London Calling

BBC to launch Arabic TV service

2005-10-30T14:42:00.000-05:00

The BBC announced last week that it is dropping a number of radio services and concentrating instead on the launch of an Arabic television service slated to begin in 2007.

A press release says the move is "aimed at maintaining and enhancing BBC World Services' pre-eminent position and impact in an emerging multi-media scene." They hope to further develop multimedia and video reporting from the Middle East, Russia, South America and South Asia.

Al Jazeera reported that the move would bring the service directly into competition with the controversial Middle Eastern television network. The Telegraph, posted on the Media Channel, also emphasized the move as a reponse to competition from Al Jazeera and declining audiences in 22 countries.

The move will involving closing radio broadcasting in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai in March 2006. Pointing out the resulting job losses because of the cuts, the National Union of Journalists also asked: "Does Jack Straw [UK Foreign Minister] really believe that countries like Kazakhstan where intimidation of political opponents remains common and there is significant international concern that recent elections were rigged no longer need the type of public service broadcasting offered by the World Service".

The BBC tried a similar entry into the Middle Eastern market in 1996 partnering with Orbit Television, funded by the Saudi Mawarid Group. The fledgling network collapsed when coverage of the Sadui Royal Family angered the Saudis. That project was a commercial operation; the current one will be funded by the British government. Many of the original reporters with that venture wound up at Al Jazeera.

License fee latest

2005-10-26T11:55:00.000-04:00

I've been a bit remiss in keeping up with BBC news lately, but here's a quick update on the BBC's attempts to secure a license fee increase.

"MPs find fee rise hard to swallow" and "In danger of a backlash": Although it looks like the BBC will finally get its license fee increase - seven years of annual inflation increases plus 2.3%, "to £150.50 per annum by 2013" - but the size of the increase has raised hackles among MPs and industry types. Although "this is to allow the BBC to fulfil the vision laid out for it in the government's green paper on the organisation's future - as a leading force in the much-vaunted switch to digital" it still rubs some people up the wrong way.
"BBC goes to the City for digital cash": Although the BBC got its licence fee okayed, they're still looking for more cash - by going into the "money markets to raise a substantial bond in order to pay for the additional costs of digital switchover, targeting help for vulnerable, older and disabled people." These over-75's will need BBC help in making the transition by the 2012 deadline, and the beeb needs to find the cash to do it.

George, God and the BBC

2005-10-09T14:02:00.000-04:00

In yet another important example of the British media serving as America's watchdog, the US media has been abuzz this week with reports of an upcoming BBC documentary that reveals Bush claimed to Middle Eastern politicians that God directed him to bomb Afghanistan, depose Saddam, and create a Palestinian state.

The BBC's three-part "The Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs," will air in late October on BBC Two. It includes interviews with Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, talking about George talking about God in their June 2003 meeting.

Interestingly, Common Dreams points out the the story was broken by the Israeli newspaper, Hareetz, in June 2003 but never picked up by mainstream media. Writer Ira Chernus speculates that the media couldn't run with the story until a "mainstream" source reported it.

The White House has subsequently denied it all, natch.

No word on whether God's directing the BBC to reveal the truth to the American people.

BBC 's "News for a Non-stop World"

2005-10-02T13:29:00.000-04:00

While perusing the BBC's 2005 Annual Report and other documents this morning, I stumbled across a press release week announcing the launch of BBC's online marketing campaign -- News for a Non-stop World -- aimed at the US and Western Europe audiences. Apparently it will last six months starting last week. (The release notes that more than 50 percent of the international audience for bbcnews.com is in the US where "there is a demonstrable demand for international news; an alternative and additional perspective on world events - in addition to that provided by local suppliers.")

In language slightly reminiscent of Daniel Lerner's old formulations, the Beeb will be targeting "inquisitives," a newly developed marketeer's term for an audience that is "grabbing short bursts of time from their bosses by going online at work, and deploys an innovative approach to creative and media, including relationships with messenger services and RSS feeds direct from the BBC's news site." (Interesting aside: In an interview published in Chris Patterson and Annabelle Sreberny's edited volume, International News in the Twenty-First Century, BBC's Chris Westcott also categorized BBC online audiences into "cosmopolitans" and "aspirants." Wonder how this development language would translate in Murdochland audience categories?)

Alan Booth, Controller of Marketing at the BBC's international radio and online division, BBC World Service, was quoted as saying: "Research we commissioned into online news users reveals that aimless surfing is a thing of the past . . . In some ways people access online news sites instead of having a cigarette. And this must be much healthier. And they are accessing specific sites and portals because they know exactly what it is they want to see.

AdWeek says the campaign will feature BBC headlines as banner ads on the Washington Post and the New York Times among others. I find this telling --the BBC will be advertising its high quality FREE content on the NYT which recently decided to start charging for the priviledge of reading Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, etc. Booth told the trade magazine: "Simply having a good message isn't good enough . . . We feel they're more likely to click through on headlines than if we just had a great slogan or piece of creative." This will be "using the news to sell the news." Note: CNN had a similar campaign in June.

The BBC was described last fall as "fishing" in a previous ad campaign for US audiences who wanted a broader view of the US elections.

Yahoo News reported that Reuters had a similar deal with Diet Coke: "In a six-month campaign that began last month, Reuters helped create banner ads for Diet Coke that display a real-time customized feed of "feel-good" stories selected by a Reuters editor. Clicking on the headlines takes users to an article page in a branded Diet Coke area on Reuters.com. They can also receive the RSS feed on their cell phones or add it to their feed reader, and the Diet Coke-branded feed has even run on the Reuters sign in Times Square."

It's not just Rup investing in the internet ...

2005-09-30T09:01:00.000-04:00

While News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch has been prominently investing in internet media firms (as reported in London Calling), he's certainly not the only one. Other big media corporations, including Viacom and Time Warner, are also pursuing aggresive interent acquisition strategies. The Benton Comm Policy listserv notes a Wall Street Journal piece (Story here but requires registration) that highlights how these and other TNCs "are spending billions in a spate of acquisitions and aggressive Internet initiatives, and are likely to keep on spending." Why are they doing this? In a nutshell, it's the fear of being left behind by new media as audiences migrate to the internet--potentially prompting advertisers to jump ship. The WSJ piece goes on:

Yahoo

Google

Robert Fisk barred from entering US

2005-09-28T11:27:00.000-04:00

The Independent's veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, a constant and vociferous critic of the US-UK invasion of Iraq has apprently been barred from entering the United States. Doug Ireland of Direland cites a (Santa Fe) New Mexican report that "U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday [Sept. 20] to allow Robert Fisk . . . to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation 's readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night." A program officer for the Lannan Foundation was quoted as saying "Fisk was told that his papers were not in order." Fisk ended up being interveiwed via satellite link from a Toronto TV station by Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! (MP3 of interview is available at the Democracy Now! web site)

More Rup Online

2005-09-26T23:10:00.000-04:00

The Financial Times reported last week that Rupert Murdoch's next online moves are being readied for roll-out in the coming weeks. Look for Rupe to land a search engine and some sort of Internet voice service soon.

Rumor still has it that Blinkx will be the search engine that ends up part of the Murdoch stable. FinTimes notes that Rupe is keen on Internet voice services, predicting a much faster acceptance and widepspread availability -- he's saying two or three years.

To recap, Murdoch first announced his intentions to expand News Corp's online activities last winter at a News Corp meeting, then in April gave a much noted speech at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in which he spanked the participants for not keeping up with technological changes driving how young people get news and information (FinTimes: the Internet and other digital technologies require a revolution in today's media companies. Murdoch went on a buying spree in the summer with an eye on companies oriented toward young male audiences. Finally, he held yet another summit this month in Carmel calling in what the Guardian described as 45 top executives with the charge of creating an online entertainment media empire. Please note: ENTERTAINMENT.

Can you create an interactive, community based media product that is still highly commercial? Well, look at e-Bay, for starters. It's no charity outfit. Can you buy such an entity? Don't they have to be grown? I guess Rupe intends to find out.

BBC's Internet TV trial ready to go

2005-09-25T20:41:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal is taking notice of the BBC's moves to mainstream the Internet and integrate it with its broadcast activities. Aaron Patrick of the WSJ points out the Beeb's trial, beginning later this month, to issue its iMP (interactive media player) to about 5,000 selected UK viewers to allow them to download and watch most of the BBC's television content for up to seven days. (This is apparently the same program as the MyBBC player Doctor Media previously referred to in blog entries here and here.) "No other broadcaster has made so many shows available for download to computers," notes Patrick. He goes on: "The BBC hopes its iMP software will become the iTunes of Internet television, allowing viewers to customize their TV schedules over the course of a week."

Amazingly, the iMP uses peer-to-peer file-sharing/networking software similar to that designed for Napster and Kazaa (software that triggered a "music-sharing free-for-all" on the Internet). In this form of peer-to-peer networking,

iMP users will be required to share the downloads with each other. As programs spread from computer to computer, most iMP users will actually download them from other people instead of the BBC. That means the broadcaster won't have to buy Internet capacity to transmit large computer files to millions of people.
The BBC's move shows how far ahead it has moved from U.S. broadcasters in this regard. U.S. networks, fearful of what they've seen happen with musical downloads, have so far only toyed with internet television, and refused to make complete shows available for download (although of course countless TV shows are in any case illegally obtained off the Internet thanks to software such as BitTorrent). The BBC is trying to make the whole process legal and above board. Patrick quotes Nancy Cassutt, vice president of content at Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.: "What the BBC is doing is what every network Web site here in America is trying to do -- discover what works online." It helps of course that the BBC doesn't have to worry about shareholders and making profits as it tries out this bold new experiment.

The trial should last for three months, and if it's successful (and why wouldn't it be!), Auntie "plans to make the iMP freely available in the U.K. next year, becoming the first TV network to show its entire schedule over the Internet."

But remember, you'll have to live in the UK to get this.

News Corp hedging its political bets in US?

2005-09-15T22:12:00.000-04:00

Tina Brown, writing in the Washington Post, notes something that most Americans might find incredible: that Rupert Murdoch could switch his allegiance to the Democrats if he felt it was in his business interests to do so. In a piece titled "Rupert Murdoch, Bending With the Wind," Brown notes Bush's sinking poll numbers and the unexpectedly strong performance by "liberal" CNN in its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She also notes "Recent friendly meetings between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Murdoch, recorded in the New York Observer" that just could "be early signs of embryonic bet-hedging" by the media veteran. Really? How far can we take this? Can we really countenance tthe possibility that, come the next Presidential election, Murdoch's empire might turn from the Republicans and toward a Democrat--even Hillary?

To address that question, Brown tries to illuminate something about the basic instincts of the man who has proved to be perhaps the globe's greatest buccaneer and survivor. She points out: "Less publicized than Murdoch's fierce political conservatism--undoubtedly his private conviction--is his readiness to turn on a dime when it's commercially expedient. That suppleness is one of the things that make him such a formidable opponent. Nothing distracts him from his business goals--not ideology, not friendship, not some inconvenient promise, not even family."

Need a historical exemplar? Brown reminds American readers of Murdoch's volte-face in 1997, when he shifted his media empire's support from John Major's hapless conservative government to "New" Labour's up-and-coming Tony Blair. Could he be planning a similar shift in the US--taking a leaf out of his UK playbook? Perhaps.

Sun

Piers Morgan

Brown goes on to cite the comparisons frequently made between Murdoch and William Randolph Hearst, which she characterizes as often "misleading." Why?

Bruce Page

Add in a possible change-of-heart by Murdoch's right-hand man at Fox News, Roger Ailes, and you have a script that could--just possibly--lead to a shift in direction for Murdoch's empire. Remember, it happened in the UK eight years ago, and it happened overnight. The only question--at least for Brown--is whether the Republicans, like the British Conservatives, have really "started to look like dying elephants." Remember, Rupert doesn't back losers.

Next step on Rupert's Internet assault

2005-09-11T22:05:00.000-04:00

Rupert Murdoch has been gathering his forces for the next step of his assault on the Internet. The Guardian's David Teather and Jane Martinson note that up to 45 of Murdoch's chief executives met this weekend near Carmel, California "for two days of private discussions on what he [Murdoch] has described as the company's highest priority: how to grapple with the threat and opportunity of the internet to the media empire he has spent a lifetime building."

As Doctor Media pointed out, Murdoch's News Corporation has, from almost a standing start, begun to build a significant web presence since the beginning of this year. It has formed an internet unit, Fox Interactive Media, that oversees its web activities. And with big-budget purchses of Intermix Media (including MySpace.com, a popular social networking site), IGN Entertainment, and Scout.com (which will be integrated into News Corp's Fox Sports enterprises), NewsCorp has made a spash on the Internet, and Murdoch also apparently wishes to buy Blinkx, a search engine.

The Guardian article reports that these recent purchases now "gives News Corp 70 million unique users and 12bn monthly page views. That catapults it into the fourth-largest internet firm in the world by page impressions, behind Yahoo, Time Warner and MSN, according to the investment bank Merrill Lynch." That's a pretty scary statistic, considering that News Corp hasn't been on most people's Internet radar screens up till now.

Apparently the agenda at the Carmel meeting was dominated by "how to turn News Corp's web properties into a hub for entertainment-related content. One News Corp insider called the strategy an attempt to create an 'entertainment Google' -- a one-stop shop for all those looking for computer games, movies, music or chat online."

Murdoch's Internet shopping spree continues

2005-09-08T11:21:00.000-04:00

TeamXbox reports that News Corp announced today that it was buying IGN Entertainment, Inc, a video game community-based Internet company. Cost? $650 million cash (corrected from earlier post). The move had been rumored since earlier in the summer. Quoting from a press release: "The acquisition of IGN underscores News Corporation's commitment to expand its internet presence by offering a deeper, richer online experience for its millions of passionate users."

You mean Rup's going for the youngest audience possible?

Maybe I should say youngest male audience -- indeed could we argue that the New Corp ethos is fairly masculine? Don't more men enjoy Fox News? Doesn't News Corp go after the sports audience in particular which at the risk of gender stereotyping is a male audience. Here's what IGN includes: "IGN.com, GameSpy, GameSpy Arena, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, 3D Gamers, Direct2Drive, GameStats.com and a number of web sites within the Vault and Planet networks. IGN also owns and operates two entertainment web properties focused on movie-related content, IGN FilmForce and Rotten Tomatoes, and a male lifestyle web site, AskMen.com. In addition, it provides technology for online game play in video games."

Indeed, Forbes reports in its coverage of the buy that IGN considers itself one of the most popular networks for young men. Business Week too has proclaimed IGN the networkWhere the Boys Are: "The lifestyle portal for men aged 18 to 34 is built on a foundation of women in bikinis, sports, cars, movies, and digital games -- lots of games."

If your company seeks a predominantly male audience does that make the company more masculine? So News Corps is from Mars? Hey, maybe that's the problem with the Public Service Broadcasting ethos -- it's just too girly.

Other interesting tidbits from the release:
"With the addition of IGN, Intermix and Scout Media to the existing Fox-branded sites, News Corporation's U.S. web traffic will increase to nearly 70 million unique monthly users and more than 12 billion page impressions per month, putting the Company in the top echelon of most trafficked sites on the Internet today. The combined sites will also provide a powerful cross-promotional opportunity for Fox's television and film content and enable the company to more efficiently introduce new products and services using its enhanced web presence.

MyBBC update

2005-09-06T00:45:00.000-04:00

Reuters ran a story last week via Yahoo about the MyBBCPlayer plans set to roll out in trial version this month, noting that part of the deal will involve a partnership with private entities to enable audiences to buy music heard on BBC. Noting that BBC is the fifth most popular website in the UK (does that include hits from outside the country I wonder), the story mentions the oft-cited stat that the Beethoven symphonies BBC made available for free download recently got 1.4 million hits.

The story notes that "The idea that 'there needs to be a vast cordon sanitaire' between public service and commercial transactions 'flies in the face of the way the public actually use the media now,' he [Director-General Mark Thompson] said . . . Thompson said it was 'ridiculous' to think that technology-savvy consumers 'would not welcome the opportunity to actually buy a download of a piece of music they have heard on a BBC Website.' " Apparently the private music sector in the UK is not happy with the prospect.

And so besides making use of their "brand" (Thompson again: "Everything we know about the online world suggests that it's the big brands -- the eBays, the Amazons, the Microsofts -- that punch through, and the BBC is one of the big brands") as part of their Internet strategy, BBC will also become increasingly networked with the private sector. I'm trying to be open-minded here and acknowledge that folks surfing the Internet may indeed not give a rip who owns the site as long as it gives them what they want, but I have to confess that whenever I hear the words private-public partnership I cringe.

We need only turn to the US private-public partnerships in terms of PBS and NPR to see where this may potentially lead. Does BBC expect its audiences to sit attentively by when Merck sponsors -- say a review "The Constant Gardner"?

Of course BBC's strategy also includes projects such as the Creative Archive project making materials available for free download and use, the ICan project that creates communities to take social and political action around local issues, BBC Backstage , etc. (All discussed in previous posts).

Additional info:
Here's a blogger/researcher providing his quick hit assessment of the BBC Internet strategy.
An undated Powerpoint presentation on BBC Internet strategy on the BBC's own website.

The BBC's future: Don't look to Canada?

