democracies debate driven by varied opinion is indispensable. In short, the sunlight of pubic airing will deflate crazy balloons. Sadly, the post-modern age has shown otherwise.
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