30 abril 2003

ZITEs
Testes
Which Trainspotting Character Are You?
Which member of REM are you?
Dante's Inferno Test - Impurity, Sin... and Damnation
CONTAMINANTES

Impact alert as X-ray satellite plummets to Earth: Thirty-nine countries around the world are on impact alert, as an Italian satellite falls in an uncontrolled spiral towards Earth.
[act.:] X-ray satellite crashes into ocean: An Italian science satellite, which was descending in an uncontrolled spiral towards the Earth, has crashed safely into the sea.
ECO-TERROR

'Red Means Big Brother's in Charge': Beneath the gimmick of colors, those practices raise serious questions about when government intrusiveness begins to exceed justifiable national security purposes and inappropriately invade private lives.
EPIC Privacy Threat Index Remains Unchanged as National Terrorism Threat Level Reduced
VITAMEDIAS
Sindicato quer direitos de autor dependentes do contrato colectivo: Mais do que a protecção material desses direitos, o sindicato, através do seu presidente, Alfredo Maia, sublinhou a importância de "salvaguardar plenamente a [sua] dimensão moral", nomeadamente no que diz respeito à integridade da obra e ao seu destino. É que, sustentou, só o autor deve "proceder a eventuais alterações" do produto que criou. O contrato de trabalho deverá fixar claramente o suporte a que se destina a obra e só com autorização do autor pode esta ser utilizado ao reutilizado noutros órgãos, recomendou ainda. A ideia é "combater a apropriação indevida e arbitrária, por parte das empresas, das criações jornalísticas, transformando-as em mera mercadoria destinada a credibilizar 'novos produtos'". [...]
Já o presidente da SPA defendeu que o diploma em questão não seria necessário, uma vez que grande parte das suas normas estão já consagradas no código dos direitos de autor. Luís Francisco Rebelo considerou mesmo "errado, contraproducente e perigoso" estar a duplicar legislação. "O projecto repete o que já diz o código, mas dizendo-o de maneira diferente, o que pode gerar confusão". Em seu entender bastaria introduzir no código dos direitos de autor as alterações que se prendem com a especificidade do sector.
Concordo com a posição da SPA, neste caso. Não há vantagens em especificar o que está determinado em geral - só falta aplicar na prática...
VITAMEDIAS
High-tech a benefit to newspapers: Bill Gates dreams of a paperless future, a digital world where books and documents are read on computer screens, but for now he still enjoys leafing through the ink and pulp version of the Sunday newspaper.
The Microsoft chairman, speaking to the Newspaper Association of America's convention in Seattle yesterday, described his reading habits and how technology might make it easier to gather and present the news.
Gates said newspapers can take advantage of lessons learned during the dot-com era about how technology will change reading habits and information distribution in the coming decade.
VITAMEDIAS
Um caso curioso em que um dos fotografados pede para ser retirado da fotografia (por forma digital, presume-se...)
People Magazine Sued Over Scott Peterson Photos: A California woman is suing People magazine for publishing a photo of Scott Peterson - accused of killing his wife and unborn son and dumping their bodies in the San Francisco Bay - and his girlfriend, without removing her image from the background.
[act.: e um outro caso em que uma fotografia não devia ser publicada mas foi, talvez casem e sejam felizes... Matter of perspective
VITAMEDIAS
Why Blogs Haven't Stormed the Business World: But at the rate they're going, blog tools are merely building simple heaps of information, giant mounds of unorganized content. Developers of these tools must implement technologies for moving and transforming entire weblogs before things get seriously out of hand.
Weblogging: the motivation behind blogging and whether blogs represent the future of journalism
[act.:] A Survey of Blogs and Bloggers to examine the uses and users of Weblogs
VITAMEDIAS
Diferentes pontos de vista?


[act.:] Afinal há uma explicação para as "diferentes" perspectivas: Cover stories: A grand slam for media monotony: The editors at Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and The Economist, anxious as anyone to see something besides the Iraqi war on their covers this week, all jumped on SARS. No problem there -- newsmagazines leading with the same story happens every now and then.
But imagine the surprise when, like a quadruple slot machine coming up with all cherries, each publication had the same image to illustrate the epidemic: a single person wearing a surgical mask.
Editors at the newsweeklies said they weren't that surprised over their version of a cover grand slam, something that hadn't happened since pictures of the World Trade Center dominated most publications right after 9/11. They noted there aren't many good ways to illustrate a disease -- a virus itself isn't that dramatic, after all -- and surgical masks have become an icon for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
ECO-TERROR
Ranking the Rich: the first annual CGD/FP Commitment to Development Index, which grades 21 rich nations on whether their aid, trade, migration, investment, peacekeeping, and environmental policies help or hurt poor nations. Find out why the Netherlands ranks first and why the world’s two largest aid givers - the United States and Japan - finish last.
Ranking:
1. Netherlands
2. Denmark
3. Portugal
PHOTO-GRAFIA
Tabloid Pictures from the Los Angeles Herald Express (1936-1961)
VITAMEDIAS
Grace News: The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV news station for Muslim Iraq.
It is being produced in a studio - Grace Digital Media - controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel.
That's Grace as in "by the Grace of God."
Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian millionaire, Cheryl Reagan [...]
RIAA's Rosen 'writing Iraq copyright laws': Chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America, Hilary Rosen, is helping draft copyright legislation for the New Iraq, according to investigative journalist Gregory Palast.
"Who's really going to win this war? It looks like Madonna," Palast told Democracy Now radio. "Where before, they feared Saddam Hussein, now they have to fear Sony Records will chop off their hands if they bootleg a Madonna album."
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer, 2002, for "The Fellowship of the Ring"
VITAMEDIAS
Journalists Debate Closure of Another Blog: A journalist working for a major media company decides to start a personal Weblog in his spare time. His blog becomes popular (or not). His association with the media company is stated, but discreetly. He has the usual disclaimer: This Weblog is the opinion of Joe Journo, and not the company he works for. But what does the company think? If it's CNN, Time magazine or the Hartford Courant, it doesn't think - it acts, killing the Weblog for reasons stated (and unstated). [...]
Some recipes for success in journo Weblogging:
1) You're not a "name" reporter, or you write your Weblog under a pseudonym that isn't discovered;
2) You write your Weblog for the official media site, with full oversight from the publication;
3) You make your name as a blogger first, then get hired by the media company with the power to write what you want.
InstaPundit's Reynolds notes that he has one card to play that most journalists don't: it's not his day job. "I have a real position of power: I don't need the money."

28 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
MiT3: television in transition: Abstracts and Papers
ECO-TERROR

