links for 2007-08-31
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Dave Winer with a trenchant perspective on journalism
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David Cox - always interesting (and always anti BBC)
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August 2007
August 31, 2007
August 23, 2007
links for 2007-08-23
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Nicholas Carr links financial systems and peer-to-peer. (HT Bill Thompson)
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Martin Belam sent me this link to his new site - focuses search on UK newspaper content. Useful...
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Harvard's SHorenstein Centre report on internet news sites. Traditional news orgs have scale but new entrants growing faster...
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When David Miliband spoke at Chatham House recently he chose to let Avaaz.org stream it and field questions from around the world. ANother site facilitating the global conversation
August 12, 2007
links for 2007-08-12
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Latest analysis of US news audiences...trust in decline, tribes consolidating
August 11, 2007
links for 2007-08-11
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"The killing was meant to prevent a real voice that described the suffering in Mogadishu to other Somalis and to the world, Elmi was a symbol of neutrality" (Ali Iman Sharmake, shortly before he too was murdered)
Boogie Time
My daughter went to The Big Chill and a week later said to me: "Oh, by the way Dad, there was this old busker guy who was seasick or something and he had a bashed up guitar with only three strings. You'd really like him."
She knows me too well.
August 10, 2007
Cheat Neutral
Thanks to David Brain and Ben Russell for this:
Think offsets buy you out of responsibility for your carbon emissions? Just take that logic elsewhere....to Cheat Neutral perhaps:
August 09, 2007
Full but Frank?
When Gordon Brown visited George Bush at Camp David recently there was much discussion of how the special relationship was still on track, praise of each other, how much of a debt each country owed to the other. However, there were some signs that things were less harmonious than with Tony Blair. Awkward body language, the suggestion their talks had been "full and frank" - sometimes diplomatic code for difficult.
It seems to me since Camp David there are signs the talks may not have been as harmonious as we were led to believe. In a change of policy Britain has requested the release of five men from Guantanamo; we indicated an early withdrawal from Basra and now in a counter-briefing the US have suggested Britain has failed in the south of Iraq.
US- UK relations will always be strong given our histories. But perhaps what's happened since Camp David shows what full and frank means.
links for 2007-08-09
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Google enables those in the news to comment on the coverage. US only at the moment. Should force greater transparency and accuracy?
August 08, 2007
Oxygen of Publicity?
Channel 4's documentary "Britain Under Attack", broadcast this week, has brought the predictable criticism about airing the views of a terrorist supporter. The "Islamic Scholar" believes British foreign policy justifies the London tube bombings. Producer Phil Rees (Disclosure: I used to work with him at the BBC) said: "Muslims can get hold of the this sort of thing over the internet and where they don't feel they have a voice they are pushed into violence. We should feel our civilisation is strong enough to counter these beliefs."
The contours of this argument are familiar. Margaret Thatcher, at the height of IRA attacks in England, complained about broadcasters providing them with the "oxygen of publicity" and introduced a peculiar ban on the voices of Sinn Fein suppoters being broadcast - leading to the bizarre practise of dubbing interviews with actors voices. The Major government repealed this recognising it was ineffective.
Tony Blair's government complained about broadcasters reporting from "enemy" capitals, be it Belgrade, Kabul or Baghdad, arguing that it gave a moral equivalence to renegade regimes. Alastair Campbell advanced this after Kosovo in a speech at RUSI. This throws into sharp relief the different perspectives of politicians and media. I never accepted broadcasting from an "enemy capital" was to automatically afford them any moral legitimacy - the audience can decide that. But it does allow the audience to be better informed - and to better understand what their armed forces may be confronting or achieving.
A few months ago BBC's Newsnight ran a report from David Loyn behind the lines with the Taliban including an interview with a Taliban leader. The same complaints and outrage came forth - the Conservative Foreign Affairs spokesman calling it "obscene". Again, the BBC's view was that it better informed viewers about what British troops were confronting.
So there is a deep divide about the legitimacy of these kinds of interview.
But the argument in favour of them is not about freedom of speech. Supporters of murder and terrorism are not entitled to the same freedoms as the rest of us in my view. It is about ensuring the public are as fully informed as possible for them to make up their own minds and to understand what threats may confront them. For that, they also need explanation analysis and context. How can we understand the world if we close our eyes or ears to parts of it we don't agree with?
It's a fragile argument. In other parts of the world (Kashmir, China) no such freedom would be tolerated. And in the US, post 9/11, there are strong and divided opinions about the performance of the media: supporting national interests v. depth and range of reporting.
Unsurprisingly, most journalists believe the public interest should default towards open information. Those who seek to restrict information don't trust the public and seek to make their minds up for them. We should have sufficient confidence in public opinion, democracy and, as Phil Rees put it, our civilisation to counter extremist views. Censorship is a victory for those who don't share our values.
But this doesn't mean anything goes. It is incumbent on the media to reflect extreme views responsibly, challenging them, placing them in context. Free speech is important, but is not the same as "free-and-easy" speech. As I have argued before, the media's role is to explain tensions, not to fuel them.
August 06, 2007
links for 2007-08-06
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How to read the WSJ now..
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FOr the next time someone asks why there isnt more Good News in the world...(HT David Brain)
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Love dipping into these for inspiration. Most of them are on YouTube and can be loaded onto iPod too..
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