Director’s Blog

Report on the Polis Panel at the LSE Literary Festival By Bjork Kjaernested

People have always been fascinated by war. But in the age of humanitarian interventions, multinational armies, governmental restrictions, intangible enemies and digital revolutions the world of the modern day war reporter is now considerably more complex than his historic counterpart. In such a complex environment, how can today’s journalists get to and report the truth?

On the morning of the biggest offence in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Stephen Grey, Andrew Mueller and Ros Wynne-Jones offered their thoughts on war reporting.

They suggested that War reporting today is getting harder as journalists have now become targets – both for propaganda and bullets. Access to war zones is limited and physical danger a very real threat. (more…)

Cyburbia

Cyburbia: How search engines are changing us by Polis Intern Sally Walkerman is a report on a talk at Polis by James Harkin.

Although James Harkin writes about technological and social trends, Cyburbia is actually a sociological book about the history of ideas. He points out that long before people spent a lot of time around Internet technology, there was an idea called ‘cybernetics’. which influenced the development of our current technologies. It’s a useful theory that gets us away from jargon and helps to understand how we wound up here. (more…)

One of the staples of  journalism is the straw man: the threat that never existed or the claim that was never really made. With the Internet this straw man is Joe Trippi and the few other people who have insisted that the Internet is innately democratic and that it will have revolutionary political consequences. Matthew Hindman’s The Myth of Digital Democracy has them in its sights. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about democracy and the Web.

And yet I always struggle in lectures or talks when I have to find quotes from these digital utopians. I can always cite lots of people (like me) who argue that the Internet has given us great tools and that it offers huge potential for civic engagement and public self-expression. I can even find examples, from Mysociety to Iran and Twitter that show concrete cases. But I don’t know many serious people talking about a revolution.

Most of the visionaries that I do find are in (more…)

Orwellian

Naturally, I am delighted that my own SuperMedia has made the cut, in the section described as ‘Journalism Critique’ alongside an all-time favourtie of mine, George Orwell, and a contemporary influence, Jay Rosen.

I am not sure I deserve to be in such exalted company, but that shouldn’t stop you voting for SuperMedia

On a more serious note, the survey sensibly allows you to suggest other works not on the list. This is good because it is a bit American, male and perhaps, overly serious.

So in keeping with the intellectual approach,  I would offer a book that has underpinned my work here at Polis, Roger Silverstone’s Media and Morality.

For an understanding of the craft of writing, I would submit the immortal Keith Waterhouse Mirror Style Guide.

But perhaps you can learn more about journalism through satire – and because it is supposed to be fun, after all – I would offer the (inevitable) Evelyn Waugh Scoop and the less predictable, but equally hilarious and truthful, Towards The End of the Morning by Michael Frayn.

Make your choices here

So there I am in a Bolivian bar by the banks of an Amazonian tributary talking to my brother about life and the universe when suddenly he comes out with it. “Of course, Bush did it.” “Did what?” “You know, 9/11″.

I nearly drop my beer. I have not always seen completely eye to eye with my brother on politics, but he’s never said anything like this before. But what really upset me was that someone who certainly cares about the real world, and who wants to change it, should have bought a one way ticket to what a mainstream media person like me would describe as fantasy island. How does that happen?

Some answers emerge from David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories, a chronicle of past conspiracy theories, and a dissection of the motives of those behind the many that currently thrive. As the Times columnist points out, conspiracy theories let the real villains off the hook and allow the public to avoid the real politics. [Aaronovitch speaks at the LSE on May 7th] (more…)

Facebook is now much more than the world’s biggest social networking site, it is a significant platform in its own right. There are alternative ways to create social networks or to market a product, person or cause, but few deliver in the way that Facebook does.

Clara Shih

This is partly because of one of the paradoxes of the Internet. While it creates much greater production diversity with gazillions of professional and amateur sources of content, the aggregation and dissemination of all that stuff is increasingly mediated through a few search engines (mainly Google), social networking sites (especially Facebook in the US and UK) and media organisations (Eg the BBC). This does not worry Clara Shih. (more…)

Could digitalisation create more equal societies? This is one fascinating insight buried in the heart of a new book that argues that almost all measures of human happiness and health are higher in societies where the income range is most narrow.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett  is a clearly argued critique of the effects of inequality. Although it has a lot of graphs, it is straight-forward and pretty convincing. Most of the book looks at health, crime, social mobility. It shows that within US states and between developed nations, those countries which share wealth most equitably tend to have better statistics on well-being, both material and social. (more…)

Public Relations and Journalism have always pretended to hate each other, possibly because they have so much in common. But is the time now right for a new relationship?

As a journalist I know that much of what I have produced over the years has been dependent on or conditioned by public relations. As Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy explain in their new book*, it is a relatively small industry but one that has grown exponentially in the last couple of decades.

Even if you separate the PR business out from lobbying, marketing and ‘communications’ it is still a vital cog in the modern mass media machine. It furnishes press releases, interviews, story ideas, tips and copy to any journalist with space or time to fill. (more…)

MacArthur Foundation’s John Bracken has been asking people for their media books of the year. You can see the selections so far here.

Here’s my reply to John for the books that ‘most influenced’ me: (more…)

George Brock has written an interesting essay on reporting standards through the ages sparked by a review of Robert Fox’s Folio Society “Eyewitness To History”.

He ends by discussing whether bloggers and other online journalism is superior or not to mainstream traditional writing. (more…)