Media

Don't hate the media, own the media

I have written extensively about what is wrong with the mainstream media and the benefits of co-operative ways of working. The article below outlines one of the most interesting alternatives or synergies that I have come across - The Dominion paper based in Canada.

Buying the war: the US medias role in the Iraq war

All people should watch this PBS documentary by Bill Moyers:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

It's one of the most comprehensive treatments I've seen of how the US media was complicit in allowing the Iraq war to happen. It details how - and why - US journalists did not challenge the "intelligence" emanating from the White House, and how many even actively supported the bombing of Iraq.

One of the main roles of the press is to challenge and hold the ruling government to account. The documentary shows how the majority of the US press did not do that in the run up to the Iraq war. The US government were able to get away with the lies about WMD and everything else because most of the press did not sufficiently challenge them. This, in turn, led the UK to going to war in Iraq with the Americans and leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of people. Although they may not admit it, blood is on the hands of those complicit journalists.

Posted in Media | Politics ed's blog | read more | 511 reads
Submitted by ed on Fri, 2007-04-27 21:15.

Propaganda and the BBC

I recently read one of the most shocking things I've ever read about the BBC, by an ex-BBC employee no less, and thought that I'd share it with you here. I found it in the comments sections of a medialens piece that Newsnight recently put up on their website. While you can get much astute analysis of the BBC and other UK media on the medialens site (and their latest alert is particularly damning of the BBC), this comment by an ex-BBC employee really brought it home for me. This paragraph in particular says it all:

Posted in Media | Politics ed's blog | read more | 305 reads
Submitted by ed on Fri, 2007-04-20 02:05.

Power Inquiry and Exploring Active Citizenship

I'm not going to go into detail about the contents of Saturday's Power Conference. For that, you can look at Davide Simonetti reporting/blogging it here.

What I will say is that I got the chance to ask David Cameron whether he supported participatory budgets. My question was more or less as follows: "Mr Cameron, one of the main things that I took from the Power Inquiry is the lack of power that I have as an individual over decisions that affect my life. What do you think about participatory budgets, like the one in Porto Alegre, where citizens have control over 17% over their local budget? There have been initial experiments in the UK with participatory budgets, such as in Harrow. Do you support these in the UK?"

Posted in Day to Day Life | Media | Politics ed's blog | read more | 1581 reads
Submitted by ed on Mon, 2006-05-08 16:01.

g8 protest worth it ?

A critique of summit protest strategy posted in Indymedia:

After almost two years of planning and a suggested figure of £200,000 spent by the ‘anti-authoritarian’ movement, the appeals to and protests against the Gleneagles G8 summit came and went in the space of a week.
200,000 people walked a caged route around Edinburgh at the Make Poverty History march, replete with Ukranian-democracy style branding; 5,000 that managed to get there, despite illegal efforts against them, took part in marches on Gleneagles; and hundreds took part in blockades. Was it all worth it?

Posted in Media | Politics ed's blog | read more | 2169 reads
Submitted by ed on Thu, 2005-12-29 12:41.

Recent Media Roundup: Tatchell, Zamparini, Medialens, Steinback, Monbiot

Peter Tatchell in the Guardian about how the new Civil partnerships for gay couples are divorced from reality:

For the first time in modern British legal history, instead of repealing discrimination parliament has reinforced and extended it. Civil partnerships are for same-sex couples only. Straights are excluded. Conversely, marriage remains reserved for heterosexuals, to the exclusion of gays. The differential treatment of hetero and homo couples is enshrined in law. Welcome to segregation, UK-style.

Gabriele Zamparini interviews the Medialens editors:

Response from BBC Parliament

I received a response on the 13th December from BBC Parliament (parliament@bbc.co.uk) regarding my previous email :

"Hello Ed

BBC Parliament is broadcast in quarter screen on Freeview because of restrictions on bandwidth on this platform. The BBC Governors have said having the channel full screen on Freeview is a "priority". We live in hope. I have forwarded your letter to the technical department that deals with reception for a more precise explanation.

Many thanks for your interest and support"

I quickly fired off a reply:

"Many thanks for your email (and the good work). I look forward to a response from the technical department.

Posted in Day to Day Life | Media | Politics ed's blog | read more | 2697 reads
Submitted by ed on Sun, 2005-12-25 20:12.

Happy Christmas!

First off, a sobering Christmas-themed powerpoint presentation that I received via email. While I'm not sure about all of the statistics, it definitely made me appreciate how lucky I am to enjoy Christmas with my family in a rich Northern country. I think I'll give some of the money I received for Christmas to UNICEF or a similar charity.

Secondly, an article from the Brighton and Hove Leader. Juilette Bowers describes how our Christmas dinners have travelled approximately 30,000 miles to get to our dinner tables:

Venezuela and the air of equality?

I wanted to quickly comment on Tom's blog post on Venezuela. I too was enamoured by Albert's and Pilger's articles. How can you not be when Pilger starts his article in the New Statesman with the following paragraph:

"Why are you here?" asked the man sitting opposite me in the packed jeep-bus that chugged up the hill. Like so many in Latin America, he appeared old, but wasn't. Without waiting for my answer, he listed why he supported President Hugo Chavez: schools, clinics, affordable food, "our constitution, our democracy" and "for the first time, the oil money is going to us". I asked him if he belonged to the MVR (Movement for the Fifth Republic), Chavez's party, "No, I've never been in a political party; I can only tell you how my life has been changed, as I never dreamt."