Author Archives: Natalie

says this BBC headline.

Other possible headlines not used by the BBC:

“People worldwide love Hollywood, governments don’t.”

– since the article itself admits that 85% of world spending on cinema tickets goes on Hollywood productions. This story is about some new UNESCO convention that gives governments, notably the French government, more power to attempt to circumvent the spontaneous preferences of their people and to make yet another doomed attempt to make them like subsidised national art instead.

Or how about this headline:

“UNESCO tries to control flow of ideas” – the option the EU Referendum blog goes for. Helen Szamuely writes:

Louise Oliver, the US ambassador to UNESCO, pointed out that the Convention could well be used by dictators to control what their citizens can read or see. Never let it be said that the BBC could get worked up about that sort of censorship.

So says this BBC story by Alfred Hermida. It continues:

It is seen as arrogant and determined to remain the sheriff of the world wide web, regardless of whatever the rest of the world may think.

It has even lost the support of the European Union.

Like David Davis has even lost the support of Gordon Brown.

It stands alone as the divisive battle over who runs the internet heads for a showdown at a key UN summit in Tunisia next month.

The stakes are high, with the European Commissioner responsible for the net, Viviane Reding, warning of a potential web meltdown.

“Responsible for the net”, is she? I’d always heard it was Al Gore.

“The US is absolutely isolated and that is dangerous,” she said during a briefing with journalists in London.

If any of the assembled journalists thought to ask her what exactly this danger was, or why the net is liable to melt down unless the Iranians get a share in running it, Mr Hermida does not tell us about it.

“Imagine the Brazilians or the Chinese doing their own internet. That would be the end of the story.

The end of the story… yes, you could say that. Later the article warns that the US faces “opposition from countries such as China, Iran.” I wonder why. Mr Hermida declines to keep me company in my wondering; he doesn’t express any curiosity as to whether the Chinese and Iranian authorities might have any other motive than a selfless desire to share the burden of Icann’s labours, or the American authorities any other motive than nationalism for wishing to fend them off.

AmEx has posted a superb parody which makes another good point:

Britain has an image problem when it comes to broadcasting.

It is seen as arrogant and determined to remain the sheriff of international news dissemination, regardless of whatever the rest of the world may think.

It has even lost the support of the US. It stands alone as the divisive battle over who runs the World Service heads for a showdown at a key UN summit in Tunisia next month.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: And then read this Eurosoc article about former Swedish Prime Minister (and UN Special Envoy to the Balkans) Carl Bildt’s editorial in the International Herald Tribune arguing that the setting up of an “international mechanism, controlled by governments” would be “profoundly dangerous” and would be likely to result in “theocrats or autocrats around the world getting their hands on the levers of control.” (Hat tip: Dan.)

Mr Bildt’s line of argument is well expressed, but not at all unusual. Many share his view, including many non-Americans. I am, alas, not surprised that none of these arguments were alluded to on Mr Hermida’s article.

Hat tip: JBLM and others.

A reader writes:

The report out today from the Crime and Society Foundation – which points out that most murders in Britain are of relatively poor young men – is reported on the BBC website (link here) as follows:

Increasing murder rates over the past 25 years were triggered by a recession in the early 1980s, a report says.

Pointing the finger of blame unambiguously at the Tories. The tenor is accentuated with another telling phrase, allegedly from the author of part of the survey, that the research indicated that there was:

… a link between rising murder rates and young men leaving school in the early 1980s, which was a time of mass unemployment.

Reminding us again, in case we didn’t know, how grim those boys on the BBC website think that life under Margaret Thatcher was. Yet the press release and executive summary from the Foundation are not nearly so certain about cause and effect. Nowhere does the press release from the Foundation make the direct linkage with the 1980s that the BBC intro does (murder rates were triggered by the recession etc…). And the contribution of Professor Danny Dorling ( the co-author of the report quoted by the BBC) is described in the executive summary as follows: link

In conclusion Dorling argues that the deeper causes of the increased murder rate lie in the social and economic policies pursued by successive governments during the 1980s and (my italics) 1990s. The emergence of mass unemployment in the 1980s and the increased levels of poverty that continue to this day (my italics) have contributed to social stresses and conflict with long-term consequences.

In short, Professor Dorling is apparently very careful to lay the blame – unlike the BBC report – on both Tory and Labour governments. An alternative intro, playing the same editorial games of selectivity, could have been:

The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and increasing poverty of the lower classes – both of which have grown markedly under New Labour – have been blamed by a leading crime think tank for increasing levels of murder among young men.

That would be the day!

“The second obstacle is that it is hard to know exactly what a world without the BBC would look like. The ramifications on media, cultural, political and social life would be so profound that it is very difficult to predict what they might be. It is not too dissimilar, for example, from envisaging a country without a national electricity grid.”

– from Measuring the Value of the BBC: A report by the BBC and Human Capital (October 2004) [Text version here, PDF here.]

This gem was found by commenter “Grimer”.

Test post – please ignore.

On second thoughts, a question. I thought I had posted the miscellany below this morning (8.32am GMT). Does the fact that it has no comments mean that no one has been able to see it until just now (3.58pm GMT), or does it just mean no one had any comment to make?

