Category Archives: Media

To name or not to name?

Given the debate in recent weeks about the wisdom of naming Dr. David Kelly as a BBC source, I’ve wondered several times why BBC News attributes only a fraction of its online content to specific members of its staff. Why don’t they identify the author of every piece?

For example, the top news story as I write is BBC News | Politics | Kelly family points finger at MoD, and it is not attributed to anyone in particular. It does contain a related video link to a report by “The BBC’s Jonathan Beale”, but that has almost certainly been lifted from the BBC’s conventional broadcasting output (i.e. television), where reporters are always clearly identified.

Sometimes the author of an online story is identified (see BBC News | Education | More GCSE exam entries fail by Gary Eason), and sometimes a story is exclusively devoted to the opinions of one of the BBC’s star correspondents (see BBC News | Politics | Profound questions raised by Kelly tragedy featuring Andrew Marr). So why the inconsistency? Why are the reporters named in some cases and not others?

There is a precedent in print, of course. Newspaper editorials are usually unsigned, and the Economist has a long tradition of not acknowledging authors, with the exception of its lengthy “surveys” and reviews of books written by its staff. Perhaps, the BBC has adopted some of these practices now that the web has forced it into “print”?

Convergence would appear to be one of the effects of the Internet. Broadcasters are publishing electronic “newspapers”, and newspapers are “broadcasting” their content electronically.

Coincidentally (or is it?), the UK Government has announced a review of the BBC’s online services (see BBC News | Entertainment | Analysis: BBC online review). I hope it helps to resolve some of the confusing inconsistencies that have developed with the popular adoption of the “new media”.

P.S. – Why is that story about the review of BBC Online classified as “Entertainment”? Since when is everything associated with the BBC necessarily entertaining?

Thought for the day

Rabbi Lionel Blue had some helpful hints for holiday makers on this morning’s Today programme in his talk entitled How to survive a holiday (RealPlayer required). Chief among his recommendations was not to make love in an airport, which strikes me as wise advice no matter who you are, but particularly if you’re a rabbi.

Thought for the day is part of the BBC’s religion and ethics programming, and its web site allows you to search for and listen to previous reflections from all your favourite “thinkers”.

Do we need nature?

There’s less than a month left in which to write the next award-winning essay in the Shell Economist Writing Prize. If you are not familiar with the competition, the winning entries from previous years have been impressive. A Ramble to Africa (Adobe Acrobat Reader required), which addressed the question Going faster, but where? in 2001, was particularly memorable.

This year’s topic is Do we need nature? and a quick search of Daypop reveals that a couple of weblogs have already discussed it. For an analysis of the strategic options available to aspiring authors see
Secretly Ironic: Do we need nature. For a less than rigorous debate featuring some serious cynics see
MetaFilter for June 19, 2003.

So hurry up and get writing. You could win $20,000 US.

Signs of intelligent life

On the weekend the Financial Times magazine published an article on the increasing popularity of the BBC in the United States (see Trust me, I’m British). Apparently, the BBC is now the main source of international news for PBS, and one of BBC America’s producers is quoted as saying “What the Americans really value from us is the broader agenda”.

I can well believe that statement given Elizabeth Lane Lawley’s amusing post titled why I don’t watch the news. The fact that there are still signs of intelligent life in the British mainstream media is one of the reasons I like living in the UK.

Today’s Weblog

Well, blogging has certainly become mainstream now. This morning BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme Today introduced its listeners to weblogs (see Today RealOne Player required). The interview lasted all of 3 minutes, but that was sufficient for Cory Doctorow to explain that the new medium has two strongly attractive characteristics for journalists:

  • complete freedom to write whatever you want without any editorial interference.
  • the possibility of almost instant, gratuitous feedback.

Consequently the hosts, Edward Stourton and James Naughtie, both agreed that blogging sounds like fun!

A sign of the times

What is going on at the Financial Times? Recent stories in the weekend edition have been headlined:

  • “Big knickers are back but this time they’re sexy”
  • “Super grannies: Juggling work and grandchildren”
  • “Don’t get left high and dry: Frequent flying can be a disaster for your skin”.

It’s as if the FT has just decided that the weaker sex isn’t so weak after all.

The real answer of course is a new strategy designed to broaden the pink business newspaper’s traditionally narrow appeal. It seems that 2002 was a bad year for the FT, largely due to the decline in advertising in the UK, but also because the many redundancies and layoffs in the finance industry have resulted in fewer people reading the paper.

The paper’s response to this decline has included a half-hearted new design, some new content (more sports and fashion), a new weekend magazine, and a new direct marketing campaign (see A warmer shade of pink and FT seeks broader appeal).

The latest news about this change suggests that it has had an initial positive effect. Apparently, the readership increased by 5% in the first week after the new “look” was launched (see FT relaunch boosts sales figures ).

