Among yesterday’s front pages was a data visualisation which, at first glance, was one of the most effective I’ve ever seen: the Independent had made an infographic showing yesterday’s £6bn budget cuts in context - as a fraction of a debt mountain.
Then I looked closer - and something’s very, very wrong.
Can you tell what it […]
Yesterday, I hadn’t heard of Mika Brzezinski. Today, I think she’s my hero. She’s a co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe news programme.
In protest at her producer’s decision to rank a 23-year-old’s release after a 3 week prison sentence above a senior republican challenging the President during war time, she ripped up, burned, and shredded her script. The video is below:
Good point, well made. News matters - and as there’s no shortage of celebrity shows and magazines, I don’t think the Paris story desperately needed MSNBC’s coverage.
I’m thrilled that someone stood up, in some small way, for serious, informative journalism. I’m happy to look at ways to make news relevant, interesting and at keeping an audience engaged. This is not the same as abandoning news for nonsense stories like this - certainly not as lead story, anyway.
Plus, it’s pretty funny watching her co-hosts squirm. Mika, I salute you.
Audience reaction can be found at MSNBC’s blog post here.
OK, everyone “loves” a good pun. But plays on our charming new PM’s name get old. Quickly.
In particular, of course, is the old chestnut “Brown nosing”. Newsnight yesterday gave us the following:
Newsnight proudly presents The Order of the Brown Nose - an award for the most egregious sucking up to Gordon Brown during the - ahem - race for the Labour leadership and next prime minister.
Yes, yes, very clever. But not all that original. From the Guardian:
Well done to canny Telegraph editor Will Lewis, clearly getting some Brown-nosing in before Gordon ascends to the top job.
And the Times even uses the phrase in a headline.
The “blogosphere” is no better. Guido offers:
Kevin Maguire fantasises that he will be the Alastair Campbell of the Brown regime…As well as practising his Brown-nosing at the Mirror, he is part of the New Statesman / Sith nexus, so it is no surprise that he was one of the few hacks to quote the recent discredited “Opinion Leader” poll.
Point made? We’ve got at least two years of the Gord. Imagine just how tired this could get. So please, if you or anyone you know is considering making this pun, please seek help and support. Together, we can beat it.
No posts for rather too long - my bad. Will attempt to return to a roughly daily schedule from tomorrow. As a quick update to “yoof newz”, I’ll add that the tycoon I mentioned last week was booted off this week’s show.
Feeling a little smug for my talented punditry. Although that now means my Tycoon commentary must be regarded “off topic” with respect to this blog. Alas, you cannot win them all.
Was watching (the pretty mediocre) Tycoon online today. It’s essentially a cross between the Apprentice and Dragons’ Den, starring the incredibly tall guy from the latter.
In among the standard Dragons den-style entries (”girlie” gardening equipment, a bag to store, umm, carrier bags, etc) was a proposal for a “teen” freesheet, from this guy. It’s not the only publication of this nature - First news is published weekly, nationally, and has Piers Morgan on board.
What, though, is the point? Is there really a market for this stuff? First news has a print run of 100,000; but declines to release circulation figures. I’m dubious as to whether these projects have any value. Why? Three reasons:
I love the new volvic adverts. The new one is below:
That said, I have never, and will never, buy volvic. Bottled water is vastly pointless. However, bloody good commercial. A sensible post (on yoof media, no less) will follow later today, promise.
PS. Naturally, whenever I try anything new on this blog, the whole thing immediately breaks. Have spent two hours fixing the site to allow me to embed video properly. Thanks to the author of this excellent video plugin, problem solved.
Just hope you find Tyrannosaurus Alan worthwhile…
The predicted BBC Editors’ blog reaction to their impartiality report appeared today - and minded me to add a small note to yesterday’s post.
It’s essentially this: impartial does not, of course, mean never stating an opinion. The classic approach of balanced views is at the core of all decent journalism practice. As such, ‘impartial’ broadcasting needn’t be quite as dreary as yesterday’s post might have implied - though gathering the full range of views on any topic is never going to happen, and perhaps some ‘extreme’ reactions are omitted.
The overall tone of a channel, though, is still significant: a channel with a ‘liberal’ bias can explore shades of liberal opinion more clearly, and may gain a clear, cohesive tone and style which the somewhat-schizophrenic ‘balanced’ channels may lack. The same would be true for a channel with a conservative tone, or so on.
The final problem is seperating impartial delivery from biased commentary. This is an area the BBC’s online services have struggled with in the past (they currently flag ‘comment’ and ‘analysis’ pieces in the header of an article, but have been known to miss these on occasion). Onscreen, BBC correspondent usually interview partial figures, rather than stating their own opinions. It’s hard to know if more could be done to protect such a divide.
The BBC is a national, publically funded institution, and so must do all it can to maintain the highest standards of non-partisanship. For the rest of us, the question is if impartiality is so difficult, is it really worth the bother?
Impartiality on TV news is hot stuff at the moment, especially with respect to the BBC. Jeff Jarvis is talking about it here, Adrian Monck over here, and MediaGuardian here (and about twelve other pages today) - and that’s just what I could find in five minutes or so.
The BBC focus is of course due to their recent review of impartiality. It’s debatable whether an organisation is really capable of judging itself impartial, so it’s not surprising so much discussion has popped up. What seems to be universally accepted is that the BBC should be impartial (whether it is impartial, of course, is more contentious), and I don’t plan to dispute that. What interests me is whether TV news more generally should be allowed to take a viewpoint.
