Richard Sambrook : SacredFacts

Political Tweets

There's a lot of talk about how social media might revitalise politics. And a lot of attempts by polticians to use social media to circumvent the press and broadcasters and reach the public direct.  So I wasn't surprised to see 10 Downing St using Twitter to send out messages from their press office. But I was surprised to see them respond to questions via Twitter - it seems to be genuinely two-way. Good for them, I hope they manage to keep it up.

Unlike the US Presidential candidates for whom Twitter is a strictly one-way street.

Will.i.am and Obama

I still think McCain may win in the end, but Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas campaign song for Obama is brilliant - as is the anti-McCain spoof of it..

I feel UK political campaigning has a bit to learn yet...

Alastair's Cudlipp Lecture

Some good discussion of Alastair Campbell's thoughtful Cudlipp Lecture earlier this week - in particular Charlie Beckett of Polis.

Perhaps unsurprisingly I agreed with Kevin Marsh's observations too however:

"...while Alastair seems on one level to recognise that his controlling urges changed both politics and political journalism, he seems on another to be in denial about the scale and corrosive effect of that urge for control ... and what needs to be done to make good that corrosion.

The truth is that some very important things did change the moment Alastair left No10. It became possible, for example, to have rational, calm conversations both with Downing Street and other Government departments. My dealings - I was then Editor of Today - with Government and Ministers was no longer a perpetual combat, a zero-sum game in which reason was a sign of weakness and the resolution of every negotiation or complaint had to have a winner and a loser."

Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust reports that in questions afterwards Alastair said if the Press ever influenced voters it "was only at the margins" So what was the point of all the spin, tussling and control-freakery? I have a suspicion the media has as much power as is conferred upon it - and ironically AC conferred a lot on it.

But then apparently he also denied hectoring the BBC on Iraq. He has a short - or at least selective - memory.

These inconsistencies apart it is, as ever, an entertaining and perceptive look at the troubled relationship between media, politics and the public. In particular I was struck by this passage:

The internet gives access to news, information and consumer choices unimaginable before. On the other hand, it has further contributed to the general shortening of our attention spans. And in civic or citizen's journalism, which sounds so benign there can surely be nothing wrong with it, it has become home to a form of journalism in which there are things constantly said and written which in old media would lead to papers and radio stations being shut down. Working out where news and views are coming from, and what weight to attach to them, at a time when a new blog is created every second of every day, is now an essential part of the media consumer’s toolkit. It has meant an acceptance that certain basic journalistic standards which used to be taken for granted have been eroded. News can be news simply for the fact that someone reports something, regardless of veracity. Anyone can be a journalist. Anyone can be a cameraman. A rumour can be launched on a message board and find its way quickly, if interesting enough, into the US presidential election debate. It is a new landscape. I would love to know where it is all heading.

Wouldn't we all. Hopefully the future will include recognition of the difference between those outlets which have values, transparency and accountability and those which don't. .

US Election

Most of the attention in the UK has been on the fight for the Democratic nomination. The Republican nomination is just as interesting. There's a theory, which I've heard from a couple of seasoned observers in the US, that when we get to the final campaign, the Republicans will pick their moment and play the terror card hard and strong convincing voters to "play safe" and elect John McCain.

Try Thomas Edsall in the Huffington Post for example.

In fact the McCain campaign has already started pressing those buttons in negative campaigning against Romney:

Political scams

It seems the scammers have moved to a new technique - impersonating British politicians.

This arrived in my inbox today:

From: pathewitt_1991@comcast.net [mailto:pathewitt_1991@comcast.net]
Sent: 20 October 2007 10:35
Subject: Patricia Hewitt MP

Dear Friend,

I got your contact after a search for a person with whom I can entrust  with a charitable projects.

I am Patricia Hewitt, the last Secretary of State for Health here in UK before the present one Alan Johnston. I like to introduce a project that will get to do with charity in your country and any neighbouring country around you: Please let me know what your response will be to an  offer to receive charity investment funds in cash if you will understand the fact that I have my reputation and intergrity to protect as the  last Secretary of State for Health here in UK.

1. The said fund amounts to Seventeen Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars  (US).
2. The said fund is in cash and will be make available to you in same state.
3.The fund is intended to be invested into any charity organisation through your agency in the said purposes within your country.
4. This transaction will result to you being paid a commission of 30% off the investment capital and the balance destributed to charity organisations of your choice or reinvested and the net income used for rehabilitating charity organisation in and around your country through your agency annually for the period of some time at least five years or above.
5.You must understand that I desire absolute confidentiality and professionalism in the handling of this project and as a result of that and for security reasons to my reputation as the former Secretary of State for Health under her excellency Queen Elizabeth, I will not be able to always communicate with you but my la! wyer wi ll take up the processing on my behalf and get the funds processed and released to you without any delay.