2005-09-05T20:48:00.000-04:00

As Doctor Media noted in her post the other day ("Murdoch in context") about Robert McChesney's talks on the need to save PBS and public broadcasting in the U.S., she's not optimistic about whether the system can actually be saved in any meaningful way. Neither am I, though I agree we need to make an effort. This leads her to raise the alternative psb approach that has begun to be outlined on this blog: based on "the BBC and the potential of a global public sphere or at least some sort of transnational Anglo public service sphere." The BBC clearly is making a valiant effort to retain its broad-based relevance in a changing media world, but if we look elsewhere in transnational Anglo PSB sphere, we might be less happy with what we see.

This brings me to Canada's CBC, or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Staff at Canada's 70-year-old public broadcaster, supposedly "the voice of the nation," have been on strike for some three weeks now, services have been severely disrupted, and audiences are down 25 percent. But, according to Peter Preston of the Observer, "the damnable thing, the awful lesson from all this, is that nobody much seems to care. Only 10 per cent of Joe Public, once polled, thinks the strike a major inconvenience; only 27 per cent would even describe it as a minor inconvenience. The rest of Canada just walks on by, untroubled, uninvolved."

Preston, making a partial comparison between the public service broadcasters in Britain and Canada, notes the BBC's much stronger position in its home country -- though that should be no reason for complacency.

5 per cent

Yes, there are similarities, just as there are significant differences. The CBC has also attempted to get on the new media bandwagon, with an extensive CBC.ca web site, RSS feeds, podcasting, a free archives service, and so on (see wikipedia's "Internet" section); still it doesn't appear to be as innovative as the BBC's efforts (see, e.g., "MyBBC" on this blog). But this apparently hasn't stopped CBC's slide. For whatever historical, cultural or economic reasons, there is no doubt that the CBC is now in a much weaker position than the BBC. Yet both corporations were and are supposed to be "voices of the nation." It's one thing to ask whether the BBC can avoid the marginalization that bedevils U.S. public broadcasting, which after all was never really part of the national mainstream. The CBC example raises the question of how the BBC can avoid being relegated from national dominance to marginalization.

Yet the threat of national marginalization might (I stress might, as I'm still thinking this through) be a force driving these old-school public servive broadcasters away from a national psb orientation toward a transnational psb role. Of course, psbs would have to tread a fine line between maintaining public (taxpayer) support at home and spreading out to new audiences abroad. Obviously it makes sense for psbs--especially English-speaking psbs--to work together, although there is nothing wrong with working with for-profit entities, as long as the collaboration produces psb-friendly results. The BBC has clearly grasped this new reality. The CBC, I fear, hasn't.

Galloway: The Sequel

2005-09-04T20:09:00.000-04:00

The firebrand British politician, George Galloway, is returning to the US this month on a tour that appears set to include Barbarella herself, Jane Fonda. Common Dreams is reporting via the Times that they have forged a pack to speak out against the Iraq war (with rumors of a joint appearance with Sean Penn in LA).

Galloway's appearance last spring before a US Senate committee on charges of being involved with the UN oil-for-food scandal was documented in an earlier post by Dougie who noted that the US media practically ignored the incredible political theater that Galloway created when -- rather than rolling over like American politicians when it comes to US Iraq policies -- he slammed the US administration for its lies about the weapons of mass destruction and the non-existent 911 links. The Independent notes that Galloway, who has some political baggage, teaming up with Fonda should have the righties foaming.

The tour, called Stand Up and Be Counted, begins September 13 in Boston. It is tied to Galloway's book tour ("Mr Galloway Goes to Washington") and Fonda's renewed activism. It should prove yet another interesting cross-over between Brit politics and the US entertainment industry.

Scheduled tour: New York (S14), Toronto (S16&17), Madison (S18), Chicago (S19), Seattle (S20), San Francisco (S21), Los Angeles (S22), Washington (24).

BBC & linking practices

2005-08-31T21:33:00.000-04:00

Cyberjournalist links to an interesting piece that again highlights significant differences between the BBC internet strategy and that of corporate media such as Murdoch. Unlike most privately owned media companies, BBC has taken to providing prominently placed links that -- gulp -- take visitors off-site to the relevant information.

It has long been standard practice not to link off-site for fear of losing audiences. The links come up in the column ABOVE their own BBC stories. Cyberjournalist quotes from the BBC site:

The Newstracker system uses web search technology to identify content from other news websites that relates to a particular BBC story. A news aggregator like Google News or Yahoo News uses this type of technique to compare the text of stories and group similar ones together.
BBC News gets a constantly updating feed of stories from around 4000 different news websites. The feed is provided to us by Moreover Technologies. The company provides a similar service for other clients.

Our system takes the stories and compares their text with the text of our own stories. Where it finds a match, we can provide a link directly from our story to the story on the external site.

Because we do this comparison very regularly, our stories contain links to the most relevant and latest articles appearing on other sites.

How do you choose which stories and which sites to link to?

The Newstracker system is automated. The BBC does not censor or change the results. But because there can potentially be scores of sites covering each story, the BBC does define some rules (algorithms) that help define which sites we link to at any point in time - and in what order these links appear.
In general, our rules tend to give greater weight to national and international sources over regional or local ones. We have a policy of only linking to English-language sites. The results are sorted in date order to provide the most recent stories at the top.

It has been noted in recent research that younger online news readers particularly like the way Google, Yahoo and similar sites provide a range of news sources and, indeed, prefer this to a single corporate site. By linking off-site BBC may well be appealing at least in part to those desires as well as reflecting a better understanding of how news media of the future may need to operate. Digitaledge reported earlier this year that Google News often has more visitors than Fox News site or CNN's.

Murdoch in context

2005-08-31T18:13:00.000-04:00

With Rupert Murdoch jumping back into the Internet, it’s perhaps useful to view his moves within a broader context. One place to start is the political economy of the global media. Which inevitably leads to Robert McChesney’s critical political economy work, an approach that critiques media institutions, charting their economic structures and ideological roles.

In a brief article written several years ago for media watchdog FAIR, title The Titanic sails on: Why the internet won’t sink the media giants, he summarized an argument he makes across a number of volumes including The Political Economy of Global Communication: The internet is not going to level the playing field for small media or alternative voices; media giants will instead use it to become ever bigger, increasing concentration, not diminishing it. He admits that big media have made missteps in this process – at the time he wrote, remember, Murdoch was making some himself. But their resources were so vast mistakes could be made.

McChesney goes on to list a number of reasons behind his argument, namely:

Media giants have lots of money to invest -- and lose if necessary
They can draw on their own programming (and thus don’t have to create content)
They have the ability to cross promote / draw on global name brands
They aren't afraid of aggressive investment
Advertisers will turn to them

McChesney (1999, 2004) has argued repeatedly that this concentration of media is a major threat to democracy and that public policies concerning media ownership have been enacted, particularly in the US, not to serve the public but to serve the corporations . This is clear in the non-enforcement of anti-trust laws and lack of governmental concern about monopolies. Consider that in earlier posts Murdoch was quoted as seeing the Internet as the perfect space to avoid government regulation.

In his Fair article, McChesney notes “The moral of the story is clear: If we want a vibrant noncommercial and nonprofit sector on the Internet, in the near term it will require existing institutions like labor and progressive funders to subsidize such activities.” He has also advocated for beefing up the US public broadcasting system which has been severely attacked in the last few years, although the downward spiral began long ago.

In an interview with Mother Jones, he restated what he argues in his most recent volume, The problem of the media: US communication politics in the 21^st century:

Now, the one thing that's clear is that we need nonprofit, noncommercial media — not just broadcasting — more than ever in the United States. We don't need a purely nonprofit, noncommercial system, but we need a significant nonprofit, noncommercial system. Advertising-run media, profit-driven media, simply is not acceptable as the entirety of our media system. There's no defense for it.

The current public television and radio system in the United States, while it's better than nothing, that's about the best you can say about it. It's nowhere near the standard it needs to be for our society, and we've got to make a commitment to rethink the system altogether. You know, just giving more money to what exists on PBS now would be not great; we've got to have a new vision of PBS.

Where I would differ with him is that I'm not really sure the US public system can be saved. Is it worth trying? Yes, but with the current environment, I' m not optimistic. Which seems to me to lead us to the other dominant model that has been outlined on this blog: the BBC and the potential of a global public sphere or at least some sort of transnational Anglo public service sphere. And that's another post.

Helpful sources:

McChesney lays out some of his thinking early on in The Internet and U. S. Communication Policy-Making in Historical and Critical Perspective (Winter, 1996) Journal of Communication 46(1).

Rich media, poor democracy. (1999) Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press.

The problem of the media: US communication politics in the 21^st century (2004). New York: Monthly Review Press. Some page summaries of important points can be found on the Third World Traveler pages.

A number of other academics have considered the political economic structure of the US media system including:
Ben Bagdikian. (2004) The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press. (New edition)
Jeffrey Blevins has written about media oligarchs colonizing cyberspace (published as an article in Television and New Media (2002) 3(1), 95-112.

MyBBC

2005-08-31T00:09:00.000-04:00

As has been noted before, the BBC has a rather different Internet strategy than say, Rupert Murdoch. On Saturday, Director General Mark Thompson announced the possible 2006 release of MyBBCPlayer,which would allow audiences to download video and audio for up to a week. The Washington Post reports that details are sketchy -- would there be any fees? what about digital rights?

Thompson was quoted saying: "I accept the premise that if the BBC remains nothing more than a traditional TV and radio broadcaster then we probably won't deserve or get license-fee funding beyond 2016," he said. "That is very definitely not our plan."

He notes on the BBC's own website that they intend to change the nature of broadcasting. The BBC Board of Governors still needs to approve the plan.

Manchesteronline reports the content would be available only to license fee payers. This raises interesting issues mentioned in earlier posts -- what is the possibility of non-Brits paying a "license fee" of some sort to access the content? Would BBC become a truly global -- or at least post national -- public service entity?

They also quote Thompson and it's pretty interesting:

"Far from posing a threat, Mr Thompson said the BBC's public value mission made more sense in a multi-media world.

He said: 'It's an environment in which the original promise of public service broadcasting the very best available to all could actually be achieved.'

Mr Thompson said: 'Pessimists suggest that the BBC might disappear amid the infinite choice of the broadband/on demand world.

'That's because they have the wrong conceptual model in their heads - a model of some mad cornershop with a trillion different coloured sweets in different jars.

'Everything we know about the online world suggests that it's the big brands the eBays, the Amazons, the Microsofts that punch through.

'And the BBC is one of the big brands. In content terms one of the biggest on-line brands in the world and by far the biggest British one.'

More to come on this I'm sure.

Back to the Future: Murdoch and the Internet

2005-08-29T19:16:00.000-04:00

I thought it might be helpful when thinking about Rupert Murdoch’s recently enhanced Internet presence to look back at his previous involvements with dot.coms. Some of the current news reports that suggest he has little experience with the online world are a bit simplified. For five years ago, just like now, Murdoch suddenly saw the potentials of the Internet and vowed to spend billions investing in it.

Wired quoted his philosophy at the time (and doubtless it hasn't changed much): "Governments can regulate satellites," he says. "You have licensing of the satellite spectrum, and you can identify people with dishes. But once the Internet starts to pass through you, it's pretty hard to do much about it. You can't afford to say, 'We won't develop a telephone system so people can't have the Internet.' You'll just rot as a country, you'll be left so far behind."

Here’s a rough timeline. I should note that he was involved in a large number of entities and I’m still checking on some of the information below.

1999

At the end of the last decade, Murdoch was still dismissing the Internet, claiming it would "destroy more businesses than it creates". But by that summer, he had changed his mind. His youngest son, James (now apparently next in line since the departure of big brother Lachlan), his son-in-law Alasdair MacLeod, and his wife, Wendi Deng, had convinced him to consider the potentials of the Internet.

According to some media reports, James had hammered home the importance of having an Internet strategy; other sources noted that Rupert had finally discovered the joys of e-mail.

Whatever the case, Murdoch decided set aside $2.3 billion for Internet investments, in some cases trading News Corp advertising platforms for media, in other cases drawing on company earnings. He called various associates together – apparently during his Italian honeymoon to Deng, and laid out plans.

This eventually included:

News Network, a new UK internet division; launched websites Revolver.com and Firedup.com; Learnfree.co.uk.

BSkyB invsted in LetsBuyIt.com

James’ News Digital Network invested in a bunch of struggling or failing Internet ventures including: Sixdegrees.com, a community site; Juno.com, an internet service provider; PlanetRX, a healthcare site; TheStreet.com, a financial website

Joined up with Japanese businessman Masayoshi Son in his venture, Softbank, an internet investment vehicle and announced they would bring up to 12 of the US’ leading Internet companies to the UK. They started ePartners, to invest in internet businesses. He convinced other major investors to buy into ePartners2, including IBM, Lord Rothschild, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

buy.com

Riot-E

Ripcord Systems

Committed $1 billion to Healtheon Web/MD which aimed to provide online health care services. Son James was said to have gotten his father interested in the company.

Months later, the older executives at News Corps got Murdoch to pull back. News Corps wasn’t making money with these ventures, and faced a cash shortage. Nearly all of these ventures listed above lost money or had their plug pulled because they were not going to be able to survive without large cash infusions.

BY 2001, Murdoch had pulled out of Web/MD which failed to revolutionize the health care industry and earned News Corp, which had promised to invest $1 billion and already invested several million, nothing. EVentures olded after 18 months.

Murdoch renounced the Internet and News Corp dropped its online plans, fired online employees and shed much of its online presence.

By November 2000, Murdoch decreed the Internet couldn’t make money. BBC reported a couple of months later, his fling was over.

Almost five years late, in February 2005, 50 News Corps executives from around the world met to discuss their Internet strategy. In April, Murdoch called a group of news media executives too complacent in thinking about the impact of the Internet on their finances, declaring -- you guessed it -- the future of the news and entertainment worlds lies with the Internet.

Whose kind of town?

2005-08-26T15:09:00.000-04:00

Joining the list of UK presenters heading for the U.S. is Johnny Vaughan, host of ABC’s new "late summer alternative" hybrid variety-reality show My Kind of Town, which debuted on Sunday night, August 14, at 9 p.m. The show (which apparently isn't based on a UK original) is co-produced by ABC and UK production company Monkey, though Monkey seems to be calling the creative shots. The executive producers are Monkey's Will Macdonald and David Granger, plus Michael Davies, "the UK-born producer who took Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to the US." ABC decribes the show thus:

My Kind of Town

Vaughan, who has a Cockney wide-boy demeanor, has done a bunch of British TV, though I remember him for his stint on C4's The Big Breakfast. The ABC web site describes Vaughan as one of the UK's "favorite comedic forces on TV and radio." As Media Guardian points out, Vaughan follows other UK summer travellers, such as Vernon Kay and Gordon Ramsay, who have been in the U.S. presenting American versions of their British shows this summer - respectively, Hit Me Baby One More Time and Hell's Kitchen.

First ratings results showed that "Town" did alright, though not great. Media Life Magazine thinks that "the show’s lack of focus perhaps led viewers to turn away. It wasn’t among the summer’s worst bombs by any stretch but it also shows little promise for coming weeks." Still, Media Guardian notes that the show's first episode "finished up third in its slot, with 7.1 million viewers, but second among the 18- to 49-year-old viewers who are the holy grail for US advertisers." But the Guardian also quotes the Hollywood Reporter, whose reviewer "was not that impressed with the show or Vaughan, describing him as 'heavily accented (and equally heavily annoying)'" (an assessment I agree with).

Celeb Weeklies, still OK?

2005-08-26T02:00:00.000-04:00

Brit Richard Desmond's high profile launch of OK is already in trouble, Media Guardian reports. Despite dumping $10 mill into advertising the new pub, its sales are off. Way off. Perhaps only a tenth of the initial run was sold.

What does this mean, if anything? Desmond miscalculated? The Brit touch for scandal pubs has turned cold? Media Life gave it a big thumbs down, panning Jessica Simpson as cover girl and scolding the magazine for using old gossip and photos and gracious me,, lacking US Weekly''s "wit and Star's cheek."

Business2.com says OK isn't the only problem with this genre, suggesting that celeb weeklies are in a bubble that's about to burst.

The market seems solid, if you consider these Audit Bureau stats for OK's rivals, as reported in the Guardian: US Weekly, 1.67 million weekly; Star sells 1.4; National Enquirer 1.32; In Touch sells 1.23. (People sill rules with 3.78 mill readers.) Business2.com says US Weekly is in fact up some 30 percent and In Touch by nearly 50 percent over last year. Media Life doesn't see any slowing to this phenomenonal growth (but notes that the newsweeklies are off in sales.)

Yet Greg Lindsay of Business2.com argues the bubble will indeed burst as titles beget spinoffs and oversaturate the market. He believes that the distribution model based on supermarket check-out sales, which follows the British (and European) model, means there will simply not be enough slots to accommodate so many new titles. " 'Nobody owns those pockets,' Bauer CEO Hubert Boehle gloomily told me this spring. 'Everybody has to go to the chains and rent them. Any newcomer can step in with an offer that, if it’s strong enough, can knock your magazines from the best spots.' "

Don't be fooled . . .

