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Free speech cannot be absolute, should not be trampled upon:VP

21Dec By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

INDIA

Free speech cannot be absolute, should not be trampled upon:VP

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said today that freedom of speech and expression cannot be "absolute" but it should also not be trampled upon. Naidu, who was the Information and Broadcasting Minister before getting elected as the vice president, said he was "not pleased" with India's ranking in the World Press Freedom Index. This issue should be addressed by strengthening medias independence, ensuring transparent flow of information, making legal framework more coherent and ensuring safety of journalists, he said. India's World Press Freedom Index ranking plunged to 136 in 2017. Naidu, in his keynote address at the Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in Journalism, also said that he twice expressed the desire before Prime Minister Narendra Modi to retire from active politics and...

Global Press Freedom Hit The All Time Low: Report

30Oct By RishabhNo Comments

ANALYSIS, INSPIRATIONAL

Global Press Freedom Hit The All Time Low: Report

Global press freedom has recently declined to its all time low ever in 13 years in 2016 amid unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies. As per the research done by Freedomhouse.org only 13 percent of the world's population enjoys a Free press. Not to forget the far-reaching attacks on news media in a democratic society by Donald Trump, first as a candidate and now as the President of United States.Borrowing a term popularized by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Trump has labeled the news media as “enemies of the people”. Yet, U.S. remains as one of the most press-friendly countries in the world, in comparison to the countries like North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Syria who are designated as Not-free in the Freedom of press 2017. While the pr...

19Sep By AdityaNo Comments

News

Snapchat Removes Al Jazeera Channel In Saudi Arabia

Social Media Platform Snapchat has recently blocked Al Jazeera, a well-known Qatari broadcaster from its app in Saudi Arabia at the request of Saudi authorities, the company said on Sunday. Saudi Arabia told the social media company that the Al Jazeera Discover Publisher Channel violated local laws. "We make an effort to comply with local laws in the countries where we operate," a Snapchat spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday. According to Snap Inc., the Saudi ministry of culture and information found Al Jazeera's Discover Publisher Story channel to be in violation of local laws. Saudi Arabia and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have been boycotting Qatar since June 5 in the region's worst diplomatic crisis in years. Al Jazeera Media Network's acting...

News, Sports Websites Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks: Study

11Jun By AdityaNo Comments

ANALYSIS

News, Sports Websites Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks: Study

News and sports websites have some of the lowest levels of security adoption, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks, a new study has found. Researchers looked at the security protocols used by the top 500 sites in various industries and online sectors. They found that fewer than 10 per cent of news and sports websites used basic security protocols such as Transport Layer Security (TLS). Even those that do are not always using the "latest or strongest protocols", researchers said. "It is like news and sport content providers do not value the security of their content," said Professor Alan Woodward, a cyber-security expert at the University of Surrey in the UK. "They are leaving themselves vulnerable to attacks like cross-site scripting, where an attacker can pretend somethi...

Google Rolls Out AI Tool Perspective to Combat Online Trolls

25Feb By AnkitaNo Comments

News

Google Rolls Out AI Tool Perspective to Combat Online Trolls

Google said it will begin offering media groups an artificial intelligence tool designed to stamp out incendiary comments on their websites. The programming tool called Perspective, aims to assist editors trying to moderate discussions by filtering out abusive "troll" comments, which Google says can stymie smart online discussions. "Seventy-two per cent of American internet users have witnessed harassment online and nearly half have personally experienced it," said Jared Cohen, president of Google's Jigsaw technology incubator. "Almost a third self-censor what they post online for fear of retribution," he added in a blog post yesterday titled "When computers learn to swear". Perspective is an application programming interface (API), or set of methods for facilitating communication...

15Dec By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

KKR-Backed Emerald Media, Premji Invest Lead $35 Million Funding Round in Amagi Media Labs

Emerald Media, the Pan-Asia company backed by leading global investment firm KKR for investing in the media and entertainment sector, today announced that it has acquired a significant minority stake in Amagi Media Labs (‘Amagi’), the leader in targeted TV advertising and cloud-based TV broadcast infrastructure. Premji Invest, the investment arm of Azim Premji, (an existing shareholder) is also participating in this combination of primary and secondary US$35 million Series D round. Mayfield India and Nadathur Holdings will continue to remain invested in the Company. Headquartered in Bengaluru with offices in New York City, London, and Hong Kong, Amagi is a next-generation media technology company providing cloud-based managed broadcast services and targeted advertising platforms to c...