Bush Regime Playing Cards
CONTAMINANTES
Management by Blog? Most of the companies I've observed using blogs are trying it on their customers before unleashing it internally on their staffs. The external need, apparently, is more pressing. Many businesses already have other systems in place for managing internal information, ranging from simple brown-bag lunches to overkill knowledge-management regimens. But companies are always looking for better ways to touch base with existing and potential customers, and there's no hotter way to communicate on the Net than via a weblog.
Google eats own Pyra dog food: Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology, told [...] that the company has started using Pyra's blog tool for internal communications and product development.
ECO-TERROR
[American (& British & France) War Beauty...]
How the road to war was paved with lies: Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war
The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication
Reason for War? To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war - a global show of American power and democracy.
Bush lies and manipulates public and Congress
The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden: Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998.
Saddam's Cash: The bottom line: George Galloway [a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions] was paid more than $10 million to propagandize for the Iraqi regime.
Galloway denies everything. He says the documents were forged - perhaps by foreign intelligence or by the Daily Telegraph. In a move sure to galvanize his critics, Galloway issued his denials from his vacation home - worth $400,000 - on the coast of Portugal.
Dossier Shows France Briefed Iraq on U.S. Plans: France gave Saddam Hussein's regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials, documents unearthed in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry have revealed.
Dossier Shows France Briefed Iraq on U.S. Plans: France gave Saddam Hussein (search)'s regime regular reports on its dealings with American officials, documents unearthed in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry have revealed
US Forces Make Iraqis Strip and Walk Naked in Public: A military officer states that the men are thieves, and that this technique will be used again (via Dagbladet)
ZITE
1 Pixel per meter & Starship Dimensions
VITAMEDIAS
truth and lies in public discourse: Fox, Nike and Kamiya: it is ironic that as Salon’s Gary Kamiya is being castigated for his extremely honest and courageous essay about the fall of Baghdad, we see companies such as Fox News and Nike go to court to preserve their right to mislead the public.
[No caso da Fox, "The courts have officially ruled that it is okay for television news to lie and distort the truth."
O segundo caso "centers on Nike's ability to participate in public debate over its foreign business operations - which critics call dangerous and immoral - without being held liable for any false or misleading statements."
Kamiya por ter escrito um parágrafo que começa assim: "I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong."
Conclusão? "as corporations extend their rights to lie and be misleading in public discourse, individuals will be punished for being too honest."]
VITAMEDIAS
For Media After Iraq, A Case of Shell Shock: Now that the shooting is over, these questions hang in the air: What did the media accomplish during the most intensively and instantaneously covered war in history? Did the presence of all those journalists capture the harsh realities of war or simply breed a new generation of Scud studs? Were readers and viewers well served or deluged with confusing information? And what does it portend for coverage of future wars? [...]
Whatever its flaws, the war coverage was so close-up and relentless that there was no time for a credibility gap to develop, either for the Pentagon or the media. There was, instead, a comprehension gap, as viewers and readers drowned in information and struggled to make sense of the blur of events.
E, em termos futuros, o que sucederá aos jornalistas? Uma resposta científica: The battle we don't report: Despite the hundreds of studies and mounting official concern about the effects on the mental health of soldiers and civilians of being exposed to the vast emotional trauma of war, there remains astonishingly little research or interest in what happens psychologically to journalists covering such conflicts. But now a unique study of 140 war journalists, recently published in the prestigious American Journal of Psychiatry, has established that war reporters have significantly more psychiatric problems than a control group of journalists who had never covered a war.
CONTAMINANTES
Pollutocrats christened: According to environmental webzine Grist, those who trash the environment have earned themselves a new name: pollutocrat. The word scooped first prize in a competition to replace the long-winded moniker, anti-environmentalist.
VITAMEDIAS
Les webzines lycéens ne font pas école: Ils demandent beaucoup de travail et effraient les proviseurs
Autre frein au développement des webzines lycéens: comme les journaux papier, et peut-être plus encore, ils sont une source d'angoisse pour les professeurs et les proviseurs. Dans son dernier rapport sur l'«Etat des lieux de la censure 2001-2002», J-Presse a traité 27 cas de censure sur cette période. «Les cas qui remontent jusqu'à nous ne sont qu'une infime partie de tous les journaux censurés», précise la cellule SOS-censure. Entre la peur que la communauté scolaire soit prise à partie publiquement, les «dérapages politiques» toujours possibles et les sujets qui fâchent immanquablement (sexualité, drogue), la marge de manoeuvre des jeunes est étroite. «Le contenu des webzines lycéens est encore plus contrôlé que celui des journaux papier», estime Michèle Elardja au Clemi (Centre de liaison de l'enseignement et des moyens d'information, ministère de l'Education nationale). «Le potentiel illimité de lecteurs sur l'Internet rend les équipes pédagogiques extrêmement frileuses.»
VITAMEDIAS
PT Multimédia autonomiza contas e resultados da Lusomundo Media: De um lado, vão ficar a TV Cabo e a Lusomundo Audiovisuais, ambas com competências na área da agregação e distribuição de conteúdos, e do outro a Lusomundo Media, que é essencialmente uma produtora de conteúdos, um negócio que, segundo declarações públicas dos responsáveis da PT Multimédia, não é estratégico para o grupo.
Até aqui, a empresa divulgava as suas contas destacando os números das suas ‘holdings’: TV Cabo, Lusomundo e PT Conteúdos. A apresentação separada por áreas de negócio é justificada pela PT Multimédia com «razões de transparência». No entanto, para os analistas, esta alteração vai facilitar a possível alienação da Lusomundo Media ou a sua autonomização da própria ‘holding’. Uma operação deste género, sublinham, nunca deverá ocorrer antes do final deste ano ou início do próximo, ou seja, quando o mercado publicitário – de cuja evolução depende o negócio dos jornais, revistas e rádio – entrar numa fase de retoma clara.
Ainda assim, a PT Multimédia já fez algumas diligências no sentido de auscultar o mercado sobre o interesse de outros grupos comunicação social, nacionais e internacionais, na aquisição da Lusomundo Media.
[Se agora não é estratégico para o grupo, porque compraram? Quem ganhou com o negócio?]
CULTURAS IN VITRO
William Gibson 'gives up blogging'
He's about ready to start thinking of his next novel - but in order to do so, he says he'll have to give up his weblog (or 'blog'), a highly popular website diary of sorts in which he's written almost daily since January.
"I do know from doing it that it's not something I can do when I'm actually working. Somehow the ecology of writing novels wouldn't be able to exist if I'm in daily contact. If I expose things that interest or obsess me as I go along, there'd be no need to write the book. The sinews of narrative would never grow."
That will disappoint many fans but he is fiercely protective of his privacy - the public weblog from the reclusive writer came as a surprise to many. Once he finishes the final, British leg of his book tour, the weblog will be wound up, he says - and, tethered soul in tow, he'll return to Vancouver to dream for us the next instalment of our hypercool future.
Gibson Kicks the Blogging Habit

24 abril 2003

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Imax Says Matrix Film Deal A 'Watershed Event': Imax and Warner Bros. [...] announced that the second and third chapters of "The Matrix" trilogy, to be released in the spring and fall, will be digitally-remastered using Imax DMR - a technology that upgrades live-action 35mm films into the Imax experience.
VITAMEDIAS
Online media rooms fail to deliver: Poorly equipped online press rooms are leading to frustration for journalists, new research shows.
Technology companies are the worst offenders, according to the study by Rainier PR, and the result is that they are not getting good media coverage.
For its report, Rainier talked to journalists from IT and business publications and national newspapers. Many complained there was a significant time lapse between news occurring and press releases subsequently appearing on sites.
VITAMEDIAS
Deep Throat: Uncovered: After a four-year investigation, students at the University of Illinois have determined the identity of Deep Throat, the most elusive, anonymous news source in history: Fred Fielding, deputy counsel to former President Richard Nixon
.DE!
["Stop the press": O verdadeiro homem que mordeu um cão:] Man bites police dog outside N.Y. bar: After being thrown out of a bar, Paul Russell Jr., 33, bit Renny, a 3-year-old German shepherd
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Hulk trailer
VITAMEDIAS
Battle of the blog builders: The company behind one of the weblog world's most popular tools is preparing to launch a new service which will attack market leaders Blogger.com head on.
SixApart, the company behind the Movable Type weblogging system, is to lanch a new "hosted" service called TypePad later this year.
[já agora, veja-se o Blogsky pela facilidade de criação de um blog]

23 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
[Mais um blog de jornalista encerrado por imposição do jornal, curiosamente devido a "conflito de interesses"...] Denis Horgan.com: It is with the most profound regret that I am compelled to announce that the editor of The Hartford Courant, a proud and wonderful newspaper of which I am honored to count myself a staff member, has ruled that I am no longer allowed to operate a column on this web page. Despite the fact that this page is operated on my own time and at my own expense, that it does not compete with the newspaper or draw upon any of its resources, the editor has ruled that its operation is a conflict of interest.
CONTAMINANTES
Words Get in the Way: Eyewitnesses may remember a criminal's features more accurately if they don't immediately try to describe them.
VITAMEDIAS
News reports abroad spur panic about SARS: Alarming hype about SARS in the news media has reached epidemic proportions overseas as journalists mix facts with speculation and sensationalism.
SARS: Panic or plague? Misinformation spreads even faster than the virus itself.
VITAMEDIAS
[Mais um:] Independent newspaper to launch paid content (subscriptions/micropayments for some of its content section)
VITAMEDIAS
The five best tools to find newspapers
VITAMEDIAS
Trois candidats pour une «French CNN» planétaire: Hier en début de soirée, seuls trois prétendants s'étaient manifestés : France Télévisions associée à RFI, à LCI (filiale de TF1) et à i-Télé (filiale de Canal +).

