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Helen Nickisson/Stuff

Studio-5 at Springlands School in Blenheim is where a small media team are producing their own audiovisual content, promoting activities within the school. Coco Sorrell (camera), left, and Penny Soper (floor manager) go through their show.

Road control, playground patrols, the school's sausage sizzle and Subway lunches, the media team at Springlands School arent scared to go after the big stories.

And it all happens from Studio-5, also known as Room 5, under the watchful eye of teacher Glen Mackie.

The Studio-5 team was excited to be visited by Stuff and Marlborough Express visual journalist Brya Ingram last week, who had herself been taught by Mackie when attending Bohally Intermediate some years ago.

Ingram shared her experiences working on the newspaper, and told the children how her journey with photography, and more recently videography, had begun with taking photos for her school.

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Helen Nickisson/Stuff

Stuff/Marlborough Express visual journalist Brya Ingram chats to the media team at Springlands School about her journey into photography and videography.

This had transitioned after school to working part-time at The Marlborough Express, while giving the remainder of her time to growing her own photography business.

It's awesome that the kids are being given this opportunity at their age, and I take my hat off to Glen Mackie for making this happen for them, Ingram said.

She shared with the children how her work differed from what they were doing, and said she couldnt wait to see how they developed and what they were able to produce.

Helen Nickisson/Stuff

Teacher Glen Mackie watches over the team, from left, Tanith Bester (music and titles), Alice Brown (audio mixing) and Maddie Dasler (vision mixing) as they record their show.

Mackie started with the current group at the beginning of this year, and said that he wanted to push their interest to see what they could obtain from it, and take the opportunity to light their fire.

Brya is a great example to them of how it can go as far as you want to take it, he said.

Mackie was self-taught, and said his knowledge came from his own passion for media, photography, video, and music.

I wanted to inspire in the children that this is so accessible to them now, and if they want to do these sorts of things, it comes down to their own passions, he said.

The children filmed their own video footage, did interviews, and pieced it all together in the studio. They used a range of different devices, from a small action camera to a large broadcast camera.

The partitioned Studio-5 control room was where they did all their planning and rehearsals, and was also the quiet space for the control team, while the set was out in the classroom itself.

Helen Nickisson/Stuff

On set are, from left, Tana Barron (teleprompter), Coco Sorrell (camera), Penny Soper (floor manager) and Tuscany Johnson (host/presenter).

They were currently filming individual segments about road control, playground patrols, the school's sausage sizzle, and Subway lunches. These were used to promote leadership opportunities within the school.

Their productions are shared first and foremost with the parents from the class, because it's all about what Room 5 are up to, but then also we'll put it on the school notices website for the school, Mackie said.

They also covered school events, assembly items, and footage for learning for other classes. They'll do pretty much anything they can get their teeth into, Mackie said.

Helen Nickisson/Stuff

The team work at producing their show. The segment being recorded was about road control, with previously recorded footage added.

The little media team said their 'job' gave them a sense of importance. I feel like a 'step up' from the others in the class, because when they're busy with other stuff, we're in here doing this, said Penny Soper. I really enjoy it. It's a big opportunity.

I would like to capture some footage of some really important stuff to Marlborough, she said.

Documentaries and films were on their radar, and their teacher was doing all he could to give wings to their vision.

They're ready to really get their wheels on and go for it, he said.

Helen Nickisson/Stuff

Being part of the Studio-5 media team gives the crew a sense of importance.

Read the original here:
The future of media building their skills in Room 5 - Stuff.co.nz

The government is exaggerating the narrative of fake news, says director of The Hindu Group in an interview to Stephen Sackur for BBCs HARDTalk segment.

Under the guise of regulating the social media intermediaries, the Narendra Modi government is trying to control the digital media which has been more defiant than the mainstream media, N. Ram, director, The Hindu Group, has said in an interview to Stephen Sackur for BBCs HARDTalk segment.

He was speaking on the topic Is freedom of expression under threat in the worlds biggest democracy.

Mr. Ram said that the new Information Technology (IT) rules brought out by the government were problematic. Former Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad while announcing the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 said they were soft-touch oversight mechanisms to deal with issues such as persistent spread of fake news.

Mr. Ram said that the government was exaggerating the narrative of fake news. India has not been bombarded by fake news, he said. There may be instances of disinformation but there were already laws to tackle that, he added.

Under the guise of regulating the social media intermediaries, the government is trying to control the digital media who are far more defiant than the mainstream media, Mr. Ram added. He said that the rules were vague on what constituted digital media. Most of the newspapers had digital presence where a lot of the print material was replicated, so the question was would there be two sets of rules for the same content.

