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MOSCOW, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Foreign ownership of Russian media outlets will be limited to 20 percent, in a bill passed by Russia's Parliament and supported by the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It targets publications critical of Putin and lengthens the reach of the government's control over the media in Russia. Foreign ownership in radio and television is restricted to 50 percent, but there had been no limits to print media ownership until now.

Russia's leading business newspaper, Vedomosti, is owned in part by Britain's Financial Times and the U.S.' Wall Street Journal, and would be subject to the proposed new rules as would magazines owned by Disney, Forbes and Conde Nast. The bill was passed in Parliament Tuesday by a 434-1 vote, legislators charging the West was using media to attack the Russian government.

"The cold war, namely the information war, which is being unleashed against the Russian Federation, requires us to apply its rules," said the bill's sponsor, Vadim Dengin.

Vedomosti and Forbes Russia have supplied Russia with some of the most critical coverage of the government. Both were successfully sued by Igor Sechin, head of the Russian oil company and a close friend of Putin's, after Forbes Russia named him Russia's highest-paid executive, at $50 million per year, and Vedomosti suggested he held excessive power over government decisions.

"Foreign ownership was the only thing that protected some Russian media outlets' editorial integrity," said Leonid Bershidsky, first editor of Vedomosti and the first publisher of Forbes Russia. "If it's not allowed, that last bit of protection is gone."

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Russian legislation aims to control media

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

24-Sep-2014

Contact: Jacqui Bealing j.a.bealing@sussex.ac.uk 44-127-367-8888 University of Sussex

Simultaneously using mobile phones, laptops and other media devices could be changing the structure of our brains, according to new University of Sussex research.

A study published today (24 September) reveals that people who frequently use several media devices at the same time have lower grey-matter density in one particular region of the brain compared to those who use just one device occasionally.

The research supports earlier studies showing connections between high media-multitasking activity and poor attention in the face of distractions, along with emotional problems such as depression and anxiety.

But neuroscientists Kep kee Loh and Dr Ryota Kanai point out that their study reveals a link rather than causality and that a long-term study needs to be carried out to understand whether high concurrent media usage leads to changes in the brain structure, or whether those with less-dense grey matter are more attracted to media multitasking.

The researchers at the University of Sussex's Sackler Centre for Consciousness used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at the brain structures of 75 adults, who had all answered a questionnaire regarding their use and consumption of media devices, including mobile phones and computers, as well as television and print media.

They found that, independent of individual personality traits, people who used a higher number of media devices concurrently also had smaller grey matter density in the part of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the region notably responsible for cognitive and emotional control functions.

Kep kee Loh says: "Media multitasking is becoming more prevalent in our lives today and there is increasing concern about its impacts on our cognition and social-emotional well-being. Our study was the first to reveal links between media multitasking and brain structure."

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Brain scans reveal 'gray matter' differences in media multitaskers

By AYA BATRAWY Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - As the Islamic State group battles across Syria and Iraq, pushing back larger armies and ruling over entire cities, it is also waging an increasingly sophisticated media campaign that has rallied disenfranchised youth and outpaced the sluggish efforts of Arab governments to stem its appeal.

Long gone are the days when militant leaders like Osama bin Laden smuggled grainy videos to Al-Jazeera. Nowadays Islamic State backers use Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms to entice recruits with professionally made videos showing fighters waging holy war and building an Islamic utopia.

The extremist group's opponents say it is dragging the region back into the Middle Ages with its grisly beheadings and massacres, but its tech-savvy media strategy has exposed the ways in which Arab governments and mainstream religious authorities seem to be living in the past.

Most Arab governments see social media as a threat to their stability and have largely failed to harness its power, experts say. Instead, they have tried to monitor and censor the Internet while churning out stale public statements and state-approved sermons on stuffy government-run media.

Last week, Saudi Arabia's top council of religious scholars issued a lengthy Arabic statement via the state-run news agency denouncing terrorism and calling on citizens to back efforts to fight extremist groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida. Leading Sunni Muslim authorities in Egypt have issued similar government-backed statements.

Compare that to the Islamic State group. Its Furqan media arm produces slick videos complete with interviews, graphics and jihadist hymns echoing in the background, with Arabic and English subtitles. It promotes the videos and its glossy monthly magazines on an array of social media, reaching out to people in the Arab world and beyond. Islamic State fighters even tweet live from the battlefield, giving real-time updates and waging theological debates with online detractors.

"They definitely have an electronic army behind them," said Ray Kafity, vice president of FireEye for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. The company manufactures IT solutions for defending against cyber threats.

The Islamic State boasts thousands of foreign fighters, some of whom were first drawn to it in the privacy and security of cyberspace. It also uses social media for fundraising.

Fadi Salem, a Dubai-based researcher on Internet governance in the Arab World, said the immediate response of Middle Eastern governments to the power of social media has been to "control, block and censor as much as possible."

