U.S. Journalist Held in Iranian Prison/Hugo Chávez Orders a Mapping of Media Owned by Opponents

U.S. Journalist Held in Iranian Prison
Iranian officials confirmed Tuesday that they are holding 31-year-old freelance journalist Roxana Saberi on court order, but refused to provide further details on her detainment near Tehran, the Associated Press and the French news agency AFP report.
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said Saberi was engaged in "illegal" activities because she continued working in Iran after the government revoked her press credentials in 2006, the AP said.
Saberi's father said the reporter was detained in late January for purchasing a bottle of wine, which is illegal in Iran, according to NPR, for whom Saberi has reported. Saberi's family and Iranian press freedom advocates told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) they believe the possession of wine—for which people are usually released from custody within a few days—was only a pretext for detaining the journalist.
Reza Saberi, the journalist's father, told NPR he received a call from his daughter on Feb. 10 from an unknown location, saying she was detained and would be released in a few days. He has not heard from her since.
CPJ has called Iran "the sixth-leading jailer of journalists," with more than 30 colleagues investigated or detained there in 2008.
Roxana Saberi has been living in Iran for six years, completing her Masters in Iranian studies and international relations. She has also contributed reporting to NPR, BBC and other international media outlets, NPR adds.



Hugo Chávez Orders a Mapping of Media Owned by Opponents
The president instructed governors and mayors to draw "the map of the media war," to determine which media are "owned by the oligarchs," El Universal reports. The announcement came during his weekly radio program Aló Presidente (Hello President).
According to Chávez, support for his government is between 60 and 70 percent, and if not for the private media, “who attack and lie and manipulate so much, the support for the government, for the revolution, would be much more than 80 percent," El Nacional reports.
"Every mayor, in every municipality should do an analysis. How many radio stations are there? What's the content? ... The newspapers ... The Internet, there's war there, too. It's a battle every day. I beg you that all of us put ourselves at the front of the battle," Chávez said.

• By Ingrid Bachmann/DG at 03/02/2009 - 10:29

IRAN ARREST AMERICAN JOURNALISTS/MEDIA NEWS AND WASHINGTON NEWS

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Media News - Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Europe, S.Korea ‘dominate’ global IT development

North European countries and South Korea have the fastest and most widespread telecoms and computer growth in the world, the UN's telecommunications agency said on Monday. More than one-fifth of the world's inhabitants surfed the Internet while mobile phone subscriptions exceeded the four billion mark by the end of 2008, according to the International Telecommunications Union's latest five yearly index. Although information and communications technology developed in all 154 nations surveyed between 2002 and 2007 - with the exception of 117th placed Myanmar - it was still a largely rich country phenomenon. Sweden led the index of overall ICT development followed by South Korea, which gained two places, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway. The top 20 was dominated by western Europe, North America and Asia. European growth since 2002 outstripped that of the United States, once the spearhead of Internet use. The United States fell from 11th to 17th place overall, despite having some of the cheapest services especially for broadband. The 'digital divide' between rich and poor only narrowed marginally over 2002. Fixed line, mobile and broadband services in developing countries were also costly to the point of being 'prohibitive' in many instances or largely confined to business use, according to the ITU. (AFP)
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US: Hearst dailies look to charge for some web


Hearst Corp. plans to hold back at least some content from its newspapers' free Web sites and appears to be on the verge of implementing a pay Web approach, according to a memo from a top Hearst executive. The memo to staffers is from Steven Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, which includes 16 dailies, among them the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Both the P-I and Chronicle have recently indicated they might close if severe cutbacks are not made soon. 'Exactly how much paid content to hold back from our free sites will be a judgment call made daily by our management, whose mission should be to run the best free Web sites in our markets without compromising our ability to get a fair price from consumers for the expensive, unique reporting and writing that we produce each day,' Swartz said in the memo. Swartz came on board in December, replacing George Irish, and has since indicated plans for major shifts in the company's newspaper division, including efforts to increase consolidation of resources and shared content among the Hearst dailies. Swartz's memo added that Hearst plans to add in more non-journalist's content to the sites, similar to moves being made by other daily newspapers, referring to contributions from 'prominent citizens in our communities.' (Editor and Publisher)
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Media News - Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Iran arrests American journalist ‘over wine purchase’
A US journalist has been arrested and detained in Iran, apparently after being reported to the authorities for buying a bottle of wine. Roxana Saberi, 31 - who has worked for the BBC - was taken into custody more than a month ago, according to her Iranian-born father. Her whereabouts are unknown and it is unclear whether she is still being held. An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hasan Qashqavi, Monday said Saberi had been engaged in 'illegal activities' and had continued to work after her press credentials had been withdrawn in 2006. Saberi, who had also worked for the American radio station NPR, had been in Iran for six years and was writing a book about the country. Her father, Reza, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, said he learned about his daughter's detention when she called on 10 February, about 10 days after her arrest. The family initially kept the matter quiet in the hope that she would be released but later decided to speak out. The bottle of wine appeared to be simply a pretext for her arrest, he added. While drinking alcohol is illegal under Iran's Islamic legal code, it is widely available on the black market. (The Guardian)
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Media News - Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Twitter takes Washington by storm
The halls of the US Congress are alive with the sounds of Twitter. Members of the Senate and House of Representatives - or their aides - are tapping out dozens of the micro messages a day on cellphones and computers from offices, committee meetings and even the floor of the legislature. A website, tweetcongress.org, keeps track of the representatives and senators who have taken to sending out the messages of 140 characters or less and ranks them in terms of their number of followers and messages sent. Representative John Culberson, a Republican from Texas, is one of the most tech-savvy members of the House and is believed to the first member of the 435-strong body to adopt Twitter, having started using it nearly a year ago. Culberson leads the pack in terms of messages sent -- some 2,000 or nearly four times as many as the next person on the list, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House from California whose Twitter feed mostly consists of links to press releases. Culberson said Twitter, which is used by more than six million people and is growing rapidly, and other social media tools are 'opening the door to a true revolution that will transform our government.' (AFP)

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