However I’d be surprised if these changes really do increase the market for the FT in the long term. For one thing the direct marketing campaign seems like an unmitigated disaster. As Roy Greenslade writing in the Guardian earlier this month pointed out, the campaign has targeted the FT’s current customers:

Pearson, the FT’s owner, may see this revamp as the paper’s last hurrah under its umbrella, and it certainly isn’t skimping on its outlay, having spent some £3m, including £1m on a hit-and-miss direct mail shot to win over new readers. This has resulted in me being the proud recipient of vouchers which are saving me £12 over the next month. I am now able to receive a £1 FT for half the price every day until May 23. As a regular reader, of course, that promotion is irrelevant to me, so Pearson is sacrificing sales income it can ill afford.

I too have received these vouchers, but I received two sets because the FT still thinks I live at my previous address as well as my new one (I moved five months ago). These two offers are staggered so I can now receive the FT at a discount until August 22nd. Nor does the fact that I already subscribe to FT.com seem to have registered with the FT’s marketing department. They seem to believe that I will not only want to read the paper both on-line and in print, but that I am prepared to pay twice for the privilege.

I predict that the FT will go back to the drawing board after the summer.

Saddam the Crusher

Sometime ago I wondered why the media often refer to Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein as simply “Saddam”. Wouldn’t this abbreviation be equivalent to referring to his main opponent as “George”? And if so, why does the media discriminate in this way?

Well I struggled for a while to find the answer, but it turns out that Saddam Hussein’s full name is “Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti”. Most Arab names have a genealogical structure; individuals are called after their father and paternal grandfather and may also reveal the geographical region from which they come. So we can to some extent dissect the President of Iraq’s name as follows:

  • “Saddam” is the epithet that he chose upon becoming ruler of Iraq and is derived from the Persian word meaning “crush”.
  • “Hussein” was his father’s first name
  • “al-Majd” refers to his paternal grandfather.
  • “al-Tikriti” refers to the town closest to his place of birth, Tikrit.

So, a rough English translation of his name would be “The Crusher/son of Hussein/son of Majd/from Tikrit”. In addition, his true first name was apparently “Hussein”, but that was dropped when he assumed the name “Saddam”.

You can probably see why journalists may have been uncertain about what to call him. While the BBC uses “Saddam”, Canada’s Globe And Mail calls him “Mr. Hussein” (see MP wants Hussein to face trial). For more details see the CTV article You say Saddam, I say Hussein – what’s in a name? and from Slate in 1998 What’s the Name of Saddam Hussein?

Mark’s Mailbox

One of the most consistently good reads on the web is Mark’s Mailbox, the letters page on the web site of right-wing columnist Mark Steyn. Steyn is a Canadian, but he currently lives in New Hampshire, having spent several years working in London. His work regularly appears in the National Post in Canada, The Daily Telegraph in Britain and the Chicago Sun-Times in the U.S., among other publications. As his web site (SteynOnline) pretentiously proclaims, Steyn is a "one-man global content provider". (If you see a link between Steyn and publications once owned by Hollinger International Inc., you’d be correct; The Lord Black of Crossharbour is apparently a big fan of Steyn’s work.)

I don’t read his columns very often. Although his writing is frequently very good, Steyn’s views are too extremist for me, and rarely substantiated by any serious objective analysis. Mark’s Mailbox, on the other hand, is a weekly must-read. Here’s a sample just from this week’s letters page:

You are such a hateful person! There is nothing good that appears in your negative, inflammatory columns! I have begged the Chicago Sun-Times to stop running your pieces. You want to bring on the war? Only a crazy person would talk that way. Perhaps you can share a room with BC Premier Gordon Campbell when he goes in for substance abuse rehab as it is clear that only someone drunk or on drugs would write the things you do.
May you be surrounded by neighbours who all vote for the NDP!

David L. Blatt
Chicago

There really isn’t much chance that Steyn’s columns can compete with fan mail as entertaining as that! I highly recommend his web site, but stick to the letters page for a really good read.

Good or bad? You decide

Here’s another example of the media interpreting the same news in different ways. This morning the BBC and the Financial Times both reported the latest change in house prices as determined by the Halifax Building Society. The difference was that the BBC focussed on the direction of the trend (no news there really, prices are still going up), while the FT reported the change in the strength of the trend (not as strong as in recent months).

The BBC headline was Housing market stays strong and the article lead with:

The housing market remained strong during January with prices increasing by 1.5%, new figures suggest.
The UK’s biggest mortgage lender, Halifax, said low interest rates and low unemployment were continuing to drive the market.

The increase pushed the average cost of a property up to £123,451.

Prices for the three months to the end of January are now 24.9% higher than they were during the same period the previous year, the survey suggests.

While the Financial Times reported UK house price growth slows in January:

The pace of house price growth slowed last month, in line with predictions that the overheated residential property market will start to cool this year, according to Halifax.