22 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
Lights! Camera! Retake! Six hundred and six takes it took, and if they had been forced to do a 607th it is probable, if not downright certain, that one of the film crew would have snapped and gone mad. [...]
Honda's latest television advertisement, a two-minute film called "Cog", is like a fine-lubricated line of dominoes.
[sobre a criação do anúncio que coloquei no dia 17 e entretanto retirei por não estar a funcionar - mas os "links" sim]
VITAMEDIAS
Mapa de la Blogosfera Hispana [via eCuaderno]
the World as a Blog: Real time & updating display of weblog postings, around the world
.DE!
1-Hour Arrest: When does a snapshot of a mother breast-feeding her child become kiddie porn? Ask the Richardson police.
CONTAMINANTES

3,000 Amateurs Offer NASA Photos of Columbia's Demise: Some 3,000 people contacted NASA in the days after the shuttle disaster to offer their firsthand reports, still photographs and videos of the shuttle's entry into the atmosphere. Ultimately, some 12,000 videos and images streamed in. [...]
And it has paid off: the images have provided a trove of data that has helped investigators piece together what happened in the final minutes of the flight.
CONTAMINANTES
Online, Some Bloggers Never Die Death and dying have lately become prime topics of interest for bloggers.
ECO-TERROR
Um Conservadorismo Progressista: em certas circunstâncias de crise, é raro o jornalista ou colaborador que não introduza nas suas crónicas umas referências críticas a José Manuel Fernandes. Tornou-se uma espécie de ritual, e eu próprio, que nesta matéria tive um papel precursor, me sinto hoje claramente ultrapassado.
[é impressão minha ou, além de JMF defender o que quer defender, está a ser usado como um alter ego de Durão Barroso (o percurso político é semelhante)? Ou seja, "faz-se a cama" a JMF para o minar na direcção do Público e dá-se um sinal de que Durão pode seguir-se no Governo? É que não leio este tipo de comentários sobre os directores de outros jornais - eles não merecem, não têm a mesma estatura intelectual ou há mesmo algo mais?...]
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Jazz legend Simone dies: Legendary jazz and blues singer Nina Simone has died at the age of 70 at her home in southern France

21 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
Fotografias secretas: Michael Douglas e Catherine Zeta-Jones vs. Hello!; conhecida apresentadora de televisão vs. montagem em revista; Salazar com aliança de casamento...
VITAMEDIAS

TV Turnoff Week 2003 (April 21-27)
.DE!
Man uses air raid siren to quiet wife: A 73-year-old man who used an air raid siren to stun his wife into submission has had it confiscated by German police.
"My wife never lets me get a word in edgeways," the man identified as Vladimir R. told Mannheim police.
"So I crank up the siren and let it rip for a few minutes. It works every time. Afterwards, it's real quiet again."
A police spokesman said neighbors had complained at the noise from the 220-volt rooftop device, believed to be an old-fashioned air raid siren.
Rosina, Vladimir's wife of 32 years, said she sometimes had to yell to get his attention. "My husband is a stubborn mule so I have to get loud."
Experiência, 1, 2, 3:
Lido: New Rose Hotel, in Burning Chrome (após ver New Rose Hotel, de Abel Ferrara)
Ouvindo: Charles Mingus - In a soulful mood
Vendo: Finding Nemo
ECO-TERROR
Cá estão (ou estavam...) as famosas armas de destruição maciças (ou em massa, se eu fosse italiano!...)
Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert: With the 101st airborne division, south of Baghdad, Iraq, April 20 - A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said. [...]
An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals.
So where are they, Mr Blair? Not one illegal warhead. Not one drum of chemicals. Not one incriminating document. Not one shred of evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in more than a month of war and occupation
CULTURAS IN VITRO

300 reasons why we love The Simpsons
7. Homer: "Operator, give me the number for 911!"
CULTURAS IN VITRO
A Hostile takeover: Who in their right mind would damage a work of art? When we hear of the harm inflicted upon a Leonardo cartoon at the National Gallery in 1987, or a bullet hole through a stack of Warhol Marilyns at The Factory in 1964, we put it down to the act of a deranged outsider. [...]
On the other hand, in Paradise Square, Baghdad, tearing down a giant bronze Saddam is seen as moving, heroic and symbolic. Bad art about bad people deserves all the abuse it gets, we might argue, but where do the lines of acceptability lie when an artist wilfully wrecks another artist's work?
Eradicating Symbols of a Past Regime: Why it was so important to see Saddam's statues come crashing down.
What is it about a dead and really poor statue - a boring one indeed - that rouses such personal antipathy? And why did we who were not there stay so gripped throughout the whole business?
VITAMEDIAS
O lado de EPC (1)
A quem paga o DN por esta crónica: Luís Delgado, que só escreveu 255 caracteres, ou Eduardo Prado Coelho, que contribuiu com 1081 caracteres?...
[act.:] O lado de EPC (2) [Mas ele não diz nada de novo!!!!!!! Estou ansioso pelo que nos reserva amanhã...]
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Hollywood Alters Movies To Foil Camcorder Pirates: Cinea LLC, which created an encryption system for DVDs, and Sarnoff, a technology research firm, are developing a system to modulate the light cast on a movie screen to create a flicker or other patterns that would be picked up by recording devices, making the resulting images unwatchable. The disruptive flickers would be unseen by the human eye in the movie theater.
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Ready for a Reality Movie? On Friday New Line Cinema will release in more than 2,000 theaters a movie called "The Real Cancún," the first attempt by a Hollywood studio to transfer the reality television phenomenon to the movie screen. Sixteen hand-picked young men and women were transplanted to an upscale Yucatán hotel for an all-expenses-paid spring break week and were then filmed by eight cameras, 24 hours a day, while they ate, drank, swam, danced, paired off and stripped.

17 abril 2003

ZITEs
[Para o fim de semana:] Delirium
Detective Story
VITAMEDIAS

CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network's web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. [...] In addition to Cheney and Reagan, CNN also prepped online farewells to Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, and Gerald Ford.
[act.:] CNN Chagrined Over Premature Obits: CNN blamed human error Thursday for exposing obituary mock-ups that its Web site's designers had prepared for Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope and other prominent figures.
ECO-TERROR

All the President's Lies: Bush's rhetoric bears no resemblence to his policies. How does he get away with it?
Bu$h/Hitler Links
ECO-TERROR
For the people on the streets, this is not liberation but a new colonial oppression: America's war of 'liberation' may be over. But Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is just about to begin
Free to Protest, Iraqis Complain About the U.S.: Protests against the American forces here are rising by the day as Iraqis exercise their new right to complain - something that often landed them in prison or worse during President Saddam Hussein's rule.
But no one here is in the mood to note that paradox, as Iraqis confront with greater clarity their complicated reactions to the week-old American military presence here: anger at the looting; frustration at the ongoing lack of everything from electricity to a firm sense of order; fear of long-term United States military occupation.
ECO-TERROR
The president's real goal in Iraq: This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.
Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?
Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.
Who will trust our man in Iraq?: The leadership preferred by the civilian hawks in the Pentagon would emerge from the Iraqi National Congress, specifically in the personage of its leader, Ahmad Chalabi. Although he now says that he harbors no such ambitions, Mr. Chalabi’s disclaimers must be regarded with the skepticism reserved for American politicians who hesitate to declare their candidacies prematurely. He didn’t spend all those years in Washington for nothing.
Financial scandal claims hang over leader in waiting: Every day since he was secretly spirited into Iraq by the US military just over a week ago, Ahmad Chalabi, the man favoured by the Pentagon to succeed Saddam Hussein, has been holding court with local dignitaries in Nassiriya.
But allegations of financial impropriety linger over Mr Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, the most important of which concern a $200m (£127m) banking scandal in Jordan.
In 1992, Mr Chalabi was tried in his absence and sentenced by a Jordanian court to 22 years' jail on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.
Mr Chalabi has always maintained the charges were politically motivated.
Who's who in post-Saddam Iraq
[ver também The photographs tell the story... April 9th: One of the "most memorable images of the war" is created when U.S. troops pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square. Oddly enough... a photograph is taken of a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Chalabi's militia members... he is near Fardus Square to greet the Marines. How many members of the pro-American Free Iraqi Forces were in and around Fardus Square as the statue of Saddam came tumbling down?]
ECO-TERROR
How We Lost the Victory: In his critically acclaimed book "Jarhead," Gulf War vet Anthony Swofford writes that Marines routinely lie to gullible reporters.
ABC further reported: "A Marine at first draped an American flag over the statue's face, despite military orders to avoid symbols that would portray the United States as an occupying - instead of a liberating - force." Yet another lie. As anyone with eyes could plainly see, American tanks are festooned with more red, white and blue than a Fourth of July parade. And that particular flag was flying over the Pentagon at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The Defense Department gave it to the Marines in order to perpetuate Bush's lie that Iraq was involved in the 9-11 attacks.
Patriotic iconography is a funny thing. I've known that the Iwo Jima photo was fake for years, but it nonetheless stirs me every time I see it. [...]
This Administration's policy of perpetual war has become a case study in entropy, the distinctly pessimistic notion that no matter how bad things get we can figure out a way to make them worse. Entropy triumphed in Afghanistan, as the world's worst regime was replaced by dozens of thuggish warlords. The end of Saddam Hussein comes as welcome news, even if it's merely the accidental byproduct of a barely-disguised oil grab. But as Iraq's cities burn and its patrimony is hustled off into the black market and its women wail and the rape gangs rule the night, it's hard to escape the conclusion that we've lost this war as well.
ECO-TERROR
Transcript of Tim Robbins Speech to the National Press Club: 'A Chill Wind is Blowing in This Nation...'
Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies - the "Blame Hollywooders," if you will - recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are okay with the real kind.
And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world, our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq. Violence as a concept, an abstraction - it's very strange. [...]
We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope - hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism.
Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us - right and left, pro-war and anti-war.
VITAMEDIAS