I'm a person that has a very big heart for the less priviledge people which is one of my top priority which is to positively uses my office to affect the life of so many people which is why I am doing this. I am not in any way going to benefit from this transaction financially but I will be very happy if you will be sincere with me to handle this project with utmost sincerity and confidentiality and use the funds for the purpose which I have above explained to you.

Please respond urgently if you are interested so I can give to you the details of my lawyer and commence the transaction properly and please if you know you are not ready and trust worthy person, please don't reply this message.

You can check more about me out at http://www.patriciahewitt.labour.co.uk/ but the website is presently under mentainace due to the high rate of fraudulent activities but you can also check more about me out and google.co.uk and please do not try to contact me through any of my personal information you may lay your hand on the internet because all my phones are connected to the British House of Parliament data base and if the British government get to know about this funds, our effort to get the funds secured for the purpose of charitable investment plans will be jeopardise. But you can call me on any of my number you can get on the internet for normal greetings and do not try to introduce yourself or discuss this transaction but just call to make sure I'm trully what I tell you I am for you to be sure
that this transaction is free from scamers.

Please send your response to this E-mail: pathewitt1990@yahoo.co.uk

Sincerely.

Patricia Hewitt MP,
former Secretary of State for Health
233 Owen Walk,
London SE37 88AQ
http://www.patriciahewitt.labour.co.uk

Now, it may be that the former British cabinet minister has a Yahoo and Comcast email account, has lost any ability to spell or punctuate, has also lost their grip on English grammar and has decided to try to lure people into some financial shenanigans. But it seems unlikely.

I wonder why they chose her?

 

Self interest v altruism

I think it was the late Sir Peter Parker who said modern politics is too often a matter of self interest masquerading as altruism. So I was interested to read in the latest edition of Prospect an attempt by the philosopher A C Grayling to reconcile these two opposites with a "third way". He seems to argue that by looking after your own interests in the short term you may be better placed to look after others interests in the long term. Which might justify why modern politics often seems to be as concerned with the next day's headlines as with long term policy. The problem would be getting lost in the means and forgetting the ends....

(btw Prospect magazine has a great blog)

The Doughty Street Experience

As Iain Dale was kind enough to show me around Doughty St TV a few weeks ago it would have been churlish of me not to accept his invitation to be interviewed on his show. However, as colleagues suggested to me in advance, the idea of a BBC executive submitting to the Doughty St experience brings to mind phrases like "Christians, Lions and Ritual Sacrifice". A view reinforced by some of the advance comments on his blog when he asked for questions ("Father Tim said...Ggrrrrrrr, I fecking hate the BBC. I must destroy them. Gnash. Gnash.")
Iain was, of course, thoroughly professional, courteous, quietly probing and an all round decent bloke.

His colleague Tim Montgomerie was less impressed with my answer to his emailed question about Robin Atiken's criticisms of the BBC. Actually, he's right, my response was inadequate. I was ready, if needs be, to talk about the circularity of the "unconscious bias" allegation (where any defence is dismissed with "see, you dont recognise it, guilty as charged"!) or with the question of drawing general conclusions from singular examples, the specifics of some of Robin's other allegations or, indeed, my own view about some of the deficiencies in the BBC's journalism and what they amount to. However, I was unaware we had never interviewed Robin about his views on air and, being now outside the UK commissioning circle, unaware of any reasons why. (None I can think of beyond whether the accusations are sufficiently interesting to those not already convinced of the BBC's bias..)

Reaction on Iain's blog was perceptive ("Richard Sambrook - he's got awfully old and bald and fat....") True, I'm 50, beyond "thinning" and an outrageous 34" waist. But it went on to suggest I must be unemployable which I'm happy to say I'm not (3 or 4 job offers a year on average, but none as interesting as what I currently do.)

Anyway, I enjoyed it. I think the Doughty St model, regardless of your or their politics, is really interesting and the way the content is sliced, diced and distributed across blogs and sites gives it a halo beyond its immediate viewership. It's genuinely innovative and points the way for a much wider range of views and voices, unregulated and diverse. Must be a good thing. However, you do need a generous benefactor - no money to be made yet - and their staffing is commendably lean, but perhaps a little too much so. I was left sitting in the green room for ten minutes after we should have been on air, unknown to Iain who assumed I had stood them up.

And personally, whatever anyone makes of the interview, I believe it's right that institutions like the BBC drop their defensiveness a little and go and talk with their critics. We need to do more of it.

