Tag: media

News and Politics and Money

I get news mostly from online newspapers, and I tend towards the barest reports. As a result, whenever I see television news, I’m shocked and put off by the heavy slant it carries.

But my shock this evening was more than usual. Watching Channel 4 news, what struck me for the first time was that Channel 4 appeared to have a more clearly defined and clearly expressed position on the issue they were reporting than did any of the politicians they were interviewing.

But why should that be surprising? Channel 4 has more resources to devote to policy than does any political party. Channel 4 spends 54 million pounds a year on news, documentary and current affairs programming. The two main parties each spend something like 10 million a year, but most of that is spent not on “content”, but on content distribution – posters, leaflets, etc.

British political parties’ policies are being constructed on an almost totally amateur basis, compared to the media – and I think it shows. There are think tanks, but I don’t think they turn over tens of millions a year.

I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from this. In the US they spend a lot more on politics, but don’t seem to get noticeably better policies. But my attitude towards politicians when I hear them is likely to change.

Reference for channel 4 finances: http://www.channel4.com/about4/annualreport/annualreports/index.html page 47

What's a Website?

thelondonpaper today ridicules Judge Peter Openshaw, who “stunned a London court by admitting he did not know what a website was.”

Judge Openshaw was hearing a trial of three men accused of “internet terror offences”, whatever they are, and told Woolwich Crown Court “The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.”

I would like to hear the journalist John Dunne give his definition.

“Website” is a pretty vague term. What website are you reading this on? Is it Blogger? Is it blogspot.com? Is it Anomaly UK? Is it bloglines or some other aggregator?

Let’s say it’s Anomaly UK — not on the basis of any technical definition, but because that’s what it says at the top of the page.

Whose website is it? I guess it’s mine, because I “created” it, although that (fortunately) did not involve supplying any physical material, paying a penny, or interacting with any human being. Most of the content came from me, but some of it from Google, some of it from various unidentifiable commenters, some bits from Sitemeter or technorati or whoever “NZ Bear” actually is. The content actually resides and reaches you from Google, except for the bits that don’t, or the bits that are put in or changed by some system I know nothing of between you and it. (“Bits” in the non-jargon sense, that is.)

A judge – or a legislator – who thinks he knows what “a website” is, but in fact only knows what the average web user knows, could make some horribly bad decisions: think about the Danish court that ruled that deep linking is illegal, for example. No politician who had thought to ask the question “what is an email address” (and got an accurate answer) would have planned to require sex offenders to register their email addresses, as John Reid did.

Since the “internet terror” cases in question involves an “extremist web forum” (and perhaps nothing else), making sure lawyers and witnesses are very precise about what was “on the internet” is probably essential to reaching a correct verdict. Judge Openshaw’s question was penetrating and important.

Unexpected Sense of Proportion

I think my fears, expressed on Friday, that too much of a fuss had been made over the captured boarding party in Iran, were misplaced.
Certainly there was a lot of media attention, but on reflection, the attention was not so much the result of an unhealthy over-sentimental concern whether they lived or died, but was just the latest Reality TV spectacle.
The Sun caught exactly the right note with the headline “We went to Iran and all we got were these lousy suits”.
On the same basis, I think the authorities are right to allow them to sell their stories. Treating global conflict as “I’m a Lieutenant, get me out of here” might make us look decadent, but, let’s face it, we are decadent, and it’s going to be very difficult to appear otherwise.
On the other hand, it also makes us look strong in a strange way. The Iranian regime is fighting for its life, and perhaps hit on the desperate tactic of kidnapping a British naval unit in international waters. If, rather than panicking, we treat the whole affair as a joke or a bit of cheap entertainment, it really drives home the fact that we’re not really even trying. Just imagine how much damage we could do if we actually gave a shit!

Blair and Me

What do I think of the current Blair feeding-frenzy? I admit to being a bit conflicted.

First, chris dillow is right as usual that compared to real questions about policy, all this is relatively insignificant.

Related to that, I think the press just wants him out, because they’re bored and would like to see something happen. I can understand that feeling, indeed I share it, but it can’t be a good reason to change the Prime Minister.

I don’t think we’d get better policies either from Brown or from whoever emerges as anyone-but-Brown.

What is distinctive about Blair is his idealism. This leads him to overambitious social and economic engineering projects, which is bad, but it also causes him to resist (to an extent) the Labour Party’s “core values”, meaning the prioritisation of the interests of public sector workers above everybody else. That is good. Will his successor’s corruption be worse than Blair’s idealism? Hard to say.

Then there is the next election. Will an early change be better or worse for Labour? Will the Tories be any better? Is Cameron lying when he says he is really just like Labour? What pressures will be on Cameron from the rest of his party? What would happen to the Tories if they lost the next election? Would they become better or worse, and in each case would that make them more or less likely to win the election after next, and what effect would that have on a Labour government in the meantime?

When it comes the the question of how to influence such an enormously complex and unpredictable system for the better by throwing a single vote at it, the only possible rational response is to give up and do something useful instead.

Current levels of voter turnout and engagement with politics are inexplicably and frighteningly high.

Ian Blair again

Yesterday I commented on Ian Blair’s accusations towards the press. While agreeing with the thrust of his remarks, I defended the press on the grounds they were bound to be responsive to their readership.
The papers today could have used a similar argument, effectively blaming their readers for their faults.

Alternatively, they could take one fairly sensible thing Blair said and invent huge quantities of spurious outrage, thereby totally obscuring any debate over their own role, and incidentally discouraging other public figures from being so reckless as to criticise the media.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

http://www.mirror.co.uk/

etc.

They have their flaws, but they’re not stupid. That’ll teach Blair to say bad things about the press.

Race and the press

Ian Blair said today that the way crime is reported in the press is racist. Specifically, the murder of a white lawyer recently got a lot more coverage than the murder of an Asian builders’ merchant.

There is an arbitrariness about what gets heavy press coverage – Blair also brought up the Soham furore – and very likely race comes into it. The press deals in superficiality, and, at least superficially, the Tom ap Rhys Pryce murder has more “it could have been me” relevance to more of the papers’ readerships than did that of Balbir Matharu.

This works the other way, of course: a murder by a white person is also superficially more newsworthy than one by a non-white.

Is this a bad thing? The superficiality of the media is regrettable, but probably inevitable. Blair was contrasting the treatment of the murders by the press with the treatment by his force – defending himself against similar charges of disproportionate attention. I think we can agree that the police should not be superficial, and particularly that their effort should not be influenced by something as superficial as race. I am reluctant to claim that all murders are equal, in terms of the police effort that should be devoted to them, regardless of the circumstances – I would claim that a random murderer who is likely to strike again is more urgent than a murderer who was settling a specific grudge, for instance – but equality is probably a good rule of thumb.

And if we want the police to be even-handed as regards irrelevances such as race, it would help if the press were too. On that basis, the press should be at least encouraged to take note of criticism such as Blair’s. At the end of the day, though, they, unlike the police, are at the mercy of the lightest whims of their customers.