Puma's Problem - The racy photo that's got a sneaker company steamed.
[An] advertiser who's trying to use the Web to generate buzz. But what happens when the "viral" buzz is not to a marketer's liking? [...]
Puma didn't see it that way and not only declared the ads fake, but sent out a "cease and desist" letter to various bloggers threatening legal action against anyone posting the "defamatory image."
VITAMEDIAS
[passe a publicidade, via bernhard36 e disponível na Honda

16 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
Corruption at CNN: Mr. Eason Jordan's admission that CNN had to suppress the news from Baghdad in order to report it brought back memories for me.
In January 1993, I was in Baghdad as a reporter for CNN...
Eason Jordan defends his choice: Some critics complain that the op-ed piece proves CNN withheld vital information from the public and kowtowed to the Saddam Hussein regime to maintain a CNN reporting presence in Iraq. That is nonsense. No news organization in the world had a more contentious relationship with the Iraqi regime than CNN.
ECO-TERROR
Library books, letters and priceless documents are set ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad: The National Library and Archives, a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq, ­were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze.
The 2003 Iraq War & Archaeology
[act.:] Pentagon Was Told Of Risk to Museums: In the months leading up to the Iraq war, U.S. scholars repeatedly urged the Defense Department to protect Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage from looters, and warned specifically that the National Museum of Antiquities was the single most important site in the country.
ECO-TERROR
US troops accused of carnage: United States troops opened fire on a crowd hostile to the new pro-American governor in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100, witnesses and doctors said.
Bush vetoes Syria war plan: The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon
VITAMEDIAS
Mosaic: World News from the Middle East is a presentation of WorldLink TV. Mosaic features selections from daily TV news programs produced by national broadcasters throughout the Middle East. The news reports are presented unedited and translated, when necessary, into English.
VITAMEDIAS
US broadcasters' war stance under scrutiny: Rupert Murdoch's Fox network is among the US media giants accused of tailoring its war coverage to curry favour with Michael Powell, the George Bush-appointed chairman of America's media regulator who is facing mounting pressure to scrap media ownership rules.
Mr Powell, the son of US secretary of state Colin Powell, is under intense lobbying pressure from the US broadcasting industry to abolish safeguards that restrict limits on the number of TV and radio stations a company can own in a market.
[act.:] How war coverage helped put Murdoch on a media roll in Bush's America: This is a very good time to be alive if you happen to be Rupert Murdoch. He has just realised his long-held ambition to break into the US satellite television market, securing the purchase of the market leader, DirecTV, after three years of tortuous negotiations with its owner, General Motors (GM).
His cable news channel, Fox News, meanwhile, has come out of the Iraq war stronger than ever. Having already overtaken CNN with its hot-blooded, rabble-rousing style and deferential approach to the Bush administration's every move, it came out as the top-rated cable station – news or non-news – in 36 of the top 40 time-slots from 31 March to 6 April.
Perhaps more significantly, it may be transforming the way Americans get their news in times of crisis. The three main networks – NBC, ABC and CBS – have been losing about two million viewers a night to cable. It is the first time they have seen audiences shrink during a war. [...]
There are more potential windfalls ahead. Mr Murdoch's long-standing campaign to deregulate the media landscape could soon come to glorious fruition in the US, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its chairman, Michael Powell.
VITAMEDIAS
New Online Genre Supplies Lessons on the War in Iraq: The journalists and former teachers who produce the NewsHour Extra Web site, which is associated with PBS's "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," are among the most conspicuous practitioners of a new hybrid online genre - part daily journalism, part education - that has taken shape during the war. They produce daily online news stories and lesson plans intended to help teachers respond intelligently to student demands for classroom discussion of what is going on in Iraq.

15 abril 2003

ZITE
Read My Lips: Bush & Blair singing out the rain
VITAMEDIAS
Out of the 'Quagmire': A day-by-day record of Big Media reporting shows which journalists and news organizations failed the credibility test. Indeed, one finds that two defeatist themes passed off as American "news" actually were surfaced by the late Saddam Hussein regime through its information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.
Quality Sacrificed at Altar of 24-Hour News: More shocking, though, has been the lack of expertise and understanding exhibited by many staff journalists and their media organizations. They failed time and again even to try to cut through the fog of war by providing authentic context for their reports. The best on offer most of the time was the "boyish enthusiasm" of the embedded correspondents - hardly a triumph in balanced or accurate journalism.
VITAMEDIAS
CNN Executive Defends Silence on Known Iraqi Atrocities: "Withholding information that would get innocent people killed was the right thing to do, not a journalistic sin" [CNN memo]
VITAMEDIAS
Marines Raid Journalists' Baghdad Hotel: U.S. Marines looking for hardcore Iraqi fighters searched rooms early Tuesday in the hotel that serves as headquarters for most foreign journalists in Baghdad, apparently taking some people into custody.
The Marines had keys to the rooms, but in cases where the doors were bolted, they kicked them down, rousting journalists from their beds and pointing M-16s in their faces, footage from Associated Press Television News showed.
[Já é mania!!! Não têm mais nada para fazer?...]
CULTURAS IN VITRO
NBC, DreamWorks Producing Cartoon what could be television's first computer-generated imaging cartoon for prime time.

14 abril 2003

ECO-TERROR
U.S. buys data on foreign citizens: Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries - apparently without their consent or knowledge - allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States.
VITAMEDIAS
Users Still Resistant to Paid Content: Resistance to paying for online content spans the globe, according to surveys conducted in the U.S., Australia, and Europe. A study conducted by RampRate and Synovate of nearly 1,400 U.S. Internet users revealed that 68 percent dislike paying for streaming audio and video, with 47.5 percent holding to the principle that the Internet should be free and 20 percent agreeing with the statement that paying is "cumbersome and a turn-off."
VITAMEDIAS
Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool: Wikis are everywhere, but, unfortunately, the online literature has not begun to focus on wikis yet. Why aren't wikis on our radar screen the way blogs are right now? Walt Crawford, a senior analyst at RLG and active writer and speaker in the library field, reported to me by e-mail that he had "tried out a library-related one quite a while ago and, at the time, found the mechanisms and content both either uninteresting or problematic. Since I didn't have any need that cried out for wikis as a solution, I didn't pursue the matter. That also explains the absence of any mention of wikis in my American Libraries 'e-files' series in late 2001: I was not aware of any real significance in the library field. That doesn't mean there isn't any, of course."
ECO-TERROR

