INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS;J Sky B Satellite Planned for Japan
Date: 26 June 1996
The Softbank Corporation and the News Corporation said yesterday that the focus of their recently announced joint venture would be digital satellite broadcasting in Japan. Softbank's president, Masayoshi Son, said that the venture would probably be called J Sky B, the name for a 100-channel digital satellite project recently announced by the News Corporation's chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. The two plan to begin the venture within two years and will face competition from two other digital satellite services aiming at the Japanese market. Softbank and News Corporation announced a joint venture last week to buy a 20 percent stake in the TV Asahi broadcasting network for 41.75 billion yen ($387 million). (Bloomberg Business News)
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Hong Kong Is Warned By Beijing On Press
Date: 26 June 1996
By Edward A. Gargan
Edward Gargan
Long accustomed to their boisterous, muckraking press, Hong Kong's journalists and news organizations are reeling from a series of body punches delivered by a senior Beijing official over the future of press freedom here. Lu Ping, the Chinese official charged with setting up Hong Kong's new government after China retakes the territory from Britain on July 1, 1997, has issued a procession of comments starkly warning the crown colony's press that there will be limits on what can be published here under Chinese rule.
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OVER COFFEE WITH: David and Peter Turnley;Double Exposures in Parallel Lives: The Other Side of the Lens
Date: 26 June 1996
By Frank J. Prial
Frank Prial
IT was 1988 during the intifada, or uprising, in the Israeli-occupied territories. Tempers were short. The police officer who stuck his head into David Turnley's car was in no mood for pleasantries. They were in a West Bank town in what the Israelis called a no-go area, banned to the news media. Mr. Turnley, a photographer for The Detroit Free Press who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize two years later, was where he wasn't supposed to be, and he knew it.
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POLITICS: THE POLLS;Clinton Lead Is Unaffected by Troubles
Date: 26 June 1996
By Richard L. Berke
Richard Berke
Despite the almost daily discussion of ethics questions involving the White House, President Clinton's support is virtually unchanged from nearly three weeks ago, the latest New York Times Poll shows. The poll found that Americans were not especially troubled by the latest accounts of Whitewater-related issues. And more than half of those surveyed said they were reserving judgment on the issue of the White House's obtaining Federal Bureau of Investigation files for former officials, including prominent Republicans.
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At the Modern, the 20th Century in All Its Shades of Gray
Date: 26 June 1996
By Luc Sante
Luc Sante
This year, The New York Times is celebrating two centennials at once: that of its purchase by Adolph S. Ochs, whose descendants remain at the helm, and that of the first publication of photographs in its pages. This is, of course, more than a coincidence, since Ochs was nothing if not forward-looking, pressing for innovation right up until his death in 1935, at the age of 77. It was on his initiative two months earlier that The Times had inaugurated its wirephoto service, transmitting photographs over ordinary telephone lines, a direct ancestor of today's fax technology. It should be pointed out that photography was gradual in establishing itself as a fixture of The Times (as was the case with all newspapers). The pictures published in 1896 appeared in the paper's magazine section; it was not until 1900 that the first photograph was reproduced in the broadsheet, and then as part of an advertisement. For that matter, photographs did not play a critical role in the news pages until the 1950's, and as late as the early 70's, the occasional front page had no pictures at all. Even so, the Times archives hold five or six million photographs. As Peter Galassi and Susan Kismaric, curators of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, note in their preface to the catalogue accompanying for the museum's exhibition of photographs from The Times's archives, it would take one person, working at a rate of 10 seconds per picture, seven years to review these holdings.
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Gunmen Slay Irish Reporter Who Wrote on Gangs
Date: 27 June 1996
By James F. Clarity
James Clarity
Veronica Guerin, 33, one of Ireland's most prominent investigative reporters, was shot dead this afternoon after two men intercepted her car on a road in a Dublin suburb. Ms. Guerin, who specialized in reporting on criminal gangs, was killed on a main road near the town of Clondalkin, the police said.
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Mrs. Clinton Imagines in Good Company
Date: 27 June 1996
To the Editor: Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her imagined conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt, participates in a distinguished tradition unrecognized by the news media. Here is how the Italian poet and scholar Petrarch, speaking of literature, characterized entering such a dialogue:
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TV Notes;News Chief Renewed
Date: 26 June 1996
By Lawrie Mifflin
Lawrie Mifflin
Happy with NBC News's output under Andrew Lack's leadership as president of the division, NBC has torn up his contract and given Mr. Lack a new one, good through the year 2002. Robert C. Wright, NBC's president and chief executive officer, praised Mr. Lack for initiating "tremendous business growth for NBC News around the globe." He cited the expansion of NBC Superchannel throughout Europe; the opening of new NBC News bureaus around the world; the revival and expansion of the prime-time news magazine "Dateline," and Mr. Lack's work developing MSNBC, the 24-hour cable network and Internet news service to be jointly run by NBC and Microsoft.
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