2005-08-23T13:03:00.000-04:00

Doctor Media's been adding some excellent posts over the past few days, while I've been taking a break and communing with nature (that's what I call it whenever I get in a tent). After all, August is here. While there's still lots going on, it seems that following a period over the summer where the stream of British news had been constant in USA media-land, things have died down a tad - at least for the moment, and at least in terms of the big news stories. We've stopped hearing so much about the London terrorist bombings. Gleneagles and Live8 are already distant, all-but-forgotten memories. No-one seems to be talking about Making Poverty History anymore. All is silent on the 2012 London Olympics front. America is consumed by the missing Aruba teenager and (maybe if they're looking for more serious news) Cindy Sheehan's anti-war protest and the Israeli evacuation of Gaza. Maybe this is as good a time as any to take a breather.

But hang on, not so fast! While the U.S. news world takes a break from blighty, the steady drumbeat UK's hidden and not-so-hidden influence on U.S. news and entertainment continues relentlessly, even during the dog days of summer. Just think of all the British institutions and people who are having an impact on the U.S. media landscape right now (many of whom we've aleady commented on in London Calling).

Of course we all know about the BBC, The Independent and The Guardian. But what about Granada International and Celador Productions? What about the WPP advertising agency? Pearson (owner of the FT)? Conde Nast? News International (the UK arm of News Corporation, and home of The Sun and BSkyB)? And don't forget Richard Branson's Virgin.

Then there's Tina Brown and her husband Harold Evans; Christopher Hitchens and Richard Curtis; Martin Walker; the defection of and any number of tabloid journos and serious journalists heading to the US for the big bucks; Ricky Gervais in the world of comedy.

Let's not forget Daniel Battsek (of Miramax) and Howard Stringer (of Sony); then there's dodgy Richard Desmond and OK! (see also here). And now there's James Goldston at ABC's Nightline. In hard news and TV entertainment, in magazine and book publishing, in the big city tabloids, the British influence is palpable and incessant. And yes, the list really does go on. (Btw, a few weeks ago I put up a list of UK media figures - culled from the Guardian's "Top 100 media figures in the UK"; there's a bunch of extra names in there to consider.)

So things aren't as quiet as they seem. All that's happened is that the temporary blip of Big British News Events has settled back down to the constant background noise - a drumbeat, even - of the UK's continuing (and expanding) media presence in the United States. So even if we hear less about London's war on terrorism or Blair's electoral capital or the London Olympics or Britain's EU Presidency or its war of African poverty, don't be fooled.

There's still a lot going on.

Economist - even more American?

2005-08-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

How much longer before The Economist can't even be considered a British magazine anymore? The Times reports that the magazine, which already has more than half its circulation (around 500,000) in the US, wants to expand by buying other US pubs.

Right now, they own Roll Call, a political mag, and CFO, for biz pros, but the company -- half owned by Pearson which also owns the FinTimes -- has $73 million on hand and wants to spend it. Editors told the Times they want more US advertising and buying American properties would mean less dependence on a single pub.

More Murdoch

2005-08-18T21:39:00.000-04:00

The Guardian gives a bit more detail on Murdoch.com's plans, noting that Murdoch was criticized for not getting into the Internet biz in the '90s but now gloats over having not experienced the dot com crash that followed.

Another piece mocks his entry into the Internet world as septuagenarians dancing to Girls Aloud. Emily Bell writes that "His vision for News Corp on the web, which in America means Fox Interactive Media, has undertones of portals and keeping your audience tied in - something which is a long way behind the latest curve, where content flies freely across whichever platform the users choose."

Whether Rup can adapt to the culture of the Internet remains to be seen, but he is right about one thing: Old media such as newspapers are not the wave of the future (or as LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke so indelicately calls them, newsosaurs).

Meanwhile son Lachlan has already announced the launch of his own new company called Illyria, which the Guardian reports might be either a Shakespeare ("The Twelfth Night") or a "Buffy the Vampire" slayer reference. Most reports are going with Shakespeare. He is forbidden by contractual obligations from competing against Daddy's company.

Murdoch roundup

2005-08-18T11:54:00.000-04:00

Much has been written in the last few weeks about the resignation of Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan, 33, from News Corp. where he published the New York Post among other things for the $85 billion company. This is bigger than a single post can cover but I did want to note a couple of things here.

The first and most obvious is that an Anglo geo-linguistic triangle is complete: Rupert began in Australia and moved to London's Fleet Street where he benefitted from Margaret Thatcher's deregulation schemes to challenge the unions and remake the industry. He brought that tabloid sensibility to the US and among other things started Fox. Therein lies his enormous significance to anyone interested in the British media's influence in the US. He posted a second son, James, a Harvard drop-out and one-time rap impressario, back to England to run BSkyB and now Lachlan returns to Australia.

Rupert is not British, but his time in Britain, (let's not overlook the British PM connection here as with Tony B) helped him hone a particular view of how to operate media businesses in a way that gave up on public service, instead emphasizing entertainment.

A round-up:

The Economist reports that Lachlan was not "obsessively interested" enough in running the family business to suit Rup.

The New York Times reported that Lachlan's relationship with Rup had recently frayed due to his father's constant interference in how he ran his share of the business. Also a factor was Wendi Deng, Rup's third wife and mother of his two toddlers, now called one of the most powerful women in the world.

As HDougie noted earlier, Peter Chernin and Rogers Ailes are moving into more powerful positions. Murdoch appointed Ailes chairman of Fox Television Stations Group, and thus control of 35 local affiliates, Fox News Channel and Twentieth Television. Not to worry about a Republican political strategist gaining ever more power at Fox, though. The NYT reports on a study that PROVES watching Fox doesn't affect one's politics one iota. Uh-huh.

MSNBC ponders: Why did Lachlan quit? Answer: News Corp is a jungle.

Other important Murdoch news is his acquisition of My Space which Business Week describes as a move aimed at establishing Murdoch.com.

The 74-year-old spent $580 million to buy Intermixwhich owns the world's most popular social networking site.. The site happens to be popular with teenagers and college students. Murdoch also bought Scout Media, a college sports site, as well. My Space has been trying to do damage control as the news that the right-wing Bush apologist had taken over what has been perceived as a free-wheeling, grass-roots venture.

In recent weeks, Murdoch has also created Fox Interactive Media, the entity that will overlook My Space. This comes on the heels of a speech he gave last spring and described here earlier that the media company had not made good use of the Internet and needed to evolve its approach.

Meanwhile, Smart Money says Rup has vowed to spend a $1 billion or more to be a dominant Internet presence. His plans include starting a web portal, buying a search engine and possibly other web businesses. Rumored targets include Technorati and Blinkx. Rup also denies he's been trying to buy out Skype, which enables free calls via the Internet. His ultimate aim, says Business Week, is to bypass other portals and deliver all that Fox content straight to audiences worldwide.

The FinTimes reports Murdoch is after IGN, a video gaming company, whose sites are aimed at young men and include GameSpy (video game news), Rotten Tomatoes (film) and Filmforce (film). The Pink Paper points out that Murdoch has moved rather quickly in making these acquistions and that buying Scout Media and Intermix upped their online visitors from 16 million a month to nearly 50. Just last June, IGN bought Askmen.com, another guy-oriented site. And finally, FT notes that Murdoch was also bidding for an Australian real estate site.

Other related items:

Ketupa.net provides a large annotated bibliography of all volumes Murdoch as well as a comprehensive News Corp site.

And, last but not least, Women's Wear Daily updates us on what we really want to know: Murdoch's re-decorated London flat including its bullet-proof sliding glass doors.

GOP vs. Brit musicians

2005-08-12T18:46:00.000-04:00

Political Wire reports that Republicans plan to hold fund raisers at the Rolling Stones' Washington concert, apparently in response to their song, "Sweet Neo-Con" on the new "A Bigger Bang" album set for September release. (More lyrics: "How come you're so wrong? My sweet neo-con, where's the money gone, in the Pentagon" and "It's liberty for all, democracy's our style, unless you are against us, then it's prison without trial.")

The Stones continue to say the song is not anti-Bush, so reports the WAPO. (Surprised they had time to report this what with devoting all their resources to sponsor Rumsfeld's Pro-war rally at the Pentagon next month). Some bloggers are calling the Stones cowards for their denials -- it actually seems like Bush strategy -- just deny the obvious.

Also, a couple of Republican representatives (from Illinois and New York) are holding fund raisers at an Elton John concert in the US next month. The reps voted to ban gay marriage last year (Sir Elton plans to marry his boyfriend in December). Not the first time American politicians have tried to force their morals on other people but, really, do they think their districts now extend into the UK?

The Blair Effect?

2005-08-12T14:41:00.000-04:00

Having recently encountered John Kampfner's Blair's Wars along with James Naughtie's The Accidental American; Tony Blair and the Presidency, I've been thinking about the nexus of Blair's reign as PM and the apparently rise of British media within the US. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, there are important, unexplored connections here.

Unanswered questions.

For one, did the British media's relationship with the US change in part because of the Blair administration? (This is not to say British PMs have never had special relationships with Americans -- witness Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan that somehow were reflected in coverage). Of course, I'm not saying Blair ordered up a closer media relationship, but rather his own odd friendship and support of Bush in some ways reflects or even indirectly influenced the new rise of British media within the US. (The connections have long been there. Tunstall well documents this but this blog argues that those connections have grown larger and more complicated in the last few years, particularly post 911 when the US media have been unable to carry out a watchdog role in any meaningful manner). This is not to overlook changes driven by economics and the global economy, yet I am increasingly convinced that things would have played out differently under a different British PM.

Blair helped push a positive view of Britain to a much higher profile. (HDougie has earlier commented on how Americans have been exposed to the British parliamentary system via C-SPAN and seen how the PM is put to real questioning with no easy escape -- I've heard many Americans comment in awe about this comparative openness when contrasted with our own politicians).

Naughtie notes the extent to which Blair was feted by left and right in the US, with his well received speeches and appearances before Congress, with Bush at press conferences and in other arenas. Naughtie argues that Blair found 911 to be a seminal event in a way that many Europeans and even fellow Brits did not. This combined with positions he had already articulated concerning global poverty, climate change, terrorism, etc. before the hijackers struck as well as notions about himself as different or above his own party and politics came together under those unusual circumstances.

Of course many have asked the broader question of why did Blair team up so closely with Buch? According to Three Monkeys, which provides a nice summary of Kampfner's book,: "a general confluence of agreement on the issue of liberal intervention with a wing of the neo-conservatives; a desperate sense of wanting to be America’s best friend; there was the what I call pessimistic view of Britain’s role in the world, that it’s nothing if it’s not America’s best friend."

So, another question: Does the British media see itself as having to succeed with an American audience to be truly successful? Or is succeeding in the US part of a political-economic-social strategy of maintaining British power post-empire? The managers and executives would likely subscribe to the second Q -- carried out by willing reporters and editors who are perhaps more personally concerned with the first question.

First the lads, now the lassies?

2005-08-11T21:20:00.000-04:00

Following the British lead, women's magazines are seeing some changes this fall -- particularly the introduction of women's weeklies. Subscriptions are dropping to monthly women's pubs here and news-stand sales are becoming a more promising route of generating revenues.

While the British magazine market does operate rather differently than the US, it has already inspired the lad's magazine trend which targeted an untapped audience, introduced snappier writing with shorter stories and bolder covers designed to snag newsstand buyers.

Here in the US, August saw the launch of Hearst's Quick & Simple, inspired by the generally down market women's weeklies in Britain. Myrna Bly writing for the New York Sun, says the US women's market has been unusual because it did not cater to the down market women's weekly audience as much as is done in Europe and Britain.

In a related launch, Men's Vogue is planned for Sept. 6. The New York Observer reported a heavy hand from British magazine maven, Anna Wintour, (See Is Anna Wintour Satan or the thinly veiled fictional account: The Devil Wears Prada) who heads Vogue and is also said to have inspired Teen Vogue and now Men's Vogue which is edited by Jay Fielder, her former arts director. Conde Nast head SI Newhouse has long been said to fancy British editors and writers, having hired Tina Brown to helm first Vanity Fair, then the New Yorker as well as Wintour, and Glenda Bailey (formerly editor of first British, then US Marie Claire) at Harper's Bazaar.

Men's Vogue is said to be trying to differentiate itself from the men's magazines such as Men's Health that are how-tos and is instead aimed at a slightly older (30 and up), wealthier ($100K and up) reader. Fielder said of Wintour: she is "around the corner whenever I need to consult with her . . . She's ready to give advice whenever she feels like she needs to give it, and whenever she feels she can improve upon what it is we've already done to make it better."

Mick to George & the Neo-Cons: "You're full of ----!"

2005-08-11T19:26:00.000-04:00

Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, set to start their latest US tour, seem to be getting some satisfaction from their new tune, "Sweet Neo-Con." Wonkette reports the lyrics include: "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot. Well, I think you're full of shit." The song is also said to criticize Secretary of State Condoleeza ("I NEVER said Ellen Degeneres was cute!") Rice.

Aussie TV reported that Mick says it's not an attack on Bush. "It certainly criticises policies he espouses I'm sure, " Sir Mick noted. Yahoo reports the real worries are from fellow rocker Keith Richards, who lives in the US, and apparently fears the sort of hysterical attack that the guardians of US "freedom" launched on the country group, the Dixie Chicks when they dared utter a negative word about Bush.

Sir Mick has said since he still lives in Britain, he's not afraid. Take note artists, if you want the "luxury" of infusing your art with political criticism. (Hey, we thought that's what good art was?)

The album, "A Bigger Bang," will be released on Sept. 5.

Tina Brown's husband the new Alistair Cooke?

2005-08-10T17:13:00.000-04:00

British newspaper veteran Sir Harold Evans seems to be easing himself into the shoes left behind by the late Alistair Cooke. Cooke is well known as one of the twentieth century's formost Anglo-Americans. He died in 2004 after having broadcast his famous "Letter from America" for nearly 60 years. (See his Wikipedia entry here). Now Evans is helming his own BBC Radio show that looks at America through British eyes: It's called "A Point of View". (The text of Evans' first piece is here).

A BBC piece on the passing of the baton notes the history and significance of Cooke's series:

Harold Evans seems to be a worthy successor. After leaving the editorship of the Times of London in 1981 (he butted heads with its new owner, Rupert Murdoch) Evans "moved to America in 1984 where he and his wife Tina Brown - former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and the short-lived but zeitgeisty Talk magazine - are about as well-connected as you can get." Wikipedia notes that "Evans was appointed president and publisher of Random House trade group from 1990 to 1997 and editorial director and vice chairman of US News and World Report, the New York Daily News, and The Atlantic Monthly from 1997 to January 2000, when he resigned to concentrate on writing."

Evans is as proud of his American side as his British character, and he hates simplistic, knee-jerk "America-bashing." The BBC piece suggests that "perhaps 'A Point of View' will be less 'A Letter from America' and more of a love letter to America - which, indeed, is how one critic described Evans' first book on American history [The American Century, published in 1998]."

It'll be interesting to see if Evans cultivates a global following - including in the United States - as loyal as that once enjoyed by Alistair Cooke.

John Simpson on Peter Jennings

2005-08-08T14:17:00.000-04:00

(Copied from mediaville): With the sad death of former ABC anchor Peter Jennings, I've been looking around for good eulogies from the media. One of the best I've found so far comes from the BBC's John Simpson. He has a lot to say about America's best news anchor by far - in fact Simpson describes Jennings as "probably the best in the world at his trade." But crucially, Jennings "always maintained a wry awareness that reporting, and fronting other people's reporting, for television was something pretty slight in the grand scale of things." Simpson says a good deal about Jennings' personal and professional talents, but the most saddening passage is this:

downward spiral of television news

Fox

I really like that last bit. Poor old Peter Jennings. To this day, if I watch any network news broadcast, it'll be ABC - that is completely because of Jennings. I watched him for hours at the dawn of the new millennium and after 9/11, and many other times, and you could only respect the hell out of the fact that, somehow, he managed to stay above the mundance idiocy that increasingly surrounded him. Maybe his Canadian background helped; he maintained a small yet essential distance from America, even as middle America embraced him. I've said before that the people coming through America's news system are in no way comparable to the anchors of a generation ago. That's never more true when you consider the stature of Jennings against the pygmies and puffed-up, opinionated idiots that dominate news today. I don't care how many times you put Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams in a flak suit or on location overseas - these guys will never match up. Simpson puts it best:

Martha Gellhorn

Ed Murrow

Walter Cronkite

Robin Cook, RIP

2005-08-06T14:54:00.000-04:00

Less than two weeks ago I posted a blog titled "Where's Robin Cook? (Where's Noam Chomsky?)" (click on it here.) I complained that Cook, the former British foreign secretary and an erudute and level-headed anti-war spokesperson, was missing from any debate in America about the Iraq debacle, and that was a great loss. Well, now he'll be missing from all debate, tragically: Robin Cook collapsed and died earlier this afternoon, while on a hill-walking trip in the North-west of Scotland. As the BBC's obituary notes, "The Labour MP for Livingston was considered one of the Commons' most intelligent MPs and one of its most skilled debaters." Also, "His stance on the Iraq war - and his resignation speech - only enhanced his reputation as a man of principle and a great Parliamentarian."

Brit at the helm of Miramax

2005-08-05T15:17:00.000-04:00

British-born Daniel Battsek is to take over at Disney's Miramax division, from October 1. Battsek will lead "the Walt Disney Co.'s specialty films division into a new post-Harvey and Bob Weinstein era." Also according to Hollywood Reporter Battsek "will bring London-based Buena Vista International executive Kristin Jones with him, Disney sources confirmed, though not as head of production."

