US holds Reuters staff near chopper crash in Iraq

On Jan. 2 American soldiers detained three Iraqis working for Reuters as they covered the aftermath of a US helicopter crash near the town of Falluja.

A Reuters driver who was working with the three said they had earlier been fired on by US troops as they filmed a checkpoint close to the site where a Kiowa observation helicopter was shot down by guerrillas.

One pilot was killed and another injured in the shootdown.

“We were fired on and we drove away at high speed,” driver Alaa Noury said. He said Reuters cameraman Salem Uraiby had been filming the checkpoint using a camera on a tripod, and had been wearing a flak jacket clearly marked with the word “press.”

Reuters was later told by the US military that the three men had been detained, but was not informed of any allegations against them.

A US army spokesman separately told a news conference in Baghdad that guerrillas posing as journalists had fired on American paratroopers guarding the crash site and four were later detained.

In August, award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was shot dead by a US soldier as he filmed in a town on the western outskirts of Baghdad. The US military said the soldier who killed him believed his camera was a grenade launcher. (Reuters)

Cameroon govt. shuts 12 independent radio and TV stations

Cameroon’s government has shut down twelve independent radio and television stations in the southwest of the country in a fresh crackdown on the media according to international media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF).

Most of the stations received orders to close down by midnight Dec. 31 on the grounds that they had not been issued with a license, Paris-based RSF said in a statement.

According to the French news agency, AFP, the communications ministry said the broadcast media sector was “too sensitive not to be controlled.”

RSF said five radio stations and two television stations were ordered closed in Bamenda, a city in the Anglophone southwest of Cameroon, close to the Nigerian frontier. Privately owned Radio Abakwa, Redemption Radio, Che Radio, Republican Television Network and the local FM relay service of the BBC were shut down.

RSF said that in Bafoussam, another city in the southwest, Batcham FM and Radio Star were told to cease operations while the university-based Tankou Radio was ordered not to “attempt to open.”

Radio Yemba in the town of Dschang and Radio Site Art in Bafang were also ordered to shut down. (IRIN)

Hired killers of journalists - a new phenomenon in Costa Rica

The Central American country of Costa Rica was recently shaken by the second murder of a journalist committed by paid killers in just over two years.

Reporter Ivannia Mora, 32, was shot on Dec. 23 in the town of Curridabat, 10 kms east of the capital, by two individuals on a motorcycle who intercepted her vehicle.

She died shortly afterwards in the Calderón Guardia hospital — the same hospital where another journalist, Parmenio Medina, died in July 2001 after he was shot by paid gunmen, according to a judicial investigation.

Just four days after Mora was killed, local authorities arrested a Roman Catholic priest and a businessman in connection with Medina’s murder.

Priest Minor de Jesús Calvo and businessman Omar Chaves have been accused of paying hired assassins to kill Medina in order to put an end to his investigative reports that revealed apparent misconduct on their part.

Mora recently left the publication Estrategia y Negocios (Strategy and Business), which belongs to Uruguayan businessman Eugenio Millot, who was arrested on Dec. 25 on suspicion that he ordered Mora’s murder.

The businessman was arrested at the Juan Santamaría airport as he prepared to board a flight to Uruguay.

Apparently Mora had a falling-out with Millot which led her to leave his magazine and help prepare the launch of Summa Internacional, which competes with Estrategia y Negocios. (IPS)

A New Form of radio marketing

Big radio companies like Clear Channel Communications and Infinity Broadcasting are equipping some stations with technology that broadcasts not just commercials but text messages that appear on car radio displays. And advertisers like First Charter Bank in Charlotte, NC, which will use the approach in a campaign beginning in late January, are signing on to see whether extra text can give their spots extra heft.

The technology — called RDS, for radio data system — is gaining as cars increasingly come ready for the technology and radio stations compete more fiercely for ad revenue against satellite radio and other media.

Radio stations have already used the radio data system to promote concerts during songs by the appropriate bands and movies during songs by bands that play on the soundtracks. (New York Times)