He concurred with Mr. Sackurs assessment that many of the media houses appeared more than willing to toe the government line. I couldnt agree more. This is a familiar criticism, he said.

To a question by Mr. Sackur on Indian medias coverage of the COVID-19, Mr. Ram conceded that the pandemic had exposed the limits of Indian journalism. More than 500 journalists have died in the line of duty. Many of them died because they did not believe the numbers put up by the government and went to crematoriums to count the bodies themselves, Mr. Ram said. Though, he rued that Indian journalism might not have the wherewithal or the data skills required to challenge the death toll. He also appreciated The New York Times for their piece on the under-reporting of the death toll by the government. We havent done a good enough job, he said.

He was also asked questions on hounding Rana Ayyub who contributed for a few Western publications. Applauding Ms. Ayyubs courage for fearlessly expressing her opinion Mr. Ram said not everyone was like her. He added that though what was happening to Ms. Ayyub was not completely representative of the situation on ground. The governments policy has had a chilling effect. A lot of journalists have held back, self-restrained and self-censored for various reasons, he added.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who Mr. Sackur pointed out enjoyed the popular mandate, Mr. Ram said, There are many examples of elected leaders turning autocratic and authoritarian around the world. This was not the first time, Mr. Ram said, that India had had an autocratic leader pointing at the Emergency imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. But the nature of this autocracy was very different, and all agencies available at the governments disposal, Mr. Ram said, were utilised to silence dissent. He particularly pointed out the example of English news channel NDTV against whom investigations were going on by the Enforcement Directorate.

Read the original here:
Modi govt. trying to control digital media, which is more defiant than mainstream media: N. Ram - The Hindu

This could have a significant impact on Twitter usage, and the way you build Twitter audiences moving forward.

Among its various experiments and tests, which are part of its accelerated development process after years of relative stagnation, Twitter is working on a new optionwhich would enable users to share their tweets with selected audiences, as opposed to all of their followers with every tweet. The idea is that this would help users get more out of their Twitter experience, and avoid them having to create separate accounts for different audiences and interests.

Twitter first revealed that it was working on the functionality at its Analyst Day briefingback in February, where it previewed a groups-like option called 'Communities', which would enable Twitter users to share their tweets within selected sub-groups of users, as opposed to sharing with everybody.

Now, Twitter has shared some new previews of exactly how the option could work.

One of the new processes Twitter is testing would be a variable audience control toggle within the tweet composer, which would also include a note on relevant tweets, signifying who can see them.

As you can see here, tweets shared with a specific audience, like 'Trusted Friends', would have a special marker, while users would also be able to have their timeline display tweets from their chosen lists first.

This specific option is very similar to Instagram's 'Close Friends' option for Stories (even down to the color selection),which enables users to maintain more enclosed conversations with selected users, as opposed to sharing everything with all of their followers.

Which could be a big bonus. There's been no shortage of controversies caused by re-surfaced tweets from times past, but then again, many of these discussions, you would think, are now being conducted in private DMs, so the practical value, for this specific application, may not be significant.

Another option could be something Twitter's calling 'Facets', which would enable users to create different personas under a single profile.

That would mean that users would be able to post in different topic areas, without having to share all of their thoughts on all of their interests on one, while as you can see in the second screenshot,followers would also have the option to follow different elements of your profile, based on their interests (or they could follow all of your tweets as normal).

So if you want to tweet about, say, 'digital marketing' and 'NFL', you could create two separate elements of your profile to share tweets about each topic with - so rather than boring your NFL fan connections with your work tweets, or creating a separate fan account in addition to your main profile, you could maintain all of your discussions and engagement in one, and keep them isolated from each other.

Which would make it easier - but would it help Twitter to boost or improve engagement?

I mean, surely Twitter gleans some usage reporting benefit from users having multiple active accounts. If everyone with a secondary profile (note: this is a lot of people) only needed one, wouldn't that reduce Twitter's overall user count?

And given that Twitter's looking to increase its active user number by 123 million more userswithin the next three years, that seems like it may not be the best way forward, at least from this perspective.

In a practical sense, for users, there is some logic to enabling people to conduct more, different types of discussion in the app, and leaning into common usage behaviors - but I'm not entirely convinced that this will be hugely beneficial. Instead, it could just end up fragmenting the Twitter experience, and making it more complex, something that Twitter has been working hard to avoid for years.

