30 Rock is hardly a hit in Germany. The Emmy-winning comedy scored a 0.0 rating in its debut on German TV Sunday night, meaning fewer than 5,000 viewers tuned in. The digital niche channel, which is run by public broadcaster ZDF, had made 30 Rock the flagship entry in a relaunch promising more cutting-edge programing [...]
Posts Tagged ‘public broadcaster’
Rio denies China bribery claims
July 17th, 2009 |
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The Anglo-Australian mining firm, Rio Tinto, has strongly denied its staff engaged in bribery as alleged by China.
Australia has also repeated its request for a quick resolution of the case, in which one Australian and three Chinese Rio Tinto staff have been detained.
China, which detained Australian Stern Hu on 5 July, has told Australia not to interfere in the legal process.
Analysts say the allegations of spying against Rio Tinto in Shanghai risk damaging Australia-China ties.
"Rio Tinto believes that the allegations in recent media reports that employees were involved in bribery of officials at Chinese steel mills are wholly without foundation," Rio Tinto’s iron ore chief executive Sam Walsh said.
"We remain fully supportive of our detained employees, and believe that they acted at all times with integrity and in accordance with Rio Tinto’s strict and publicly stated code of ethical behaviour."
Rio added that it remained "very concerned" about its employees and said it was still shipping iron ore to China, following reports it was pulling out staff and cutting back exports.
Polite talk
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said he had pressed China "politely but firmly" to push through the case.
"When I had my conversation with Vice Minister He, I made the point that Australia understood that this was a matter before Chinese legal and potentially judicial processes," Mr Smith told public broadcaster ABC, after meeting China’s Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei during a multinational summit in Egypt.
Their meeting came a day after China told Australia not to interfere in its judicial process.
"We are firmly against anyone stirring up the case and interfering with the independent judicial authority of China. This is not in the interest of Australia," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said on Thursday.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned that China has big economic interests at stake in the case of a mining executive accused of spying.
The United States has also urged Beijing to ensure transparency and fair treatment for staff of foreign companies.
The Shanghai-based staff of the Anglo-Australian mining firm Rio Tinto are accused of stealing state secrets from Chinese steel mills.
China has widened its investigation into the industry’s workings by investigating executives at Chinese state-owned steel firms in recent days.
In June, Rio Tinto abandoned a $19.5bn deal with China’s state-owned Chinalco in favour of a tie-up with rival giant BHP Billiton, to the anger of some in Beijing.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Japan’s PM Aso calls August vote
July 13th, 2009 |
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Japan’s embattled Prime Minister, Taro Aso, will call a general election for 30 August, says public broadcaster NHK.
The move comes after Mr Aso’s ruling coalition suffered a crucial defeat in local elections in the capital, Tokyo.
The opposition Democratic Party (DJP) won 54 seats to 38 for Mr Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party, ending four decades of dominance in the assembly.
Mr Aso, who has approval ratings of around 20%, had been widely expected to dissolve parliament following the loss. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
I apologise for Berlusconi
I’m sorry for our prime minister’s predictable reaction to a story about G8 summit preparations, please keep the spotlight on Italy
As a member of the Italian parliament and former magistrate who ensured that many corrupt politicians and businessmen were brought to justice in the 1990s, I wish to apologise to the editor and staff of the Guardian newspaper for the utterly predictable reaction of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and our foreign minister, Franco Frattini.
The Guardian does its best to keep the public informed. In Italy this government is not accustomed to free debate, or to hearing the truth being told. While sections of the article dealing with preparations for the G8 summit may be debatable, the rest of it contains little that can be refuted.
However, there is one classification missing from the list in the article, one published by Freedom House, which puts Italy 73rd place for freedom of the press. The real problem in our country is that information is firmly in the grip of one individual, namely our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – which must be one of the worst cases of conflict of interest ever recorded in any country in the western world.
Berlusconi’s control over the media is exercised via his ownership of the largest Italian publishing house, Mondadori, as well as via the country’s six television networks: three private Mediaset channels owned by Berlusconi himself and three channels of the public broadcaster RAI which Berlusconi indirectly controls and influences, with very rare exceptions I might add, through managerial staff appointments.
His virtually total control of the media allows him to maintain a dominant position and provides an endless source of revenue that helps to consolidate his position within the institutions via a wide-ranging system of patronage. In the past, these revenues were made possible by the tacit approval of previous governments that refused to address the issue of obvious conflicts of interest. Currently Berlusconi pays the Italian government a mere 1% of turnover in return for the television broadcasting frequencies conceded to him and now used for Mediaset transmissions. Since the centre-right coalition government came to power, a number of major parastatal companies have diverted their advertising expenditure from the RAI public television networks to the private networks belonging to the prime minister.
In addition to the media issue, there is now also another, namely the scourge of the “unconstitutional” government reforms. The first of these was a law known as the Alfano bill, which was ordered by Silvio Berlusconi himself as his first act after coming to power, which prohibits the prosecution of himself and the incumbents in three other senior government posts.
The provisions of this law mean Berlusconi did not have to appear in a trial in which he was facing charges of bribing a witness. David Mills, his lawyer and former husband of Blair government minister Tessa Jowell, has been sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment for accepting a bribe. On 6 October, the constitutional court is due to issue a ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano bill and, should the court rule that it is indeed unconstitutional, then Berlusconi will be obliged to stand trial for allegedly bribing Mills.
I would like to conclude by appealing to the Guardian and the other foreign press not to allow the spotlight to move away from Italy and to continue to perform the same vitally important task that they have always performed in the past, namely the task of informing the public, a role that most of our media have abdicated from because they are no longer being allowed to do their job.