Running With the Dogs of Neo-Liberal Imperialism

"News as Entertainment: The Rise of Global Infotainment" is the name of the new book from Daya Kishan Thussu. And Daya Kishan Thussu is the name of the University of Westminster professor who spoke yesterday to the Reuters Fellows. Just as one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, so one probably shouldn't judge a book by an hour-long seminar followed by an informal Q&A, and yet that's what I'm about to do.

Thussu isn't alone in his belief that television news--the main way the world finds out about itself--has become more concerned with entertaining its audience than informing it. It's a common trope. Thussu says that, owned by entertainment companies, desperate to hold dwindling audiences, eager to cut costs, news divisions have been lowering their standards, largely adopting the techniques of entertainment.

The world we live in is very different from the world that's depicted on TV news. "The world has very serious problems," he said. "Wars on TV are Hollywoodized. In the process we don't get the real picture." Thussu said that the "neo-liberal imperialism" of soft infotainment masks the reality of a troubled planet.

I had several reactions to this, the first of which was:
Mask away, baby! If what we see on TV news--which last time I watched included stories (non-Hollywoodized, in my opinion) about Iraq, global warming, genital mutilation, Darfur, dead dolphins and, yes, the occasional comic exploits of vapid celebrities--then someone's not doing a very good job of filtering out the death, despair and decay. I also wondered how his argument fares if audiences are still falling even though news executives have embraced softball journalism.

But what really confused me was that term "neo-liberal imperialism." I always thought imperialism was armies on a map, colonists on ships, administrators sweating in provincial capitals. I asked Thussu to clarify: Is neo-liberal imperialism the market? Does it mean allowing people to decide what they like to watch, whether it's a TV show on footballers' wives or a nature program about molluscs? Apparently it is the market.

I accept that global media has influence and that that influence may not always be a good thing. However, Thussu seems to be suggesting there is a specific mechanism by which western (mainly U.S.) media giants are seeking to pull the wool over the world's eyes. Bread, circuses, that sort of thing.

In his view, public service broadcasters such as the BBC are a bulwark against this creeping crapification. What's needed is global public service broadcaster, funded perhaps by a penny tax on each e-mail that's sent. How workable would that be? Here's your bill to support a Unesco-funded TV channel so we can bring you a program about unemployment in Chad.

The problem as I see it is that it's a short step from saying what people can watch to saying what people can't: No one's watching our story on Chadian unemployment! They're all watching "Hand Me the Defibrillator: TV's Funniest Onscreen Heart Attacks." Let's restrict their ability to do that.

What Thussu means, of course, is that there could be more, should be more, quality news programming. That's what he would like. I suppose I would like it too. But even a liberal like myself (I sometimes buy the Big Issue) believes that though the market may not be a perfect system, it's the best system we've got. Clunky as it is, it's preferable to a group of elites deciding what news would be good for me to consume.

And, lo! The market does seem to have hurled onto the beach something that would seem to fit Thussu's requirements. The web has made it possible for me to find news that, in his argument, the Rupert Murdochs of the world would like to hide from me. I can read foreign newspapers. I can sample foreign bloggers. I can access the fevered bleatings of various bloggers.

I agree with Thussu that journalism could be better. But I don't see its shortcomings as some sort of conspiracy. The media reflects the societies it covers while trying, in its imperfect way, to shine light into darkened corners. If some TV news program hasn't nailed down precisely how many Iraqi civilians have died in the war--80,000; one million; or something in between--could it be that this is a figure society (the market) isn't clamoring for?

It may be, as Thussu said, a chicken and egg argument: Do people become more interested in "important" news the more they're exposed to it? Or do we seek out that which we're interested in? Whichever it is, I'm uncomfortable with the notion that people make "wrong" choices and should be nudged in the "right" direction. I would call that neo-liberal totalitarianism.

The Aunt in the Attic
Well what about the BBC? The issue of whither the Beeb has felled more forests this year than a hundred Brazilian land barons. Thussu said he'd shudder to think what would happen to the respected current affairs program "Newsnight" if it had to compete on the open market, adrift from the safe bosom of the public service charter. I would say: Leave the BBC as it is. It may be a weird, anti-market anachronism, but you would have a tough time recreating its quality programming from scratch. Make it share its iPlayer on-demand technology with any other U.K. broadcasters who want it. (We all payed for it, after all.) But get it out of areas it seems to have no business being in. Travel books? Selling advertising on its international web site? What's that have to do with informing, educating and entertaining?

Friday Grab Bag: Monkey Brains Mashup

Do we really want monkeys able to control robotic arms with their brains? I mean, do scientists even think these things through? To them, it's all "Wouldn't it be great if monkeys could control robotic arms," giving little thought to how it might all end: bionic monkeys rampaging, Terminator-like, through our streets, smashing our doors down with one swing of their mighty robotic arms.

Much better, I think, for researchers to figure out a way for Sharon Stone to control her brain. So far that's eluded science, which is how she ends up saying things like "bad karma" caused the Chinese earthquake. Of course, first they'll have to find her brain. It won't be easy, but once they locate the small, vestigial organ (last seen, briefly, in "Basic Instinct") they can wire it up so it can control a robotic arm, plucking marshmallows from the end of a skewer and popping them into her, um, mouth.

BritNews RoundUp
From Sharon Stone to Kirsty Wark. Who's she? A presenter on "Newsnight," the BBC's bestest current affairs program. Like Stone, Wark got into a spot of trouble with her legs, at least according to the Daily Mail: "Viewers watching the Newsnight Review show from the French Riviera last Friday were treated to the 53-year-old mother-of-two flashing her legs in a black dress with a hem several inches above the knee." This unleashed a "flood" of complaints to the program's Internet message board, said the paper.

How would you like to be the Daily Mail person in charge of scouring the BBC's message boards. Don't think there isn't such a person. How else to explain the story headlined "BBC viewers attack Bill Oddie's 'smutty' and 'almost perverse' Springwatch innuendoes." Springwatch is a nature show. Oddie is a birdwatcher and former comedian. The show in question featured footage of birds and insects mating, with commentary from Oddie that included him saying "Oh be gentle with me" as two stag beetles copulated. Wrote one viewer: "I am sick to death of the constant innuendo being offered by Bill every time a scene of mating appears."

One shudders to think what Bill Oddie would say when describing the mating habits of the great tit. Great tits are in the news after a nest was found inside an ashtray on a Scottish nature reserve. And let's hope Oddie never gets his hands on an Australian trouser snake of the sort that bit a tourist on the wild and rugged Cape York Peninsula of Queensland. Actually it bit the tourist on his, well, let's just say it bit him "down under." The tourist had stopped for a toilet break when the deadly brown snake lunged at him, sinking its fangs into his, um, didgeridoo. According to the Telegraph: "The man, whose nationality was not released, was extremely fortunate to be alive but also 'shocked and embarrassed' about where he had been bitten, an ambulance spokesman said."

Moving to New Zealand, where 27-year-old William Singalargh was found guilty of assault and offensive behavior after asking a 15-year-old if he wanted to "wear a hedgehog helmet" and then throwing a hedgehog at him. The Telegraph story is a marvel of understatement, allowing the facts to speak for themselves: "Singalargh was holding a hedgehog and asked the boy: 'Do you want to wear a hedgehog helmet?' When the boy indicated that he would rather not, Singalargh threw the animal, leaving a large red welt and four quills lodged in the teenager’s hip."

"Wearing a hedgehog helmet." Why does that sound dirty, like something Bill Oddie might say?

At times like these it's nice to return to good old human sex, or at least what passes for it in England. The Sun reports that a Watford dentist shares office space with his girlfriend, "Tiny," who offers sex shows upstairs while he fills cavities downstairs. Actually, it sounds like she fills cavities, too. (Rimshot, please.)

