media

We've published several posts about the onslaught of online criticism aimed at the Western media, in particular CNN, over its coverage of violence in Tibet. Here's the latest example of CNN bashing : a song originally broadcast on the state TV channel CCTV, is now running rife on the Internet. See the video.

The contributors

Team Observers

The facade of Le Monde building in Paris. Photo taken from the metro by "Mademoiselle N"

The French daily newspaper Le Monde announced plans to lay off 130 staff, including some 90 journalists, in an economic reshuffle last week. But the news did not go down with the editorial staff, who today, for the first time in the newspaper's history, went on strike. Read more...

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Patrick Eveno

Olivier Dumons

The French site L'Observatoire des médias has released a map of the world "as seen by news editors". The countries on the interactive map change colour and expand depending on how many articles have been written about them by the chosen publication, altering the world map to represent its coverage. The creators of the innovative project, Gilles Bruno and Nicolas Kayser-Bril, agreed to create a version for the Observers site. See the whole map and read Nicolas's analysis.

News coverage on observers.france24.com.

The contributors

Nicolas Kays...

Russian tabloid Express Gazeta organized a drawing competition all across Russia to support President Valdimir Putin's successor, Dmitry Medvedev. These drawings, published three days before the presidential election, are strangely reminiscent of personality cults from the Soviet era. See the other drawings.

"Dmitry Anatolyevich is a worthy successor" by Valeriya Emelchenkova, 10, Chelyabinsk region. Medvedev is lifting weights that are labelled "housing", "children", "school", "village", "nature", and "sport".

The contributors

Team Observers

Iran's International Fajr Film Festival was hosted in Tehran last week for the 26^th time. But pictures from this year's edition of the popular festival offered an unusual view of the showbiz affair. The FARS news agency blurred out the faces of female guests, making them almost unrecognisable. Our Observer for Iran, feminist Farnaz Seifi, explains why. Read more...

UPDATE (17.30, 15 Feb. 08): Thanks to comments on this post, we have found photos posted by the Fars agency where actresses' faces are not blurred. The photos are part of a different set found at a seperate link. This would suggest that the agency has no consistent policy on whether or not their photographers can show the faces of female actresses.

Photos from the FARS news agency posted on Arash Kamangir's blog.

The contributors

Farnaz Seifi

Arash Kamangir