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Mar 18, 2005

Union leaders say they’ll fight massive layoffs at the BBC, Edinburgh's Scotsman reported. The BBC is expected to announce a second wave of staff cutbacks on Monday, mostly in news and other program jobs. The first round made public last week affects 1,730 jobs — 980 layoffs and 750 jobs outsourced, mostly in finance, human resources and marketing, said the media workers’ union BECTU. The Culture Minister earlier recommended keeping the BBC's tax on TV sets, but pressed for efficiency in the government's Green Paper [118-page PDF] on the BBC's future.
The FCC announced changes to its low-power FM service yesterday and asked for feedback on other possible tweaks. (Release and order, both PDFs.) It also froze granting of FM translator permits for six months, following the Media Access Project's filing of a petition charging that shell companies have been acquiring and reselling the free permits, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars. (PDFs of petition, releated release.) Coverage in the Los Angeles Times.
Anti-quack crusader James Randi criticizes Diane Rehm and public TV stations for featuring Deepak Chopra, Dr. Christiane Northrup and a psychic.
MJ Bear, former head of online at NPR, has co-authored a study of media coverage of the Iraq War. It found that many media outlets have self-censored their coverage to avoid offending their audiences. (Via Romenesko.)