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The Sun to launch Sun on Sunday

The Sun has announced that it will be launching a new Sunday edition this weekend.

"The Sun's future can now be reshaped as a unique seven-day proposition in both print and digital," stated Sun editor Dominic Mohan in an article discussing the launch. "Our readers' reaction to the announcement of a seventh-day Sun has been huge and we won't let them down."

The news comes as the paper is still recovering from the arrest on February 11 of five senior Sun journalists, who were later released without charge. The arrests provoked conflict at the Sun, as staff objected to the way the Management and Standards Committee - an independent body set up by News Corp to investigate allegations of illegal activities at News International - handed over large amounts of evidence to the police without consulting journalists.

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Hannah Vinter's picture

Hannah Vinter

Date

2012-02-20 15:40

Concerns about press freedom protections after WikiLeaks and phone-hacking

Legal experts and human rights advocates have raised questions about the state of international laws protecting journalists and their sources in the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the fallout from WikiLeaks publication of classified documents

Speaking at the UNESCO conference The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World, Jane Kirtley, director at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism, stated that she was "very nervous" about a number of cases in the United States, which she saw as laying a ground work for greater limits being placed on freedom.

Among the factors that caused her concern were the lack of a federal shield law to protect journalistic sources in the United States, and the recent seizure of the Mega Uploads domain name, despite the fact that it was outside of US jurisdiction.

Agnès Callamard, executive director of Article 19, likewise criticised the US government's reaction to the embassy cable leaks, calling some of the initial reactions reminiscent of the "McCarthy era".

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Hannah Vinter's picture

Hannah Vinter

Date

2012-02-16 19:11

What's next for The Sun?

On Saturday morning, senior journalists at The Sun, Britain's biggest-selling daily, were arrested over allegations of corrupt payments to police officers and other public officials. The journalists were released on bail without being charged, but the arrests have caused a furor in the British media, and a serious conflict at The Sun, described by Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade as a "civil war".

Time will tell how the crisis will affect News Corp in general and The Sun in particular, but Robert Andrews at paidContent has published an article suggesting that, as yet, the ethics scandal at News Corp has not impacted on The Sun's bottom line.

Andrews writes that although The Sun's circulation has declined by 15% over the past year, "last year's sales pattern merely followed that which has flowed for the last decade..."

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Hannah Vinter's picture

Hannah Vinter

Date

2012-02-14 16:06

Arrests of Sun journalists spark anger in the UK press

The arrests of five Sun journalists over alleged corrupt payments made to police and public officials have prompted angry responses from sections of the UK press and from the National Union of Journalists.

Sun deputy editor Geoff Webster, chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker, picture editor John Edwards and deputy news editor John Sturgis were arrested early on Saturday morning and later released on bail.

Trevor Kavanagh at The Sun condemned the arrests in an article today, beginning "The Sun is not a 'swamp' that needs draining". He protested that the paper's journalists are being "treated like members of an organised crime gang" who are "subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history".

Kavanagh characterises the ongoing police investigation as "out of proportion", and describes the alleged crimes of the journalists who were arrested as being nothing more than "to act as journalists have acted on all newspapers through the ages, unearthing stories that shape our lives, often obstructed by those who prefer to operate behind closed doors"

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Hannah Vinter's picture

Hannah Vinter

Date

2012-02-13 17:03

News Corp profits soar but phone hacking scandal rumbles on

The financial cost of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal may still be growing, but News Corp has seen its net profits grow by 65% between October 1 and December 31 2011 compared to the same period last year.

Yesterday News Corp published an earnings release, revealing that it made a net profit of $1.06bn in the last three months of 2011, compared profits of $624m in the same period in 2010.

Profits were driven by growth in the company's cable network programming, filmed entertainment and television divisions.

News Corp chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said in a statement that he was "particularly pleased with the success of our business strategies in spite of the uncertain economic conditions that we continue to face."

News Corp's cable division saw its operating income grow by 20% in the last three months of 2011, fuelled partly by the lower fees the company paid to broadcast NBA basketball. The corporation also benefited from profits from Fox News and growth in Latin American channels.

Profits from the company's filmed entertainment division more than doubled thanks to the success of films including "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked".

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Hannah Vinter's picture

Hannah Vinter

Date

2012-02-09 19:08

Independent regulation: the future of the press in Britain?

How can a country make sure that its press behaves responsibly? Government regulation compromises freedom of speech. Self-regulation can't always be trusted, as revelations about the unethical and illegal practices from parts of the British press, which continue to be discussed by the Leveson inquiry, prove.

Now the UK culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt and the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke are advocating a third way: a powerful independent regulatory body.

Speaking at a parliamentary Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, part of an inquiry that was launched to deal with controversy over super-injunctions, Hunt stated: "I think that it is clear that nobody wants statutory regulation of the press" and said that such regulation would be "completely the wrong direction to go".

Clarke was equally vocal in his opposition to direct government regulation of news organizations, maintaining: "no one has so far made a clear case for a new law."

But Hunt also was suspicious self-regulation from the press, noting "self-regulation is very often characterised as something which is very similar to the current system and clearly some very significant failings have emerged on that."

The third way that Hunt suggests is "industry-led independent regulation". He stated that the news industry should "come up with a structure that will have [widespread] confidence and has proper sanction-making powers." In other words, an enhanced and independent PCC.

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Hannah Vinter's picture

Hannah Vinter

Date

2012-01-17 17:14

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