Gargoyle of the Week


Now that's a proper gargoyle. I snapped him at Keble College, where My Lovely Wife and I lunched as guests of Malte and Jette. You'll notice the sky was blue, something that happens occasionally around Oxford, though not today. I suppose if it was always sunny they wouldn't need gargoyles and then what would I do every Friday? Sundial of the week?

Thanks for reading during this spotty week. My paper still isn't completely finished but it's almost done. And that means I'm almost done, too. In preparation for my return to Washington and the unpacking of my mothballed column I invite the Washingtonians among you to submit questions to Answer Man. That's the weekly feature in which I answer questions about the D.C. area. E-mail them to me at john[at]voxford.com. Thanks and have a great weekend.

You Can't Say That

If censors had a motto it might be "What you can't see won't hurt you." Countries such as Iran and China might have censors--in practice if not in name--but surely enlightened democracies such as Britain and the United States don't. Not so fast, says Henry Laurence, a Bowdoin College professor who lectured yesterday here in Oxford. Henry compared episodes involving public broadcasting in the U.K., Japan and the U.S. The bottom line: Uncomfortable subjects make people uncomfortable.

In 1965 a British filmmaker named Peter Watkins made a film for the BBC about the devastating effects that a nuclear attack might have on England. Called "The War Game," it featured harrowing scenes of death and destruction. We see those sorts of things everywhere now--I'm disappointed if my evening's television viewing doesn't include at least one mushroom cloud, fireball or slow pan over a post-apocalyptic landscape--but it was scary stuff back then. And since the film seemed to question the very notion of mutual assured destruction--aka, "Nuke! You're it!"--executives at the BBC started to get nervous. In the end, they were so nervous that they didn't show "The War Game." It was finally aired in 1985.

Japan's public broadcasting service, NHK, was explicitly modeled on the BBC, though critics say it is so deep in the government's pocket that it's covered with lint and fuzz. Nothing is more controversial in Japan than that country's World War II atrocities. When a conference was held in 2000 to discuss the issue of "comfort women"--Chinese, Korean and other women forced into prostitution to service the Japanese Army--it was big news. Or it would have been big news, had the Japanese media bothered to cover what was being billed as a "People's Tribunal." Still, NHK commissioned a documentary on the conference and the reparations movement. But after alleged pressure from top government officials, including future prime minister Abe Shinzo, NHK watered down the program to the point where it was as useless as a dose of homeopathic medicine.

If issues of defense and national guilt are controversial touchstones in England and Japan, what excites Americans? Sex! Gay sex! Girl on girl action! Animated rabbits! PBS's Buster the rabbit really stepped in it in 2005 when he took his camcorder to Vermont and showed families involved in producing maple sugar and cheese. The problem: The two families happened to be headed by lesbian couples. This worried the Bush education department, which had provided some funds for the children's show, and it pressured PBS not to distribute that episode of "Postcards From Buster," though stations could request it from WGBH, its maker. PBS honcho Wayne Godwin said: "In fairness I would have to say a gay character is not one we would not include. The fact that a character may or may not be gay is not a reason why they should or should not be part of this series." Apparently he was getting paid by the "not."

It's hard being a public broadcaster, taking the public's--or the government's--money but striving to remain independent. I wonder if things would have been any different if those three networks had been private. Maybe not. I remember the foofaraw over "The Day After," a 1983 ABC docudrama that, like "The War Game," showed the effects of nuclear war, in this case by incinerating Lawrence, Kansas. (Well, pretending to incinerate Lawrence, Kansas.) The Reagan White House was nervous about the film's anti-nuclear message. ABC went ahead with it. (And in Langley Park, Maryland, a college student and his roommate were inspired by the program to write a pop song called "Tomorrow Might Be the Day After." It was sort of an updating of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," in which the singer urges a girl to sleep with him tonight, since tomorrow the Soviets might drop the big one. Yeah, it didn't really work as a song or a pickup line.)

Then there's the decision in 2004 by the Sinclair broadcasting group not to show an episode of "Nightline" in which the names and photographs of 500 U.S. servicepeople killed in Iraq were to be aired. "We find it to be contrary to public interest," said Barry Faber, general counsel to Sinclair, which owned eight ABC affiliates and dozens of other stations.

"Contrary to public interest." Hey, here's an idea: Let the public decide.

Petard-Hoisting, Plus: 'Lark Rise--The Sequel'

The Bard of Avon's name has been spelled in numerous ways over the years and there was incredible variation even within his own lifetime. However, I'm pretty sure this was not among the versions:


The temporary yellow sign adorns a roadsign near the Cutteslowe Roundabout and advertises a "Shakespreae" production by the Creation Theatre Co. Thank goodness they're not doing "Omelet."

Lark Rise: What Happened Next?
This next item will make no sense to anyone who hasn't been watching "Lark Rise to Candleford," BBC One's treacly Sunday night costume-drama. Set in the late 19th century, the show revolves around the post-mistress of a small market town and the modest tensions between the town folk of Candleford and the rural inhabitants of Lark Rise. It's based on the memoirs of Flora Thompson, who grew up in Oxfordshire.

Last night was the final episode and while a few loose ends were tied up it wasn't the satisfying conclusion I had hoped for. In fact, there wasn't much character development over the course of the 10-part series: spinster postmistress Dorcas Lane stays unsatisfied in love, spunky teen postmistress-in-training Laura Timmins stays spunky, fecund welfare cheat Caroline Arless keeps being a pain in the ass. And yet we planted our butts in front of the TV every week.

In an effort to give a sense of closure, here's my guess as to what happened next:

Assistant gamekeeper Philip White catches Alf Arless poaching pheasant on Sir Timothy's land and kills him with a single blast of his shotgun. Philip hopes this will endear him to Laura Timmins, for whose affection he has competed with Alf. But Laura is horrified by his act. In a strange twist, Philip marries Alf's mom, the rotund Caroline, when it turns out she was never legally married to the seafaring husband she's spent the whole series waiting for.

Last seen moving to London, Sir Timothy Midwinter and Lady Adelaide return to Candleford to show off their baby. Or, rather, babies: She has given birth to conjoined twins and they have joined a traveling circus, entertaining itinerant laborers with an act called "The Royal We." The body of Zillah, Dorcas Lane's cantankerous cook who died at the end of episode 10, is sold to Sir Timothy to exhibit as part of the circus under the name "The 1,000-Year-Old Woman."

Despite numerous offers from willing suitors, Dorcas never marries. She sublimates her passion by wearing increasingly tighter and tighter corsets until one day she simply disappears. The busybody Pratt Sisters take over the Post Office. Their first act is to order that all correspondence be handed over in unsealed envelopes so that they may read them before delivery.

Laura's parents, Emma and Robert Timmins, are found dead in their Lark Rise cottage in what is apparently a murder-suicide. Authorities cannot determine who killed whom and finally decide it doesn't really matter.

Teetotaling head postman Thomas Brown moves with his new bride, Margaret the minister's daughter, to the Isle of Wight where he invents a non-alcoholic wine spritzer and starts a cult.

And what of Laura Timmins, the 16-year-old girl through whose eyes the story is told? She marries Twister the crazy old beekeeper after his wife, Queenie, dies from anaphylactic shock. Laura gives birth to six children in the five happy years that she and Twister have together.

Hey, I'd watch it!

Media Monday: I Divorce Thee

Proof is what separates good journalism from crappy journalism and so let me retroactively apologize for my blog post of a few weeks ago where I criticized British newspapers for printing questionable stories based on self-serving research (last item). I didn't include any specific examples.

I knew, though, that one would come along eventually and sure enough a nice illustration appears in the Guardian today. The story, by legal editor Clare Dyer, is headlined "Mid-life crises pushing couples to divorce, survey of lawyers finds." The article begins: "Growing numbers of people are divorcing because of 'mid-life crisis,' a survey of 100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales reveals today."