In the next few weeks, Battsek will move from the U.K. to New York, where the Miramax headquarters will continue to operate autonomously, separate from the parent studio. He has yet to decide where the new offices will be, though they will likely be housed in one of the buildings in Lower Manhattan that Disney leases for Miramax. "We will not be at Disney," he said. "We will have our own address. I was very determined that New York was the right place for an independent label, not a studio lot, given the way in which independent productions are created there."
Battsek has an interesting biography. He "began his industry career at the Hoyts Film Corp. in Sydney, where he rose to general manager in Victoria State overseeing distribution. He then served as managing director of Palace Pictures before joining Disney" in 1992, "after laying out plans for a U.K. distribution arm for the company. Having set up Buena Vista International U.K., he rapidly rose through the ranks, ending up executive vp and managing director of distribution and production for BVI U.K."

In 1999, Battsek helped set up the BVI U.K. Comedy Label, "which has produced three features, 'High Heels and Low Lifes' (2001), 'Hope Springs' and 'Calendar Girls' (both released in 2003). He has forged relationships with such filmmakers as Frears, Minghella, Christopher Nolan and John Madden."

It's a celeb mag war, OK!

2005-08-03T17:09:00.000-04:00

The Guardian Unlimited gives a bit more juicy detail on the arrival of the UK's OK! magazine in the US.

First, billionaire publisher Richard Desmond's story is a bit tantilizing. In a previous dust-up over starting up phone sex lines in NYC, he was ordered out of the city by the NYC mob which also, so the article says, may have sent a hit man to London to make sure orders were clear. Also, Desmond tried to strike a deal with Penthouse some years back and apparently lost big time, vowing not to do business with the Yanks again. So, this is a risky move indeed!

Secondly, the arrival of OK! is meant to be a direct challenge to People, the celeb magazine that tries to present itself as the clean version of an often smary topic (note: they're owned by Time Warner). Already there are reports of wars over celeb photos. Other competitors will be National Enquirer, Star, and US Weekly.

That's not all. USA Today reports that UK's Hello will launch a US version in 2006. It's not clear how the market can support them all. (Their story also includes a comparative chart of the leading celeb mags).

Again, I predict more boundary maintenance -- either from the "quality" media covering the story -- in order to tell audiences how trustworthy American media -- or the other celeb pubs pushing an anti-British line. Just a guess.

Also, I ran across an article from Columbia J-student, Katie Prout, with a quote from Christopher Hitchens concerning the differences between British and American reporters: "British magazine writers are taught to write with a point of view. You’re not supposed to be neutral. Be judgmental. Interest, enlighten, outrage and offend others. You’re there to do for the reader what they can’t do for themselves. Journalism cannot go too far."

Prout includes a long list of Brits who jumped ship to work in the US magazine industry and quotes a number of experts on why the two countries journalism styles differ. Reasons range from the Brits being more concise, more openly political, and better educated, to perceptions of their superior writing talents.

Brit magazine invasion continues

2005-08-03T13:34:00.000-04:00

Yet another British magazine -- this one called "OK" and focused on celebrities is launching in the US this week. While the celebrity magazine field seems to be saturated, publisher Richard Desmond doesn't apparently think so.

The New York Sun reports that there are differences between OK and its US competition including the fact that Desmond is a more "colorful" publisher having come from a porn, er adult, magazine background. Not sure how that will play out . . . Also, OK pays for access to events which US celeb mags claim not to do. Newsday has this delicious quote from Bonnie Fuller, publisher of among others, the National Enquirer: "I don't think that most Americans would consider that paying for celebrities to give you a story would really fit with that requirement." (The various self serving quotes about the celeb rags -- see earlier posts about the National Enquirer's hiring of a new stable of British writers -- seems to be a case of boundary repair for American media. Oh, nooo, American scandal mongers have ethics! Not like those nasty Brits. Uh-huh.)

The bigger picture, it seems to me, is the import itself of British magazine styles, writers, editors and indeed magazines themselves . For example, the introduction of lad's magazines, a trend started by the British with Maxim in 1997 and followed by IPC's Loaded and Emap's FHM, which in some ways changed the world of men's magazines here -- targeting younger, hipper audiences; introducing new content and adapting the consumeristic styles of women's magazines to men's; and introducing new design styles.

Then there is the allure of British journalists for US magazines. Tina Brown is not a solidary example. Take Ed Needham, editor in chief of FHM, who was hired away by Rolling Stone to bring some juice to the aging publication (although Maxim later lured him away from RS.) Even the lowly Toby Young, a 20-something Briton who wrote "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," a biting memoir on his participation in US magazine culture, epitomizes this on-going pattern of US magazines relying on Brits at all levels. It seems fairly difficult to argue that US lacks in editors or writers, so clearly some other cultural phenomenon is at work.

Nightline's new honcho

2005-08-03T12:58:00.000-04:00

As noted in an earlier post, Briton James Goldston is taking over as executive producer of Nightline. Today's Romenesko links to a New York Observer column on his remarks last week to staffers of the long-running news show. Some were concerned with his involvement with the infamous Michael Jackson documentary, others with the fact that he will commute from New York to Washington where the show is based rather than relocate.

Apparently the Oxford grad got off to a good start, promising more international reports, more aggressive reporting and more taking the show on the road. Goldston credentials include work on the second Iraqi war, Kosovo and the Good Friday peace agreement. That said, already in-progress moves to revamp the show will continue such as more of a focus on pop culture and more segments per show. I'm guessing this all could mean more of the sort of program that featured actor Don Cheadle ("Hotel Rwanda") reporting on the genocide in Sudan. The actor accompanied a Congressional delegation as part of a report that at least WAPO media critic Tom Shales appears to have approved of.

While I'm tempted to dismiss such an approach, having spent the last few weeks pondering Richard Curtis' "The Girl in the Cafe" (and here and here) and read Liesbet van Zoonen's "Entertaining the Citizen" about the intersection of politics and popular culture, I'm increasing reversing my thinking on this -- it may indeed be an effective way to reach American audiences.

New MD, new role at BBC Worldwide

2005-08-02T15:20:00.000-04:00

BBC Worldwide is to get a new managing director: Darren Childs, who moves over from Sony Pictures Television International. Childs' post is brand new, "created as a result of the restructuring of BBC Worldwide into six divisions - TV channels, TV sales, magazines, children's, home entertainment and new media." According to Media Guardian, "BBC Worldwide's channels business comprises 19 wholly-owned and joint venture television channels with current availability in more than 320m homes around the world. In 2004/2005 the business generated sales of £140.6m and a profit of £4m." (is it me or does that profits number seem low compared to the total for annual sales?)

Citizen journalists, citizens' pictures

2005-08-02T11:11:00.000-04:00

Citizen journalism and its increasing prominence during breaking news events is something we noted in the days following the 7/7 bombings in London (see e.g., the "Guardian's London bombing media coverage" and "More attack coverage" posts). It is also the subject of a recent piece, "From the editor's desktop", by editor and acting head of BBC News Interactive, Pete Clifton. Clifton notes:

(Clifton points to some examples of the images received by the BBC here).

Clifton is also quoted by Mark Glaser, writing in Online Journalism Review (published by USC Annenberg). The article generally praises online news sources, which, Glaser says, "were at the top of their game on July 7 and beyond." But the BBC receives a special mention for its coverage. The BBC Web site, according to Clifton "experienced its most trafficked day ever on July 7 and was inundated with eyewitness accounts from readers - 20,000 e-mails, 1,000 photos and 20 videos in 24 hours." Replying via email Clifton told OJR : "It certainly did feel like a step-change [on July 7] . . . We often get pictures from our readers, but never as many as this, and the quality was very high. And because people were on the scenes, they were obviously better than anything news agencies could offer. A picture of the bus, for example, was the main picture on our front page for much of the day."

Glaser also posts as a sidebar the Nielsen/NetRatings figures for the most-visited news websites on July 7, 2005, in thousands of [U.S.] unique visitors, with the percentage change from the day before." Note that the BBC doesn't make it into the Top 10, by this measure - but it does show easily the largest day-on-day increase.

1. Yahoo! News . . . . . . . . .6,888 (+21%)
2. MSNBC . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,437 (+45%)
3. CNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,162 (+24%)
4. AOL News . . . . . . . . . . . 3,173 (+22%)
5. NYTimes.com . . . . . . . . 1,855 (-1%)
6. Fox News . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,787 (+55%)
7. Internet Broadcasting . . 1,643 (+12%)
8. drudgereport.com . . . . . 1,491 (+11%)
9. Gannett Newspapers . . .1,453 (+26%)
10. washingtonpost.com . . 1,378 (+7%)
11. BBC News . . . . . . . . . . 1,314 (+138%)
12. USATODAY.com . . . . . . 1,289 (+53%)
13. Tribune Newspapers . . . 1,279 (-11%)
15. Google News . . . . . . . . . 1,125 (+13%)
16. Knight Ridder Digital . . 1,026 (+12%)

Glaser's piece also has a mention for the Guardian web site, which didn't make it in the U.S. Top 15. He points out that "the BBC and Guardian both had reporters' blogs that were updated as events unfolded, and group blogs such as BoingBoing and Londonist became instant aggregators of online information." Also of interest, Glaser notes: "both the BBC and MSNBC.com gave particular citizen journalists who survived a bit more room to tell their story on instant diaries set up for the occasion." (However, he also notes that "the diarist on the BBC, a woman who would only identify herself as Rachel (previously just "R"), was not totally thrilled about becoming a media sensation herself.")

Tectonic rifts at NewsCorp

2005-08-01T09:28:00.000-04:00

As Doctor Media noted the other day, Rupert Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan quit as NewsCorp's deputy chief operating officer (though he'll retain a seat on the board). Rupert, 74, is said to be "saddened" by his son's decision. Yeah fine, but what's really going on? Now the media (well, those media not controlled by Murdoch at any rate) are buzzing about serious rifts between the leading members of the Murdoch clan; Lachlan is said to have "chafed" under his father's domineering style. And there are apparent rifts over the potential divvying up of family spoils, which would include Rupert's third wife and their two toddler children. Many might think that this leaves the door open for Rupe's second son, James (head of BSkyB), to take over, though the Wall Street Journal notes that, at least for the short term, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin might be best placed to take the top spot should the elder Mr. Murdoch step down. And rumors continue that News Corp could become the target of a takeover bid by Liberty Media Corp., controlled by "media titan" John Malone.

No Sex Please, We're Americans

2005-07-30T13:13:00.000-04:00

You've doubtless heard the hullabaloo over the discovery that the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto game has hidden sex scenes. (And now, this being America, the Federal Trade Commission is launching a probe and a woman is suing the makers because she's concerned it might pollute the mind of her young grandson.)

It's worth reminding ourselves that even though GTA is excessively violent, the game was perfectly acceptable to mainstream America (even being sold in Wal-Mart). Remember, this is a game where it's OK to kill cops, hookers, etc. But chuck in a little bit of sex and suddenly there's complete outrage! As Jonah Bloom (executive editor of Advertising Age) points out in The Guardian:

I noted just last week the possible consequences to its media of America's "new morality" crusade. I'm pretty sure that this is another clear example of the warped state of mind of post-Janet Jackson America. But this time the violence-versus-sex angle (extreme violence OK, regular sex not) becomes highlighted, raising more troubling questions about just what the hell is happening to American culture. But back to the sex: Bloom points out that the family values crusaders were "upset by the so-called 'hot coffee' modification in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which enables users to have virtual sex with a number of girlfriends; you also get to take them out for coffee, hence the name." Clearly that's too much for the children, though it's apparently still OK to blow away the cops and the hookers.

And what about beyond the immediate confines of the gaming world?

CSI

Paris Hilton

Rick Santorum

(Santorum was quizzed about the Victoria's Secret thing by Jon Stewart earlier this week (here's Salon's War Room take on the interview; and btw, I have only seen CSI a couple of times, but I've found the gruelling depictions of post-trauma blood and gore to be pretty gut-wrenching.)

But here's the kicker - and something that "London Calling" should probably take note of: Grand Theft Auto was designed by a Scot by the name of David Jones, who runs a successful UK software company called Real Time Worlds (formerly DMA Design). (GTA is now sold through Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take Two Interactive). GTA's massive success in the States is unquestionable. It has already racked up "an estimated $600m (£345m) in sales" in the US. (Here's the full story on Wikipedia.) In fact, the videogame industry is one more area of the media where UK firms have had a decided impact on the US market and its culture. Not that you'd notice anything "British" about GTA. It all takes place in a violent, dystopian America - call it Miami, San Andreas, wherever. It's perhaps another good example of the Brits selling back to the States an image (or simulacrum) of American culture - a culture that now seems to be defined by its relentless, extreme, and open violence and where sex was secret and hidden. But at least it was available if you knew where to look. Now the violence remains open, extreme, and uncontrolled - no problem there - but the sex comes with ever heavier regulation, with the clear intention that it should be completely forbidden. Welcome to the latest version of America brought to you by Britain - a version negotiated between the profit-making gamemakers, gamers, and the cultural guardians (both public and private) of America. And why question it? After all, aren't we doing all this for the children?

Lachlan's out, a Brit takes over Nightline

2005-07-29T19:36:00.000-04:00

Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan abruptly resigned today from his father's News Corp. and will return to Australia. Lachlan was deputy chief operating officer and publisher of the New York Post. Speculation is that Rupe's next son, James, who runs BSkyB and is said to be more liberal than the rest of the family, may step up.

Another James, this one James Goldston, has been hired as Nightline's chief executive. Goldston was executive producer of ITV1's "Tonight with Trevor McDonald," and honchoed their coverage of the Anglo-American war on Iraq. Um, he also was responsible for the infamous "Living with Michael Jackson"documentary. Earlier, he produced BBC's "Newsnight."

Seems to be yet another example of US media bringing in a Brit to spice things up, but will he do more than change the accent? I can't see Nightline suddenly becoming more public service oriented. Indeed, with rumors that ABC was considering bringing in that noted investigative journalist Ellen Degeneres to run the show, Nightline may soon be unrecognizable.

BBC web news "under the bonnet"

2005-07-29T19:20:00.000-04:00

Cyberjournalist provided a link to this neat page from BBC about how their news web operation works from a technological standpoint.
Some highlights:

They get 3 million users a day and 24 million page impressions.
Their server farmers are located in London and New York. UK users get sent to London (as they pay the license fee that technically keeps it afloat). International users are sent to the NYC servers, paid for by a British government grant to the the Beeb's World Service.
Picture files are kept on yet another server for efficiency.

The UK's Media "Top 100"

2005-07-28T14:07:00.000-04:00

MediaGuardian offers up its annual guide to the Top 100 media figures in the UK. (Also broken down by sector).

I've gone through the Top 100 list and pulled out (see below) some of Brits and British-domiciled folks on the list that might be of particular interest to Americans studying UK influence on the States. (I've included informational notes on some of these guys, though some people's inclusion on the list -- like Murdoch, for instance -- needs no further explanation.)

=1. Mark Thompson (BBC director general)
=1. Michael Grade (BBC chairman)
3. Rupert Murdoch
4. Charles Allen (CEO of ITV)
8. Martin Sorrell (chief executive of WPP and thus the UK's most influential advertising man, "in charge of the world's second-largest ad group, worth £7.7bn".)

10. Paul Dacre (editor-in-chief, Associated Newspapers, and "the most powerful newspaper editor in Britain".
11. James Murdoch (Rupe's son and CEO of BSkyB)
12. Peter Fincham (controller of BBC1, described as "one of the 10 people who have shaped television over the last decade").
20. Helen Boaden (director of BBC News)
23. Ashley Highfield (director of new media, BBC, he "oversees not only the corporation's sprawling internet and interactive operations, [but] he is also one of the leading players in changing the way we consume TV and radio.")

25. Paul Abbott ("one of the most critically acclaimed and prolific TV writers of his generation.")
27. Richard Desmond (CEO, Northern & Shell, Express Newspaperss - shouldn't really be on the list, but I thought I'd stick him in since I mentioned him in the previous blog)
28. Les Hinton (executive chairman, News International, famous for described as "Rupert Murdoch's representative on earth"; he "oversees the Sun, the Times, the News of the World and the Sunday Times.")
35. Ivan Fallon (UK chief executive, Independent News & Media, owner of the Independent, UK newspaper widely read by US readers on the web.)
36. Jana Bennett (director of television, BBC, with "overall creative and leadership responsibility for all of the BBC's TV," including "the four domestic television channels, as well the UKTV joint venture channels and international services, BBC America and BBC Prime.")

38. David Bergg (ITV's director of strategy and its scheduler-in-chief, ultimately responsible for programming " the likes of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and Hell's Kitchen.")
42. Roger Parry (UK-born chief executive, Clear Channel International)
49. Paul Fitzsimons (partner and senior director at Apax, a UK venture capital firm heavily involved in financial dealings in the UK, and rumors of "an alliance with US media giant Time Warner in a bid led by Greg Dyke.")
50. Richard Curtis (The "Love Actually" and "Girl in the Cafe" guy, yes that Richard Curtis.)
51. Alan Rusbridger (editor of The Guardian, including the internet arm, Guardian Unlimited, which "continues to grow and win awards and is the UK's second biggest news website outside of the BBC. This year it won best newspaper on the internet at the Webby Awards and was named best daily newspaper on the web at the 2005 Newspaper Awards for the sixth year running.")