Britain’s largest lender on Wednesday said that prices rose 1.5 per cent last month over December, taking the growth rate over the three months to January to 24.9 per cent compared with the previous year.

Last month Halifax had to adjust its figures which meant the index fell 2.1 per cent from November, to stand 26.4 per cent higher on an annual basis. Without the technical adjustments, the index would have risen 1 per cent in December over November.

So is the trend in house prices good or bad, or is the change in the trend significant? The media can’t make up its mind, so it’s up to you.

Leadership and language

This week BBC 4 broadcast a two-part documentary entitled Holidays in the Axis of Evil. To quote the web site blurb:

The Bush regime claims that North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and Cuba are part of an “axis of evil”. In a remarkable two-part travelogue, reporter Ben Anderson, armed with a hidden camera and a tourist map, visits all six rogue states and tries to find the reality of life in some of the most repressive regimes in the world.

Anderson was asked what possessed him to make such a potentially dangerous trip:

“The idea evolved after the second Axis of Evil speech when they added Syria, Libya and Cuba to the list. There’s no evidence so far to link the six countries and not one of them is linked to 11 September. When you say axis it suggests some kind of link and the only thing we found was that you could travel to all six countries on a tourist visa. So that’s what we decided to do. We were looking for links.”

Such a quest struck me as potentially fascinating. It might be possible to learn something interesting and valuable about these rogue nations. Unfortunately, these regimes turned out to be so repressive that Anderson and his female producer had a hard time interviewing many ordinary people and were prevented from filming any politically sensitive sites.

Nevertheless, my response after viewing part one of this programme was an overwhelming sense of the pathetic. It’s pathetic that the leaders of North Korea and Iraq are so insecure that they keep their citizens in ignorance of the rest of the world; it’s pathetic that their citizens are so accepting of their state’s propaganda and its constraints on their freedom; and it’s equally pathetic that, in the case of Iraq at least, the response from the West is regular and frequent bombardment. You would think we could come up with something better than crude brute force by now.

Of course, the phrase “axis of evil” was obviously a crude simplification from the start, and I’ve been haunted by thoughts of it ever since I discovered that it was coined by a Canadian named David Frum.

Frum, who was employed as a speechwriter at the White House, became widely known last year as the author of that phrase, when his wife sent an email to friends boasting of her husband’s accomplishment. Unfortunately for them, the email fell into the wrong hands and was published on the web. A few days later the White House announced Frum’s resignation, although it claimed his departure had been planned a month previously. Once the mainstream press picked up the story it became well-known news around the world (see Proud wife turns ‘axis of evil’ speech into a resignation letter).

The significant point about Frum is that, like most Canadians, I knew his mother. Or at least I thought I did. Barbara Frum was a celebrity in Canada throughout the 1970s and 80s, as a result of hosting at least two ground-breaking news programmes for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). To quote from the CBC’s web site titled The Life and Times of Barbara Frum:

From her CBC Radio days as a national presence on As It Happens from 1971 to 1982, to her highly successful 10 years at the helm of CBC-TV’s flagship show The Journal, Frum had a huge following. She spent 18 impassioned, hectic, pioneering years in Canadian broadcasting. On any given weeknight, 1.3 million Canadians tuned in to watch The Journal, where Frum hosted approximately 2,600 shows. From the great to the ordinary, she maintained the same standard of integrity, honesty and toughness of mind. Her thousands of interviews included people from every walk of life – presidents, prime ministers, world leaders?the unemployed fisherman. Each and every interview was different and revealing.

That description is no exaggeration. Barbara Frum was tough, honest and fair. There was rarely any hint of her own views or beliefs in any of the interviews she conducted. The Middle East was a hot topic then as now, and Frum must have covered the subject countless times, but I listened to As It Happens for years without ever realising she was Jewish. Barbara Frum never let her personal prejudices affect her investigation or communication of the events of her day.

That’s why it’s so difficult to understand the partisan and ill-judged behaviour of her son. How could a child of Barbara Frum coin a phrase as arrogant and simplistic as “axis of evil” and then take pride in it? To be more specific (and fair), David Frum apparently wrote “axis of hatred”, but according to the Los Angeles Times “his boss, chief speechwriter Michael Gerson, changed it to “axis of evil” to match the theological language Bush had adopted after the terrorist attacks”. Nevertheless my point remains, why would anyone admit, let alone publicise, their association with such an arrogant, provocative and misleading phrase?

Well, obviously they would only do so if they didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, and as the LA Times article explains (see ‘Axis of Evil’ Rhetoric Said to Heighten Dangers) Bush’s words were intended to incite only the domestic audience. The effect on the rest of the world was not considered important, or perhaps not considered at all.

Such naivety and arrogance in the use of language is breathtaking, and makes me wonder if the developed world really needs such ham-fisted leaders anymore. Doctors would be more appropriate. At least they would be familiar with Hippocrates’ advice:

“Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things: to help, or at least to do no harm.”