Just once I would like to see someone who's been involved in some sort of dramatic event--a battle, a hostage situation, a plane crash--say, "Yeah, I guess I am a hero." Would the newspaper headlines announce: "'I Am a Hero' Says Bus Plunge Saviour"?
We certainly see the polar opposite often enough. The latest person not to be a hero is Prince Harry, third in line to the British crown and just back from Afghanistan. The BBC reports that Harry thinks he's not a hero. The News of the World, on the other hand, insists that he is. So is "every British soldier fighting out in Afghanistan," says the NOTW. The Sun can't resist the alliterative possibility--nay, the duty--inherent in the prince's name. For the Sun, he will always by "Hero Harry."
Who else isn't a hero? There's Wesley Aubrey, the New York City man who last year jumped onto the subway track to pull a man from the path of an oncoming train. (“I’m still saying I’m not a hero ... 'cause I believe all New Yorkers should get into that type of mode,” said Aubrey.) Also not-a-hero is Ken Hammond, a Utah police officer who saved shoppers from a mall shooter. (He hedges his bets a bit, saying "I don't necessarily feel like a hero.") Nathan Oakshaw isn't a hero, even though the Welsh man dove into a freezing river in an unsuccessful bid to save a man from drowning. Thirteen-year-old Brittney Bohbot of Nebraska rescued her sisters from a fire, but she says she's not a hero, either. Neither is University of Hawaii professor Albert Britt Robillard. He's disabled and the mere act of being in a wheelchair has caused people to call him a hero. Which he says he's not.
All of these examples are arguably "heroic." And some of these people do seem to qualify. I mean, jumping in front of a train to save a person? That's hero-stuff. I think that Prince Harry is right to deny the hero label. It's just the idiotic media that feels compelled to ask that question: Do you feel like a hero? It's one more info-blip that we can slot into our stories. We know the answer before we even pose the question. The result, I think, is the wholesale degradation of the word "hero." The media applies it at the drop of a hat, only to see those it's applied to reject the label.
At a time when everyone's a hero, no one is.
Wild About Harry
Should the press have kept mum for the last 10 weeks? I'm inclined to think it was okay to abide by the terms of the embargo. The media wouldn't divulge operational details or publish information that would endanger any other specific person. Peter Wilby, in today's Guardian, disagrees. "To my mind, this was propaganda for a war of dubious legitimacy and declining public popularity," he writes.
The surprise is that the embargo lasted as long as it did.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Monday, 3 March 2008
Friday, 25 January 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Hug a Journalist
You can be excused for not knowing that today, Nov. 8, is Journalist Day. Until yesterday I didn't know it either. True, it's Journalist Day in China, but as there are 1.3 billion people over there I think it would be churlish to ignore it.
In announcing Journalist Day last year (the seventh annual), Chinese Politburo member Liu Yunshan called on journalists to "give top priority to studying the essence of the recent Sixth Plenary Session of the 16th Communist Party of China Central Committee." I get a bit queasy whenever I see the word "plenary" (it sounds too much like a urinary tract infection) so I think I'll mark the day in a different fashion, by thinking about journalism. (I can't really take the day off, since I'm taking the year off.)
We live in interesting times, journalistically speaking. There are more and more ways for the public to get news, from words printed in the newspaper to text zapped to a mobile phone. Golly, I hear there's even a way to get instant news on your computer screen! You don't have to be a media magnate with his own printing press or TV transmitter to join this conversation. Bloggers and citizen journalists can make their own contributions. Are they proper journalists? That's almost beside the point, since they're out there beavering away in all their unstifled glory.
The challenges for companies such as The Washington Post are many: to appeal to readers (or users or viewers) with new and interesting formats that cut through the clutter of modern life and inform even more deeply than newspapers are able to do. It's also to figure out a way to financially support the great news-gathering structures that have taken decades to build: the foreign bureaus, the investigative reporters, the photographers, the editors, the designers, the agate clerks typing in late-night sports scores, the, um, columnists. (On his blog Recovering Journalist, Mark Potts has a very succinct look at the economic complications of this particular puzzle.) These issues are being played out at a time when well-publicized journalistic sins have shaken confidence in the media.
And yet I don't think we should pine for some Golden Age of Journalism. This is a myth perpetrated by old men in comfortable chairs who can't resist talking about how great things were when they were young and vital. (If you ever see me doing this, you have my permission to glass me.) There were plenty of hacks in the old days too, incurious reporters content to go through the motions. If anything, the profession has become more professional and the tools journalists have to tell compelling stories are greater than they've ever been.
So are the risks. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists 56 journalists have been killed this year because of their jobs. People like Zakia Zaki, who ran an Afghan radio station and was gunned down in front of her children. And Muhammad Arif, a Pakistan TV cameraman, among the 130 people killed last month by the bomb intended for Benazir Bhutto. And The Washington Post's Salih Saif Aldin, one of 30 journalists killed in Iraq this year. Just yesterday one of my fellow Reuters Fellows, a journalist from Georgia, learned that masked special forces units had entered his TV station on orders of Georgia's president. Elsewhere in Tbilisi news photographers' cameras were smashed, equipment confiscated.
Journalists are risking their lives so that you (and I; I've never even had to work weekends) can know what's going on in the world beyond the end of our street. If we know what's going on--in our council member's office, in our local court, in our congress, in our military, on a barren African plain or in a guerilla camp deep in the jungle--just maybe we'll make informed choices and wise decisions.
So, say a silent prayer today for journalists in harm's way. Think about journalists striving to create a free press in unfree countries. Read a paper. Watch the news. Oh, and bite a dog, too. That always makes us happy.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
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.
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.
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