Politics this week: 17th - 23rd February 2007

Italy's prime minister, Romano Prodi, tendered his resignation after only nine months in office. He did so after a mutiny in his sprawling coalition led to the defeat in the Senate of government proposals to keep troops in Afghanistan. See article

Tony Blair said the number of British troops in Iraq would fall from around 7,100 at present to around 5,500 in the next few months, but that a British military presence would remain there at least into 2008, “for as long as we are wanted”. Denmark said it would withdraw all its 470-odd troops by August. See article

The commander of Russia's strategic forces warned Poland and the Czech Republic that they could be targeted with nuclear weapons if they agree to host American anti-missile defense bases. America says the radar and rockets are designed to counteract Iranian missiles, not Russian ones. See article

Poland's governing Law and Justice party is suing the country's former president, Lech Walesa, for defamation. Mr Walesa called the current incumbent, Lech Kaczynski, a “blockhead” in a row over a report on alleged criminal activity and Russian influence in the country's now disbanded military-intelligence service. See article

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, rejigged her campaign, promising more help for the low-paid and shuffling her advisers. Polling had shown her lagging Nicolas Sarkozy, her center-right opponent, by ten points.

European Union environment ministers agreed in principle to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The plan, and the list of countries which will take most of the burden, must be agreed to by heads of state.

Judicial review

An appeals court in America ruled that suspected terrorists held at Guantánamo Bay do not have the right to challenge their detention in a federal court. The decision upholds legislation passed by Congress last autumn that was written to clarify the law, but the issue may end up yet again in the Supreme Court.

The Democrats failed to break a Republican filibuster in the Senate that would have allowed a vote on a resolution criticizing George Bush's policy in Iraq. Seven Republicans, including John Warner, the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, joined the Democrats. The House of Representatives passed a similar resolution last week.

John McCain went to Iowa and Florida, where he courted social conservatives by proclaiming his strong support for anti-abortion legislation. The Arizona senator is expected to announce his bid for the White House next month.

An attack on peace

Two bombs exploded on the Friendship Express, a train traveling from Delhi in India to Lahore in Pakistan. In the ensuing inferno, at least 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, died. Indian experts suspected Islamic militants with bases in Pakistan, but the two countries said the atrocity would not affect their peace process. Their foreign ministers went ahead with planned talks in Delhi, where the two countries signed an agreement on reducing the risk of accidental nuclear conflict. See article

A United Nations special rapporteur, Philip Alston, accused the army in the Philippines of being in a state of denial about a spate of extra-judicial killings “convincingly attributed” to the security forces.

Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen, a big microfinance institution, entered into Bangladeshi politics with the formation of a new party. Separately, the military-backed government said it would take eight to ten months to prepare the voter-identity cards needed for an election. See article

Too close for comfort

Colombia's foreign minister, María Consuelo Araújo, resigned after her brother, a senator, was arrested over allegations that he received cash from right-wing paramilitaries. The escalating scandal over links between the paramilitaries and pro-government politicians has brought criticism of the government of Álvaro Uribe from the United States Congress, which provides Colombia with around $600m a year in aid. See article

Jean Charest, the Liberal premier of Quebec, called a provincial election for March 26th. Opinion polls give the Liberals a five-point lead over the separatist Parti Québécois. See article

The crackdown on drug-traffickers by Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, continued as 3,000 troops were sent to two states bordering the United States and an assistant state prosecutor was arrested over alleged links with a drug gang. Meanwhile, gunmen in the border city of Nuevo Laredo shot and wounded a federal congressman.

According to his niece, Fidel Castro is in “stupendous” condition and will be “very active” again as he recovers from stomach surgery that led him to hand over his powers as Cuba's president to his brother, Raúl.

Blowing another raspberry

Iran ignored a UN deadline to suspend its uranium-enrichment program by February 21st or face wider sanctions. After the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, meets early next month, the UN Security Council will have to decide on further steps to try to squeeze Iran into compliance. See article

The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, met the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, together in Jerusalem, but appeared to have made scant progress towards restarting a peace process in earnest. See article

Rival Palestinian parties, meanwhile, continued to argue over the interpretation of their agreement signed earlier this month in Mecca, where they were supposed to have settled the terms of a national unity government.

The UN Security Council authorized the African Union to send peacekeepers for six months to Somalia, where Islamists were routed last month by troops from Ethiopia. It was unclear how soon the troops would arrive. Meanwhile, mortars, presumably launched by Islamist remnants, killed 16 people in the capital, Mogadishu.

Speaking on his 83rd birthday, Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, seemed to confirm rumors of mounting intrigue within his ruling circle by accusing unnamed senior colleagues of plotting to oust him from office.