NBCUniversal Invests $200 Million in BuzzFeed

22Nov By reutersNo Comments

FUNDING

NBCUniversal Invests $200 Million in BuzzFeed

Online media company BuzzFeed, best known for its list-based articles and quizzes, said Comcast Corp's NBCUniversal had invested an additional USD 200 million in the company. NBCUniversal last year invested roughly the same amount in BuzzFeed. NBCUniversal parent Comcast has pumped heavily into digital-native companies such as BuzzFeed and Vox Media, partly in an effort to better service existing advertisers. BuzzFeed, whose content generates 7 billion views each month, will collaborate with NBCUniversal on production and social distribution for NBCUniversal's Content Studio, the companies said on Monday. In August, BuzzFeed split itself into news and entertainment divisions amid media companies' struggle for balance between covering news and politics, and lighter fare like social...

Pakistan Blocks India Today Website For Insulting Army Chief

15Sep By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

Pakistan Blocks India Today Website For Insulting Army Chief

Pakistan has blocked India Today websites in the country for publishing a humiliating picture of its Army chief General Raheel Sharif. "The site you are trying to access contains content that is prohibited for viewership from within Pakistan. This website cannot be reached," reads the page of India Today websites. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), which is authorised to block offensive material on the internet, could not be reached for confirmation on account of Eid holidays. But it appears that PTA has been directed by the concerned authorities to block the India Today websites in Pakistan after the Lahore High Court (LHC) directed a petitioner to take up this matter with the federal government. Earlier this month, the court had disposed of the petition seeking a...

Facebook CEO Says Group Will Not Become a Media Company

30Aug By reutersNo Comments

News

Facebook CEO Says Group Will Not Become a Media Company

Facebook will not become a media company, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, telling students the firm would remain a technology platform. An increasing number of users are turning to social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to find their news, but Zuckerberg said his firm had no ambitions to become a content provider. "No, we are a tech company, not a media company," said Zuckerberg, after a young Italian asked him whether Facebook intended to become a news editor. While acknowledging the role Facebook has in supplying users with news through their connections and stressing the advantages of obtaining information from different parts of the world, Zuckerberg said Facebook was "a technology company, we build the tools, we do not produce any content". ...

Bloomberg Acquires Barclays Risk Analytics

25Aug By AnkitaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Bloomberg Acquires Barclays Risk Analytics

US-based Bloomberg today completed acquisition of Barclays Risk Analytics and Index Solutions Ltd for an undisclosed sum. The transaction includes the widely-used Barclays fixed income benchmark indices, Barclays Risk Analytics strategy indices, and the intellectual property of the POINT portfolio analytics solution, Bloomberg said in a statement. The benchmark indices will be co-branded Bloomberg Barclays Indices for an initial period of five years. Bloomberg will also act as the calculation agent for the Barclays quantitative investment strategy index business and Barclays strategy indices. The acquisition enables Bloomberg to incorporate sophisticated models and analytics from POINT into Bloomberg PORT and augment these with data, news, alerts, mobile capabilities and Bloomb...

Dailyhunt Invested 15 Crores in OneIndia

18Jul By AnkitaNo Comments

FUNDING

Dailyhunt Invested 15 Crores in OneIndia

Dailyhunt, an app for news and e-book invested Rs 15 crore in the local news language portal OneIndia also known as Greynium Information Technologies, owned by Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh. The funding from DailyHunt seen as a revenues sources for advertisement spend on digital with increasing smartphone users. Dailyhunt and Oneindia already have a content partnership. Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh were the brains behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi's digital strategy during the 2014 elections and the investment will help Dailyhunt expand its partnership with OneIndia, which is owned by Greynium Information Technologies. Founded in January 2006, OneIndia websites includes Cricket, FilmiBeat and CareerIndia sections had 35 million unique visitors and 500-million page views a month. ...

4Jul By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

CHINA

China Bans Online Media From Publishing Reports

China has banned online media from publishing unverified content, especially from the social media, after the country's internet regulator punished some major websites that fabricated stories this year. China has banned online media from publishing unverified contents, specially from the social media. Online media basing news reports on contents made on social media must verify them before publication, China's Internet regulator said yesterday. News websites must accredit these sources, and they are banned from fabricating stories or distorting facts, according to a notice issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The CAC has punished some major websites which have fabricated stories this year, including sina.com, ifeng. com,...