The quote marks around "mid-life crisis" are just one clue to how wispy this story is. "Mid-life crisis"? That's not a scientific term, not even as precise as "adultery," which at least is a definable act. And in fact infidelity was the most common cause of marriage breakdown--"for the survey's fifth year running"--with "mid-life crisis" on the rise and coming in second. Family strains were third most common.

Funnily enough, there were no quote marks around "family strains." Would a mid-life crisis cause a family strain? Could a family strain lead to infidelity? The story is a mess all around, the data useless for anything more than a frosty, intraspousal breakfast table discussion. Extramarital affairs as a reason for divorce were listed in 29 percent of cases, down from 32 percent a year ago. Surely those three percentage points are within the margin of error. And is that 29 percent of all U.K. divorces or just 29 percent of those reported by "100 leading divorce lawyers in England and Wales"? Why even bother to release something so squishy?

The reason becomes apparent in the third paragraph: The "survey" comes from chartered accountants Grant Thornton and the first quote, in the fifth graph, is from the head of the firm's London matrimonial practice. To me the survey looks like an ad for Grant Thornton wrapped up in the guise of news. And the Guardian leapt on it like Michael Jackson on a Cub Scout.

They're not the only ones. I'm sure by day's end the story will be everywhere over here. That was the case with previous iterations. Last year's news was that private investigators were being hired more often in divorce cases. In 2005 the BBC headlined its story: "Affairs 'main reason for divorce.'" Browsing the coverage of this dubious survey from the last few years we can assemble an Infidelity Metric. Here are the percentages of marital breakdown caused by affairs:
2007: 29%
2006: 32%
2005: 29%
2004: 27%
2003: 29%

To me the headline isn't that there's been an increase in mid-life crises--whatever they are--but that, amazingly, every other year exactly 29 percent of divorces are due to affairs. According to 100 leading English and Welsh divorce lawyers, anyway.

I called Grant Thornton to ask if this annual survey wasn't just a big ad for its services. Of course not, said spokesperson Dee Crooks. "If we were a law firm, you could argue it was 'Come to me, come to me,'" she said. "But [clients] have got to go through a lawyer. We have relationships with lawyers, which is why we survey lawyers. We’re really down at the end of the line. We’re accountants. "

Okay, so a little story like this isn't the end of the world. God knows I've put lipstick on a pig before. But the practice is so common over here that you might think editors would simply bin these press releases when they come in, even those impressively marked "Embargoed until 00.01 hours, 25 February," as this one was. I think stories like this would fall under the "churnalism" heading Nick Davies is on about.

Why Newspapers Are Dying
British presswatcher Adrian Monck had an interesting post a few days ago about why newspapers are withering. It has nothing to do with journalism, he said: "The problems journalists are confronting are to do with the changing social habits of people who once purchased newspapers and were thus appealing to advertisers."

I can't tell whether he thinks the product needs changing--he sort of suggests it doesn't--but surely he doesn't believe we can change peoples' social habits instead?

Let the Sun Shine In

It's always sunny on British TV costume dramas, which gives one a rather skewed impression of this damp, sceptered isle.

The British love a good TV costume drama. Or even a bad one. They're so adept at producing them that a half-dozen seem to be on at any one time. No sooner had "Cranford" finished than "Lark Rise to Candleford" started up. The latest incarnation of "Robin Hood" has been heating up (or "hotting up," as the Brits say) the BBC air waves for the last few years. And just as the U.S. Strategic Air Command always has one nuclear bomber in the air, so does British television always have one Jane Austen adaptation in development.

Many of these shows feature the same actors: men who know how to use a plow and women who have a high tolerance for bonnets and a rib structure that allows for constant corseting. I sometimes wonder if being stuck in the 18th or 19th century is a kind of punishment, the modern workhouse. ("Madam, I find you guilty of driving under the influence and I hereby sentence you to a 12-part mini-series based on 'Jude the Obscure.'")

Still, we watch them all. The English are so very good at them. Actors are trained from a young age to keep a straight face while saying things like "That's a fine teacake you make, Mrs. Catchpole" and "But it's so dreadful, Charles; Ruby lost the antimacassar and now Tidgy shan't be able to row on St. Swivan's Day." Producers can dial in just the right amount of authentic grime, from the squeaky clean rural charm of a show like "Lark Rise" (no one has smallpox) to what I like to call "High Bubonic," or "the Full Dickens." (You don't see much of that, actually.)

What I couldn't understand, though, is why it's always so sunny in these shows. And not just mildly sunny, but incredibly sunny: the screen suffused with a warm amber glow, fruit-heavy boughs dancing in a light breeze, heroines stripped down to their pinafores, the jerkins of working-class heroes unbuttoned to reveal chiseled, hairless chests.

I mean, it never gets that way in England. I thought that perhaps CGI was involved: the entire series shot in front of a green screen and then finished off at Industrial Light & Magic. Or perhaps all the British costume dramas are filmed in a single, frenzied two-week stretch of nice weather every May or June. But now I think I know the answer. I described my confusion this morning to a woman I sometimes encounter while walking the dog and she filled me in: "No," she said. "They just cobble together all the sunny days over a summer, shooting when the weather's perfect."

Of course. It may not be "realistic," but that's TV for you.

Super Duper

I find it somewhat ironic that I had to move to England to see the most thrilling Super Bowl in recent memory. Of course, I could have stayed in the U.S. and seen it too, and without having to stay up till 3 a.m.

But then I would have missed seeing how the Brits cover an American sport. Actually, there wasn't much difference. The play by play was by Dick Stockton and color was by former wide receiver Sterling Sharpe. They may have held back on some of the minutiae--they were providing what the NFL called the "international feed"--but they assumed more than basic knowledge on the part of the viewers.

In the booth were "U.S. Sports Journalist" Mike Carlson and former Raider and Raven Rod Woodson, along with a BBC guy with a haircut. They did explain things occasionally, especially what must be the hardest thing for newcomers to grasp: the down system. The trio had a lot of air to fill, since there aren't any commercials on the BBC. We missed the ads (please tell me: Which were the best?).

The on-screen graphics during play were a little spotty. They had the first-down line marked in yellow but didn't always mark the line of scrimmage. And they kept a big arrow-shaped graphic that read "1st and 10" or "2nd and 7" up throughout each play, not just until the ball was snapped. Distracting. (To see how the NFL is hoping to colonize Britain, go to www.nfluk.com.)

But, all in all, an enjoyable, if exhausting, experience. I don't recommend eating nachos as 2 a.m.

My daughter noticed that there were no shots of cheerleaders, though. You would have thought University of Phoenix Stadium was a no-cheerleader zone. I wondered if the NFL was cooling the rah-rah for the international feed, not wanting to offend international tastes. "Yeah," she said, "that might not go over well on Al Jazeera."

I thought Tom Petty was great, by the way. America leads the world in Tom Petty Production and that's something to be proud of.

Brooker No Dissent
Charlie Brooker has a great column in the Guardian every Monday, a hilarious collection of spleen and bile. Today's is about his idea for a celebrity death service. Not entirely original, as some of his commenters point out, but Brooker describes his idea so beautifully that you may want to sign up. (His column a few weeks ago about tangling with the norovirus nearly made me spew milk out my nose. And I wasn't even drinking milk.)

On a more thoughtful note, one of the Guardian's U.S. correspondents, Gary Younge, has an interesting column about the political aristocracy that seems to have America in a stranglehold. And in a sneak peak from his new book, Nick Davies explores "Flat Earth News": stories in the media that either aren't true or are based on PR material. A study he commissioned from Cardiff University found that 80 percent of the UK stories they studied were "wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry." He calls this "churnalism."

I've noticed this in the British press. It seems much more willing to do stories--often short ones of no consequence, seemingly just to fill space--on dubious studies commissioned by some corporation or public interest group. They're often quite silly: Things like "survey respondents would most like to go on holiday with Tony Blair," said a study sponsored by a...travel agent.