Saddam key in early CIA plot: U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
.DE!
Saddam Starred in Gay Porn Films! Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been caught with his pants down - literally. A shocking 1968 porn film has surfaced, in which the flamboyant strongman appears performing raunchy homosexual acts! [ou será um dos sósias?...]
ECO-TERROR
Iraq-Russia spy link uncovered: Documents reveal Iraqi agents trained in Moscow [in last September]
Russia spied on Blair for Saddam: Russia provided Saddam Hussein's regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations between Tony Blair and other Western leaders.
ECO-TERROR
Who Owns the Rules of War? The war in Iraq demands a rethinking of the international rules of conduct. The outcome could mean less power for neutral, well-meaning human rights groups and more for big-stick-wielding states. That would be a good thing.
The Next Resolution: If you think the United Nations is irrelevant now in Iraq, wait and see what hawkish policy makers are planning for any sequel.
ECO-TERROR
Back to Baudrillard: According to Baudrillard, when the logic of war is missing - when there is no real reason for the war to exist - you get a virtual war. War becomes a spectacle of force managed by the dominant side. The 1991 Gulf War was waged with high-precision weaponry and 'surgical strikes'. The war was less a conflict between adversaries than a demonstration of American power. [...]
In the current war, there has always been a sense that we are about to reach a climax, that hostilities are about to start for real, but this is always indefinitely postponed. The 'big battle' was promised first of all when American troops began the march up to Baghdad, then when they began to take the airport, then when they began their assault on the city…now it is promised when coalition forces chase Saddam's henchmen up to his homeland in northern Iraq.
Now, we are faced with the question of what victory is supposed to look like - how will we know when the war is over? Saddam is not around to surrender, minor skirmishes are likely to continue for many months.
Ultimately, it is down to Bush to draw his line in the sand, and declare the Second Gulf War closed.
[Obrigado, Carlos]
Power trips: Coalition forces did storm Baghdad over the weekend - first its suburbs, and in later incursions the city centre. But they seemed less interested in 'taking the city' than in demonstrating their ability to take it. In this war of image over substance, even the weekend's incursions into the Iraqi capital appeared to be about displaying American power rather than actually asserting it.
VITAMEDIAS
Repórteres Sem Fronteiras contra recurso da CNN a guardas armados
Reporters sans frontières s'inquiète d'un comportement qui peut s'avérer dangereux pour tous les journalistes
Shots fired at CNN crew in Tikrit: Brent Sadler:
We're OK, we're OK. Under fire. That confirms our worst fears.
If you're with us, we've just gone through a checkpoint, we've come under automatic machine gun fire, and we've blown through the checkpoint. Our armed guard pulled his automatic machine gun and opened fire to get us through there.
I think that's as far as we're going to push it today.
Two in CNN Crew Hurt in Iraqi Gunfight: Most journalists adhere to Geneva Conventions rules that reporters not openly carry weapons in war zones, although several news organizations have hired armed guards for protection in dangerous areas. [...]
The guard was grazed by a bullet, said Matthew Furman, CNN spokesman. A CNN producer was hit by shattered glass.
CNN noted that Sadler was in a convoy clearly marked as containing journalists and that the Iraqis fired first. In a dangerous place for reporters, CNN supports what its guard did, Furman said.
While not passing judgment on what happened, media ethics expert Bob Steele said news organizations must consider the danger that such an incident can heighten the risk for all journalists that they will be considered a hostile force in a time of war. [...]
Joel Campagna, Mideast program director for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, couldn't recall another incident where a reporter's guard had to fire his weapon.
"Journalists pose the question of whether they should sacrifice their security for the perception of neutrality. I don't know the answer to that," he said.
It was the second harrowing experience for a CNN correspondent near Tikrit in three days. On Friday, correspondent Kevin Sites and his crew were held captive for several hours by Iraqi Fedayeen at a checkpoint.
[act.:] CNN defiant after Tikrit firefight: a CNN spokeswoman said that Sadler's team had not set a precedent and that journalists have been accompanied by armed guards in previous conflicts including Somalia and Afghanistan.
"Any decision taken in regards of our staff, and how they may or may not be accompanied, is always based on safety," the spokeswoman said.
[act.:] CNN's Access of Evil: As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated. On the New York Times' op-ed page on Friday, Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some "awful things" about the Baathist regime - murders, tortures, assassination plots - that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."
[Em guerras futuras, será que os jornalistas se têm de constituir num exército para aceder a locais em conflito? Raio de precedente, não de agora mas só agora sabemos que de guerras anteriores! Como é que os iraquianos (ou outros) não hão-de querer disparar contra jornalistas se eles têm "tropas" prontas a disparar?}
Mas há mais: I'm Not a Real Journalist, But I Play One on T.V.: Indeed, it was not the content of Rivera's reporting but his questionable journalistic methods that gained the most attention with regards to his coverage in Afghanistan. Yes folks, he carried a gun for the duration of his stay in the occupied country. As well as being an extraordinarily unwise decision for a war reporter ("No, Mr. al Qaeda extremist that has captured me, I am not a CIA agent, I am a reporter. Um, yes, that is my gun"), this is also a violation of the Geneva Convention rules for journalists.
Geraldo's response to criticism of his carrying a firearm? He told Fox News in an interview: "It's been blown way out of proportion. It makes me sound like a tabloid talk show host goes to war."
Yes, that sure sounds like a misrepresentation of the facts.
E até as British troops may be in breach of Geneva Convention for failing to prevent lawlessness after overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein, an expert warned.
Mas o que diz a Convenção de Genebra sobre os jornalistas? "In 1977, journalists were re-classified as civilians. As a result, reporters who wear civilian clothing and otherwise differentiate themselves from members of the armed forces are entitled to the broader protections offered to civilians." (Protocol I, Art. 79: Measures or protection for journalists
1. Journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians within the meaning of Article 50, paragraph 1.
2. They shall be protected as such under the Conventions and this Protocol, provided that they take no action adversely affecting their status as civilians, and without prejudice to the right of war correspondents accredited to the armed forces to the status provided for in Article 4 (A) (4) of the Third Convention.)
CONTAMINANTES
Human genome sequence completed: Less than three years after finishing the working draft of the three billion letters that make up human DNA and two years earlier than expected, an international consortium of scientists said on Monday the set of instructions on how humans develop and function is done.
Human genome done and dusted: For some it's the sense of completion. For others it's the importance of getting it right. Either way, the completion of the human genome project in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of DNA's helical structure is attended by many sighs of relief.

11 abril 2003

The Matrix Reloaded (final trailer)
CONTAMINANTES

Space Station Science Picture of the Day: High Tea
ECO-TERROR
'Hitler' producer Gernon fired: The producer of CBS' miniseries "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" has been fired for statements he made regarding the project and President Bush. [...]
CBS officials were said to be upset that Gernon appeared to equate Hitler with Bush by drawing parallels between Germany in the 1930s and contemporary America.
VITAMEDIAS
The photographs tell the story...: Is This Media manipulation on a grand scale?
The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the television cameras.
Journalists Reveal Their True Colors
ECO-TERROR
[act.:] The Original Idea:

Mohammed @ Croque Fan [Thanks, Jan.be]