55. Simon Kelner (editor of The Independent, whose "opinion-led front pages, invariably devoted to a single story and occasionally given over entirely to a series of quotations or statistics, have been almost as much of a break from newspaper tradition as its upmarket-and-yet-tabloid format.")
63. Nicholas Coleridge (managing director of Condé Nast, a magazine "empire" that includes classic titles with widespread distribution in the US, "such as Vanity Fair and Vogue to handbag-sized market-leading glossy Glamour.")
68. Andrew Gowers (editor of the Pearson-owned Financial Times: "Published on 23 presses in four continents, its circulation - roughly split three ways between the UK, continental Europe and the US - is around twice that of 15 years ago.")
82. Simon Shaps (chief executive, Granada, whose international production/syndication arm "is booming and its retro music show Hit Me Baby One More Time proved a rather bigger hit for NBC than it did for ITV.")
83. Andrew Neil (a "bit long in the tooth," but well-known in the US from his days with News Corporation and apprently "Neil has quietly become one of the key faces of BBC political programming.")

Virgin paper for NYC?

2005-07-28T10:46:00.001-04:00

The British entrepeneur, Richard Branson, of Virgin fame, may open a free entertainment daily in New York, according to Forbes.

Although it's not clear if the project is actually a go (his US publicist claims she's never heard of the project), it would be part of the company's entertainment sector which includes Virgin Megastores. The publication would challenge Variety, the leading entertainment industry newspaper that has produced a special New York version called Daily Variety Gotham since 1998 (and is said to have an exceptionally high subscription price.)

The move seems to be part of an industry trend to produce free newspapers which the Times of London identifies as one of the fastest growing segements of the print media market. The Times reported this week that a new free newspaper, The London Business Daily, was readying to launch in London. The paper will be led by former execs of Swedish owned Metro International which "publishes 57 daily editions in 81 cities in 18 countries and 17 languages across Europe, North and South America and Asia. Each new Metro title is expected to turn a profit within three years of being launched." The paper is said by the Telegraph to be a threat to the Financial Times, which, as has been pointed out in earlier posts, has opted for a global focus with a strong reliance on the US market.

Isn't Dirty Des OK! with the USA?

2005-07-26T16:33:00.000-04:00

In the latest example of British magazine publishing crossing the Atlantic, Richard "Dirty Des" Desmond, well-shady owner of The Express newspapers and the UK celebrity gossip magazine OK!, is set to launch a US version on August 4.

Desmond (pictured right), you might remember, is notorious for his anti-German outburst last year, when he confronted executives of the Daily Telegraph, which at that time was being considered for purchase by Axel Springer, a German media group, following the departure of Conrad Black from Hollinger International, the Telegraph's owners. (The German group didn't proceed with the bid). Desmond apparently didn't like the idea of the very English Telegraph being owned by the Germans, and let Telegraph CEO Jeremy Deedes know it by branding him a "miserable little piece of shit" and saying "Germans were 'all Nazis,'" before proceeding to do a Basil Fawlty-style Hitler goosestep and instructing Express executives to sing "Deutschland uber Alles" and throw Nazi "Sieg Heil" salutes to the stunned Telegraph executives as they rapidly exited. Apparently, Desmond also "called the Telegraph directors 'fucking cunts' and 'fucking wankers' among other names in an expletive-ridden tirade." A nasty piece of work, this Richard Desmond. And maybe a bit mental.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Desmond's Northern & Shell group also owns the Daily Express and Sunday Express. But OK! is its flagship and big moneyspinner. Some Americans might remember OK! as the magazine that supposedly paid £1m for pictures of the Catherine Zeta Jones-Michael Douglas wedding a few years ago.

MediaGuardian notes that Northern & Shell "is putting $100m (£58m) behind the release of the new magazine, which it claims is the biggest launch in US magazine history." The piece quotes Stan Myerson, Northern & Shell's joint group managing director, as saying "We have received the most incredible support in the United States, not only from the news trade and advertisers but also from the many celebrities we have approached. . . . All of them tell us they have been awaiting OK! USA, with its unique style and celebrity friendly format, for a very long time. Everybody is looking forward to the launch."

That's just wonderful. Still, it's not what Jossip.com has been hearing. Taking its info from a New York Post article (registration required), the web site notes that OK! USA's first edition might "only have six paid advertisements in its pages." Meanwhile, Desmond has "struggled to secure a printing press large enough to spit out 1.5 million copies for OK!'s debut."

Finally inking a deal, he's reduced to printing on Monday afternoon, while Us Weekly prints more favorably on Tuesday mornings and People runs on Wednesdays.
A deputy editor of the UK OK!, Sarah Ivens, is moving to New York to take up a consultant editor position with the new magazine. Sounds like she's got her work cut out for her if she's to work some of that UK mag magic.

Where's Robin Cook? (Where's Noam Chomsky?)

2005-07-26T14:31:00.000-04:00

Some random thoughts:
After last week's (thankfully failed) London bombing attempts, followed by Friday's Police shooting of an innocent Brazilian, it seems that the much-lauded "spirit of the blitz" frame we talked about in previous posts is coming under severe pressure as Londoners start to consider that suicide bombings might become part of the fabric of their lives (Here's The New York Times' perspective, courtesy of Sarah Lyall).

And what of that old chestnut, the war in Iraq: What impact is that having on the Dunkirk spirit? Well, it's not helping. The New York Times last Tuesday quoted "a new opinion survey published in The Guardian" on July 19 that showed that "two-thirds of Britons believed there was a direct link between the bombings on July 7 that claimed 56 lives and Mr. Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq as the main ally of the United States."

And Juan Cole reminded me of someone you never hear much about in the US media coverage of the Iraq War (and Britain's role in it): Robin Cook (above right). Cook used to be the Tony Blair's Foreign Secretary but in a cabinet reshuffle in 2001 he was moved over to Leader of the Commons. He resigned this position in opposition to the impending Iraq invasion in early 2003. Since then Cook (a diminutive yet engaging Scot and a "ginger," i.e. a redhead and redbeard) has consistently, loudly, yet coherently and respectfully eviscerated the British government over its Iraq War policy. (Here's a recent example of his writing from The Guardian). He has gained a good deal of respect in the British media and public sphere for his principled stand.

Juan Cole notes that Cook's successor, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, had by the weekend "backed off his categorical denial that the Iraq war had increased the likelihood of terrorist action against the UK. The assertion was not plausible and cost Straw and PM Tony Blair credibility with the British public." (Although it seems like as of today, Tony Blair is still vigorously holding the line on the "no-linkage" position, according to the BBC.) Cole quotes Cook's "scathing" response to Straw on Sunday, broadcast on the BBC's News 24:

'Yesterday [Cook] claimed that the invasion of Iraq had "undoubtedly" boosted terrorism around the world. The former foreign secretary also warned that the government would have to acknowledge that link if ministers wanted to bring young British Muslims on side. Intelligence agencies had warned the Prime Minister ahead of the war that the invasion would increase the threat to Britain, Mr Cook said. "The problem is that we have handed al-Qaeda an immense propaganda gift, one that they exploit ruthlessly," he told the BBC News 24 Sunday programme. "There have been more suicide bombings in the two years since we invaded Iraq than in the 20 years before it. Yes, it has happened around the world. "I don't think you can make a simple link between any one event and Iraq, but undoubtedly it has boosted terrorism." While Mr Cook refused to say that the bombings would not have happened if Britain had stayed out of the war, he stressed that the problem of terrorism had worsened.'
But here's the saddest part, as Cole ruefully acknowledges:

You will never, ever, hear Robin Cook's statements at any length on American television, even though he has been among the more perspicacious observers of the Iraq guerrilla war. He predicted, for instance, that the Fallujah campaign would have no effect in ending it. His invisibility in the US is easily explained: he disrupts the manufactured consensus that Noam Chomsky warns us about.
Now I have my problems with Noam Chomsky, like many people. But he's a very important contributor to remember (or should be) when we consider the climate of selective suppression and systematic de-emphasis that seems to infuse US media coverage of the Iraq War and the "War on Terrorism." And I need hardly point out that Chomsky himself, a distinguished scholar with a truly international reputation, has been all-but absent (probably completely absent) from US TV news discussions of the war and the "war."

My Son the Fanatic

2005-07-21T08:49:00.000-04:00

Slate foreign editor (and, I believe, Brit expat) June Thomas points to a film that. she argues, provides clues as to how and why "apparently assimilated, British-born Muslims end up stuffing bombs into their backpacks and murdering dozens of their compatriots in the Tube and on a London double-decker bus". The film she analyzes in her piece is called My Son the Fanatic (BBC Films), written by Hanif Kureish and directed by Udayan Prasad - and, funnily enough, I own a copy.

In this engaging little film from 1997, "the British-born son of Pakistani immigrants morphs from a clothes-obsessed, cricket-playing, music-loving accountancy student into a devout Muslim who rails against the corruption and emptiness of Western society, much to the uncomprehending consternation of his father." The father, Parvez, played by the prolific and excellent Om Puri (above left), is a taxi driver (and thus near the bottom rung of English society) who lives in a seedy, sleazy deindustrialized Northern city ("not unlike the hometowns of the alleged bombers," as Thomas points out). This definitely is not England at its best. But Parvez has hopes of rapid upward mobility for his family. For Parvez, notes Thomas, "immigration to Britain represented a decision to prioritize materialism over spirituality." When his son, Farid, got engaged to a white, middle-upper class English girl, Parvez thought that his family had "made it" in England. But Farid goes on to reject the engagement, arguing "In the end, our cultures … cannot be mixed" and "Some of us are wanting summat more besides muddle. … Belief, purity, belonging to the past. I won't bring up my children in this country."

My Son the Fanatic avoids the simple black-white, good-versus-evil contrasts plugged endlessly by George Bush, and, increasingly, Tony Blair. It

Rachel Griffiths

Perhaps becoming over-eager to find sinister clues to "7/7" in this film, Thomas notes that "Farid leaves home, stalking off with suitcases in hand and an overstuffed backpack on his shoulders. It's an image that is all the more haunting after the events of July 7." Still, Fanatic does offer insights to a community that has been, up till now, all-but closed off to the broader British consciousness.

Like an earlier Kureishi screenplay from the 1980s - the angry anti-Thatcherite Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (dir. Stephen Frears) - My Son the Fanatic convincingly shows the generational struggle between an older generation wishing to assimiliate with "the mother country" and a younger, more radical generation that rejects England and all it stands for. (And of course in this they were not unlike countless white subcultures who rejected the BS of postwar, postcolonial Britain. The worry, though, is that unlike other such youth cultures, some elements of British Islamic youth won't "grow out" of their rebellion.)

The reason I have a copy of the film is that in the fall I'm teaching a freshman seminar on Film in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. The theme is tensions and interactions between white Anglo and non-white cultures depicted in film, as each of these three countries moves toward a truly postcolonial cultural paradigm (I'm including England as a "postcolonial" country in this context). I'll be showing films such as Once were Warriors (from New Zealand) and Rabbit-Proof Fence (from Australia). As for Britain: Fanatic provides a fascinating contrast with another film about intergenerational Asian-British conflict: Damien O'Donnell's 1999 film East is East (screenplay by Ayub Khan-Din, based on his play). Om Puri also plays a father in this film, also set in a gritty northern English town, though this time it's set in the early 1970s, the family is "mixed" (the mother is white), and all but one of the children have rejected the father's strict adherance to Islam and Pakistani values, wishing instead to identify themselves as white and English instead of as "Pakis".

These films are fascinating to watch side by side, especially as they both feature Puri in similar yet contrasting roles. While East is East is lighter and more fun, and has a patina of optimism (undoubtedly filtered through a nostalgic haze for a period when "community" still meant something in English towns), Fanatic is much darker. It surely provides a more accurate picture of the tensions in British race relations today - at least as they pertain to the Islamic community.

Red Ken and the terrorists

2005-07-20T08:38:00.000-04:00

It's not often you see the chief executive of a foreign city given his own commentary piece in American newspapers, but that's what's happened with London mayor Ken Livingstone. I noticed his piece in yesterday's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, repeating his stance that Londoners will not be cowed or defeated by terrorist actions (though for some reason I can't now find it on that paper's web site).

The US media aren't quite sure how to handle Livingstone. Surely many in the media would like to frame him as a London version of Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, many of the early reports showed Livingstone condemining the attacks, and standing up stoically to the terrorists. Early Livingstone quotes placed him nicely in this frame. E.g., this from the AP:

London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the blasts were "mass murder" carried out by terrorists bent on "indiscriminate ... slaughter." ... ""This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful ... it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners," said Livingstone, in Singapore where he supported London's Olympic bid.
And Livingstone's "You will fail!" speech aimed at the terrorists sounded almost Churchillian, and was widely praised in America (a country that loves all things Churchill).

The trouble is for the US establishment and MSM, Livingstone is not a Rudy Giuliani. He has a history of political positions well to the left of almost all American mainstream politicians - although that didn't stop him getting elected by the citizens of London (in the teeth of Tony Blair's opposition, no less). I remember when, in the 1980s, Livingstone was roundly villainized by the right-wing press as "Red Ken." This was back when he was leader of the Greater London Council (subsequently abolished by Margaret Thatcher), and he had the temerity to place on the GLC headquarters, directly across the Thames from the House of Commons, a giant sign showing the weekly rise in UK unemployment figures (3,005,437, 3,067,556, 3,145,320, etc.)

"Red Ken" has moderated his opinions somewhat, but he retains a left-wing political philosophy and a raft of positions on international issues, including a tendency to lean toward the Palestinians in the Israel-Palestinian dispute (inevitably, American media define any position along such lines as "radical" or extremist, although to be fair, some of Livingstone's contacts with Palestinian elements linked to terrorism could fairly be criticized.) Anyway, this instantly sets up a tension in the US media, who are not sure how to deal with Livingstone. How do they lionize him as a sturdy bulwark against the terrorists when he takes many political positions that the MSM would normally condemn or marginalize? The New York Times expressed this tension in a piece by Craig Smith back on July 12 ("Usually Volatile Mayor Wins Praise for Low-Key Presence", p. A8):

Ken Livingstone, London's famously loose-lipped mayor, boards subway to express city's determination not to be cowed by terrorists, but is otherwise keeping remarkably low profile, with nothing of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's take-charge behavior after Sept 11 attacks in New York; photo; one of reasons may be his controversial past overtures to radical Muslim youth and strong pro-Palestinian and pro-immigrant positions; London mayor's office also does not control emergency services as New York's mayor does, and it would not be seemly for Livingstone to upstage Prime Min Tony Blair or Queen Elizabeth.
David Gelernter eschews all ambivalence, getting stuck in to Livingstone in an LA Times opinion piece, titled "London's mayor: A terrorist puppet?" (The evidence Gelertner lays out focuses, inevitably, on Livingstone's sympathy with the Palestinian cause).

Perhaps the MSM will make its mind up about Livingstone now that he has comes out and charged that "decades of British and American intervention in the oil-rich Middle East motivated the London bombers" (See BBC report here.). This will probably necessitate a change of heart by the right-wing Weekly Standard, which wrote after Livingstone's "They will fail" speech that "the left-wing mayor of London, an apologist for terrorism in the past, spoke for decent people everywhere when he denounced the attacks and made no attempt to ape his fellow lefties in blaming the United States and British governments for them." And US-based Brit blogger Andrew Sullivan, no leftie he, admired "Livingstone's ability to see how liberal and left-wing Londoners who have helped build an amazingly vibrant, diverse and tolerant city are particularly affronted by these medieval monsters." Sullivan continued: "Maybe this will help build support for a war that is as unavoidable as it is unlosable. I don't mean we won't continue to differ over means and methods and tactics and strategy. We will. That's our strength. But right and left, we are in this together."

Ahem. Maybe not. This will likely take some of the shine off of Livingstone, at least in the eyes of the US media, who have to realize that the prism through which this "war on terrorism" is "fought" is significantly different in the UK. And remember, Livingstone's position is broadly in line with the charge made in a report by the highly respected Royal Institute for International Affairs (and which also got picked up by the US media), that Britain's involvement in the Iraq invasion has increased the terrorist threat to Britain. Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have both rejected the RIAA report. Still, the whole issue of how Livingstone is framed in the UK and the US shows up once again the different dominant ideological positions staked out in these two countries. We might expect to hear more MSM references not to the "London mayor" but to "Red Ken" - if we hear anything more about him at all.

Reuters' Iraqi project

2005-07-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

The Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the wire service, is funding an Iraqi news website, the New York Times reported this morning. Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq) is said to be the first independent commercial news service in the country. The reporters were trained in London, Cairo and Amman. The UN kicked in $800,000 to get the project going. There have been several attempts to establish indigenous independent news outlets in Iraq since the war started -- all of which appeared to have failed.

The announcement reminded me of an interesting Observer article that ran in the Guardian Unlimited last month about Niell FitzGerald who runs Reuters. Fitz, it turns out, has been closely involved with the Blairites' Commission on Africa (which in turn is part of the Live 8 campaign). He claims he was briefly a member of the Communist Party during his university days in Dublin but now sees the solution for global poverty such as found in Africa to be capitalism.

Any Intelligent Life down there?