Human Nature Loves a Vacuum

This is our new vacuum cleaner. I guess here in England you would call it a "Hoover." (Like Kleenex, that word comes from a brand, Britain's best-known electric floor-cleaner. The art deco building where they were once made was celebrated by Elvis Costello in his song "Hoover Factory." I pass it on the bus into the Big Smoke [the building, not the song]: "Five miles out of London on the Western Avenue....")

Oddly, the best thing you can say about a vacuum is that it sucks. Our old one didn't suck. Its hose also had the irritating habit of popping out of the canister when you tried to pull it across the room. This made vacuuming even more of a maddening chore than it normally is, since you had to walk over to the canister and push it along as if it was a quadriplegic. It was such a pain to vacuum that we hardly did, leading to the build up of huge drifts of black dog hair. Sometimes I couldn't find my house keys in the mess.

We asked the rental agent for a new vacuum and she yes, we'd be getting a Henry. A Henry? Whatever is that?

Well isn't he the cutest thing? Those eyes. That smile. He looks like a character from a children's book. Henry comes from a family of vacuums that includes James and Charles. (Basil has evidently been discontinued.) Okay, it's a bit disconcerting that Henry cleans with his nose, sucking up dirt the way Kate Moss snorts lines of coke. But he gets the job done--he could suck the white off an egg--and he makes me happy.

Let There Be Light
Speaking of good design, Summertown--the Oxford suburb where we live--is getting new streetlights. Road crews have been using cranes to pull the old streetlights out, a process that looks like a doctor removing a nasty splinter. I don't know if anything was wrong with the old streetlights. I guess they looked a bit dated:



And here's what the new ones look like:


Snazzy, huh? So sleek and high-tech. Notice the smaller, secondary light that shines on the sidewalk. There also appears to be a yardarm jutting out horizontally from the main shaft. It's oddly nautical. Perhaps they will hang festive flags from it--or dangle British youth.

Good design is important, whether it's on a Hoover or a streetlight. A well-made, well-proportioned, well-thought-out appliance, vestment, piece of furniture, automobile or building pleases the eye and, subconsciously perhaps, lifts the spirit.

Disraeli Gears


The design on this can gets the job done (the cap is a nice touch), but what I love most about the product is the name: Squirty Cream. That's exactly what it is.

More on Anthony Lilley
There was one thing I thought I should add to yesterday's review of the third Lilley lecture: When Lilley described how he would structure a networked BBC, he was at pains to say: "Don't touch news. Don't touch factual." I believe those are two departments currently on the chopping block.

From BBC to BNC: Anthony Lilley Part 3

The good ol' BBC. To an American such as myself--well, let's just say to me--it's a force for good, a provider of quality television and radio programming and the repository of beneficial notions of "Britishness." But to an actual Brit it's something much more complicated. The British Broadcasting Corporation is the 800-pound gorilla in the room during any discussion of the media here.

Which is important to know when considering Anthony Lilley's third lecture last night. (I reviewed his first two lectures here and here.) It was entitled "Network Media as Public Space" and it was an impressive and largely successful attempt to explain why regulators and politicians need to comes to grips with the changes digital developments are bringing, going forward. ("Going forward" is one of those Internet-era phrases, like "long tail" and "space" [as in "social media space" or "search space.")

The forces at work conveniently all begin with the letter C:
Choice: More channels on TV. More pages on the Web.
Context: We can access information and entertainment in more and more places--a mobile phone while walking down the street, a screen in the back seat of a taxi cab.
Control: It's passing from broadcasters to us, "the people formerly known as the audience."
Conversation: We're increasingly sharing media back and forth, be it photos on Flickr or videos on YouTube.
Put this all together and you get the fifth C: Community--bunches of people interested in the same things, able to find each other more easily. We're rooted in our common likes, not only by that old limiter of affinity, geography.

Then Lilley moved to the principle of market failure, explaining that governments only invest in things that the market won't provide. That's the main argument for the BBC: The cultural, social and democratic benefits brought by the BBC wouldn't otherwise come about without the license fee. (Briefly, each household in Britain pays about 140 pounds a year. That money totals close to 4 billion pounds and it is the main budget for the BBC.)

But just as my act of sunning in the nude to provide my body with much-needed Vitamin D can frighten and disgust the neighbors, so too public investment in media can have unintended consequences. It can stifle competition. One can argue that a sober and thoughtful current affairs program broadcast at 9 p.m. on the BBC is important, but why do you need a celebrity ballroom dancing show at 8? Wouldn't the market provide that? Perhaps, goes the counterargument, but it's important to capture the viewers at 8 so that they'll stick around for 9. Besides, if everyone's paying 140 quid, shouldn't they get some value for their money beyond dutiful documentaries about global warming and dead sea turtles?

There are many definitions of what public service broadcasting should do. Lilley offered this one, among others: It should inform, stimulate interest in arts and culture, reflect and strengthen cultural identity, make us aware of different cultures. And it can do that by being of high quality (a heavily subjective area), original, innovative, challenging, engaging and widely available.

And here's where Lilley neatly pivoted and asked the audience to open their minds a bit. Interactive, networked media can do all of the things public service broadcasting demands of itself. Lilley argued that interactive media--computer games, Web sites--are by their nature educational. What's more, we are moving towards a world where there isn't an 8 p.m. dancing show followed by a 9 p.m. current affairs show. There are only shows that you download at your leisure.

In other words: Is the BBC putting its money in the wrong place? Should it be--my words, not his--the British Networking Corporation instead of the British Broadcasting Corporation?

I didn't hear Lilley commit to that notion, per se, and he was a little vague on what a BNC would look like. (More investment in radio; definite investment in educational computer games, especially those the market isn't providing; explore advances in "non-linear comedy.") But I think he's right that the landscape is changing and will change further. The dilemma that the BBC is facing--and The Washington Post, come to think of it--is that we're on one galloping horse and we need to switch to another. But, frankly, our horse has served us well, and making the leap to the other one--blowing up the notion of "broadcasting" and "mainstream"--could go horribly wrong. So we try to do both. Lilley thinks that's a recipe for disaster.

The decisions we have to make aren't easy ones, and in the case of Britain they are political decisions. "We're coming to a moment where that political judgment must be made," he said. (He also said, ruefully: "Our politicians think the media is the newspapers. They aren't thinking about it.")

How do you translate Lilley's ideas into change? I don't know, but I'm glad I'm not the one doing it. Do you risk altering--even perhaps destroying--something that has worked well, in the hopes that it will work even better in the future?

By the way, Lilley didn't use the word "meme" once last night. And he reiterated that he would assemble his last lecture from the blog postings of his readers. If you've always wanted to lecture at Oxford--albeit through the black-clad, bewhiskered person of Anthony Lilley--now's your chance. Go here and make a comment or ask a question. Or just leave a comment on my blog.

Friday Grab Bag: Rule Britannia Edition

Nothing cures Anglophilia like actually living in England. What seemed quaint or quirky from the comfort of your easy chair, "Masterpiece Theatre" flickering on the TV, is maddening when confronted in the flesh. For example, it's amusing in the abstract that the English don't give you a glass of water when you sit down in a restaurant, but, Jesus Christ, when all you want is a freakin' glass of water--I mean, come on, I'm dying here--it suddenly isn't so funny.

But true love means accepting something, someone, warts and all. Which is a very roundabout way of getting to the seminar I attended last night. It was at the Said Business School and it was entitled "The U.K. Media Sector and the Global Media Business: Global or Bit Part Player?" Gathered to speak were David Levy, an associate fellow at SBS and former controller at the BBC; Will Hutton, journalist and chief executive of workplace consultancy the Work Foundation; Helen Alexander, chief executive of the Economist Group; Peter Bazalgette, former chief creative officer at media giant Endemol; and Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC.