But if Twitter does push ahead with it, it could change the way you use your Twitter profile, and how you build specific, targeted audiences in the app. A brand, for example, could create a separate 'Help' feed, a 'Customer Service' handle within their main profile, and another stream for 'Sales and Specials' to limit ad intrusion in regular user feeds.

There's a range of options to consider, and while it would take some time and testing to see how this actually works, and how users align with it, it could spark a significant shift in user behavior.

Or, it might prove too problematic. We'll have to wait and see where Twitter goes with it.

Twitter has specifically noted that it's not building these mock-ups as yet.

Read this article:
Twitter is Testing New Audience Controls on Tweets, Making it Easier to Engage Around Various Topics - Social Media Today

The Man Who Hated Women by Amy Sohn // Macmillan

In 1873, Congress passed a law outlawing the distribution, sale, mailing and possession of "obscene" materials including contraception.

The Comstock Act, as it became known, was named after Anthony Comstock, an anti-vice crusader who later became a special agent to the U.S. Post Office, giving him the power to enforce the law. In her new book, The Man Who Hated Women, author Amy Sohn writes about Comstock as well as eight women charged with violating the Comstock Act.

While working for the post office, Sohn says, Comstock "decoyed people" by using the mail to solicit obscenity and contraception.

"[Comstock] was given that [post office] title so that he could have the power to inspect the mail and over time it was expanded to be able to come into people's houses and seize items," she says. "It was a very broad, broad definition of what someone affiliated with the post office could do with regards to individual civil liberties."

Over time, the scope of the Comstock law expanded: "Its heart was in the mail, but ... it became much broader than that," Sohn says. "Even oral information, which reasonable people believed was constitutionally protected, turned out that it wasn't."

In 1916, feminist activist Emma Goldman was arrested in New York City just before giving a lecture on family planning. One year earlier, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger had been charged with violating the law. Goldman and Sanger are just two of the eight women profiled in Sohn's book. Others include nurses and health practitioners, spiritualists and women in the so-called free love movement.

The Comstock Act lasted until 1965 when the Supreme Court ruled it violated the right to marital privacy. "It was in Griswold v. Connecticut that married women could finally have the right to receive contraception from their doctors," Sohn says.

As for single women? They didn't get the same rights until the 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird ruling 99 years after the passage of the Comstock Act.

On the forms of birth control that were available in the 1870s

They had sponges. A very common form of birth control that many women used was vaginal douching, which were these syringes. And you could use them for health and hygienic purposes, but they would also put various substances in them, acidic substances that were said to have spermicidal qualities. Also [the rhythm method] although they did not understand the rhythm method, and so the times that they were abstaining were actually the worst possible times to abstain. And withdrawal, which was sometimes successful and sometimes not successful.

On how Comstock became obsessed what he considered "smut"

Well, he was born in a small, rural area called New Canaan, Conn. And it was the kind of town where you knew everybody and you knew everybody's business. And his parents were very religious; he was raised Congregationalist. And after the Civil War ... he moved to New York ... [and he] lived in a house with other young men called a boardinghouse. And New York at the time was dominated by what was called "sporting culture," where all of entertainment was tailored toward these young single men ... most of whom were living apart from their families for the first time. So there were billiards and boxing and pretty waiter girl saloons. And he was exposed to all of this and [was] just absolutely disgusted. He had trouble finding men of similar religious thinking. And so that was when he decided to do something about it.

But the real precipitant to his becoming an anti-smut, anti-vice activist was he had a co-worker at his dry goods store who told him that he had visited a prostitute and become diseased and corrupted. [Comstock] became convinced that the reason this guy had gone to a prostitute was because he read dirty books. So he went to the store where the books were sold and called the police. And that was the beginning of his career as a vice hunter.

On the Comstock Act and the penalties for sending contraception or information about it through the mail

They could be up to $5,000, which would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars today and either five or 10 years of hard labor. ... So these fines, when they were able to get convictions, and these sentences, absolutely ruined people's lives and didn't just cut off their ability to make a living, but frequently sent them into poverty and completely out of the business [and sometimes to prison]. ...

One of the fascinating things about Comstock and the women that he went after I focus on eight women he pursued is many of them were middle-aged and older, some as old as their late 60s. And so given what life spans were at that time, to be a 67-year-old woman facing a 10-year prison sentence, you were almost certain you were going to die in prison. And that is why some of the women he went after and was able to prosecute took their own lives.