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Arab states lag in media war against extremists - NBC40.net

Okay, I have to tackle this one.

The media, which are not exactly immune to crazed obsessions, now stand accused of going off half-cocked on the NFL.

That is, theres a backlash to the backlash against the league, an argument that the press has taken some cases of domestic violence and abuse and practically equated the National Football League with the evildoers of ISIS.

To wit: On the NFL, the media has lost its collective mind.

The argument comes from National Review Editor Rich Lowry, writing in Politico. And while I admire Lowrys writing even when I disagree, on this one he is missing some crucial points.

Yes, the media do everything to excess, and the video of Ray Rice punching his fianc was aired so many times that it became mind-numbing (to the point that the networks finally agreed to cut way back). As Lowry says: The coverage of the Rice elevator video managed to combine moralistic preening with voyeuristic pandering. Everyone on TV professed to be so outraged by domestic violence that they had to show a clip of a woman getting viciously punched, over and over again.

And yes, cable news can cover such emotional stories in an endless loop. Lowry even likens the NFL coverage to the missing Malaysian plane.

But this is no longer a mere news story. Its a cultural moment. We are actually engaging in that much-overworked phrase, a national conversation.

Roger Goodells initial wrist-slap for Rice quickly gave way to a focus on other cases. The furor forced the Carolina Panthers to bench Greg Hardy at the last minute after his conviction for throwing his ex-girlfriend in a bathtub, choking her and threatening to kill her. The uproar forced the Minnesota Vikings to sideline Adrian Peterson at the last minute after his conviction for child abuse in the whipping of his 4-year-old son. And if all this wasnt bad enough, Jonathan Dwyer of the Arizona Cardinals was arrested Wednesday on assault allegations, with police saying he head-butted his wife and broke her nose after she refused him sex, and punched her in the face the next day. Lovely.

Im glad the press is going nuts over this. Of course the problem is not limited to professional sports, but men like Rice, with their $10-million-a-year salaries, are cast as community icons. This is not a debate that should be limited to ESPN and the sports pages, as Lowry suggests. Its been ghettoized there for too long. This is front-page, top-of-the-newscast stuff.

Follow this link:
Media out of control on NFL? Nope, it's about time

CTC Media Inc. (CTCM), which runs Russias sixth-biggest television station, fell in New York yesterday on concern the government will limit foreign ownership in media companies.

CTC, whose largest shareholder is Stockholm-based Modern Times Group AB (MTGB), dropped 3.1 percent to $9.20, the biggest retreat in four weeks, as Russian legislators began work on a law aimed at capping foreigners stakes in print, radio and TV media. CTC, the countrys only publicly-traded TV broadcaster, has lost 34 percent this year on the Nasdaq Stock Market, compared with an 18 percent drop in the Bloomberg index of the most-traded Russian stocks in the U.S.

The legislation seeks to cap foreign media ownership at 20 percent, from the current 50 percent, forcing international shareholders to lower their stakes by early 2017 or shut down their companies. The move forms part of a series of measures that President Vladimir Putins government has taken since the U.S. and Europe began imposing sanctions on Russia for its involvement in the Ukraine conflict. Other steps have included the barring of some imports, tighter control over the Internet and an appeal to the nations companies to delist shares from overseas bourses.

This draft law confirms yet again that the country is on a path to isolating itself, Kirill Yankovsky, director of equity sales at Otkritie Capital, said by phone from London yesterday. It wants to reduce foreign investors role and influence and is now focusing on the media sector. Some investors are asking now whether Internet companies, the markets darlings, are at risk of becoming the next target.

The average 12-month price estimate on CTCs stock plunged to $10.84 on Aug. 20, the lowest level since 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Shares surged 79 percent last year.

CTC, which gets more than 96 percent of its revenue from ad sales, will post its first annual sales decline since at least 2010, according to the mean of 11 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg, as economic growth in the country slows. The companys billionaire shareholder Yury Kovalchuk was included on a U.S. sanctions list on March 20.

We are analyzing this draft law and monitoring its progress carefully, Yuliana Slashcheva, who took over CTC Media as Moscow-based chief executive officer in August last year, wrote in an e-mail yesterday. Given the early stage in the legislative process, we are not commenting on the potential timelines or outcomes.

Russias TV ad market grew 4 percent in January through June to about 79 billion rubles ($2.1 billion), according to data from the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia. The TV ad market expanded 9 percent in 2012 and 2013, the data show.

Gross domestic product will grow 0.5 percent this year, the slowest since a 2009 contraction, the Economy Ministry predicts, while the average of 38 economist forecasts compiled by Bloomberg indicates an expansion of just 0.25 percent.

Since June, the ruble has been the worlds worst-performing currency, driving up the price of imports and helping push annual inflation to 7.6 percent last month. A weaker ruble cuts CTC Medias dollar-denominated revenue, while higher inflation saps purchasing power.

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CTC Media Slumps on Plan to Cap Foreign Media Ownership