Ban on foreign films in Iran

In an effort to wipe out "corrupt Western culture," Iran is banning foreign films. This is a move to reverse the easing of cultural restrictions which was initiated by the previous president, Mohammad Khatami. People do still have satellite antennas, though, The Guardian reports:

"Under President Khatami, Iran's 70 million citizens, more than half of whom are under 30, enjoyed growing social and political freedoms and were exposed to western popular culture through satellite television. The dishes are officially banned but tolerated by authorities. Many residents in Tehran hide them under tarpaulins or disguise them as air-conditioning units."

There seems to be big disjunction between what the government wants and what the society tolerates. Bringing back strict censorship is meant to control this disjunction, but will probably make it stronger.

BBC Arabic language TV service

The BBC has announced that it is launching an Arabic-language TV station, which will broadcast 12 hours a day. They have received a grant from the Foreign Office to cover the cost, but they will also be shutting down the language services in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai. While Nigel Chapman, director of the BBC World Services, declares the success of the outgoing programs ("It is acknowledged that their presence has contributed to the building of freedoms now enjoyed by their citizens. We believe this will be a lasting legacy.") and expects a similar success for this large new venture, not everyone agrees. The Bectu broadcasting union warns, "The decision will create a perception abroad that the BBC World Service is working to a government agenda." It will also probably compete with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, which is itself planning to launch a global English-language service.

Notes on concentration of ownership

This doesn't necessarily happen all the time, but it's an interesting little tidbit: identical editorials appearing in newspapers around the country on the same day. All of the papers involved are owned by Freedom Communications, Inc., although they go to different lengths to disguise this fact in their disclosures. This is not the first venture that Freedom Communications has made into what it calls "joint content." But syndicated cooking and advice columns are one thing, and control of the editorial page is in a different category.

How to lose friends and influence

The New York Times is not disclosing how many subscribers they have attracted for their new pay-for-op-eds plan. But the first month of experience shows that the paper is losing influence in terms of presence in other media. Have a look at the chart showing mentions of NYT op-ed writers on blogs from early September to early October. It shows an across-the-board decline in citations, regardless of which part of the public the columnist appeals to. This was probably easy to predict, but it is bound to be especially damaging to the "newspaper of record" which has long been proud of its ability to set the news agenda for other papers around the country.