On what the "free love" movement was like back in the late 1800s

The free love movement was this idea that there should be equality in romantic relationships. A lot of people hear free love, and they think of like, Woodstock and the summer of love. It was not about having sex with as many partners as you could. Most free lovers were monogamous. The heart of it was better equality, better division of domestic tasks, and the idea of abolishing marriage laws that two people should be able to enter into their own romantic contracts, which should not be legal. Most free lovers were opposed to abortion, except in extreme cases. ...

But what's interesting about the free lovers is they were civil libertarians, and many of them were also extremely leftist in their ideas about economics. So, for example, they felt that too many men and women were marrying for economic reasons. Women needed money, and then they would marry men that they didn't love. They wanted all relationships to be based on love and mutual respect. The most radical thing that they believed is that if a man and a woman really loved each other, they would give birth to superior children.

On how the Comstock story relates to our current reproductive issues, including challenges to Roe v. Wade

Certainly now that we see these [reproductive] rights already being chipped away and I'm lucky to live in a state like New York, which is trying to protect abortion access no matter what happens with Roe. But, yes, I think the biggest thing, though, is that I have a teenage daughter, and so I think about the generations into the future and what is a post-Roe landscape going to look like? And from what I understand, we're going to have, even more so than we already do today, a real two-tiered system where your access to abortion is going to rely heavily on where you happen to live. And the reason that saddens me is Roe was decided precisely to stop that from happening. And the other reason it fills me with dread is that was essentially what Anthony Comstock created, a two-tiered system, which was that even after the passage of the Comstock law, you could get what was called a "medical exemption" or a "therapeutic exemption" if you were wealthy and you could find your way to having abortions. But women who didn't have that kind of access couldn't.

Sam Briger and Kayla Lattimore produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.

Read the original here:
How An Anti-Vice Crusader Sabotaged The Early Birth Control Movement | NPR - Houston Public Media

The month-long Euro Cup final ends Sunday, or wee hours of Monday Nepal time. Copa America final sees footballing giants Brazil and Argentina early Sunday morning Nepal time.

These have been opportunities for betting for Nepali gamblers although it is considered illegal by the Nepali law.

On Wednesday, Lalitpur Metropolitan Police Range busted a football betting network, run by five men.

According to Senior Superintendent Kiran Bajracharya, chief of Lalitpur Metropolitan Police Range, they used to run betting from social media platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook.

They used to collect cash from digital platforms like e-sewa and Khalti or the amount was directly deposited to a bank account, Bajracharya told the Post.

With tournaments like the Euro Cup and Copa America going on, police have increased vigilance in restaurants and clubs where most of such events take place, Bajracharya said.

On Monday, Metropolitan Crime Division had arrested eight individuals, including three Indian nationals, from different parts of Kathmandu for organising illegal online betting over the ongoing Euro Cup 2020.

Police also seized over Rs3.4 million from them.

We acted on a tip-off about ongoing illegal betting in Nepal and India and raided various places and arrested the persons, said Senior Superintendent Chandra Kuber Thakur, chief of Metropolitan Crime Division.

Section 125 of the National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 prohibits gambling and betting in Nepal.

Every year, Nepal Police busts several betting rackets, however, they are only able to arrest agents as the main people involved in operating such illegal rackets are mostly abroad.

SSP Thakur and Bajracharya also agree with the point.

According to them, since betting is now running online, it has become difficult to track people involved in betting.

Most of the arrests are made after police are tipped-off mostly by those people who themselves have lost the money in betting, said Thakur.

Thakur is aware that betting through websites have also thrived in Nepal. However, police are helpless as such activities are difficult to monitor.

I have heard about betting through websites, but as such websites are not operated from Nepal. So, there is nothing we can do, said SSP Thakur.

Many Nepalis, especially youngsters, are using websites like 1XBet and Stake for sports betting.

According to R, who wished to be identified by only his initial letter, betting on websites is easy, so many of his friends including him have been betting in games for fun.

You can bet even Rs 20 in the game, said R.

According to him, they have to first create a profile in such websites after which they top up to Nepali agent number through Khalti which later sends the amount to profiles in betting websites.

The reward depends upon the risk you take, if you guess the winner you get less profit but if you guess goals by player or goal difference, you could get double or even triple the amount you bet, said R. If you win the bet, then you can transfer the money to an agent account who will later send the amount to your account.

According to Senior Superintendent Ashok Singh, chief of Kathmandu Metropolitan Police Range, they have found many instances where people were cheated by bet organisers as many people involved in such illegal betting business are out of the country.

SSP Singh has urged the general public to file a complaint in Nepal Police as soon as they hear about the ongoing illegal betting.

Visit link:
Authorities struggle to control illegal sports betting - The Kathmandu Post