We Love the Iraqi Information Minister
The Scheherazade of Baghdad: Iraq's marvellous minister of (mis)information
VITAMEDIAS
The Great Blogging Ethics Debate: The war in Iraq put blogs in the public spotlight, but it also has given the blogosphere its first real scandal - a scandal that is provoking a new debate among bloggers about what ethics, if any, apply to their medium. [...]
Blogs and bloggers of all stripes, whether or not they like this fact, have become part of the journalistic discourse. That hasn't stopped many bloggers from contending that they are not practicing pure journalism and therefore are not governed by the same ethics. This is a slippery-slope argument. Many bloggers say they want to be accepted by the mainstream media as another facet of public discourse, but this seems to be a hard goal to achieve if plagiarism, a cardinal sin in the world of journalism, is brushed off as a minor offense (or no offense at all). Just because blogs are a "free medium" doesn't mean that rules of playing fair need not apply.
CONTAMINANTES
The battle for American science: Creationists, pro-lifers and conservatives now pose a serious threat to research and science teaching in the US
VITAMEDIAS
Vencedores da 1ª edição do Prémio Meios & Publicidade [selecção]:
Televisão do ano: SIC Notícias
Rádio do ano: RFM
Site Informação do ano: Público.pt
Publicação do ano: Expresso
Jornal Semanal Generalista do ano: Expresso
Jornal Desportivo do ano: Record
Revista Informação Geral do ano: Visão
Publicação Económica do ano: Diário Económico
Publicação Feminina do ano: Vogue
Publicação Masculina do ano: MaxMen
Personalidade Media do ano: José Eduardo Moniz
CONTAMINANTES
Human cloning currently 'almost impossible': "There's a molecular obstacle that stops the technology from working in primates," says Gerald Schatten, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania. "Charlatans who claim they have cloned humans clearly don't understand the biology."
ECO-TERROR
U.S. Issues Most-Wanted Deck of Cards: The U.S. military has issued a most-wanted list in the form of a deck of cards, and Saddam Hussein is the ace of spades in the pack of 55 top figures in his toppled regime.
The cards, with pictures of the most-wanted figures, were distributed to thousands of U.S. troops in the field to help them find the senior members of the government.
U.S. Issues List of 50 Most-Wanted Leaders: Of the 50 - what one official described as "the worst of the worst" - only three have been killed and none has been captured, senior administration officials said.
VITAMEDIAS
Blair [& Bush] launches new Iraqi TV: Tony Blair and George Bush will address the Iraqi nation [yesterday] on a new television station set up by coalition forces, in a bid to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.
It is thought to be the first time the leaders of invading countries have broadcast in this way, although similar TV stations were established at the end of conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
US to beam American news into Iraq: The Bush administration is planning to beam US network news bulletins fronted by veteran anchors Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather into Iraq on its Towards Freedom TV channel within days.
It remains to be seen how the Iraqi people will respond to the ABC, NBC and CBS bulletins, which will be dubbed into Arabic but otherwise broadcast largely unedited.
ECO-TERROR
Governo Português Assegura Junto dos EUA Negócios com Iraque: Ontem, na Assembleia, o primeiro-ministro congratulou-se com a entrada das tropas norte-americanas em Bagdad, considerando que se trata de "um momento histórico que emociona todos os democratas que dão valor à liberdade e à democracia". "Portugal orgulha-se de ter estado sempre do lado da democracia e da liberdade e espera agora contribuir para um Iraque em paz e em democracia", realçou. [e com boas perspectivas de negócio, porque não admiti-lo...]
Portugal Also Keen on Winning Reconstruction Contracts: Just hours after U.S. tanks entered al-Fardous square in the heart of Baghdad, Portugal began to press Washington for its right to a share of the contracts for rebuilding Iraq.
Details Given on Contract Halliburton Was Awarded: The Pentagon contract given without competition to a Halliburton subsidiary to fight oil well fires in Iraq is worth as much as $7 billion over two years, according to a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers

10 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
L’Oncle Sam: feu sur la presse! Selon l'agence de presse espagnole Europa Press, le ministre de la Défense de Madrid aurait reçu, depuis quelque jours déjà, une note du Pentagone qui définissait l'hôtel Palestine comme "un objectif militaire".
Selon le témoignage de Giuliana Sgrena, envoyée spéciale à Bagdad pour le journal italien Il Manifesto, samedi dernier, le ministère des Affaires étrangères italien a contacté les journalistes italiens sur place, au "Palestine", en leur conseillant de... changer de lieu!
Jornalistas em Bagdad Recusaram Atender Ministério da Defesa: O momento que estavam a viver, o receio de aproveitamento político por parte de Paulo Portas e o facto de se tratar do primeiro telefonema do gabinete desde o início da guerra terão, segundo fontes da SIC e da Rádio Renascença, pesado na reacção dos jornalistas.
A intenção do ministério de Paulo Portas seria a de transmitir uma mensagem de preocupação para com os profissionais que se encontravam naquele hotel
[Não é muito credível que Espanha e Itália tivessem sido avisadas e Portugal não. Mas o Ministério poderia ter avisado os orgãos de comunicação e não os jornalistas directamente...]
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Global music sales fall 7% as internet and CD piracy bite
Net piracy blamed for global slump in music sales
VITAMEDIAS
Quase mil trabalhadores abandonaram a RTP, a RDP e a Lusa: Desde o início da reestruturação nas três empresas, em Outubro passado, 945 funcionários da "holding" Portugal Global rescindiram os seus contratos de trabalho, a maioria dos quais (675) na RTP.
Na Lusa cerca de 40 trabalhadores aderiram no último mês ao processo de rescisão voluntária, lançado no dia 10 de Março pela nova administração e que termina hoje.
VITAMEDIAS
Quality news pays off, editors told: Content can boost readers, revenue [Não!!! A sério?...]
CULTURAS IN VITRO
A titanic effort in 3-D moviemaking: James Cameron is trying to bring 3-D movies back into the mainstream with his latest Titanic tale, “Ghosts of the Abyss.” But this isn’t your father’s 3-D, with gimmicky plots and headache-inducing perspectives.
VITAMEDIAS
Embedded media 'shorten wars': Having journalists "embedded" with frontline forces could have shortened some of the great conflicts of the 20th century, [Australia] Prime Minister John Howard has said.
VITAMEDIAS

TV tells story: Knowing the power of such symbols, the networks kept their cameras focused on that statue for nearly two hours, waiting for the moment of collapse. [...]
A televised symbol - even one that will be as repeated as often as this one - is ultimately only as powerful as the event it represents. That falling statue represents a relatively easy American victory and the liberation of Iraq. Should history shift again, or should the war grow darker, another image will take its place, at least temporarily.
Still, it's hard not to believe that this war has found its symbol. And TV knew it when it saw it.
VITAMEDIAS
Balsemão defende concentração nos media e anuncia novos produtos: É desejável que existam em Portugal empresas de comunicação social fortes e com dimensão, não devendo haver impedimentos à concentração no sector baseados em receios infundados de falta de pluralismo, disse Francisco Pinto Balsemão, presidente da Impresa.
VITAMEDIAS
LA Times Photo Ethics Case Study [via PontoMedia]
ZITE
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [para quem não tem nada a fazer...]

09 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
How the media changed: Something fundamental has happened to the British and U.S. media during this war. Those who have spent time on the front lines with the coalition troops, whether embedded with individual units or traveling independently through liberated Iraq, have learned to love the military.
Newspapers pull out the stops for war: Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and several of the nation's top newspaper editors will lead a roster of speakers at the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which begins today at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans.
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Matrix2: Bullet Time was just the beginning. F/x guru John Gaeta reinvents cinematography with The Matrix Reloaded.
VITAMEDIAS
Iraq - the most dangerous war for journalists: The war in Iraq is the worst ever for journalists and could spell the end of the "independent witnessing of war", veteran war reporters and experts have claimed.
VITAMEDIAS
Google News: Is all the news fit to post? Nestled among the headlines from the thousands of newspapers, magazines and wire services that appear on Google News are press releases and government statements that are not clearly distinguished from actual news articles.
ECO-TERROR
13h35: Tanques americanos chegam ao centro de Bagdad sem luta e protegem hotel Palestina. Num dia disparam, no outro protegem - também por isso, imagine-se o alívio daqueles jornalistas.
E agora? Algumas dúvidas:
1) Depois de duas guerras contra duas pessoas (bin Laden e Saddam), parece que ninguém sabe onde eles estão. Qual o significado futuro destas ausências?
2) Onde páram as armas de destruição maciça - ou não passaram de desculpas de informação maciça?
3) A falta de resistência não prova que os 12 anos de embargo funcionaram e que os inspectores da ONU tinham razão em prolongar as verificações no Iraque?
VITAMEDIAS
Warblogs: Jornalista português escreve sobre a guerra, a partir da Turquia, para weblog Jornalismo e Comunicação
CONTAMINANTES
"Stupid Security" winners revealed
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Lawsuit accuses LAPD officer of selling celebrity data: A Los Angeles police officer used department computers to access confidential law enforcement records of celebrities and sold the information to tabloids, according to a lawsuit recently settled by the city.
Officer Kelly Chrisman has acknowledged looking up the information, according to internal Los Angeles Police Department records, but said he did so at the direction of his superiors. His attorney, Christopher Darden, said the 13-year veteran never sold the information to anyone.