In the US, Fox news clearly has a political perpective. This is well known, and any viewer stumbling onto the channel’s coverage is unlikely to mistake it for unbiased coverage of events. No similar channel exists in the UK - Sky news is scrupulously non-partisan - as are all UK news programmes. This is required in broadcasting law.
Should it be, though? Perhaps not. TV news is trusted more by viewers than newspapers (and both rate far more highly than blogs, but that’s another story). Impartiality likely helps this. But audience figures are falling, and perhaps livelier, partisan coverage might help bring viewers back.
I once argued with ITN anchor Alistair Stewart about just this. His view was that as viewers are able to “stumble upon” a news broadcast, they may not be aware of its bias before they start watching - risking a blurring of fact and opinion. This is a fair point, but I would suggest that not all newspaper readers are thoroughly aware of the political leanings (and reasons for said leanings) of the UK media market. Perhaps such ‘ignorance’ is more likely for television, but there’s no clear cut argument for allowing bias in one format and not in another.
Personally, I would prefer high quality, objective broadcasting. However, there is no use in high quality reporting that no-one watches. It may be the case that to save TV journalism, we will have to accept partiality, bias and maybe even spin. In a multi-channel climate, with institutions like the BBC remaining as broadcasters ‘of record’, this need not necessarily be detrimental. A future with a variety of news channels with different bias and tone (not unalike the newspaper market at present) is infinitely preferable (to me, at least) than a mere one or two news services producing minimal output
I look forward to seeing what happens - just as I look forward to seeing the BBC’s response to the latest furore over their own reports.
As it’s Sunday, it seems appropriate to write on religion today. In what I expect will be a fairly regular feature, it’s time for “loony religious website of the week”. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Answers in Genesis
As you may have guessed, this is an American (where else?) website, brought to you by the “Creation Museum”
The site argues that science and creationism aren’t contradictory. But in a page headlined “Where’s the proof?”, the site argues:
Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars—the facts are all the same.
The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions
So facts aren’t important, interpretation is. This dismissive perspective on evidence is more than a little disturbing. If it’s all about interpretation, a group attempting to promote literal interpretation of genesis instead lead us into extreme relativism: once we dismiss ‘facts’ so easily, we’re free to believe (and justify) anything.
The page goes on to argue that:
A Christian cannot divorce the spiritual nature of the battle from the battle itself. A non-Christian is not neutral. The Bible makes this very clear: ‘The one who is not with Me is against Me, and the one who does not gather with Me scatters’ (Matthew 12:30); ‘And this is the condemnation, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil’ (John 3:19).
Agreeing to such terms of debate also implicitly accepts their proposition that the Bible’s account of the universe’s history is irrelevant to understanding that history!
And herein lie the problem. We’ve hit a tautology, and we’re going no further. Once you accept the bible, the bible becomes authority, you must argue from the bible. What’s your justification for this? What’s your evidence? No prizes for guessing, folks, it’s…*drumroll*…the bible!
That said, the page argues well, is well presented, and even offers the classic sceptical argument: that without God, everything is random, and so you cannot know the truth of anything. If this is the case, how can you even be sure anything exists? (You can’t) The author clearly knows his stuff.
This is much less true on other pages - the link points you to a rather splendid page which argues that any Christian who believes the world wasn’t created six thousand years ago is disputing the Word of God. Stirring stuff, eh?
Anyway, I shall leave encouraging you to have an explore - do let me know if it convinces you. As an aside, though, the site’s design is lovely: Christian web designers are talented people, apparently. Tune in next week for another exciting instalment - the site I have in mind is positively barmy.
…I’m just not going to be a religious affairs correspondent, am I?
This blog does not display remotely correctly on internet explorer.
Drat and blast.
Will have this fixed ASAP.
Update: Well, the blog is now viewable on IE, but I apologise unreservedly for the awful hideous “get firefox” banner. I disable and disable again but still it returns to haunt me. I will battle bravely onwards.
Update 2: The beast is slain. Hurrah. Now to further twiddle with my third template in as many days. Must get the blasted thing right soon…
Has facebook shot itself in the foot?
Seen as the alternative to the awful music-and-clashing-backdrop ridden monstrosity that is MySpace, Facebook’s become the preferred social network of students and (increasingly) professionals - the Oxford network alone has over 28,000 profiles.
But now they’ve opened up the system to “widgets” - third party content allowing music, video, ‘fortune cookies’ and other content to be placed in profiles. For some users, this is a source of welcome new content and features. For others, its bloody annoying. No prizes for guessing which camp I’m in.
iLike, which places music in profiles, is the early runaway success, though I’m sure others will follow. Other popular widgets allow users to “graffiti” messages to their friends, or plant novelty images such as horoscopes. It’s slowing things down. Page load times are increasing, as users are forced to load a huge amount of bonus content. Whether you install the things or not.
Mashable believes this makes Facebook an even more significant threat to MySpace. I’m not so sure - for many users, Facebook’s strength is its simplicity, elegance and more reserved tone. It’s growing in popularity in older demographics, and other networkers to whom Facebook doesn’t appeal. Those who like MySpace may well just stay there - it is, after all, signficantly bigger.
And those, like me, who don’t like MySpace (and, indeed, avowedly avoid it) will simply stop using Facebook if it continues down this route. I’ll be interested to see what happens…