2005-07-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a post I've adapted from mediaville, but which seems pretty appropriate for London Calling. It concerns a piece in Intelligent Life, The Economist’s summer 2005 lifestyles-for-the-global-rich-and-trendy crowd, which has a few harsh words for America’s television, whose vitality and inventiveness has driven media globalization for decades. Now contributor Caitlin Moran argues that this golden goose could be under threat, and the United States' traditional easy global dominance of scripted shows (dramas, sit-coms, etc.) - in place for more than half a century - is possibly coming to an end, the victim of the new conservative ascendancy in America's culture wars. She states: "Over the past year, a schism between America and the rest of the world has begun to open. Triggered by the amusingly inconsequential revelation of Janet Jackson’s nipple . . ., and fueled by America’s historical inhibitions about sex, a rising sense of moral and religious hysteria has swept through American TV."

Moran runs through the various pieces of evidence, many of which we've commented on previously: the $550,000 fine on CBS for showing the Jackson breast; a decision by Fox to “pixelate animated nudity in the cartoon Family Guy;” PBS’s cowardly decision to remove from an imported British docudrama (Dirty War), “scenes of a woman in a shower being decontaminated after a nuclear attack”; and PBS president Pat Mitchell’s decision to pull an episode of Postcards From Buster that featured a lesbian couple. Moran concludes: “For the first time since the 1960s, American television looks in danger of being created in a mode of what isn’t possible, rather than what is.” As a result, what she calls “the seemingly endless expansion of liberalism in the world of [US] television is suddenly going into reverse.” The consequences of this could be that US programming loses its cachet and attractiveness - and market opportunities - in other rich countries, most of which are less inhibited by such puritanical morality. And of course, as London Calling has noted repeatedly, the US has already ceded global dominance in the realm of reality TV/format programming to the UK and other countries - in fact, the US never even gained ascendancy in this genre, and is now effectively in a state of media dependency - to the UK especially.

Moran continues in her piece:

If [US] broadcasters accept the principle that non-sexual nudity—the actual human body, no less—is in itself obscene, then we are only a step away from homosexual characters being removed from scripts, morally ambiguous characters being censored, and similar edicts on there being subjects that art (even if only television) isn’t allowed to touch anymore.
And though Moran doesn’t explicitly make the next point, I will: It starts with children’s programs. Every conservative agenda item in America is, it seems, promoted by a plea to “consider/protect the children” - this in a society with one of the West’s highest infant mortality rates and where no-one considers, say, giving mothers a proper amount of paid maternal leave (6-12 months) to look after their children when they are most vulnerable! But I digress, if only slightly.

Moran also sees a clear link between this increasing Puritanism and the rising reluctance of US media producers to take on controversial political matters - witness what's happened to news and public affairs programming and the recent rapid rise in sci-fi dramas and “nostalgia dramas,” she notes.

Of course, while American television languishes, European TV powers ahead, tits and ass and all. Moran focuses on two fascinating examples of British cheeky inventiveness, neither of which I'd heard of but both of which would surely be unimaginable in the US mainstream: The Guantanamo Guidebook, produced for Channel 4, in which volunteers (contestants?) "are ‘mildly tortured’ in the manner of Camp X-Ray” (see The Guardian's take here); and Sky One’s Badly Dubbed Porn, “in which ‘classic’ porn movies are redubbed by comedians.” Though I haven't seen these shows, they are likely quite peripheral, though they have both been shown of mainstream channels. But the fact that they were made at all underlines the argument that British and European television is showing a degree of inventiveness and iconoclasm increasingly lacking in the US. And British TV also seems to tackle, much more readily and effectively, other controversial subjects in the political as well as the entertainment realm. Coincidence? I think not. The two seem to go hand in hand. (For the moment America has HBO, but how long can that diamond in the rough survive the turn to conservative morality?)

Guardian's London bombing media coverage

2005-07-13T17:54:00.000-04:00

The Guardian sums up the London bombings' media coverage (as of July 11) here. The headline for this piece was "We had 50 images within an hour" and the deck: "Britain watched the story of the London bombings through mobile phone pictures and video clips, while America saw another 9/11. MediaGuardian reflects on a momentous day for journalism." It's a very interesting piece as it gets into the whole issue of real-time bloggers and "citizen journalists" sending in their mobile phone camera stills and video clips to the news organizations. Notes the piece:

"tipping point"

democratisation of the media

God Save the Queen? It must be the All-Star Game

2005-07-12T20:32:00.000-04:00

I guess I wasn't too surprised to see Major League Baseball observe a moment of silence for the dead in the London bombings in Detroit last night, just before the All-Star Game started. And an electronic version of the Union Jack was displayed for all to see. But I was rather surprised to hear a band play "God Save the Queen" while everyone was standing. And the concurrent flyover by a stealth bomber was, I suppose, to remind any Brits watching just where their loyalties should lie. USA Today, true to form, describes the scene as part of the best pregame moment, i.e.,: "Flyover by a single B-2 stealth bomber, pretty quiet and very cool. The British anthem God Save the Queen in tribute to the victims of last week's terrorist bombings in London was also a nice touch."

Somehow, seeing and hearing such obvious symbols of the British state present in an American ball park (Detroit's Comerica Park, to be precise) alongside an American space age bomber just seemed odd and out of place. It's like worlds colliding. And tell me how a stealth bomber is supposed to defeat the terrorists?

Oh, and if you didn't know: the AL won . . . again.

"Londonistan" threatens US?

2005-07-12T08:35:00.000-04:00

While the rightie cable news stations in the States have been having another go at Fisking the British news media, it seems the more refined sections of the US press have found another target in Britain for opprobrium: its people . . . well, those people of Middle East extraction at any rate. In today's Guardian ("Newspapers warn of threat to America from 'Londonistan'"), Gary Younge relays numerous stories in the US press pointing specifically to Britain as a source of a major threat to the USA. He notes:

New York Times

Los Angeles Times

San Jose Mercury News

Boston Globe

Wall Street Journal

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

Younge notes of all the pieces: "Although the identities and nationalities of those who committed the terrorist attacks are not yet known, the pieces hinge on the assumption that they are British citizens who have been in the country for a considerable amount of time." By extension, a clear threat is presented to America from Islamic extremists who carry British passports and who can therefore enter the US visa-free, circumventing strict visa controls for many Arabs with Middle East passports.

Younge points out that the pieces mostly draw on US-based terrorist "experts," who "argue that the government's reluctance to enforce stricter surveillance and anti-terror legislation for fear of upsetting Muslims has left the UK and the rest of Europe more vulnerable to terrorism." For example:

Perhaps if these pieces had queried more experts based in Britain - whose authorities have, after all, been combatting domestic terrorism for more than 30 years - they might have gained a more nuanced perspective. But no, it's easier for the press to frame the issue as those soft Europeans not knocking heads together hard enough, and thus create a new threat for Americans to be scared of - and in the news media world, Americans can never have enough things in their lives to be scared of, it seems. (The US media, btw, have a long tradition of doing this sort of thing, having in recent years hammered Canada and numerous European nations for being "soft on terrorism." It's much easier and safer than criticizing, say, their own government's supremely incompetent record on the issue.)

Younge saves the saddest example of this borderline-racist frame to the last: he quotes from Peter Bergen ("Our Ally, Our Problem"), a fellow of the New America Foundation, who had a rather shocking op-ed piece (which I read with some dismay - here's the original piece) in last Sunday's NY Times. He describes British Muslims as posing "one of the greatest terrorist threats to the United States". Bergen then "questions whether America's safety is compromised by allowing Britons to come to the US without a visa, given 'the reality that Islamic militant groups in Britain ... represent a growing threat to the United States that will continue for many years to come.' So entrenched is the British capital as an outpost of the Muslim diaspora, that London is now commonly referred to as 'Londonistan' - a word used several times in different papers."

As it becomes clear that as the "war on terrorism" allows the US to detain pretty much anyone it wants indefinitely, including even its own citizens (see here for the latest example) perhaps US journalists should look to their own back yard first. Or perhaps this country has to face up to the fact that it can't build ideological or physical walls between "us" and "them" - placing even its closest ally into the "them" camp - because ultimately there is no difference between "us" and "them."

More blitz spin . . . by Bush

2005-07-12T08:07:00.000-04:00

President Bush has jumped on the British stiff upper lip/beat the blitz bandwagon. As USA Today notes today ("Britain places blame on Islamic extremists", by Noelle Knox), Bush made his comments on Monday at the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Va., where he "praised Britons' response to the bombings. 'This week there's great suffering in the city of London. But Londoners are resilient. They have faced brutal enemies before. The city that survived the Nazi blitz will not yield in the face of thugs and assassins.'"

Meanwhile, here's the latest from the UK press's own coverage pushing the "national unity" and spirit of the blitz angles (wrapped around the national commemoration of Sunday's VE/VJ Day anniversary celebrations), as well as BBC's latest take on Londoners' blitz spirit: fact or myth?

Fisking the British Press

2005-07-11T19:56:00.000-04:00

Let no good deed go unpunished. As the elite press in the US praises the journalism of the British media for their response to the London attacks, the American tabloid media are on the attack.

FAIR reports that Bill (phone sex) O'Reilly was heard screeching on his show: "The anti-American press both here and in Europe is actually helping the terrorists by diminishing their threat." To make his point even clearer, O'Reilly asked one guest, "Have you read The Guardian lately? I mean, it might be edited by Osama bin Laden. I mean, that's how bad that paper is. . . O'Reilly's guest, Steven Emerson, expanded on that: "In certain respects, BBC almost operates as a foreign registered agent of Hezbollah and some of the other jihadist groups."

According to FAIR, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough also attacked the Live 8 concerts and suggested the performers ought to listen to Blair and Bush. Funny thing that, since the White Man's Burden campaign originated at least in part with Blair. Oh, but let's not let facts get in the way of a good show.

At the Weekly Standard, they toned down a bit to allow that the "prissy" BBC was being a bit more manly by using the word terrorists for the terrorists.

These attacks on the British media are nothing new. Accuracy in Media, a far-right wing media "watchdog," attacked Reuters in 2003 in a press release about coverage of the Jessica Lynch propaganda stunt. A search on their site revealed some other interesting items, including an item accusing the BBC of planting hecklers to embarrass British Conservative politicians.

Of course, right-wing bloggers are the worst at going after the British media, even though they often rely heavily on them for international news.

Good show, British chaps

2005-07-11T15:28:00.000-04:00

The International Herald Tribune has also weighed in with a story praising the British media for their coverage of the attacks. I suppose one could say this is of a piece with HDougie's identification of the British stiff upper lip trope in US coverage of the London attacks, but it is also about the broader trend of US media audiences getting a clear comparison of what's being shoveled out by US news media, particularly television, and what media outlets are delivering around the world.

At any rate Eric Pfanner again compared the rational British approach with the sensational US coverage noting that Fox broadcast from "central London with a grainy image quality and a reporter dressed in a flak jacket, giving the appearance of a war zone. " Too bad we can't have a split screen with a normal British reporter in street clothes and the American entertainment specialist ("I'm not a real reporter, but I play one on tee-vee") to illustrate.

Pfanner reported that the British tabs were not so sensible but then when have they ever been? "The Sun, the mass-circulation tabloid daily, was reporting still-unsubstantiated rumors on Friday that the bus explosion had been the work of a suicide bomber."

Interestingly, Pfanner connects government regulation to the differences in the US and British coverage: "Some of the caution of the British television news services is explained by stricter content regulations than U.S. news organizations face. Broadcasters are required to adhere to guidelines on fairness, balance and privacy rights, for example." Thank goodness the "free" market in the US keeps our media "fair and balanced", making those Old Europe media rules obsolete here.

Live 8 gets do-over on VH1/MTV

2005-07-10T08:48:00.000-04:00

While Britain has already moved tragically on from the fun and optimism of last weekend's Live 8 and the winning Olympic bid to the horror of the London terrorist bombings, VH1 and MTV have decided they need a do-over on Live 8. "Having been hammered for its chopped-up coverage of last week's Live 8 concerts," the Viacom-owned channels "will air 10 hours of commercial-free footage from Live 8 on Saturday (July 9) - essentially admitting that they made a mistake with live coverage the first time around." As one report has it, "The networks have been roundly criticized this week for frequently cutting away from the stage in the middle of a song and larding the broadcast with backstage bits and talky segments about Live 8's stated purpose to raise awareness of global poverty."

Spirit of the blitz lives on?

2005-07-09T09:04:00.001-04:00

As London recovers from the Underground/bus bombings, the US media coverage has begun to pick up references to the so-called "spirit of the blitz" in London (the Blitz being the German bombing of British cities in WW II). References have been made regularly on cable news, PBS's "News Hour," on NPR, and the national press. And numerous news organizations have noted that this was the deadliest attack on the people of London since WW II. And with pronouncements by Blair and the Queen, who toured a London hospital to meet the wounded, the Blitz is emerging again as a historical exemplar and frame for interpreting this event on both sides of the Atlantic.

The New York Times, in its second-day reporting (Alan Cowell, "First Details of Bombs Emerge; Toll Reaches 49"), notes that "many people sought to invoke the memory of Britain's bulldog wartime spirit, when Londoners grew accustomed to German bombing and confronted it with gritty humor. 'If London could survive the Blitz, it can survive four miserable events like this,' said Mr. Blair. He spoke of 'this wonderful great diverse city' and called London and Britain 'one united community against atrocity.'" And one AP report quoted by Juan Cole really ramps up the war imagery. Cole introduces the piece in obvious WWII/Blitz terms, by writing "London began digging out on Friday". He then quotes the following passage, talking about the Friday after the bombing:

Much of London was eerily quiet. Bombed stations were shrouded in security curtains, and refrigerated trucks waited outside to carry away bodies. Bouquets of fresh flowers and cards scribbled with thoughts for the victims of London's worst attack since World War II piled up outside the stations near the bombed lines. "Yesterday, we fled this great city, but today we are walking back into an even stronger, greater city," said one card near St. Pancras Church, near where a bomb shredded the bus. "The people who did this should know they have failed. They have picked the wrong city to pick on. London will go on."
Yes, it's 1940 all over again. Or maybe 1941. Of course, part of this is driven by the fact that London - and Britain - is getting set to celebrate the end of WW II 60 years ago. But then WW II retains a much deeper resonance - and immediacy - in Britain than in the United States. One major reason for this is that, unlike any US cities, London and other UK cities suffered continuous heavy bombing raids that killed tens of thousand of people. This has left a very deep impression on the national psyche. And it's a clear historical parallel that still resonates in London to this day. When the 9/11 attacks happened in New York, there was no such obvious historical analogy for New Yorkers (and the US media) to attach themselves to - so one had to be created out of whole cloth. In London the Blitz provides a ready-made mediated "myth" and frame for Londoners to attach themselves to.

US audiences seem to instinctively to be able to empathize with the spirit of Londoners - perhaps more so than, say, with Madrid after its Al Qaeda train bombings last year. Why is this? It could just be that, as Tom Friedman put it, the London bombings "are profoundly disturbing" because, in some ways, "a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country." But there's more to it than that.

Another AP report, republished in the New York Times on July 8, perhaps provides a clue as to why this is. The article, "Bombs Likely Won't Leave Emotional Scars" suggests that London's experience with trauma of this type will help them shake off this incident all the more easily. It quotes James Thompson, a lecturer in psychology at University College in London, who argues that The Tube is a terrifying target for so many Londoners. He says: '''This is hard for us because so many of us are tube users. But whether it will be for us what Sept. 11 was for America, I would doubt, because we have so much more experience with this sort of stuff.'' Another trauma specialist quoted in this article

All this mythical British stoicism and ability-to-cope-in-a-crisis is ready-made for American audiences because of a historical and ready-made UK-US parallel that still works in this country: Edwin R. Murrow's reporting from London during the Blitz. Murrow was successful in transmitting to his American audiences the "myth" of London's and Britain's heroic and stoic resistance against the Blitz (aided by a very effective British propaganda campaign aimed at breaking down US neutrality). And the heroic stoicism was perhaps the key ingredient here. It's something that Americans can easily attach themselves to - especially given New York's own newly created post-9/11 "myth" of heroic stoicism.

Addendum: Slate's "international papers" section provides a useful overview of British press coverage of the bombings.

More attack coverage

2005-07-08T16:10:00.000-04:00

The Guardian is reporting large increases in website traffic, particularly from the United States. BBC was the most visited.

Some numbers: In the UK, the BBC was first in number of news page impressions (page visits), followed by Sky News (3rd place) , the Guardian (5th), the Sun (8th) followed by CNN.

The Guardian Unlimited had 1.3 million visitors with more than 1/2 million coming from the US.

A number of stories in the US and UK are commenting on citizen journalism contributions to the coverage. The Guardian quotes a BBC representative,

"Within minutes of the first blast we had received images from the public and we had 50 images within an hour. Now there are thousands. We had a gallery of still photographs from the public online, and they were incredibly powerful.

"People are very media-savvy. We saw the use of what we call 'user-generated material' in the tsunami and at the floods in Boscastle. But as people get used to creating picture and video on their phones in normal life, they increasingly think of sending it to us when major incidents occur."

And Ms Boaden believes the increasing interaction between the public and broadcasters is changing media for the better. "It shows there is a terrific level of trust between the audience and us, creating a more intimate relationship than in the past. It shows a new closeness forming between BBC news and the public. We are into a new world now and each big story that happens confirms that."

