Director’s Blog

Essays

This is an edited version of an essay by Polis Summer School student Victoria Yates.

The idea of globalization is not new, despite many of the modern connotations attached to the term. The creation of the printing press created much the same revolution in communication, connecting people for the first time in a wide manner beyond traditional dialogical contact. (more…)

LSE

This is a paper submitted as part of the Polis Summer School

The limits on freedom of expression in journalism by Rebecca Hales

A western European, when questioned on the subject of freedom of expression, might wave his or her hand in a vague easterly direction and boldly claim the privilege of a comparatively free press and liberal broadcast organisations.

Formally, freedom of expression is considered a universal value but just 17% of world’s population enjoy what is widely considered to be a ‘free press’.[1] This essay will identify and explore the three levels of limitation on free speech that all journalists in the modern world have to negotiate, not just those working in countries historically perceived as being non-democratic or ‘not free’.  (more…)

Polis Summer School

If people feel that mainstream media is ignoring alternative politics, then they can now create their own media. But how should traditional journalism respond? Should it change its ideas of impartiality to reflect the real diversity of contemporary politics? This is Polis Summer School student Steven Linett’s course paper that tackles this complex problem, citing media around the rise of US Militia movement.

How impartiality and objectivity in journalism changes in the New Media environment by Steven Linett

The new media environment has helped level the playing field for those outside the mainstream media to publish and disseminate their views to the world.  This environment appears to be a godsend for the participatory models of democracy, which “emphasize the importance of ‘real’ citizens’ participation and their more active involvement in democracy (Barber 1984).  As such, they criticize the radical separation of citizens from power, the elites and democratic institutions through representation” (Bailey, et al. 2008). (more…)

Thinking Space

The following is by POLIS summer school student Emil Stigsgaard Fuglsang. In his first-ever blog he gives his thoughts after a lecture on the media’s portrayal of war and  human suffering. It is a critique of the media professional’s promise of impartiality and objectivity. Fuglsang does not believe anyone to be objective. Emil says he has written the following as an open letter to modern, commercial media professionals. He says he has tried to write the blog to entertain and provoke, not to inform.

Goddamn, bloody immorality – please! by Emil Stigsgaard Fuglsang

Dear media professionals: Who are You? Academic articles tell me You are perceived to be impartial and objective truth-tellers, and lecturers dub you gate-keepers and openers of information from the world that surrounds us, the normal people. From my cliché-cache, I hear You are supposed to be the fourth power of the state. (more…)

Summer @ LSE

One of the joys of the LSE and the Polis Summer School in particular, is seeing different political philosophies collide. Katy Kinney from Iowa is active in one of the heartlands of American democracy, a state famous for its special role in the US elections. So perhaps it’s not surprising that she found it thought-provoking and even challenging when we discussed freedom of speech and the role of Islamism online from different perspectives.

A Test of Democracy by Katy Kinney

A great man, George Washington, once said, “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” Another, David Ben-Gurion, said, “The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.” (more…)

India Knight

Should politicians’ love lives be exposed in public? Times columnist India Knight doesn’t think that they should. So when Chris Huhne’s marriage break-up and new affair was made into headline news by a Sunday tabloid she expressed her disgust, in public, on Twitter:

“Poor Chris Huhne. In what conceivable universe is this anyone else’s business? God’s sake. Also, who gives a toss?”

I agree with her, as do many other people. Many of them said as much on Twitter.

Of course, the point about this is that by Tweeting about Huhne  we are drawing even more attention to the story and possibly increasing the discomfort for the Minister, his wife and probably the new lover, too. And this blog just adds to it all. (more…)

One of the functions of international reporting is supposed to be that journalists can warn the world of impending disasters. The idea is that intrepid hacks can spot looming conflicts or humanitarian catastrophes and help persuade governments or other agencies to intervene. In practice, this ain’t necessarily so. By it’s nature, news journalism tends to focus on what has happened, not what is coming up. And there is no doubt that pressures on resources make it harder for mainstream media to find time for that kind of analytical, predictive journalism.

So do we need a new special media body to do this? (more…)

For a global elite who care about the big international issues such as climate change, economic regulation or conflict and security, modern media is a wondrous but worrying thing. Thanks to great multi-national brands like the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera or the New York Times we have fantastic trans-national news resources. While the Guardian only has 300,000 sales in the UK, it has 30 million readers online across the world. And yet at the same time the level of foreign correspondents, international coverage and the commitment to understanding global stories is declining in the hard-pressed mainstream media.

This was the problem that Columbia President Lee Bollinger sought to solve in a Polis lecture that used his new book about media freedom of expression as a springboard to discuss the kind of journalism we need for a globalised world. [The podcast will be up soon, as will a full report on the actual lecture] ‘Your news is our news now’ he said. And the implication is that therefore we also share a need to find a solution to what threatens it.  His answer was surprising and in a Chatham House Rules dinner afterwards was challenged by a former Fleet Street editor, a senior Conservative MP, and assorted UK academics, lawyers and an economist. (more…)

A view of the world

Travelling around New York City at the weekend with my two teenage boys was a reminder of just how globalised our culture has become with shops, music and even art looking distinctly familiar to my young Londoners.

An all-day seminar today on world media seemed to suggest that global journalism has some trans-national trends, too. But as ever, look closer and the cracks appear. (more…)

Blimey, Polis has become influential on a global scale. On the day that we have an event warning about naive assumptions about the Internet and Democracy, Google ends its collaboration with censorship in China!

Alright, so there was no causal link between our digital democracy talk by Evgency Morozov and today’s news, but it was certainly topical. You can read Morozov’s general argument here, and he has responded directly to the Google move here: (more…)