Sadly, the session was off-the-record so I can't tell you about the BBC's plans to scrap "Newsnight" and replace it with "Celebrity Dwarf-Tossing."

I think I can reveal, however, that the panelists are very keen on what they called Britain's "creative economy" or "cultural industries." These are things like media production, advertising, publishing, design, architecture, performing arts, software, etc. They directly or indirectly employ close to 2 million people in Britain. At the same time, the U.K. is the world's leading exporter of cultural industries.

The world can't seem to get enough Britstuff, which means Blighty should be producing even more, and be smarter about how it produces and disseminates its cultcha. I heard, not for the first time of course, that digital will change everything. Throw out the business models. Trying to make money with old-fashioned notions such as sticking commercials in the middle of TV sit-coms won't work in a world where users download, mash-up and forward to friends.

So, a pep rally for Britain, with only a few dark notes thrown in. No one really nailed exactly why British creations are so popular, although one panelist's comment that Britain "brings a lot of character, some might say eccentricity, to the mix" is probably close to the mark. I confess I was a bit surprised at how in-demand British culture seems to be. BBC America never struck me as that good, and while I loved "The Office" I can't see some of my favorite movies, music, novels and TV shows playing well in Peoria.

Or course, that could just be the Anglophile in me. When you love something, you hate to share it.

BritNews RoundUp
No one can compete with Britain when it comes to wacky news stories. This News of the World subhed says it all: "Man traps penis in mannequin and complains to makers." Don't you just hate when that happens?

Things have been quiet on the Daily Mail breast front lately, but the paper came roaring back this week with another hard-hitting look at the science behind women's bosoms, with a story headlined "Why the British woman's cleavage has gone from 34B to 36C in a decade." Frankly, I didn't read the whole article (something to do with hormone replacement therapy and estrogen loose in the environment) but I did look at the pictures.

Swinging Virgin millionaire Richard Branson this week unveiled the design of the futuristic craft that will allow tourists to experience space. Here's the story. Make sure you watch the little animation, for it raises a question I hadn't thought about before: The video shows the space-suited passengers unbuckling their seatbelts to float around for "a few minutes" of weightlessness. The next thing you know, they're all buckled safely back in as the ship starts its reentry. What's neatly glossed over is how exactly the Virgin Galactic crew is going to get them all back in their seats. Can you imagine the mad rush to corral a half-dozen floating passengers and strap them in? I'm betting a few don't make it to their seats in time and have to be scraped off the ceiling back on Earth.

Here's a touching tale: A pair of black-clad Goths were ordered off a bus in Yorkshire because the man leads the woman around with a dog leash. "The couple said they 'loved each other to pieces' and the use of the lead was a 'sign of trust,'" wrote the BBC. It takes guts to dress like that in Yorkshire, by gum. And do watch the interview with the couple. Those accents go great with those clothes.

Jeremy Paxman is host of the respected BBC program "Newsnight," regularly grilling newsmakers with a ferocity unknown on American television. He entered the news last week when an e-mail he sent to the chairman of British retailer Marks & Spencers (imagine a slightly more upmarket Sears) was leaked. In the e-mail, Paxman complained that the quality of Marks & Spencer underwear had declined noticeably. The socks fall down and the underpants don't, well, don't adequately support the family jewels, creating what Paxman termed "widespread gusset anxiety." This would be like Mike Wallace dashing off a letter to the head of Fruit of the Loom. In other words, odd. But in a way encouraging. Unless the whole thing is a publicity stunt, it suggests that you don't have to stop caring about the little things just because you're rich and famous.

Gargoyle of the Week


Isn't he great? Now that's a gargoyle. My Lovely Wife took this picture at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Iffley.

My, look at the time! Thanks for reading. Here's hoping we can all avoid widespread gusset anxiety this weekend.

Citizen Journalism: Save Your Hay

"Save Your Hay"? Of course I mean "Have Your Say." Have Your Say is what the BBC calls the reader interaction area on its Web site. It's a delightfully British name: to the point, non-threatening, human. Though internally the BBC bandies about the expression "user-generated content"--aka UGC (one of the ugliest acronyms out there; just look at the way you have to twist your mouth to form those sounds)--to its credit it doesn't use that jargony term when inviting the public to participate. "Have your say," it says. And you do.

What does it mean that the public is invited to participate? All sorts of things, some of which were touched on last week in a speech by the head of the Beeb's newsroom, Peter Horrocks. Most noticeably, he said, the public can be quite nasty. Many of the comments in the Have Your Say forum after the murder of Benazir Bhutto were of the "Islam sucks" variety.

"The vehemence and the unanimity of these opinions against the Muslim religion were striking," Horrocks said, and the BBC briefly considered pulling down its comment board. If it had, it would have been accused of inviting free speech only to stifle it. Since it didn't, it could be accused of condoning intolerant speech. (The Washington Post has had similar debates about the propriety of its comments, as the paper's ombudsman wrote in a column last week.)

Horrocks is thinking beyond just what message the comments might send to those who read them, though. He's also concerned about what the BBC should do with them, that is, what are the news implications? Does the preponderance of negative comments mean more people are anti-Muslim than we think, or that BBC reporters should rethink the way they cover Pakistan or immigration or religion?

Not necessarily, he decided: "Rather than playing a numbers game to drive our agenda I instead encourage our teams to look for thoughtful or surprising views and opinions [in the forums]. In other words we still need to be journalistic with this material, as we would with any other source."

I think that's the right response. After all, "It's the journalism, stupid." But what are the journalistic implications of forums and, more broadly, of user-generated content? That's a vague question with a big, sprawling answer--or collection of answers.

The BBC does more than almost anyone in this arena. The Have Your Say portion of its Web site includes forums; it invites readers to send in pictures and raw video; it asks for input on specific articles that are in the reporting stage, in search of sources; it posts stories ("Your Stories") inspired by users. The UGC operation sifts through the comments and e-mails to see what should be sent on for use by other BBC journalists. There is a 20-minute weekly TV show, "Your News," that runs on the BBC's News 24 digital channel and is based on user-generated ideas.

More than two dozen people work in the BBC's interactive department, and at any one time a 13-person unit called the Hub is sifting through the tsunami of incoming submissions. E-mails are forwarded, images are categorized. Have Your Say editors set up and moderate forum debates. Some 10,000 items come in every day. Horrocks pointed out that though this number is impressive it represents fewer than 1 percent of the 5 million people who visit the BBC Web site every day. (That may not be strictly true; I understand Cardiff University will release some updated numbers soon.) It's a self-selecting group of BBC users with all the opportunity for bias that suggests.

One of the things I always wonder about the citizen journalism efforts of large, mainstream media outfits such as the BBC is: Why? What is the factor that spurs such an investment? Is it to wring some journalistic worth out of the torrent of submissions? Or is it to give the public the impression that they are wanted as more than mere recipients, that they are being taken inside the tent--to engage in conversation, not listen to a monologue, as Dan Gillmor might put it?

The BBC says it's the former. But, with 10,000 inputs day, this is journalism on the factory-farm scale. Many of the people who commented on Horrocks's speech pointed out that it's almost impossible to wade through hundreds of comments. Are those comments there to inform the people reading them or to please the people writing them?

Also, it's not always clear how readers or viewers should interpret UGC. What, for example, makes a Your Story any different or better than a Their--that is, a BBC--Story. Are these stories that might have slipped through the cracks if citizens had not sent them to the BBC? Are they not a subtle argument that even the BBC is infallible? (Not necessarily a bad thing.) Are they the journalistic equivalent of Dr. Johnson's female preacher/hind-leg walking dog: not done well but impressive for being done at all.