08 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
Media Companies Lose $77 Million [in advertising revenue] in Week One of War
VITAMEDIAS
RTP absorve 36,5% das indemnizações compensatórias de 2003
VITAMEDIAS
War toll: journalists killed [8], detained [5] or missing [5] in Iraq
Morreu um dos cinco feridos no bombardeamento ao Hotel Palestina: Um dos quatro jornalistas feridos hoje no bombardeamento do hotel Palestina, em Bagdad, morreu em consequência dos ferimentos sofridos
[act.:] Reuters man killed in US attack [e o da TeleCinco também]: The US 3rd Infantry commander, General Buford Blount, admitted today that an American tank fired a single round into the hotel after receiving rifle and rocket fire.
However, journalists on the ground and at central command in Qatar have expressed incredulity at the US military's claims that snipers were operating from the hotel.
[act.:] US denies deliberately targeting Al Jazeera: Al Jazeera's presenter accused the US military of "deliberately targeting" its offices and recalled that the station's Kabul bureau had been hit in November 2001 during the US-led assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
[Questão: o que estaria agora a suceder (nos media, na guerra e na política) se tivesse sido fogo iraquiano?...]
VITAMEDIAS
The Pulitzer Prize Winners 2003
ECO-TERROR
Secretary-General Kofi Annan [mostrado igualmente na BBC World]: “Iraq is not East Timor and Iraq is not Kosovo,” adding that “Iraqis have to be responsible for their political future, and to control their own natural resources, and whatever one can do to help the emergence of a new leadership or new situation is what one should focus on.”
UN role in post-war Iraq on UK-US summit agenda: The UN's role in post-war Iraq will be one of the issues of contention between the UK's Tony Blair and the US's George W Bush, in Belfast for a two-day summit - the third they have held in three weeks.
While both have agreed that the US will be in control of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the war, with an eventual handover to an Iraqi authority, differences still exist over the role of the UN and how long the process of handover should take.
VITAMEDIAS
Friend or foe?: There are two types of journalist covering the front-line war - the "embeds", on official placements with military units, and the "unilaterals", who have to take huge risks in an effort to gain an objective view of the conflict. We asked one of each to tell their story
[Aliás, de forma cínica e noutra direcção, é curioso ver que os media se questionam sobre a veracidade e o tempo das imagens que surgem de Saddam na televisão mas não o fazem quanto à data de entrada nos palácios do Hussein. Assume-se a verdade das imagens ocidentais...]
VITAMEDIAS
[Um curioso artigo de opinião sobre o impacto legal no nosso país dos enviados de guerra:] Guerra - Informação e Vida: Se estes jornalistas são enviados para o teatro de guerra, em condições de tal forma inseguras, e para lugares de tal modo vulneráveis, que é razoável prever a possibilidade de risco de vida ou de atentado grave à sua integridade física, aqueles que tomam tais decisões e as mantêm apesar dos graves perigos que se desenham, poderão vir a ser responsabilizados criminalmente por esses eventos, por forma dolosa ou por negligência.
ECO-TERROR
Privatizing Water: What the European Commission Doesn’t Want You to Know
Leaked documents and an exchange of e-mails reveal that the European Union has asked 72 countries to open up their markets to private water companies.

07 abril 2003

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Copy protected CDs: artists can be the losers
Music companies which use copy protection may be denying the artists under contract to them legitimate play time on radio stations, if the happenings at one outfit are any indication.
This radio station, which recently received its regular bag of freebies from EMI, finds that it is unable to play any of the CDs it received - the copy protection on the discs gets in the way.
VITAMEDIAS
[Plágio na blogosfera:] Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying: Kelley - the man behind the wildly popular site The Agonist - lives in Texas, worlds away from the war's front lines. And his reporting résumé added up to a mere three weeks at a local paper. Still, for the last few weeks, he had managed to post several dozen war-related news items a day on his site.
Some of the information was attributed to news outlets and other sources, but much of it was unsourced, particularly the almost real-time combat information presumably gleaned from a string of high-level sources worldwide.
Kelley's insightful window on the details of the war brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News, Newsweek online and National Public Radio.
The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized - lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor.
"You got me, I admit it... I made a mistake," Kelley said. "It was stupid."
VITAMEDIAS
[três despedimentos nos EUA, três contratações fora:] Arabiya TV Hires Sacked Arnett for Iraq Coverage: On March 31, NBC fired Arnett after he gave an interview to state-owned Iraqi television in which he said the U.S. military's battle plan had failed.
British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror and Belgian television outlet VTM have since hired Arnett, who gained international fame covering the first Gulf War for CNN in 1991.
VITAMEDIAS
Some newsroom doves give false image of war: some media outlets want the war in Iraq to go poorly for the Bush administration for political reasons. Thus, the more chaos and uncertainty that war headlines and stories can produce, the better the ultimate outcome will be as far as they're concerned. These ideologues masquerading as news people are hoping for a Pyrrhic victory so the hawks will not gain power and prestige.
I deeply resent that kind of game playing with news, especially concerning a story that is vitally important to all Americans. So, in this column, I am going to do something about it.
A few days ago, I was handed an E-mail from the Iraqi front. It came from a U.S. Army colonel in the 3rd Infantry Division. He is deeply angered over much of the reporting he is seeing in the American media.
US media dig deep for politicians: Political donations by US television and radio stations have almost doubled in the last year, research has shown.
And the Bush family's association with many media organisations runs deep and is reflected by the hefty handouts from the likes of NBC network owner General Electric and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, both trenchant supporters of the war.
The amount of money ploughed into party coffers by Rupert Murdoch's Fox TV, NBC and radio giant Clear Channel among others has gone up to £7.56m in 2001/2002, compared with just £4.6m in 2000, the latest figures reveal.
Media companies have shown that they have deep pockets when it comes to politics, with the level of contributions made over the last decade growing ninefold, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a US research group that tracks money and politics.
The support President Bush has received from the corporate sector is evidenced by the unprecedented $100m he raised when he decided to run for president.
[act.:] Mr. Murdoch's War: Mr. Murdoch is constantly on the phone with his company's editors and news executives from wherever he is, several people who work with him said. Occasionally, he offers praise or criticism of their coverage, but more often he is hunting to pick up the latest bits of information for himself, sometimes passing them on from one newsroom to another. "He'll say, `Do you know what The Times of London is saying?' " Mr. Moody said. "He is a source for us. He is like a very well-dressed information service." [...]
Mr. Murdoch said he was hardly on the phone dictating headlines or opinions. "When a new editor is hired I will be asked for approval, but that will be all," Mr. Murdoch said. He continued: "I don't put them through a litmus test on every belief they have."
ECO-TERROR
U.S. Plan For Iraq's Future Is Challenged: Top Republicans as well as Democrats have been smarting for months over what they view as highhanded treatment by the White House and the Defense Department on a range of fiscal issues. While there is overwhelming support on Capitol Hill for the way Bush and Rumsfeld have conducted the war, the peacetime arrangements for Iraq outlined in Bush's emergency spending package met with near universal rejection.
In what members said was an unprecedented move, Bush asked for the $2.5 billion reconstruction fund to be appropriated to the White House itself, presumably to be distributed through the Pentagon. A memo prepared by senior GOP staff for the House Appropriations Committee noted that the arrangement would erect a "wall of executive privilege [that] would deny Congress and the Committee access to the management of the Fund. Decision-makers determining the allocation... could not be called as witnesses before hearings, and most fiscal data would be beyond the Committee's reach."
ECO-TERROR
A Nova Nova Ordem: Neste quadro, o Iraque é a não a primeira mas a quinta nova guerra. A primeira guerra do Golfo, no início dos anos 90, foi a segunda das novas guerras. A primeira foi a que ditou a derrota da União Soviética. O desenvolvimento mais emblemático do novo mundo foi a superioridade tecnológica dos Estados Unidos, protagonizada nomeadamente pelo projecto anti-mísseis 'guerra das estrelas', o qual contribuiu decisivamente para a implosão da União Soviética. A terceira nova e decisiva guerra foi o 11 de Setembro. O Afeganistão foi a quarta nova guerra e a guerra que corre no Iraque é já a quinta guerra de uma nova geração de conflitos, unidos pelo poder do entendimento global da acção, dos media, dos meios em sentido geral, tanto das televisões e da Internet como dos tanques, dos mísseis e da aviação norte-americana, quais extensões do sentidos e das capacidades humanas. O que une estas cinco guerras é em termos imediatos e aparentes o poder, o domínio e as promessas da nova tecnologia, os instrumentos e os conceitos que lhe estão subjacentes, mas o que essencialmente mais as une, as distingue e caracteriza é a diferença que em qualquer momento ou lugar pode fazer uma outra diferença, ou seja, a informação.