Click here to the original political news capsules from Economist.com

Business this week: 17th - 23rd February 2007

In a closely watched decision America's Supreme Court overturned punitive damages of $79.5m against Philip Morris that were handed down by a jury in 1999. The case centered on an Oregon man who had smoked for 42 years and died of lung cancer. The Supreme Court ruled that the jury's award to his widow had overstepped the mark by punishing the cigarette-maker for harm done to others, but it failed to set any limits on future punitive-damage awards and sent the case back to Oregon's state Supreme Court for a new hearing. See article

The European Commission slapped its biggest-ever antitrust fine, €992m ($1.3 billion), on five elevator manufacturers it accused of operating a cartel. Germany's ThyssenKrupp and America's Otis were among the companies the commission said had “artificially bloated” the construction and maintenance costs of buildings in European countries.

Transmission problems

After years of intense rivalry, Sirius and XM announced their intention to merge. Once considered the new kids on the block, the satellite-radio networks have been struggling to respond to competition from recent advances in broadcasting, such as through the internet. Their merger is far from certain; America's communications and antitrust regulators promised that the $4.6 billion deal will be heavily scrutinized. See article

Google encroached further into Microsoft's territory by offering businesses a new set of web-based word-processing and spreadsheet services. The internet company released a similar package to consumers last year.

Another effort is under way to combine Warner Music and EMI. Warner confirmed it had approached EMI after obtaining support from IMPALA, the trade group for independent music-labels in Europe. Last year IMPALA complained to the EU that consolidation among big music companies would hurt competition.

The board of Portugal Telecom rejected an improved €11.8 billion ($15.5 billion) bid from Sonae, a Portuguese conglomerate, and bolstered its defenses by announcing a €6.2 billion shareholder-remuneration package. The saga of what would be Portugal's biggest takeover has been rumbling on for a year.

Conquistadors

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria made its biggest acquisition outside Spain when it agreed to buy Compass Bancshares in a $9.6 billion transaction. BBVA has been steadily increasing its business in the southern and south-western United States, on account of the region's growing Hispanic population. Compass, based in Birmingham, Alabama, operates more than 415 banks from Arizona to Florida, including 164 in Texas.

Sberbank, Russia's largest savings bank, looks likely to have raised $8.8 billion from its share offering, the country's second-biggest following last year's issue by Rosneft, an oil firm. Sberbank's sale raised a bit less than had been forecast by analysts. Some investors had grumbled that the prospectus was only available in Russian and that the bank (unlike Rosneft) won't be selling shares on foreign exchanges.

HSBC replaced the head of its North American unit, which has been reeling from losses in the subprime mortgage market. Meanwhile, the share price of NovaStar Financial plunged by 40% as it revealed losses in the subprime market.

EADS, the parent company of Airbus, delayed launching a long-awaited restructuring plan because of “cross-national” difficulties about job costs and workloads related to the A350XWB. Last year Airbus was beset by production delays surrounding its A380 super-jumbo; both projects are crucial to Airbus's future competition with Boeing.

A plan to merge India's two biggest state-owned airlines, Air India and Indian Airlines, came closer to fruition after it was approved by the country's aviation minister. The proposal will create a national carrier that could compete as one of the world's top 30 airlines. The minister also said that a promised merger announced last month between two private domestic carriers, Jet Airways and Air Sahara, would be permitted.

Sweden's Volvo agreed to buy the 81% of Japan's Nissan Diesel it does not own in a SKr7.5 billion ($1.1 billion) deal. The combined company will overtake DaimlerChrysler to become the world's biggest maker of heavy lorries.

Feeling less deflated

Japan's Topix stockmarket index (a broader measure than the Nikkei) reached its highest level since November 1991, helped by share prices of big banks which rose in response to the Bank of Japan's decision to raise interest rates by one-quarter of a percentage point, to 0.5%.

Click here to read the original business news capsules from The Economist

Payola & the State of Hip Hop/Urban Radio

The other week we alerted you about an urban music director in Chicago being arrested and fired from her job for allegedly taking payola in the form of a Porsche from a local artist. We promised to follow up that story with a more in-depth story/interview about payola and the state of urban/ Hip Hop radio.

What you will be listening to is conversation that took place in Memphis, TN last month (January 2007) at the Media Reform Conference. We caught up with longtime radio urban radio programmer Paul Porter of IndustryEars.com and Professor Jared Ball of Freemix Radio. Both gentlemen participated in the conference’s payola panel.

We kicked off our show with an excerpt from an interview we did with Quest Love of the Roots where he explains in great detail how the Roots went about getting their Grammy Award hit record ‘You Send Me’ on the radio. he says they had to pay almost 3/4 of a million bucks and the record label had to make a bunch of behind-the-scenes deals.

We talked to Porter about the role corporate media plays in keeping this practice alive and how it impacts urban radio and the urban community at large. He feels like the practice is too far gone and that the FCC caved into the big media giants.