Still, I think it's right that the BBC has invested so heavily in Have Your Say. Even if it is the journalistic equivalent of mechanically-reclaimed meat, nuggets of value will surface regularly. It puts in place a structure that comes into its own when there is a big breaking news story: a natural disaster, a coup, a terrorist attack. And no less importantly it sends the message that a seemingly opaque organization cares enough about its readers (or viewers or listeners) that it wants to hear from them. This is vital at a time when the public's trust in the media is lower than the Marianas Trench.

Besides, the trash-to-treasure ratio of the UGC selected for display on a mainstream news site is probably no worse than that of the overall news site itself. Those who vehemently oppose citizen journalism would do well to remember just how bad some professional journalism is.

What of the future? Vicky Taylor, head of the BBC's interactive department, envisions a time when the Hub isn't processing only comments, photos and the odd shaky cellphone video. She can see the Have Your Say site hosting citizen-produced video of a more professional nature, a BBC YouTube, if you will.

"That can’t stand alone," she told me. "Everything has to work with everything else. But I personally have no problem if somebody can produce a really good form themself that has a piece to camera in it and there’s a narrative. Then you can run that as a film. Or we can give them the tools to do audio slide shows, that type of thing. And we run them on our site."

It would be the video equivalent of their message boards: blanketed with disclaimers that this or that video package doesn't represent BBC policy or adhere to BBC standards, but posted with the belief that a viewer somewhere will be interested in it.

"I don’t see a problem with that," she said.

There are some journalists who, having their say, would say that goes to far. I'm convinced, though, that you'll never know if you've gone too far until you've gone far enough.

Coffee-Blogging

Ah, that's better: off the bus, in a coffee shop at Gloucester Green, sipping a decaf cappuccino and about to join some fellow Fellows for a pint. Perhaps it isn't norovirus after all, just a bad bus driver. (He was the sort, and I've known them before, who can't keep a constant speed. He liked to speed up then slooooooow down, thenspeedup, then sloooooow down. I'm getting sick just typing that.)

I was in London yesterday to talk about my study topic with a few smart people. One was Martin Moore, the director of the Media Standards Trust. (Their web site appears to be down right this moment.) The MST is a relatively new outfit that is doing lots of things, but the most interesting to me is a project to come up with what amount to ingredients labels for news or comment web pages. They're working with Tim Berners-Lee to develop a system where users could search for information based on various criteria, ie: Show me news stories about the unrest in Kenya that rely on two or more named sources, utilize reports that are funded by impartial observers and include links to original source material. Or if you'd rather have first-person commentary, you could set your filter for that, too. I don't know much more than that, but it's an interesting approach, one that attempts to help deal with the avalanche of information that is being uploaded to the web every day.

I also met with Vin Ray at the BBC. He's director of the Beeb's College of Journalism, an outfit started in the wake of the Hutton Report. Vin's shop has prepared hundreds of pages of material--both technical, nuts-and-bolts, how-tos and more reflective material meant to touch on journalistic ethics--to help improve the quality of BBC journalism. There's a robust section on user-generated content, which is what I'm interested in.

Then I spoke with Vicky Taylor, czarina of UGC at the Beeb. The BBC is among the most active media outlets in requesting content--comments, photos, videos--from users, harvesting it for the web site and passing it on to BBC reporters as possible source material. This is the sort of thing--user-generated content, citizen journalism--that drives some journalists crazy, akin to letting the inmates run the asylum. Best not to think about comparing my profession to the madhouse.

My friend Richard (and former fellow Fellow) showed me around his shop. It was nice to be back in a newsroom again: the energy, the intelligence, the gallows humor.

Most exciting of all, during my stint in White City (the name of the multi-building compound that the BBC calls home) was a glimpse of a couple pooches being walked out back by a minder. A gaggle of schoolchildren were taking a tour and almost as one they screamed out "The 'Blue Peter' dogs!" Ah, celebrity.

Drive, He Said

The best program on British television, and possibly the best program in the history of television, runs Sunday nights on BBC 2. It's called "Top Gear" and it's about how each of us can make the world a better place with simple acts of kindness, compassion and neighborhood voluntarism.

Who am I kidding? "Top Gear" is a totally indefensible hour-long show devoted to the internal combustion engine. It's about cars. But to call it a weekly car-test show is like calling "La Boheme" a show about a girl with a pesky cough. They drive new models, yes, but "Top Gear" is unadulterated car-porn, but with much better production values. The segments are beautifully filmed and edited, making each car look tooth-achingly beautiful. It's as if they called in Ridley Scott or Michael Bay to direct.

And they do ridiculously entertaining high-concept things in the show, like have a Bugatti Veyron race a light airplane from Italy to London or have an Aston Martin race a man on rollerskates with a jet-pack strapped to his back down a runway. They bring in celebrities to do a timed lap around their course in an econobox then reveal whether Simon Cowell was faster than Jamie Oliver. Sure, "Top Gear" demonstrates the luggage capacity of the new Land Rover, but goes far, far beyond merely dutiful reviews of the new Honda or Daihatsu.

The first thing I noticed about "Top Gear" was how pathetic it makes America's closest analogue appear. In the States there's a PBS show called "MotorWeek" which manages the amazing feat of making every car it tests look boring. It has at its host a humorless guy named John Davis who sucks the life out of even the most thrilling vehicles. Part of it is Davis's incredibly over-scripted delivery, each word uttered as if he's reading it from a TelePrompTer. And part of it's just Davis. He's a tubby guy who couldn't lever himself into a Lotus or Lamborghini unless he was sprayed with graphite. The other main character is Pat Goss, a garage owner from suburban Maryland who talks about car maintenance. His segment at least makes viewers dream that their garages could be as clean and well-equipped as his, but he's another chubby sourpuss. (And nowhere more sour than on his weekly radio program. He can barely hide the contempt in his voice when listeners phone in to ask about their "Check Engine" lights.)

The cars on "MotorWeek" are driven responsibly. You can't imagine them getting above 55 mph, let alone racing a man with a jet-pack on his back.

"Top Gear's" main host is Jeremy Clarkson, the anti-John Davis. In addition to his "Top Gear" duties, Clarkson pens an engaging car column in the Sunday Times. It's his weekly non-car column that explains why Clarkson is so popular in Britain, though. (There's a nascent "Clarkson for Prime Minister" movement.) Fed up with political correctness, Clarkson is a master of "I calls it as I see it." He can deploy a metaphor with the aplomb and audacity of a Thai stripper picking a Ping Pong ball up off a bar floor. It can all be a bit much sometimes, but it's a refreshing antidote to the furrowed-brow hand-wringing that characterizes so much British journalism.

This segment gives a taste of "Top Gear's" sensibility:



There's nothing as entertaining-- or wonderfully irresponsible--on American televsion. "Top Gear's" in re-runs now. It won't start up again till the summer, by which time I'll be back in the land of "MotorWeek." Pity, as I enjoy my weekly dose of petrol--er, gasoline.

Friday Grab Bag

Reason No. 472 It's Nice Not to Have a Car


You don't have to scrape frost off a windshield on a cold morning. You do, however have to scrape it off your bicycle seat:


BritNews Roundup
Call it pedalphilia: A 51-year-old Scottish man was convicted of a "sexually aggravated breach of the peace" for trying to have sex with his bicycle. Robert Stewart was sentenced to three years of probation for the offense. Stewart conducted his cycle seduction in a locked room in a hostel. But he probably should have put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Cleaners knocked several times then used a master key to gain entry, where they discovered Stewart wearing only a white T-shirt and, ahem, trying to ride his bike. Both cleaners, the BBC reported, were "extremely shocked." They informed the hostel manager, who called police.

Like me, you may have thought that in Scotland pretty much anything is fair game--those cold, dark nights, all those sheep. Bikes, however, appear to be off-limits. Ah well, different spokes for different folks.