04 abril 2003

ECO-TERROR
Fighting Words: Everyone in America - Myself Included - Has Been Driven Insane by This War
.DE!
A quem interessar: Na ferramente de procura do CupidoClix no menu de idades podem escolher 0-12 e 13-18 (homem, mulher ou casais). No caso de contacto positivo por favor enviar comissão para a conta habitual bibi@prisõesdeportugal.pt
[Impressionante mas verdadeiro!!! Anda a PJ a querer a retenção dos dados pelos ISPs (também) por causa dos pedófilos e não olha para estas facilidades...]
VITAMEDIAS
Embedded in Iraq: The high cost of the war to the 24-hour news networks
Before the war began, CNN spent over $1m on security training. Now the running costs are piling up. It costs $1,500 a day merely to link a channel up to a geo-stationary satellite from a phone on the ground.
CNN is understood to be spending $1m a day covering the war, and to have put aside a $25m war-chest. “But it is clearly going to cost more than that,” comments one CNN insider. John Stack, vice-president of news-gathering at Fox News, which has just over 100 staff in the region, says his war budget runs into “tens of millions of dollars.” The BBC, which has over 200 people in the Gulf, feeding both its 24-hour news service in Britain and BBC World, its international channel which is running non-stop news, is said to have earmarked some £10m ($15m) for the war. Tom Wolzien, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein, estimates that the additional cost will run to roughly $40m-60m for the American news networks, about 10% of their annual news budgets [...]
The American networks could be forgoing some $3m-7m a day in deferred and cancelled advertising.
The implication of all this is that some news networks may have to find ways to share costs.
Networks Add Up War Cost, NBC at $50 Million: Goldman Sachs has estimated that, depending on the network, the war could cost up to $20 million a day. Tom Wolzein, a Sanford Bernstein analyst and former NBC News executive, pegged the potential cost increase to network news divisions at anywhere from $40 million to $60 million for the year.
But those forecasts were in the early days of the conflict [via Ponto Media]
The televisual war: more than 500 journalists are “embedded” - that is, living with the troops, filming and reporting the grunt's eye view. Nearly 1,500 more journalists are covering the war independently. This changes the balance between reporters and the armed forces [...]
Now, the problem is that so many journalists are broadcasting snippets from the front, it is hard to get a broad, accurate reading of what is happening. The Pentagon had hoped the process of embedding would educate correspondents in the realities of war and reduce their tendency to obsess about disasters. So far, the results have been mixed.
VITAMEDIAS
Internet and the fog of war: The Internet has emerged as the best antidote to the numbing stupidity that passes for daily television coverage two weeks into America's battle with Iraq.
[act.:] alt.war: Traditional media mislead the public about the war in Iraq as a media revolution makes traditional media increasingly irrelevant
There has long existed a convention among news readers, and news reporters, that stories don't really exist until they appear in the mainstream press. Given the recent journalistic debacle in Iraq, an opposite standard may apply: Once you turn off television news, it no longer exists.
VITAMEDIAS
«Le Monde» attaque fort: Le quotidien demande 1 million d'euros de dommages et intérêts à Pierre Péan, à Philippe Cohen, [...] les auteurs de la Face cachée du Monde, ainsi qu'aux éditions Fayard et à leur patron, Claude Durand. Le quotidien les a assignés pour diffamation, hier, devant le tribunal de grande instance de Paris
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Celluloid Heroes Evolve: New filmmaking technology invites the question: What should be recognized as special effects, and what’s plain old good acting?
CULTURAS IN VITRO
Le Livre 010101 (1998-2003)
ECO-TERROR
US tells UN to Butt out: An extraordinary communication from the United States to UN representatives around the world has been leaked to Greenpeace. In it, the United States warns that the simple act of support for a General Assembly meeting to discuss the war will be considered "unhelpful and directed against the United States."
VITAMEDIAS
Americans Growing Less Positive About Media's Coverage of War: Interestingly, those Americans who support the war with Iraq are most likely to rate the media coverage positively. At the same time, war supporters are also the most likely to have downgraded their views of news coverage since the war began, suggesting that this group is most sensitive to how the war is being portrayed.
VITAMEDIAS
The Secrets of Drudge Inc.: Run on a shoestring, the Drudge Report, a plain-Jane page of news links and occasional scoops, clears, by our back-of-the-envelope estimate, a cool $800,000 a year.

03 abril 2003

VITAMEDIAS
15 dias depois do seu início, a guerra vista pelas manchetes dos jornais (Público, Diário de Notícias, Washington Post e El País):
030320
Começaram manobras de guerra contra Saddam
Ordem para atacar
WP não disponível
EE UU ataca Irak
030321
EUA iniciam invasão terrestre no Iraque
Invasão
Ground War Starts, Airstrikes Continue As U.S. Keeps Focus on Iraq's Leaders
EE UU lanza un intenso bombardeo sobre Bagdad y pone en marcha la ofensiva terrestre
030322
Ofensiva total
Guerra total
Strikes Intensify as Forces Move North
Bombardeos masivos arrasan el distrito gubernamental de Bagdad
030323
Forças aliadas avançam rapidamente para Bagdad
Guerra e paz
Troops Advance Halfway to Baghdad
Los aliados avanzan hacia Bagdad tras controlar Basora y la zona petrolera del sur
030324
Dia sangrento
Morte a caminho de Bagdad
Clashes at Key River Crossing Bring Heaviest Day of American Casualties
Focos de resistencia iraquí retrasan el avance terrestre hacia Bagdad
030325
Aliados aproximam-se do “momento crucial” em Bagdad
Batalha feroz
U.S. Forces Push Closer to Baghdad As Iraqi Resistance Proves Persistent
Tropas aliadas e iraquíes libran duros combates a 90 kilómetros de Bagdad
030326
Revolta em Bassorá
Tempestade
Sandstorm Delays Army's Advance; U.S. Reports Fierce Battle in South
Cientos de muertos iraquíes en una feroz batalla al sur de Bagdad
030327
Iraque passa à ofensiva
Grande batalha
Iraqi Militia, Elite Forces Roll South Into Fierce Attack by U.S. Warplanes
Dos bombas causan una matanza de civiles en un mercado de Bagdad
030328
EUA: mais 120 mil soldados para o Iraque
Guerra dura
Missteps With Turkey Prove Costly
La resistencia iraquí obliga a EE UU a movilizar 100.000 soldados más
030329
Dezenas de civis mortos em mais um ataque de mísseis americanos em Bagdad
EUA ameaçam Irão e Síria
U.S. Forces Fight to Protect Supply Lines
Otra bomba mata a más de 50 civiles en un mercado de Bagdad
030330
Iraque promete responder às bombas com mais ataques suicidas
Ataques suicidas
War's Military, Political Goals Begin to Diverge
La guerra hunde la popularidad de Aznar y amplía la ventaja del PSOE
030331
EUA admitem que guerra no Iraque pode arrastar-se
Caça ao homem
Clashes Continue Along Supply Lines
EE UU vuelve a bombardear a civiles en un ataque sin tregua sobre Bagdad
030401
Bombardeamentos intensos tentam quebrar defesas de Bagdad
Avanço aliado
Army Has First Close Clashes With Republican Guard Units
EE UU lanza 3.000 bombas en dos días contra las defensas de Bagdad
030402
Aumenta o número de vítimas civis no Iraque
Choque brutal
Forces Resume Baghdad Advance As Army Takes On Key Defenders
Decenas de mujeres y niños mueren bajo las bombas en el sur de Iraks
030403
Tropas americanas às portas de Bagdad
Ex-provedor acusado de tráfico de menores
Baghdad-Bound Forces Pass Outer Defenses
Las tropas de EE UU rompen la barrera defensiva de Bagdad

Por vezes, nem parece que estão a escrever sobre a mesma guerra...