Blogger is being intolerably slow for me at the moment, so here is a miscellany of Beeb-related items all in the same post. Comments to the effect that a lower proportion of my musings per link constitutes an improvement will be met with a Paddingtonian Hard Stare.

– Adloyada writes in critical vein about Andrew Marr plugging Robert Fisk plugging his book on Start the Week. On the other hand, ever just, she describes the BBC coverage of recent intra-Palestinian violence as sensational. Follow the link if you don’t believe me.

– I praise BBC correspondent Justin Pearce for going secretly to Zimbabwe in a post for Samizdata.

– The Independent runs through some media bigwigs’ views about BBC reporting of Israel/Palestine. Ex-BBC correspondent Tim Llewellyn says:

What the BBC does not do is go into the West Bank and live there and be there. If it did that, and lived life as a Palestinian Arab lives, then it would experience the daily humiliation of that existence.

However reformed Today editor Rod Liddle says:

To use a singularly inapt metaphor, they see the Middle East as David versus Goliath – except that David isn’t a good Jewish boy any more, but a stone-throwing Arab. Foreign affairs really are that simplistic for some producers and reporters.

– Here is a new Beebwatching blog coming from the other side of the hill: Blogging the Beeb. The first post says:

What does the word ‘British’ mean for the BBC today? How does the BBC reflect contemporary Britishness? What does Britishness mean after devolution, the enlargement of the European Union, the challenges of globalisation, 7/7, the current debates on multiculturalism?

This is a blog about a book – or rather, a blog in advance of a book.

I am writing from the perspective of someone who believes strongly in public service broadcasting, and the BBC being at the heart of that. I believe in an independent BBC, supported by the licence fee. However, I don’t believe that the BBC is perfect. I think the BBC itself needs to avoid defensiveness, and engage with its critics. It needs to be alert to the dangers of its own internal culture dominating the way in which it covers the external world.

Damian Penny has a good summary of the story that the BBC put out and is now pulling back from, that President Bush said that God told him to invade Iraq.

Here’s the BBC’s original press release. And here’s what they are saying now.

AL, of the blog Sir Humphrey’s, writes:

Hi there,

Two days ago I did a post on a series of photographs seemingly shown AP/Reuters photographer Bilal Hussein colluding with insurgents: link

It has already featured on LGF, Instapundit etc.

Now it turns out the BBC is broadcasting video featuring exactly the same “insurgent” actors and locations as part of an item claiming
insurgents have ‘taken control’ over several western Iraqi towns:
link

I will add Sir Humphrey’s to the blogroll. I assume the blog name is a reference to the character in the TV series Yes, Minister.

Sonnets on the subject of “Spring” may be submitted via the comments. I want proper rhyme, none of yer bleeding assonance.

Alternatively, you may just have time to follow the CBBC website lesson plan “Fair trade, fairer world poetry”

Students write a poem about a fairer future for Africa and enter them into a competition judged by Children’s Laureate Jacqueline Wilson.

The competition that this BBC lesson plan promotes is sponsored by Divine Chocolate and Christian Aid. Some political and commercial sponsorship in the classroom is OK, then. And it’s good to see them dropping all that overdone paranoia about sweets and junk food. Anyway, you’ll be wanting to get started:

Read out the following explanation of fair trade to the class:

It is part of the Newsround guide to trade. Click on the link in the blue box for the full guide.

What is fair trade?

Fair trade is about making sure farmers get the best price for their crops in the poorer parts of the world.

Many organisations that do this are allowed to print the FAIRTRADE Mark on their products.

Sometimes the sense of dèjá vu I get from writing these posts is spooky. Blue box … Guide to trade … I have been … here … before. I have wondered what on earth the BBC was doing providing lesson plans before. I have wondered at the way the external links all push the same agenda before. In some past life, just as I did today, I have run a search of the CBBC website for the word “trade” and found an overwhelming assumption that buying and selling was something akin to injecting yourself with dangerous drugs, a basically harmful activity only to be done in dire need and with six carers and two policemen standing by.

Well, at least something has changed since my last visit. The “Guide to trade” now contains a new article: What are ‘sweatshop’ goods?

A sweatshop is a factory where the workers do long hours for low pay, they may have to work in uncomfortable or dangerous conditions.

In richer countries like the UK there are rules that protect workers from being treated badly or paid too little, but this is not the case in many of the countries we trade with.

Never mind that applicants queue up for prized factory jobs in Third World countries, because the people there rightly see them as a route out of poverty and vastly preferable to the quaint but miserable life of a subsistence farmer. Never mind that the economist Paul Krugman, scarcely a right-winger, has said that forcing Third World economies to pay Western wages and operate to Western environmental standards is a policy for good jobs in theory and no jobs in practice. The passage finishes with a statement that in its innocent ignorance would amaze me, only I am living my life in a BBC-induced time loop and don’t do amazement any more.

Lots of cheap clothing that’s sold in the UK is a good deal for the customers here, because making it was a bad deal for workers in the third world.

No, sweetie, not because. Every economist for the last three centuries might as well never have been born.