Al's Climate Crusade

I promised to reflect on the Al Gore road show. Having presented his slides 1100 times (I'm told), won an oscar with the documentary and presented his five point plan to Congress he's moving up a gear. He's seeking to recruit supporters to take his slide show and cascade presentations around the world - providing in depth "training sessions" for them - and is planning to spend $100 million a year for the next three years on a media campaign, starting this year with the Live Earth global concerts on July 7th (7/7/07). Who has time to run for President? There's no question that the charisma, energy, eloquence and passion of an A list politician with a mission is powerful. But what of the content? He's impressive on the science, but more impressive on the politics - clearly attempting to provide hope for those who might despair in the face of his apocalyptic warnings.

The event brought together a collection of CEOs, government officials, NGOs, teachers and others - all pretty much supporters (I made it clear I was there as observer not advocate). On hand were scientists Sir Peter Knight from Imperial College and the Director of the British Antarctic Survey Prof Chris Rapley.
They asserted there were no serious sceptics about Climate Change (but were very defensive about Channel 4's "Great Global Warming Swindle" going to great lengths to criticise the programme, the commission and outline the flaws..I would have expected greater confidence in discussing it).
Overall it reinforced my view that - whether or not you believe climate change is caused by man - no-one seems to question global warming is happening and that, as a precaution alone, we should cut CO2 emissions which will mean compromising our lifestyles. Which is where it starts to get really interesting...Recognition of Climate Change extends across the political spectrum. What to do about it, does not.

I then read a piece in the latest British Journalism Review by Eleni Andreadis and Joe Smith about media coverage of climate change. They rightly say:

The history of climate-change reporting is one of a long period of passivity punctured by a more recent burst of alarmism. ...it is essential to recognise that climate change is, by its nature, a very tricky issue to cover.

Reporting risk is never straightforward.
They argue that journalistic scepticism and weakness on economics are to blame for a delay in public understanding of the seriousness of climate change. Plus too great a weight being given to maverick voices in the search for "balance". Interestingly, Gore said the scientific culture of peer review and scepticism was also interpreted as uncertainty about the science by the media and had contributed to some confusion.

They conclude:

Journalism has helped to bring much of the British public to a new understanding of its precipitous relationship with its environment. It now has a key role in provoking and presenting the political and economic debates about how we can progress towards an ecologically sustainable society.

In other words, news coverage should move on from the science to the politics and economics of hard choices. I agree we need to invest heavily in reporting those elements, which take in every aspect of how we live our lives and how we work. But I suspect in confronting those hard choices, people aren't ready to leave the scientific debate quite yet.

Assault on Reason

I've spent 36 hours in Cambridge watching the Al Gore roadshow as he debated climate change and explained his "Inconvenient Truth" presentation to an invited group from business, politics, NGOs and the media. I'll post on the Global Warming aspects when I've thought about them a bit more. But I was struck by the former VPs strong views on media. They are not new - he outlined them at the New York WeMedia conference in 2005 and also at the launch of his movie. He has a book coming out shortly - The Assault on Reason - which will expand further. The subtitle -How the Politics of Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision-making - gives you the drift. Applied to the media it's an argument against politicisation and in favour of rational, evidence-based reporting. A defence of Enlightenment values. To that extent, something I believe in myself...

But Gore goes further and makes it a moral issue, quoting Scott Peck saying Evil is the absence of truth "so reporting something you know not to be true is evil"...and retelling the story of the German philosopher after the end of the second world war who studied how the Third Reich had taken power and concluded the" first significant symptom of their descent into hell was this: ‘All questions of fact became questions of power’..."

He then made a passing reference to Adam Curtis's documentary, The Century of Self charting the rise of PR as the beginning of a move away from rational argument into journalism more concerned with emotional engagement and entertainment values.

All this in parenthesis to his main subject. It was, he said, our "moral duty to live in truth". He was as passionate about this as he was about the climate. I wouldn't want to be a young producer on his network, Current TV, cheating an edit...

(NB He also paraphrased Bobby Kennedy's speech about the value of the GDP when arguing that consumerism wasn't any measure of quality of life. I wonder if anyone else spotted it!)

A visit to Doughty Street

I paid a visit to 18 Doughty St today - home of the pro-COnservative internet TV channel run by Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie.  It's impressive. At low cost they have  a very professional operation - it reminded me of the kind of traditional TV operation set up for live coverage of major events - all digital, portable and high quality. I'm interested because it points the way to the future of TV, however convergence turns out, and specifically for the World Service we are looking at internet TV to extend our language services. Iain was generous with his time and very open about the programmes, the operation the successes and the challenges. As it's internet only at the moment it is not subject to Ofcom Regulation on political impartiality. It's not commercially viable and exists thanks to the deep pockets of Stephan Shakespeare. However, the house was bustling and it feels as if it's here to stay and set to expand.