Media Culpa

A popular pastime for Swedish bloggers is to look for alleged bias and factual errors in traditional media. Conspiracy theories are abundant. Today I found a new media watchdog (via Chadie) called Mediakoll. The site’s RSS feed is not posted on the site, but this is the address: http://mediakoll.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Congrats to Steve Rubel and six other bloggers for making it to Media Magazine’s top 100 list (pdf) of people to know in media (in the US). See Steve, I was right when I named you the most influential PR blogger in May last year 😉

ABC’s TV drama “Boston Legal” debuts in Sweden next Monday on TV3. Apparently the show’s script is too controversial for the big media moguls on the other side of the pond. In a recent episode, the show debates the issue of media bias but it doesn’t name any names, especially not Fox News Channel because ABC asked the executive producer and writer David E. Kelley to remove references to Fox. In the original script a school principal uses FOXBlocker to block Fox on televisions in his school. Instead, there is criticism of TV news in general and one unidentified network in particular. The network also refused to run an ad for the film Outfoxed.

Full story in Miami Herald (registration required). Link via the Media Drop.

Another European top politician starts blogging. Il Blog del Presidente is the name of former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi’s new blog. Or is it a blog? It lacks many of the features we expect to find in a blog. And since he is the former President, shouldn’t that be “Il Blog del Precedente Presidente“? (Precedente is Italian for previous or former).

[Link via CorporateBlogging]

Also, I noticed that the EUobserver now has RSS feeds.

There has been an intense debate in Sweden the last few days regarding a dawn raid against an internet service provider. The ISP had four servers in their office which allegedly had hundreds of thousands of illegal files available for downloading. Well, I have another question regarding measures to stop illegal file sharing, namely copy protection. Can a CD with copy control fail to play correctly in some CD players? I have experienced that my CD player cannot play the first track of some of my new albums, for example R.Kelly’s “Happy People” and Christian Walz’ “Paint By Numbers”. I even went back to the store with Walz’ record and got a new copy – same problem with that one. And they work ok when I play them on my car stereo, so something on these CDs is making my CD player go nuts.

Twice can be a coincidence but three times is a pattern. So does this have something to do with copy control? I read somewhere that some techniques include adding information in the beginning of the CD that ordinary CD players ignore but makes it able to control how it is being used on a computer. Can this cause my player to get stuck? I don’t know.

Both examples of albums above are from the BMG label so I went to their site http://www.bmgcopycontrol.com to seek answers but scored zilch. I even wrote them an email asking for advice, but no reply. So now I’m asking the blogosphere. Any advice? To me this seems like I’ve been sold flawed goods.

Footnote: My CD player is a Denon DCM-360, which should have quality enough to play any CDs.

March 15 is the last day to vote for Sweden’s best blog in Internetworld’s poll. Just follow this link and cast your vote for Media Culpa or any of the other 49 nominated blogs, then click the grey button marked “Rösta” (Vote, in Swedish). Winners will be published on April 26.