Porter also talked about a couple of well publicized incidents including the beat down that Game and his crew were accused of giving to a Washington DC disc jockey (Xzulu) at Radio One headquarters). He feels that payola played a big role in keeping Game’s record on the airwaves in spite of the severity of what occurred.

Porter also talked about the racial make up of many of the nation’s popular urban stations including the fact that in many places you do not have Black programmers. He explains how that can have an impact on the African American community at large. He also talks about how what few Blacks they do have in key positions have sold out and not been responsive to community concerns.

We also spoke with Professor Jared Ball who gave an insightful historical breakdown about the current state of Hip Hop radio. He feels that its no mistake that mainstream Hip Hop has been suspended in state of adolescence. He connected current urban radio policies and practices with the Cointel-Programs that the FBI launched against Black leaders in the 60s during the Civil Rights era.

Click here to read the original notes from the audio interview from Davey D of Odeo.com

Would C-SPAN count?

Once again, Congress is flirting with the idea of censoring violence on TV. Once again, its efforts are misguided.

JUST WHAT, EXACTLY, constitutes a program that's too violent for kids to watch on TV? How about the story of a gun-blasting bounty hunter destroying a neighborhood as he tries to kill or capture his nihilistic offspring? That, after all, is what one sees in Walt Disney's "Lilo & Stitch," a hit movie for … kids, and a perfect illustration of the fundamental problems posed by Congress' flirtation with regulating violent TV programming.

Responding to a request from lawmakers, the Federal Communications Commission has drafted a report outlining what Congress might do to curb excessively violent programs. Objectionably violent shows, it says, could be banned during the hours that children are most likely to be watching TV (6 a.m. to 10 p.m.), just as indecent programming is. Congress could force cable operators to sell channels on an a la carte basis, rather than bundling them into packages that can't be customized. And the difficult task of defining excessive violence could be done by the federal government without violating the 1st Amendment.

There's plenty of evidence that television shows are more graphically violent than ever, both on cable networks and on free over-the-air TV. Simply noting this problem, however, doesn't prove that government censorship can solve it.

Requiring programs such as "24" to be aired after 10 p.m. wouldn't stop kids from watching a recorded version the next afternoon. Nor would it have much effect on the Internet, where networks are posting a growing number of reruns for viewers to watch on demand. And it's hard to imagine Congress barring news programs before 10 p.m., and there's no shortage of violence on the news.

A similar problem underlies the proposal to mandate a la carte cable pricing. It would be a boon to consumers if cable and satellite TV operators did business this way. But even in an a la carte regime, the channels with programming that distresses anti-violence activists are likely to be among the most frequently bought, simply because their programs are in high demand.

What censorship would do is deter networks from airing valuable but bloody shows that don't quite qualify as news, while generating lawsuits over what inevitably will be inconsistent standards for judging violence on TV. Would cartoons be treated the same way as live action? How about realistic historical fare? Would "Saving Private Ryan" get a pass? Then how about "The Passion of the Christ"? What about psychological violence?

The government shouldn't be making these calls; parents should. Online, there's plenty of help for parents trying to identify inappropriate shows for their kids, and there's technology in every TV set, cable converter box and satellite receiver to help screen out violent programming. If they still don't like how much violence their TV is bringing into their home, they should just turn it off.

Click here to read the original editorial from the Los Angeles Times

Poll: Bloggers, Citizen Reporters to Play Key Role in Journalism's Future

A new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll has found that most Americans think blogging and "citizen journalism" will prove vital to journalism in the future.

The national survey of 5,384 adults found that 55% thought blogging was an important aspect of American journalism in the future, while 74% said they believed amateur "citizen" reporters would play a key role.

When asked about the impact of the Internet on journalism, 53% said that Web-based media provided the most opportunity for the future of journalism. 72% of respondents said they were "dissatisfied" with the quality of journalism in the U.S., but 76% thought that the Internet's overall effect on the quality of journalism has been positive.

The poll also surveyed 77 members of the media at the recent We Media conference in Miami, finding that 55% of these media insiders were "dissatisfied" with American journalism today, while 61% thought that the media is out of touch with what Americans want from their news. 86% of those media industry insiders polled said that bloggers would be key to the future of journalism.

"We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us -- the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media," said Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference, in a statement. "We've arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society."

The nationwide poll also found that dissatisfaction with the media is greater among those respondents who characterize themselves as "conservative," with 88% saying they were unhappy with the state of journalism. A full 95% of those saying they were "very conservative" expressing negative sentiments about the current state of journalism. 51% of liberal respondents said they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism.

Other key findings from the nationwide survey:

- 72% of those asked said journalism is important to their community.

- 81% said Web sites are an important source of news, followed by television (78%), radio (73%), newspapers (69%), magazines (38%), and blogs (30%).

Click here to read the original report from Editor & Publisher