It would appear that the BBC's online strategies, previously discussed here, combined with a sense of public trust, are paying off, allowing them to run an enormous global media outlet yet still be connected to grass-roots citizens.

Covering the attacks

2005-07-08T13:10:00.000-04:00

Both the Baltimore Sun and the LA Times weighed in today with pieces comparing British coverage of their own terrorism attack with the American version. Both conclude: The BBC did journalism at its best: calm, reasoned and collected. The Americans were sensational.

The Sun's David Zurawik wrote the best piece noting that "While the American news channels and commercial networks that aired in Britain yesterday were filled with images of carnage and talk of confusion in the wake of bombings in London, the government-supported BBC, the most-watched news outlet in the United Kingdom in times of crisis, offered viewers an oasis of relative calm."

Zurawik talked to Greg Nielsen, director of the BBC World Archive at Concordia University in Montreal, who explained that "There's a certain attitude and quite different history from commercial broadcasters both in America and Britain that results in higher standards - a keen sense of duty in time of crisis."

He even quotes a psychiatrist who says the US coverage of attacks causes needless anxiety and the BBC, operating more professionally, did not.

In checking out news online yesterday, I also found that BBC appeared to have stripped its main UK news page yesterday so that it would download faster -- similar to what CNN did during the 911 attacks. And what was striking was that the casualty figures stayed the same for much of the day, no sensational over-predictions given -- something Zurawik noted on television coverage as well. Another digitial journalism development was explored by the WSJ among others in their nice summary of the impact of citizen journalism including the BBC and the Guardian's incorporation into their coverage.

In a less well researched article, the LA Times gives a similar thumbs up to the BBC: "The tone of BBC coverage could be described, finally, as adult. I didn't hear the word "exclusive," for example, even as they broadcast an interview with an injured passenger just released from the hospital. To watch the BBC handle this crisis was to sense a network not nearly so paranoid as its American counterparts that the viewer might be about to switch the channel, surfing for better video."

This is not simply a matter of style or audience numbers in the end. The way the media cover such disasters helps shape citizen attitudes and ultimately their responses to politicians dealing with the aftermath.

Make Poverty History : Tony's Road Show

2005-07-07T01:07:00.000-04:00

Media critic Danny Schechter raises the issue of Tony Blair using the Make Poverty History campaign as a pop culture cover for his policies in his post about Live 8 and the demos in Scotland: "Have the rock stars been seduced by Tony Blair, who is desperate to recast an image battered by his association with Bush and the bloodshed in Basra? Have they been deceived by politicians used to making pledges that they don't honor while thinking they have persuaded the politicians to new levels of caring and commitment? Geldof was part of an Africa commission chaired by Blair which calls for change, but in a free market, pro-private sector direction."

He notes that the Stop the War coalition was not allowed to march with the Make Poverty History group or to speak at their rally. (Earlier reports said Geldof forbid any Live 8 acts from criticizing politicians. Was that before or after Bill Gates was feted on stage?) Schechter writes this is "inviting suspicion that the Blairites were stage-managing the protests from the shadows. (The British government actually funded some of the organizing undertaken by Oxfam, which now has former staffers advising Blair's people while ex-government functionaries work with the charity.) Tony Blair's chancellor Gordon Brown supported the protests. Was there a deal between the popsters and the politicians that we don't know about?"

Meanwhile, George Monibot writing in the Guardian is convinced it's all a sham meant to help the corporations, and points readers to The Daily Mail which ran photos of Geldof and Gordon Brown joining the so-called protest. And indeed, Monibot asks, what are the Blairites protesting, themselves?

Also, IndyMedia Scotland is reporting protesters scaled a crane and hung a banner against "Brownwash" referring to the Brown and the Blairites' takeover of the MPH campaign.

FinTimes #1

2005-07-06T21:01:00.000-04:00

Editor and Publisher is reporting a new survey of business, government, academic and journalist types shows the Financial Times is ranked as the world's best newspaper, Wall Street Journal is #2 (must not have read the editorial pages). NYT fell to 6th what with having to apologize for their war reporting and other scandals. Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung snagged third and Japan's Asahi Shimbun and Italy's Corriere della Sera cracked the top 10 for the first time.

Blair and Media Strategies

2005-07-06T19:59:00.000-04:00

I've just been skimming some work by UK prof Margaret Scammell who notes in a chapter of The Blair Effect that Blair's administration has been "landmark" in terms of its mastery of communication strategies, using daytime TV, women's magazines, regional and ethnic presses, and the tabloids to get his message out. So, I suppose it's no wonder that he should be appearing on MTV to flog the Make Poverty History campaign. At least some of the coverage I've been reading frames this as Noble Tony Blair fighting for the world's poor against that retrograde cowboy Bush. But heh, weren't they bosum buddies a few weeks ago?

Also, Scammell has written about the export of British formats, in a different edited volume, Developments in British Politics (no.6 I believe), that the Blair admin (and earlier John Major's) has been encouraging the export of British programming and suggesting that the industry "re-think programming to better fit overseas schedules and tastes" with BBC as the "spearhead of the export drive." Scammell asks, as has been done often here on London Calling, whether the Beeb can maintain its public services ethos and still be a global brand?

I guess a big picture question is: To what extent are many of the trends we try to chart on this blog -- British TV formats thriving over here, liberal Americans turning to elite media in the UK for a broader perspective, and now the whole "Girl in Cafe"/Live 8/G-8 media campaign -- how much of this can be attributed to the actions and policies of Blair and New Labour?

Along these conspiracy theory lines, would British media have followed the war as closely if the UK hadn't been in it and thus would not have appeared as a steady info source for Americans? Would BBC have intentionally set itself apart from US media? Remember this: Greg Dyke, the former BBC Director General, is a Labour guy, Blair's guy, who got appointed with some controversy. Anyway, he came to the US and criticized our television outlets for appalingly uncritical war coverage. He was right, of course, and I'm not suggesting he didn't believe it -- yet that also helped remind American audiences of why they might turn to BBC for a different view.

Brit format TV rules the global airwaves

2005-07-06T10:01:00.000-04:00

I found this interesting stat in, all of places, Foreign Policy magazine. In a piece called "Britannia Rules the Airwaves" (July/August 2005, p. 19, paid registration required), FP cites figures from Screen Digest indicating that the UK has, by some margin, become the world's biggest exporter of format TV - bigger even than the US. Format TV, btw, is the entertainment industry's term for "reality" and formula-based shows that can be franchised in local forms to markets across the world. We've talked about this before (e.g., Who's getting dumbed down? and Format programming: UK rules - in fact this piece might be quoting the same stats that Doctor Media noted back in April from Screen Digest, including an informative downloadable PDF file, so consider this a reinforcement of that post). Anyway, FP notes that format TV exports are a $3 billion global business, and the UK gets the biggest chunck of this new pie - "more than 30 percent", according to Screen Digest. The magazine quotes figures for the top five exporters of format TV in 2004 (in hours) as follows:

Britain, 3,795 hours
Netherlands, 2,569 hours
USA, 2,236 hours
Australia, 718 hours
Sweden, 558 hours

The prominence of the Netherlands is largely due to Endemol, the Dutch-based producer of "Big Brother." But, according to the April 12 Screen Digest news release (linked to by Doctor Media), Britain's prime place has been cemented by companies such as Celador Productions ("Who Wants to be a Millionaire"), and the BBC ("The Weakest Link"). (Curiously, the April release makes no mention of the recent success of Granada International.)

The FP piece notes that, to date, Who Wants to be a Millionaire "has been sold to 106 countries, and Pop Idol can be found in places as far flung as Iceland, Kazakhstan, and Lebanon." Interestingly, "the top four importers of this Brit-dominated genre are all continental European countries" (in order, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). The piece doesn't say anything specific about British exports to the United States, though the fact that Britain's total exports are some 70 percent higher than the US's is telling.

Christian righties push US aid agenda?

2005-07-05T21:20:00.000-04:00

The July 2 edition of The Economist has an interesting take on US-UK positions on aid to Africa. The magazine's Lexington column ("Right On", p. 34, paid registration required) suggests that, whereas British moves toward alleviating suffering are largely associated with the secular left (in concert - at least for the moment - with a center-left government), in America it’s the bible-thumping conservatives who are pushing the issue. Or, as Lexington puts it:

Guardian

L’Humanite

The article is clear that these pressures are coming not from liberal mainline Protestant churches, but from the more radical, evangelist right. And it notes the implications on American foreign policy of having these evangelical Protestant churches pull the Republican Party to the “left” on international issues. It also notes that “In the perennial battle between Kissingerian realists and neoconservative idealists in Washington, they help tip the balance towards idealism.”

This article surprise and intrigued me. The American campaign "dominated" by the Christian right? Really? Why haven't I heard about this? What I find interesting about this perspective is that it’s pretty rare in the American MSM. As far as I'd been aware, the prism through which the American end of this effort has been viewed in the media is that of another effort pushed by the bleeding-heart, leftie-conscientious celebrity elite (Madonna, Susan Sarandon-Tim Robbins, Brad Pitt et al). The idea that the real power behind the American effort comes from the right, not the left, comes a bit out-of-left-field to me (although I was also shocked to see rightie Pat Robertson appearing with all these other lefties in a VH-1/MTV ad/trailer on the fight against African poverty - and then I read that Pat Robertson and George Clooney had gone on ABC's "Nightline" together back in late June, to encourage Americans to get involved). Am I missing something here? Or is this possibly a new example of the US media's secular orientation blinding them (and me!) to how the Christian right really works in the United States? Right now, I don't know.

More response to Live 8

2005-07-05T10:13:00.000-04:00

Some impressions of Live 8: It made a splash in Britain after all, where the whole "Make Poverty History" campaign had, from the beginning, much greater resonance than in the US.
The BBC seemed to think the London concert itself went very well, and prompted a rapturous response by the UK press (see also here for crowd feedback, and the London acts rated, both courtesy of the BBC). The BBC also pointed out some of the many events surrounding Live 8, from Sail 8 to the Unicef-sponsored C8 children's summit in Dunblane, Scotland. Meanwhile, the Independent noted it was "A Beautiful Day: Great music, massive crowds". The article asked, "Was anyone listening?" - and then went on to suggest quite a lot of people actually were: It claimed that "Half the world tuned in yesterday [July 2] to watch the biggest musical event in history, featuring 170 acts in 10 countries. A million people were said to be in the crowds in London, Paris, Philadelphia and elsewhere. And as Sir Paul McCartney started to sing in Hyde Park, the drums and bass of his backing band U2 must have shaken the most important windows in the world." I'm not sure how accurate the Independent is with its audience estimate. The LA Times on Sunday put the estimated audience for the concerts - "broadcast live on TV, radio and over the Internet in 140 countries" - at 1 billion. But the Hollywood Reporter quotes Bob Geldof as putting the "combined television audience" at "some 3 billion viewers".

Bob Geldof (seen at left with Ethiopian famine survivor Birhan Woldu, who was roundly exploited by Madonna in her appearance at London) has in fact already declared Live 8 a success - although concert attendance in Tokyo and Rome was "disappointing". It seems that TV ratings were also lower there than in the UK, France, and Canada. (While the Canadian concert only attracted 35,000, the Hollywood Reporter noted, "Canada's 18-hour contribution to Live 8, organized by veteran concert promoter Michael Cohl, drew 10.5 million viewers, or one in three Canadians, host broadcaster CTV Inc. said Monday."). The BBC attracted between 6.6 and 9.6 million to their Saturday concert coverage, which translated to a very respectable average 42 share. While the Hollywood Reporter was focusing on lackluster US audience ratings (see below), "the rest of the world was glued to their television sets to watch the concerts."

But was anyone listening in the United States? Live TV coverage of Live 8 was limited to Viacom-owned MTV/VH-1, and XM satellite radio (in contrast to the morning-till-night coverage on BBC 1 and BBC 2 in the UK). US network ABC replayed concert highlights at 8-10 p.m. Saturday, but the ratings were disappointing. The Hollywood Reporter notes that, in spite of "featuring performances from such heavy hitters as Paul McCartney, U2, the Who and Coldplay," the special averaged only 2.9 million, which translates to "barely a 1.1 rating/5 share in the adults 18-49 demographic, according to preliminary estimates from Nielsen Media Research." On the plus side, though, Internet provider AOL carried live online coverage of the concerts and this appraently "drew a larger crowd than ABC's primetime highlights special."

As for the US mainstream press: The New York Times included this overview of the day's proceedings, as well as reviews of the London and Philadelphia shows. The Washington Post gave more prominence to Philadelphia than the Times did. The Philadelphia Inquirer seemed quite happy to wrap that city's Live 8 event into a very successful July 4 holiday weekend for Philly - even if the real meaning of the concert might have gotten lost in all the fun. An Inquirer editorial noted, "If Live 8 did nothing else over the July 4th weekend, it showed a global audience that America's birthplace can accommodate current events as well as it can revel in its history." But what about the impact on Americans, or even the concertgoers? Not so sure there. The editorial asks itself:

Did the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people who jammed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Saturday learn much about the conditions that help perpetuate extreme poverty in Africa? No, though most of the audience probably heard more about that continent during the six-hour concert than ever before.
The LA Times gave greater prominence to the political element of the concerts, noting that "Musicians and celebrity speakers urged audiences to pressure President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and leaders of other wealthy nations to take swift action when they meet for the annual Group of 8 summit Wednesday near Edinburgh, Scotland." It also reminded us (unlike the NYT) that "About 220,000 people gathered [in Edinburgh] Saturday for a rally timed to coincide with the summit and the concerts."

Elsewhere, MSM coverage on broadcast and cable news was fairly cursory, as far as I could tell - after all this was July 4 weekend, when America turns even more introspective than usual. NPR had a couple of 3-minute pieces linking the concerts and the Edinburgh protests marches on Weekend Edition Saturday and Sunday. But now that there are reports of some clashes between police and marchers, CNN seems to be quite happy pushing that aspect up the news agenda.

Now that the focus in the States is moving, albeit grudgingly, away from domestic issues and to the G8 summit itself, we'll see how it plays out from here.

Live 8: Saving the World is "Easy Peasy"?

2005-07-02T13:28:00.000-04:00

Lots of stuff going on with Live 8.

Technorati has recruited 50 bloggers to cover the concerts. They also have set it up so Treo Smartphones can receive the blog posts too. I realize this is pure promotion for the phones, but cool use of technology! As of right now more than 10,000 blogs have mentioned Live 8 in their posts. Their stated goal is to get millions.

Some of the NGOs involved in the campaign have bloggers too. I believe this is a fairly new phenomenon for those groups. I checked out a couple earlier this week and found them to be, well pretty lame. For example, OXFAM has a blog called Generation Why with posts such as:

"One more blog! We loved Tom Vek's performance on the Other Stage on Friday so much, we managed to bag ourselves some copies of his new album 'We Have Sound' to giveaway to you lucky people. All you have to do is answer an easy-peasy question to be in with a chance. "

Then again, I'm not 13 years old.

A cover story in the LA Times Calendar section this morning asks: Will Live8 really matter? The more important question from London Calling's perspective is: Has any world leader prior to this ever so strongly been connected into the global entertainment complex to promote a foreign policy goal?

Yesterday, a story in the LAT A section (that's news, not entertainment) paired a story about Bush's promises of more aid for Africa (yeah, I'll make a Bush-style pledge of $50 million myself -- since in BushWorld one doesn't have to actually deliver) with another story about Tony Blair appearing on MTV to talk about poverty and climate change. Blair is also set to talk with Christiane Amanpour on CNN about "The Girl in the Cafe" and the same issues. Unless this has already happened. I can't find it listed anywhere. Maybe it's only for non-US audiences?

I've been skimming what appears to be an interesting article from the UK alternative publication, Red Pepper, which gives a much more critical view of OXFAM and its "failing" Africa polices. Quoting from the New Statesman (I can't access this online) it notes the "‘revolving door’ relationship with UK government officials and policies, accusing it of allowing Blair and Brown to co-opt MPH [Make Poverty History] as a front for New Labour’s own questionable anti-poverty drive."

The article argues that the agenda of the MPH is actually fairly radical but has been co-opted by Blair with the complicity of OXFAM, using the same keywords to mean very different things.

Huffington on the DSM

2005-06-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

The BBC in a recent article quoted figures from a recent Arianna Huffington column, which "compares the major US news networks' focus on three stories from 1 May to 20 June: Natalee's disappearance, the Michael Jackson trial and the Downing Street Memo." According to Huffington, on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined, there were 56 segments dealing with the memo, 646 on Natalee and 1,490 on Jackson.

Here are the full figures she cites in her post, for "the number of news segments that mention these stories: (from a search of the main news networks’ transcripts from May 1-June 20)."

ABC News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 42 segments; "Michael Jackson": 121 segments.
CBS News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 70 segments; "Michael Jackson": 235 segments.
NBC News: "Downing Street Memo": 6 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 62 segments; "Michael Jackson": 109 segments.
CNN: "Downing Street Memo": 30 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 294 segments; "Michael Jackson": 633 segments.
Fox News: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 148 segments; Michael Jackson": 286 segments.
MSNBC: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 30 segments; "Michael Jackson": 106 segments.

So it's not as if the network news was doing any better than cable in covering the DSM story - now rapidly fading into history.

