Media

Media Matters caught Sean Hannity on Tuesday blaming the "anti-war left" for protesting at the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. In reality, the protesters were members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka, Kansas, which claims that terrorism and other disasters are divine retribution against America for the "sin" of tolerating homosexuality.

Tired of being picked on by religious media watchdog groups, big media is fighting back with its own advocacy group. NBC Universal, Viacom and News Corp. have launched the group TV Watch to "advocate parental controls and oppose government intervention" into TV programming, the Dallas Morning News reports.

A leading state-run newspaper in China has scrapped a controversial appraisal system in which reporters would get paid more if they pleased the Communist Party's central propaganda department. The plan prompted a rebellion by the paper's reporters, one of whom posted an open letter condemning it on the Internet.

Public relations "is coming of age" in India, writes Ramesh Narayan, the founder of an advertising agency in Mumbai. Its emergence has been accompanied by some shady practices, such as press confererences where reporters receive a "press kit which contained relevant material and a gift. ... Considerable time was spent in deciding what gift should be purchased.