Charlie Beckett comments on international journalism, media and society
Messing With Media
Whose election is this? That was the question I am left with at the end of a fascinating week where I have heard directly from a top Labour campaign strategist, Welsh voters, and LSE political pundits. If you believe the mainstream media it is in the hands of the spin doctors and journalists. The pollsters and professors say it’s ‘motorway man’ in the marginals. I am not so sure
A combination of new and very traditional media could yet win the election for Labour, according to one of their key campaign strategists, Douglas Alexander MP.
Speaking at the LSE to Political Communications students just minutes after the ink was dry on a deal for Election TV Debates, Alexander was bubbling with a sense that this election is still up for grabs. For a campaigner who has known brutal defeat (Dukakis 1988) as well as epochal triumph (Blair 1997) this is a novel battleground, but one that he refuses to surrender. Read the rest of this entry »
Not the digital youth
This is my introduction to a series of papers on the subject of the ‘myth of digital natives’. They were given at a Polis event last autumn, you can read them in full here. They attempt to dispel the idea that young people of the Internet generation are naturally gifted at using online resources and seek to find ways to enhance everyone’s ability to benefit from digital communications.
Myths can be useful ways for societies to tell stories about themselves. They can help us preserve our values and cope with change. So the idea that young people are particularly, even naturally adept at using new media technologies is comforting and perhaps even exciting. Read the rest of this entry »
Media researcher Wadi Hassan has made a charming and thoughtful video about two children from the next century discovering how the Internet changed their minds - as predicted in a rather alarming speech by scientist Susan Greenfield.
Clay Nicholls from Dadlabs speaks in defence of the Net and Video games, while I muse about being part of the television generation.
Judge for yourself with the video, but my (incredibly ill-informed) opinion is that any effects are related to behaviour and so are more of habit than biological or chemical. In other words, media consumption certainly impacts on us as social beings and so we can choose to change the impacts and effects. And often we will make more creative results out of these influences.
The Brown ‘bullying’ allegations are a nightmare for good journalists. They are also a dream for bad hacks who simply repeat every smear and concentrate on the process instead of substance.
It’s a cracking yarn of psychosis at the heart of government and manna for radio phone-ins and online forums. But if you were, for example, to watch Monday’s BBC Ten O’Clock News followed by Newsnight you would be hard-pressed to extract any factual basis for the narrative. Read the rest of this entry »
Dawning of the PBAge?
Is it a sign of weakness or strength that Google is now having to listen to critics and competitors as well as customers?
A few years ago Google didn’t bother to do publicity and public affairs. It thought its global dominance in search spoke volumes for its popularity and success. But with growth comes corporate responsibility.
The dispute over security with Beijing was taken up by Hillary Clinton putting Google on the geo-political stage. And the recent screw-up over privacy and Google Buzz showed that you can’t just launch in Beta and hope everyone forgives you when you push too far and fast. Read the rest of this entry »
New evidence supports my hunch that jurors are better at their job than you might think if you watch TV crime series. This might imply that we should allow greater freedom to journalists to report cases, too.
The study for the Ministry of Justice indicates that some jurors do need more written guidance to understand cases. However, the overall picture is of a system that works very well. The researchers suggest that written help from the judge will overcome any confusion and clear guidance will help jurors remove prejudicial ideas from their minds. Read the rest of this entry »
The Haitian earthquake was a terrifying TV tableau of human misery, pain, and fear. Emotions of hope, despair and disbelief swept around the island with the seismic shocks. So its hardly surprising that witnesses to the aftermath also felt swamped by human feelings. How can journalists show that emotion without succumbing to it? How involved should a journalist get in helping those she watches?
There is a real set of dilemmas here that say a lot about journalism today and its struggle to report on humanitarian crises. But it goes deeper than that to touch upon the core problem of how journalists manage what I call the Cycle of Sensitivity. As journalists we witness hugely emotional events. We then package them using professional skills that exclude emotions from the production process: we have to get the job done. But then we re-introduce the emotions into the report because we have to convey to the public the full humanity of the story. It’s how we do it that decides the ethical value of the journalism. Read the rest of this entry »
This report on the inaugural seminar for Polis/LSE seminars in Investigative Journalism and Law which considered the mechanics involved in the process of financial investigation is by Nizar Manek (nizar.manek@gmail.com), coordinator Polis/LSE seminars in Investigative Journalism and Law
‘Tax, Financial Secrecy, and Investigative Journalism’ was chaired by Professor Gavin MacFadyden, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, City University, and senior-producer director in over 40 documentaries from the 1970s to present, through World in Action to BBC Panorama, Channel 4 Dispatches and PBS Frontline. Read the rest of this entry »
"Read it, and act!"
Jon Snow, Channel 4 News
SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World by Polis Director, Charlie Beckett is the first detailed manifesto for "Networked Journalism" based on Polis research and debates.
SuperMedia surveys the new media landscape, outlines the crisis facing journalism and the opportunities on offer for a radical new relationship between the media and the public.
POLIS is a joint initiative from LSE and the London College of Communication aimed at working journalists, people in public life and students in the UK and around the world. POLIS is the place where journalists and the wider world can examine and discuss the media and its impact on society.
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