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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Posting looks as if it may be thin here today, so a quick comment on the economics of the internet.
The usual story is that the big, bad, old organisations could be in trouble now as the internet whistles into existence a million new nimble players to run rings around the big, bad, etc. … blah blah.
But how about this for a train of thought?
Selling text on the internet is working, okay, sort of, but it hasn’t really taken off. There’s too much free stuff, and anyway, people don’t want to pay. Maybe they’re scared that if they start surrendering £30 here and £30 there, it will never stop and they’ll be bankrupt. Maybe they just reckon the prices will come down, and they’re waiting.
But what if you are a huge, globally celebrated organisation which wants to be able to swank even more than you do now about how much beneficial impact you are having on the world, to your donors, charitable or political, and would actually quite welcome the simplicity of not having to be too businesslike about it all, and to have to chase every last cent for every bit of virtual stuff that you part with?
What if you are the BBC? Despite all that our bit of the blogosphere may say, the BBC still counts for a hell of a lot in the world; that’s why our bit of the blogosphere complains about it so much.
Or what if you are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? → Continue reading: Big brands getting even bigger by giving it away
This must have happened before, but it’s the first big example of it that I’ve heard about at all recently. Tomorrow’s British press is apparently full of reports of what Mr Blair “said” to a bunch of trade unionists. In other words, the press printed the stuff that they had been given by Downing Street beforehand. They printed a whole load of stuff that he was going to say. The trouble is, BBC2 TV’s Newsnight has just reported, several trade union leaders who were present at the meeting at which all this was going to be said are adamant that Blair didn’t actually say it.
There must have been occasions where the print media have written reports in the past tense about events that had yet to occur, only for them not to happen as scripted, but it is somewhat unusual for our Prime Minister to be directly involved in such a mess-up. Why didn’t Blair follow his own script? Did he chicken out? Did he set the papers up on purpose? Did he think the whole thing would remain permanently in two separate compartments, with the trade unionists getting one message, and the rest of us getting another, without anyone comparing notes?
Maybe this sort of nonsense happens every day, and the government has (had) a gentleman’s agreement with the BBC that what it says it is going to say is what it said, regardless of what it really said. And if the newspapers print a load of bollocks they are too embarrassed to admit it, and it all dies the death without any embarrassment to anyone. Except, that – maybe, could be, I don’t know, I’m guessing – the government forgot that the BBC now hates it. → Continue reading: And the news is that … the news we just said may not have actually happened
You know, I’m beginning to suspect that Rod Liddle is on the same journey I took, albeit in a higher plane, from New Labour placard-waver, to semi-rabid libertarian back-street raver. There have been several excellent articles in The Spectator, recently, topped off I think by his latest piece on the travails of the Reverend Tony.
I did have Rod pegged as being a straightforward leading member of the liberal elite, with his column in The Guardian, and his editorship of the Today program. But ever since the BBC let him go I’ve really begun to welcome his regular appearances on Channel4 News, his pieces on the stupidity of over-regulation, and his devastating broadsides against the Spin-Meisters of the champagne socialist lie machine.
So is the end in sight for Boris’s demise as editor of the Speccy? As a South Oxfordshire resident, an occasional bag-man for Boris, and a one-time writer for his magazine, my opinion is torn in two opposing directions. But if Boris is happy to give up the mantle, to concentrate better on his task of becoming a serious politician in the mould of Lord Salisbury, then is there a better potential editor around than Rod Liddle? I’m becoming ever more confident that Lord Black doesn’t think so.
And following Jonathan Pearce’s earlier article, on the matter, would a change be a good thing anyway, for one of my favourite magazines?
One thing though, Rod, if you’re reading. Gonna have to give up that Guardian column. Sorry.
I cannot recall hearing of such a petulant outburst from the normally stately and dignified BBC:
The controller of BBC1 launched an unprecedented attack on Rupert Murdoch yesterday, calling the media billionaire a “capital imperialist” who wants to destabilise the corporation because he “is against everything the BBC stands for”.
Sounds like my kind of guy.
Lorraine Heggessey said Mr Murdoch’s continued attacks on the BBC stemmed from a dislike of the public sector. But he did not understand that the British people “have a National Health Service, a public education system” and trust organisations that are there for the benefit of society and not driven by profit.
Methinks the executives of the BBC sense that they are in trouble. They realise that ‘Auntie’ no longer enjoys an exalted status as a national treasure and, hence, is vulnerable.
The time-honoured and global reputation for fairness, accuracy and objectivity is something they have dined out on, abused and terminally tarnished. And, even if this were not the case, in an era when the market provides so many choices, it is impossible to stem the growing discontent with the arcane and punitive television tax that funds the BBC.
But it’s all the fault of Rupert Murdoch and his band of evil capitalists. (Oh, and George Bush of course).
I read an article over on Fox News which does as a good a job explaining media bias as any I’ve seen.
Since postings here today seem a bit thin on the ground, let me recycle a link which I’ve already featured on my Culture Blog, but which I think is interesting enough to make a posting for the mass media. (I originally found it at b3ta.com.)
I’m talking about this, this being a site which includes something I’ve read about a lot but never actually seen demonstrated with the relevant contrasts. I’m talking about the ancient and now technologically rejuvenated art of picture retouching.
The most striking is the picture you get to straight from the link, but there are lots of others at the same site.