Oh that naughty BBC, Part XVI: The news outlet apparently added the sound of crying babies to footage of newborn quintuplets it showed on its 24-hour news channel and Web site. Video of the quints was released by Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. It lacked audio. However when the video showed up on TV and online, there was the sound of crying, despite the fact the newborns, born 14 weeks prematurely, had respirators in their mouths. A BBC spokesperson told the Guardian: "[We] should not have added sound to the pictures."

Well, no duh. Reality should be good enough for anyone. The news needn't be tweaked to make it more real.

The Daily Mail's infatuation with women's breasts (and John Kelly's Voxford's infatuation with the Daily Mail's infatuation with women's breasts) continues with a story on why women's breasts are getting bigger with each succeeding generation.

A Real Renault-No
Still waiting for a call back from Publicis, the London agency responsible for Renault's "n-word" newspaper ad. A spokesperson at the Advertising Standards Authority informed me that his group had received two complaints about the ad from members of the public. "The general crux of the complaints is that the ad is offensive, inappropriate and in bad taste because of the connotations of the 'n' word," he said in an e-mail message.

The ASA issues wonderfully detailed reports of its findings. I'll be waiting to see what it does with this ad.

Gargoyle of the Week
My Lovely Wife snapped this happy fellow, who looks out from a corner of Brasenose College (which is universally recognized as the most oddly-named college in Oxford).


Keep your nose clean and have a great weekend.

Deep Fry-d

Stephen Fry is a certified British national treasure. The Cambridge University-educated actor/writer/TV presenter is so wonderful that it's a pleasure to see him make a mistake, as he did today in his weekly Guardian technology column, Dork Talk. When speaking of the lashings of press Apple receives whenever it releases a new product, Fry wrote: "Whoopy-doo, as Americans like to say."

Cor-flimey, I've never met an American who liked to say that, or disliked it for that matter, that is, who ever said it. "Whoop-di-doo," perhaps, or, current favorite, "Big whup." But never "whoopy-doo." (We do "make whoopy"--or did in the 1920s--although actually I think that's spelled "whoopie.")

We don't really have people like Fry in America: someone who can be intellectual AND funny. American audiences probably know him best through "Jeeves & Wooster," the TV adaptation of the P.G. Wodehouse stories. But he's a fixture on television here and currently hosts an amazing program called "Q.I." The British have a lot of comedy quiz shows that require the celebrity contestants to actually have two brain cells and a synapse between them. "Q.I."--it means "quite interesting" and has evolved into a mini-empire-- is the cream of the crop. Fry is master of ceremonies as two two-person celebrity teams compete to answer questions about....About what? Oh, the physics of invisible ink, the architecture of whale penises, the German national anthem, faux European Union directives--that sort of thing. It really doesn't make much difference what the topics are since they're just excuses to spout witty in the discursive way that seemingly only the British can do.

"Q.I." is our current favorite program[me], despite the fact that it is so funny it can be physically painful to watch. (The closest we come to it in America is probably NPR's "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me." And it's not that close.)

I can imagine BBC television producers kicking around ideas and one saying, "Let's get Stephen Fry to do it!" It doesn't really matter much what "it" is: a documentary on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a tour of West Country cheddar farms, a quiz show on the Law of the Sea Treaty. Whatever it is would get that trademark Fry touch: witty and erudite, cerebral without being off-puttingly intellectual, clever but not too-clever-by-half, twinkly-eyed and chuckley, if that's a word (and if it isn't, it should be), with at least one Oscar Wilde quote per episode.

Fry's current project appears to involve traveling to all 50 states in the U.S. in a black London taxicab. (The Brits love unleashing their comics on the world, Baedeker in hand.) I can't wait to see it. Or, as Stephen Fry might say, "Whoopy-doo!"

Radio, Radio

The payment extracted for sipping wine in a handsome function room in an ancient Oxford college is typically attendance at a lecture. Usually it's a small price to pay. Sometimes the cost is steep, indeed. But occasionally it's a pleasure, as it was last night, when I attended something called the Philip Geddes Memorial Lecture.

The topic was "Radio: Medium of the Moment" and the presenter was a journalist named Martha Kearney. She started out in radio news in London, moved to television and, since April, has been back in radio, as host of BBC Radio 4's daily current affairs program "The World at One."

Many colleagues, Kearney said, were baffled that she left television for radio. In the hierarchy that all journalists mentally calculate, radio is inferior to TV. But, she argued, radio can touch listeners in ways no other medium can and is, in these challenging digital-broadband-podcast-user-generated-content times, showing amazing stamina. (Of course, you couldn't really expect her to say otherwise. I can't imagine her delivering a lecture entitled "Radio: It Was Nice While It Lasted" or "Radio: Can I Have My Old TV Job Back, Please?")

While television news audiences have fallen, radio listenership, especially among the young, has risen--this 40 years after the birth of "modern" radio in Britain. The explosion of delivery mechanisms almost demands a change in terminology. "Radio" is a multipurpose word that means both the machine that one switches on and the program that comes out of the speaker. Those programs--that "content"--will be delivered in increasingly diverse ways, from downloadable .mp3 files to programs sent to mobile phones.

Regardless of how it tickles your cochlea, Kearney said radio will possess the same vital qualities, that of being "personal, portable and universal." Radio, she said, "is the most personal medium of all, a voice in your ear that follows you around."

Socialized Media
After Kearney's lecture, Tim Gardam, himself a former television executive, asked a question: How fertile was the ground for commercial radio stations? Could they flourish in an environment where so many resources were lavished on the BBC? Kearney acknowledged the dilemma but hoped commercial radio could survive, possibly by taking advantage of the cost savings that come from harnessing new digital technology.

The exchange made me ponder the irony of the BBC: It wants to be--it has to be--successful, but it can't be too successful. It needs a viable commercial media the same way a company like Microsoft needs to be able to point at Apple and say: "See, we don't really have a monopoly."

As an Anglophile raised on PBS and "Masterpiece Theatre" I've always thought of the BBC as a Good Thing. And I'm sure it is. But I can see how--regardless of one's thoughts on its political bent--the BBC could be seen as a force that disrupts the intricate workings of The Market. Not that I understand those workings or even believe that they are intricate.

Wookey Nookie
As I mentioned Monday, we spent the latter part of last week driving around the West Country. Because driving around certain villages--their roads a warren of one-way streets and diabolical roundabouts--can be maddening, we often saw the same signs again and again. That was the case in the Somerset town of Wells, where between trying to find an ATM and looking for Wells Cathedral, we drove down the same stretch of asphalt a dozen times. We kept passing the sign for a village called Wookey Hole and laughing at the name.

Then in today's Guardian I read that a hotelier in Wookey Hole is planning to host Britain's first ever Erotic Film Festival there next summer. I don't think I will ever be able to think of Wookey Hole the same way again.

Friday Grab Bag

I Got You, Beeb
It's turmoil time at the BBC, which must save money by trimming 2,500 jobs, reducing duplication and canceling what it calls "middling" programs. (How you'd like to have worked on one of those?) Because the British love a good strike (we never know when we're going to get our mail, though yesterday our postman said he'd see us at least "for the next few days"), BBC employees are threatening to join the picket line.

The same sort of forces that are facing newspapers are facing the BBC. Of course, the BBC receives money from every household in Britain, courtesy of the TV license fee, something The Washington Post doesn't enjoy. But just as The Post is being buffeted by increased competition and an uncertain marketplace, so too is the BBC.

In his column in today's Guardian, Simon Jenkins observes that the BBC's role as a sort of national surrogate newspaper is being eroded by advances in technology. True "public" broadcasting is the sort that shows up on the Internet. Transform the Beeb into a lean, mean multi-platform machine, Jenkin argues. And he gets off a great line: "Like the Royal Navy, Oxbridge and the Church of England, the BBC has been led to imagine that it can join the 21st century by thinking of ever cleverer ways of staying in the 20th."

Shouldn't She Have Seen It Coming?
Sunlight streaming through a crystal ball on the windowsill of a house in Dorset set the curtains on fire. "It was a most unusual incident," said a firefighter.

In the Zone
My hometown, Washington, D.C., has always been a desirable vacation destination for people who like to live life on the edge. Why? Because you never know what you're going to be charged when you take a taxi cab there.

Though the gear and the pinion wheel were invented centuries ago, and the taxi meter not long after that, in D.C. cab drivers prefer to charge their customers based on something known as the zone system. Posted in each cab--displayed in a curling and yellowing plastic sleeve on the back of the front passenger seat--is an inscrutable taxi zone map that divides the city into 23 separate chunks of real estate. Your fare is determined by how many of those different borders you traverse. Oh, and by how honest your driver is.

The map is nearly impossible to read, especially if you're unfamiliar with the city. Many's the time I've taken a cab from Point A to Point B, only to be charged something completely different when I went from Point B to Point A. It's always been a crap shoot to take a D.C. cab, especially if you're visiting from out of town.

But Washington's mayor, Adrian Fenty, has pulled the plug on the zone system, announcing that D.C. will switch to time-and-distance meters, like just about every other city in the civilized world.

Washington has a lot of quirks to it. (Its citizens don't have a voting representative in Congress for example.) The zone map was one of those, an artifact, it's said, of a time when politicians wanted to cheaply travel from Capitol Hill to the White House. There's also an argument that the zone system is fairer to poor people, who, without cars, use cabs to travel from one end of the city to the other.

Of course, it had the potential to screw every one else, especially tourists. The city has been mulling a change for years, and all sorts of studies have been done. There was talk of some sort of hybrid system, using GPS receivers to automagically determine when a zone was passed. But given that many of the cabs can't even manage working air conditioners or seat belts, it seemed a stretch to think advanced technology would solve the problem.

So meters it is. The taxi drivers supposedly aren't happy and are threatening a strike. Now, do you think they'd do this out of concern for customers? I'm sure some crooked drivers will figure out a way to still cheat, but it's going to take some creativity: circuitously driving on back roads or purposely getting stuck in traffic as the meter ticks over. If they're going to rip us off, let's make them earn it.

Gargoyle of the Week
Two squirrels, clutching their nuts:


And I hope they're red squirrels, since as I mentioned previously, Britain is fighting an invasion of non-native gray squirrels. A hotel in Cumbria has added squirrel appetizers to the menu in an effort to reduce the overpopulation.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.

Friday Grab Bag

Tattoos! Tea! Gargoyles!

The Illustrated Idiot
Like many people--and like most journalists--I am prey to crippling bouts of self-doubt. Am I living a virtuous life? Am I a good writer or am I a fraud? Am I kind enough to my family and other animals? Just as I'm rolling into the fetal position (or what the British disturbingly call the "foetal position") I'm rescued from the abyss by the happy realization that as bad as I may be, there's someone out there worse than I.

This week it was a Daily Mail story about man in Wales who got a life-sized tattoo of his wife and two daughters on his back. It's not a very handsome tattoo--it looks like one of those sterile, computer-generated designs you can get inked in frosting atop a sheet cake--but he's not a very handsome man. Perhaps that's why, not long after Alan Jenkins had endured the painful tattoo process, his wife left him for a "Latvian hunk she had met at work."

A family torn asunder. Sad. And yet the photos accompanying the article reduced any sympathy I may have had. The first photo is of the shirtless cuckold surrounded by his wife and daughters. Taken pre-split perhaps? No, because the second photo is of the adulterous wife and her Latvian hunk, and she's wearing the same outfit. The pix were obviously taken at the same time. Ditto for the story in the Sun. (Britain's tabloids will not be beaten when it comes to tattoo-related articles.)

The family gathered one last time for their sordid 15 minutes of fame. How gross is that? As we ponder the excesses of the media, let's not forget the excesses of the public.

It's in the Bag
Time for another study on the beneficial effects of tea, this one touted in a USA Today story. According to the article, drinking tea inhibits the growth of human cancer cells implanted in mice. Ingesting or applying green tea polyphenols protects against skin cancer in mice.

I don't think any of these findings will change my intake--about one or two cups a day. The real message is, if you are a mouse you really ought to try to get your paws on some tea.

Claws Celebre
To update my Sept. 25 item about the BBC's cat-naming controversy: In a letter published in the Guardian, the BBC's children's programming director said there was not a suspicious surge of votes for "Cookie," nor was there the belief that the name had a sexual connotation.

Over the weekend a letter-writer to the Daily Mail speculated that the discomfort over the name must have come from a joke that was "popular in the Seventies" in which a man tripped over a cat and uttered the Spoonerism "Cooking fat!"

I dave my houbts.

Blog-Rolling
At least two of my fellow Fellows here at the Reuters Institute have blogs: Abel Escudero Zadrayec and Wang Yao. Too bad I can't read them, they being in Spanish and Chinese, respectively.

By the way, Wang Yao said he gets around 200,000 hits on his blog. If I can siphon off just a few of those.....

Gargoyle of the Week
I think I snapped this one at Christ Church College:


We should have a caption contest. My entry: "What's that smell?"

Have a great weekend.

The BBC's Cat-astrophe

The basic commandment of journalism is Thou shalt not make stuff up. It isn't Thou shalt usually not make stuff up, or Thou shalt not make up important stuff, but it's okay to make up the unimportant stuff.

No, not much room for interpretation. Yet it's amazing--and troubling--how often this commandment is broken. There are a lot of sinners out there. One must ask: WWJD? What would a journalist do?

The latest making-stuff-up episode to take place on this scepter'd isle involves the BBC and a drip-drip-drip of revelations, each one arguably minor, most of them almost laughable. The poster child--or poster pet--is a kitten that either is or isn't named Socks. The kitten is the mascot of a venerable children's TV show called "Blue Peter."

I remember watching "Blue Peter" when I was a teenager in Britain in 1977/78. The show's hosts would come and go, but all were characterized by a hale and hearty chipperness: "Hullo!" they'd exhort. "Today we're going to make a chronometer out of ice lolly sticks!" They'd glue a few wooden popsicle sticks together--while viewers at home desperately did the same--and then they'd recite the magical incantation--"Here's one I made earlier"--and pull from underneath the table a breathtaking example of the watchmaker's art. Meanwhile, you were left with sticky fingers, a ruined carpet and something resembling a matchbox that had been dropped in a blender.

And then there were the animals. My English mate Richard tells me the onscreen quadrupeds--cat, dog, tortoise, each with a compelling back story and plenty of screen time--were designed to comfort children who weren't allowed to have pets of their own. A kid living in a cramped flat or council house could have some sense of ownership of the "Blue Peter" cat--a 1/1,237,900th share in it, if you like.

I can't remember if the viewing audience always chose the name, but that's what happened with the most recent kitten. "Socks" had been in the lead for a while, but was overtaken towards the end of voting by "Cookie," the eventual winner. But "Blue Peter's" producers went with "Socks." (Why? Theories abound. They may have suspected voter fraud [a hanging chad?]. "Cookie" supposedly is slang for something rude, though I haven't been able to figure out what. My favorite explanation, though, is that "Cookie" was too American. They don't have "cookies" in the U.K. They have "biscuits.")

Socksgate was the latest in unsettling revelations. Earlier a "Blue Peter" audience member was press-ganged into posing as the winner of a phone-in contest. (The English are mad for contests.) Through the magic of editing, a BBC executive on another program was inserted--doing the prototypical ruminative nod--into interviews he himself did not conduct.

None of these things are as bad as what a reporter for my employer, The Washington Post, did 27 years ago, when she created an 8-year-old heroin addict. But, need I remind you, Thou shalt not make stuff up.

Trust and believability are all we journalists have going for us. We hold mirrors--and microscopes and telescopes--up to reality. We don't hold kaleidoscopes; we don't play with the truth. Sometimes reality means the cat gets a name you don't like.