Okay I admit it, at this point I did pause a bit to think of a political moral to stick at the end, a thing not needed on a Culture Blog. But I think there is one, concerning the degree to which cameras do or do not tell lies. Put it this way, I think maybe I’ll give this site a mention at White Rose as well. An awful lot of credence is placed these days on photographic evidence. What this before/after site reminds us is that photos are only as reliable as a way to tell the truth as are the people in charge of them. (You have only to think of Stalin’s graphics department.) As it gets easier to manipulate images, so our readiness to trust them ought to diminish.
This site shows what is the result of retouching. But does anyone here know how long it takes to do this kind of thing, and how difficult it is? And can all of it simply be done with Photoshop?
On BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme (on Monday’s show – if my memory serves) there was a story about the destruction of the forests of Eastern Europe.
The BBC journalist would refer to forests in country after country and talk about how the trees were “illegally cut down” and the timber “illegally imported into Western European countries”.
I noticed something about the BBC man’s remarks. In each Eastern European country he discussed he talked about the ‘national parks’ or the ‘national forests’ – never once did he talk about privately owned forests being destroyed.
Whether forests are owned by old aristocratic families or by private companies (as in the State of Maine) there is no question of them being destroyed for a quick buck – ownership (as opposed to licences, or ‘rights to’ or other nonsense), brings concern for the long term.
Of course the BBC man did not notice this – he just claimed that ‘things’ would be improved when the Eastern European nations joined the European Union and there were even more regulations than there are now.
Behind the headlines, underneath the debate, hidden by the cheery faces of the elite and occluded by the gleaming fabric of the towering glass monuments in Strasbourg, something darker stirs in Europe again according to this report from UPI
Those of us who ever bothered to read the small print knew from the get-go that far from being “a great coming together of the European peoples…yadda yadda yadda..” that the whole project was nothing more than an exercise in cynical bribery and vote massaging
Nothing new here, of course. Politicians are what they are and, as my Grandmother used to say, from a pig expect a grunt. No, what is new is the sheer scale of this. Most politicians aim to buy a constituency; really ambitious ones aim for a whole country. But these guys are shooting for a whole continent!!
I’m surprised that the Greeks have joined in. They, of all people, should know a thing or two about hubris and, perhaps if they had stopped to think for a moment they would have realised that if this thing breaks it will break very, very badly
They say that time is a slow but fair judge; fair, but not always merciful
It seems that the US media now have a new bugbear as the source of all teen miscreant behaviour: Osama Bin Laden. When a teenager (a loner, naturally) in Tampa crashed his airplane into the Bank of America building, the US media rushed to blame Bin Laden. No where has it been suggested that the usual suspects, heavy metal bands, were at fault. Marilyn Manson, Slipknot and Rob Zombie are all off the hook. American has a new bugbear and he has a towel-wrapped around his head. Osama bin Laden does share one thing with his musician miscreants co-defendants, they all made really crap and disturbing videos.
It seems the media was right one this one, a note was found praising Osama Bin Laden in the wreckage of the airplane, expressing sympathy for him and praising the events of the 9/11.
What is more alarming is that the airplane was just trailed and allowed to crash into the skyscraper. It does seem rather daft to watch the airplane crash and do nothing. We are supposed to be re-assured by the fact that the airplane was followed all the way into the building and that there were two F15s scrambled. Surely the whole point of chasing the plane was to shoot it down? No doubt the Al Queda cells left in the world are studying this event closely. Fortunately the boy stole a pathetic little 2 seat airplane. This is proof, not that it is needed, that the Americans still have not grasped the danger of air based terror.
NB: It is curious to note that some of the leading hard-core left wing bands in the US have kept very quiet since 9/11. There has been virtually not a hard-left peep from Rage Against the Machine, Zack la Rocha, Eddie Vedder or Chumbawumba.
Andrew Ian Dodge
“What Sucks? Statism Sucks!“
Here is yet another example of how the newsblog movement*1 has inspired media upstarts to challange established media companies all over the world. The full ‘story’ can be found here.
Galina Petkova, 19, takes off her clothes during a newscast of “The Naked Truth” a late evening cable show on M-SAT TV in Sofia, Bulgaria, Dec. 10, 2001. Four days after the newscasts premiered, the programs’ rating outstripped the state’s television’s late evening news program, normally the most commonly watched.
Objective insights, clever punditry and naked babes… the perfect admixture for the next media revolution. As Frederick Hajek would have said “There ain’t nuthin’ that leads to catallaxy more that a bodacious naked 19 years old chick dispensing profundities! Beat that, Keynes, you totally bogus ol’ fart!”. Right on, Fred baby! Gil Scott-Heron blew it big time: the revolution will indeed be televised.
*1 = no, the newsblog movement is not something that happens after you take too many laxatives.
To read an editorial piece like this in the Guardian, of all things, is nothing less than a thing of wonder to behold. Tomorrow’s editorial will be dealing with hell freezing over, cats and dogs living together and the new range of Vaticantm brand contraceptives.
I just saw over on Muslimpundit that Robert Fisk was attacked and beaten up by a mob in Pakistan. My heart bleed for him. Not. You may be sure he will try to find some way of blaming the US for what happened. Fisk and his dismal newspaper, the oh so ironically named Independent, have been amongst my pet hates for rather a long time. A tip of the turban to those guys.
On the other hand, respect to pundit Jeffrey Simpson. There is a good post on Daimnation about how he admits he got it all totally wrong about the war in Afghanistan. There are very few pundits who are willing to do that. An honourable journalist in BigMedia(tm): what a concept!
Addendum:
I was correct. Fisk did indeed blame the US for what happened to him: “It doesn’t excuse them for beating me up, but there was a real reason why they should hate Westerners.”
Well I’m also a Westerner, Fisk, and I hate you too.
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