Huffington also cites some interesting comments from such media watchdog worthies as Josh Marshall and Jay Rosen. Unfortunately, Rosen's comments - posted on June 20, relating the process by which news items ignored by the MSM get fed back into the news loop by the bloggers - now seem largely irrelevant as far as the DSM is concerned. Yes, a huge blogger-inspired push (based on solid UK-originated news gathering) did seem set to push the DSM story fleetingly into the spotlight (a pretty weak spotlight, as it happens). But that spotlight quickly moved away to other, more interesting stories for the news media - such as Natalee Holloway.

I don't know if Howard Kurtz still thinks of the the DSM case study as a "coming of age" moment for the progressive blogosphere. But if this is what counts as a "bloggers' victory", I really wouldn't want to see a full-fledged defeat!

Dr Media very appropriately compares the DSM story with Greg Palast’s "expose on the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida in the 2000 presidential election." In the DSM case, the bloggers have made a difference in propelling what should be a major news story, but - if I can use a football analogy - they've succeeded only in moving the ball down the field. The question is, how far down the field did they move "the story" this time. And how close did they come to scoring (if by "scoring" we mean the story hits some sort of critical mass to became a major defining issue that dominates politics and news coverage in the way that, say, Watergate or Monica Lewinsky dominated)? That's a tough question. Maybe the bloggers got closer to the endzone than we realize, but it's clear that the Bush administration and the MSM have now - at least for the moment - driven the ball way back to the other end of the field.

Return of The Persuaders

2005-06-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

While Granada International/Granada America is making loadsamoney with reality show concepts repackaged for the US market (such as Hit Me Baby One More Time, Nanny 911 and Hell's Kitchen), it's not stopping there. The increasingly powerful export/production arm of ITV is trying to horn in on the action in the action-adventure drama realm. And it's doing this by bringing back The Persuaders, a classic UK 1971 drama series produced by Lew Grade's ITC. The Persuaders, starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis, was an expensive flop in the US (it only lasted one season), but it achieved a sort of kitschy cult status, along with other late 1960s/early 1970s ITC productions such as The Avengers, The Saint, and The Prisoner. (And according to Jeffrey Miller's Something Completely Different, these types of shows, all of which were shown on prime-time US network television, had a significant and lasting impact on the shape of American television.)

So the news that Steve Coogan and Ben Stiller are to star in a remake of The Persuaders has generated some excitement in the film & TV world on both sides of the Atlantic (see also here and here for more information). BBC America has also been doing its best to keep these classic cult shows alive, by showing them regularly as part of its Retro Shows season on Friday evenings.

Granada America is working with DreamWorks to bring the project to life. ITC, the original producer of the series, was bought by PolyGram in the mid-90s. Granada America's ability to feed America's "renewed appetite for shows from its in-house production arm" is becoming increasingly important to ITV, which, the Guardian notes, is suffering from declining audiences in the UK.

Update: Live8

2005-06-27T00:36:00.000-04:00

Another component of the entertainment campaign connected to the G8 meeting and Tony Blair’s initiative on Africa is the Live8 concerts to be held Saturday in Berlin, Johannesburg, London, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, Tokyo, Toronto. The concerts are part of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty campaign which includes the UK's Make Poverty History coalition, the US One Campaign and Germany's Your Voice Against Poverty. (I’m not sure where the latter two names came from but Make Poverty History was the brainchild of a British PR affiliate, Abbott Mead Vickers, of the behemoth Omnicom Group's BBDO agency.)

Interestingly, the German event may be a bust as Berlin’s city government and German businesses apparently are unwilling sponsors (just not into it or a response to Blair’s high profile connection to the cause?) Also worth noting: Der Spiegel says Tony B. isn't getting the kind of support for this initiative out of his buddy Bush that he might expected considering his support for the Bushwars.

As noted earlier, tickets were free but in order to get them one had to send a text message which was then entered into a lottery. The real audience will come via global television. The BBC says the concerts will be broadcast in 140 countries. MTV will carry it in the US.

A quick search on Lexis-Nexis for articles (through June 25) reveals – so far – that this has been primarily a British story. Rough estimates from a search of Major Newspapers:

89 UK stores, dominated by The Independent

28 Australian/ New Zealand, although these were almost all merely blurbs about who was performing

3 Canadian

1 US (NYT)

The extent to which stories triggered discussions of the actual policies were fewer. Random thoughts and observations: From a communications perspective, what exactly are these concerts? Edu-tainment? More evidence of the merging of politics and entertainment ala “The Daily Show” etc.? UK’s The Observer calls the concerts: “Geldofism - mobilisation of pop stars and fans behind a cause – [which] requires simplification of complex issues and, to maintain credibility with a young audience, much anti-establishment rhetoric.” The Independent quotes former International Development Secretary Clare Short’s (who resigned from Blair’s cabinet over the Iraq war) take: “People will enjoy the concerts because there are famous bands but quite how the concerts are going to eliminate poverty in the world is not clear.”

The policy aim is so, well Tony Blair, watered down Third Way – free trade for Africa. This is not to say no one problematized this neo-liberal approach but it seems from this cursory look that few were willing to do so.

Most criticisms of the concerts seemed to centered on issues such as the lack of African performers, the rumored appearance of certain acts (The Telegraph being convinced that Jacko wanted to appear), the controversy over the free tix being hawked on e-Bay.

An exception was Deborah Orr writing for The Independent, who noted “What the Make Poverty History campaign emphasises is just how the political landscape has altered since Live Aid. Back then, British and US politicians were the enemy because of their ruthless pursuit of free market policies. Now, in a dazzling turnaround, politicians are the enemy because of their refusal to extend the free market into Africa, by dropping their own protectionist subsidies, and unleashing upon the more vulnerable of their own voters the reality of competition.”

Before DSM, another case

2005-06-26T22:25:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that an interesting comparison could be made between what’s been happening with the Downing Street Memo and an earlier case in which the British media broke a key story about American politics: American reporter Greg Palast’s expose on the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.

Palast reported the story for BBC and The Observer but it never really got any traction here. (You can follow the articles via Palast’s own website). Alternative media were interested, and he appeared in a couple of documentaries but that was about it. In part, the questions about the election were dropped in the wake of 911 but even before then, the mainstream media didn’t seem particularly interested.

What are the differences between now and then? People are more willing to challenge Bush, the war no longer enjoys the support of the majority of Americans. But I wonder the extent to which bloggers have played a role. They are now more ubiquitous and more powerful – they seem to be capable of driving a story onto the mainstream agenda or at least keeping it alive. After starting this post, I ran across a Washington Post story that even admits that bloggers have set the agenda on this story. (Another interesting point their story makes is that memo generated some attention in Spanish language media too.)

Reporter Jefferson Morley noted this last Thursday: "The Post's Dana Milbank who portrayed Rep. John Conyers's DSM hearings on Capitol Hill last week as an excursion into the "land of make-believe". But with a click of the mouse they can go to the coverage of the same event in the Guardian of London and see the DSM story described as "tantamount to the first word of tapes in the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal."

Morley also pointed to a BBC story calling the DSM story a "bloggers' victory."

"Girl in Cafe": Not Quite Bewitching

2005-06-24T16:51:00.000-04:00

The LATimes, after contributing quite a bit of buzz to the HBO movie, "The Girl in the Cafe" has finally come out with its official review today. (The Calendar section also includes a full-page ad for the television movie.) Robert Lloyd loves, loves, loves Bill Nighy and in a rather large hunk of the review lets us know this in no uncertain terms. But in the end, Lloyd deems the production, which he calls a "schizophrenic, mostly satisfying romantic comedy," as "propaganda" for the movement to Make Poverty History.

The San Francisco Chronicle is a bit kinder. After noting the plot's not quite realistic, it seriously recommends the movie as a "primer for next month's Group of Eight summit" and ends with the tidbit that Tony B. apparently likes the movie. The Philadelphia Inquirer, also giving a brief overview, decribes the movie serving "up an intriguing brew of passion, politics and pathos while delivering the same strong message that some real-life aging rockers will be trying to send in next week's Live 8 concerts."

LA City Beat gives it a thumbs up for having the guts to use the guise of a seemingly light-hearted tale to consider the "the grim question of whether the wealthy and powerful nations of the G8 will ever seriously address the issues of Third World poverty. Nighy, Curtis, and all concerned have taken their highly commercial track records and courageously used them to do the unthinkable – bait and switch we-the-viewers to exit our TV comfort zone and think." Notably, since we see so few movies much less those on TV focused on real foreign policy issues, the online edition of the The Washington Post features only the earlier mentioned AP review.

The Seattle Times, meanwhile, has a review to warm the cockles of that city's WTO protesters. It begins this way: "Imagine a film called "The Girl in the Java Joint." Set during the WTO riots, it features a Seattle waitress whose tryst with a Treasury official puts heart into U.S. economic policy."

Interestingly, Times critic Kay McFadden points out that American movies tend to follow a plot that elevates a young woman in the "Pretty Woman"/Julia Roberts type story where the "focus is individual triumph, not social awareness. " She then goes on to say this:

"The attitude of British filmmakers is somewhat different: They often like to roll around in high-low class collisions expressly to explore the dynamics of inequality."

After rating the acting (highly) and the story itself (implausible and "propagandistic") McFadden makes some very interesting statements such as"I'd prefer if Gina had stated her cause because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dress down the leaders of the world's wealthiest nations for their self-interested neglect of the world's poor."

Interestinglty, McFadden baldly states what other reviewers either don't know or don't bother to say: The movie is about Blair's foreign policy ambitions for Africa which have not been warmly welcomed in Washington. The review ends thusly: "Little wonder the WTO demonstrations — dire consequences and all — may still seem the most effective way to make those in charge pay attention. Protests are expected in Scotland."

Hitchens propels the myth

2005-06-24T09:05:00.000-04:00

While Don Rumsfeld & Co. are under attack and in full damage-control mode over the Iraq debacle today, and veteran UK war correspondent Max Hastings resurrects the spectre of Vietnam, the US media are once again doing their best to neglect the issue of how we got into this mess in the first place. Remember the Downing Street Memo?

Congratulations to professional contrarian Christopher Hitchens for propelling the US media's self-serving myth that the DSM is not and never was news because everyone in America supposedly already knew that the Bush administration was going to go to war with Iraq. In a piece in Slate.com, Hitchens argues, "I am now forced to wonder: Who is there who does not know that the Bush administration decided after September 2001 to change the balance of power in the region and to enforce the Iraq Liberation Act, passed unanimously by the Senate in 1998, which made it overt American policy to change the government of Iraq?" The answer is simple: The American people did not know this! Maybe Hitchens and his chattering-class peers "knew" or think they knew what Bush's Iraq policy really was, but the American people - in whose name this probably illegal invasion took place - did not know that Bush wanted a war, and would do anything to make it happen - including, of course, misrepresenting himself to the American people. And just how many Americans in July 2002 knew anything about the Iraq Liberation Act? Most Americans naturally took Bush at face value when he argued that war was a last resort. (In an Op-Ed piece in today's NY Times Paul Krugman quotes veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who apparently told an audience in November 2002, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - an then made it clear that President Bush was the first.)

So Hitchens gets himself an "Officer Barbrady award" - for what it's worth.

Look, it's clear that, following last week's brief spike in coverage commensurate with John Conyers's Capitol basement session - and in spite of the emergence of a whole clutch of incriminating UK memos and minutes - the whole DSM issue is being efficiently buried again (and this time, I'm sure the MSM hope, it'll be for good). So Hitchens is kicking the issue when it's down. Oh well. But he's still wrong, and it's necessary to clearly recognize why he's wrong because that explains so much about what's wrong with the US news media today

So again, I turn to Joe Conason, whose Salon piece (which I discussed here) provides clear contemporary evidence (from 2002) that the media did not know Bush's true intentions:

Michael Kinsley

July 23, 2002

Kinsley himself

July 12, 2002

Sept. 15, 2002

July 23, 2002

Oct. 8, 2002

So what impression did all this leave in the minds of ordinary Americans? Not that war was inevitable or desirable, of that I'm sure. But no matter: A new myth is being carefully constructed by the media, and no amount of Internet or blogosphere criticism seems able to fully deconstruct it. (Btw, here's another excellent piece Joe Conason from June 10, 2005, also in Salon.)

Live8 and "Girl" Updates

2005-06-23T13:49:00.000-04:00

Alternet weighs in today on the upcoming Live8 concerts tied to the G8 summit in Scotland next month.

The online alternative reports that the "nine shows scheduled for July 2 add up to an astounding lineup: the Sex Pistols, Coldplay, Madonna, Scissor Sisters, U2, Green Day, Roxy Music, REM, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, A-ha, The Cure, P. Diddy and Youssou N'Dour" among others.

More importantly, the concerts do not aim to do what Live Aid did for the Ethiopian famine in 1985: They aren't intended to raise money; all shows are free. Instead, they are strictly PR for Tony Blair's Commission on Africa efforts.

A cursory check of US coverage of the companion effort, "The Girl in Cafe" television movie, appears to be turning up some positive US coverage. As was pointed out earlier, despite a core of dedicated activists in the US who have worked on debt relief for some years, this is not an American driven issue.

So it's somewhat suprising that this rather small movie got a page in last week's Newsweek which called it a "poignant, topical, lovely little film" and a "cry for the ignorant to open their eyes and for the powerless to stand up to the powerful." Whew! Meanwhile their over-promoted columnist Fareed Zakaria called it a "pleasure to watch" and suggested that it would surely induce audiences to learn more about Africa debt. He does point out that the movie features a "bad" American official who wants trade not aid.

Associated Press also gives it a thumbs up: "Besides packing a weighty message -- significant reduction in global poverty and infant mortality is now within the grasp of world leaders -- this lovely film can hold its own against any love story as it depicts a mismatched couple struggling to connect." (Read whole review at boston.com)

In the hinterlands, the movie is getting more mixed reviews. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wanted the story to stay on the romance and not the politics or what it called "a blast of hot air." The Oregonian calls it a "bit of political propaganda" filled with "political polemics."

So, we'll have to see the extent to which British foreign policy can indeed seep into America's consciousness via our entertainment obsessed culture. All of which raises some interesting questions: Is the US entertainment industry more aligned with British popular opinion (where the campaign has lots of both grass-roots and adminstration support)? Or is it a matter of enough Brits working in the US industry to put certain topics on the table that might otherwise be ignored or downplayed? Or are British media in general agenda setting for the US in regards to an issue in which they are clearly more in tune and more knowlegeable about?

Praising the BBC ... through gritted teeth!

2005-06-22T16:07:00.000-04:00

Just to piggy-back on Doctor Media's fine post, if I may: I can't help but notice that the piece she refers to in the (UK-based) Economist is quite happy to describe the BBC in its first reference as "Britain's mammoth public-service broadcaster" and in the third reference as a "Britain's lumbering giant of a public-service broadcaster" [My emphases]. It makes sure to highlight the corporation's "annual £2.8 billion [$5.4 billion] public subsidy." It lauds the very market-oriented former BBC Director-General John Birt - perhaps the most hated D-G of recent times - as having had the vision to take the BBC into the web. You get the impression from reading this piece that The Economist is not exactly Auntie Beeb's best friend! And you'd be right. Make no mistake, when this influential and economically conservative magazine praises the BBC's "excellent" web sites, it's doing so through very gritted teeth! In fact, it's fair to say that The Economist is fundamentally opposed to everything the BBC as a psb stands for, and has on more than one occasion called for the abolition of the license fee and the freeing of the BBC "brand" to do battle in the marketplace. Too bad if you can't afford the product.

The tone of The Economist piece here is a little schizophrenic. Even though it rightly praises the quality of the BBC's web sites, it does not make an explicit connection with the the essential public-service value of these sites. Even though the article recognizes that most British newspapers (apart from the Guardian and maybe the FT) still don't quite "get" the web, the tone is still implicitly critical of the BBC for having had the audacity to figure out the internet first and then make it harder for the poor, suffering, commercial British press to turn it into a "nice little earner." How, you can almost hear them think, can this socialistic, "mammoth," "lumbering giant" of an entity actually do something right? Why isn't the BBC more like British Rail or British Leyland, i.e., just rubbish?

In fact, if I may be so bold, The Economist cares not a whit about public service in this case: all it sees is a market opportunity lost because of that public service. Now it'd be one thing if the BBC was providing a crummy service with all this public money (£15 million, or $27 million pa, apparently) spent on the web. But this has not been and is not the case. The BBC was and is in the best position of any media organization in the country to do what it does, and it's doing precisely what it should be doing - providing a top-quality service that the people really use and really like - and doing it well. If the BBC wasn't doing it, commercial operators (whether from the press or wherever) would step in - but the service would likely be inferior and definitely be more fragmented and would of course cost lots more. Unfortunately, something tells me The Economist would really like that!

BBC dominates online

2005-06-22T12:09:00.000-04:00

The Economist reports that the BBC’s early jump into online journalism has paid off handsomely with visitors to their news site increasing from 1.6 million in 2000 to 7.8 in 2005. The magazine attributes the jump to the quality and breadth of what BBC makes available, drawing on the services of more than 5,000 journalists and spending $27 million a year on the news site. (BBC operates 525 sites total!) Of course, as has been much argued here, the problems with American media in the wake of 911 have probably driven at least some of the US traffic their way. And who knows the extent to which the Bush-Blair war has helped the corporation generate more global eyeballs. Good show, Tony.

At any rate, this dominance means that other British sites have a hard time competing – they after all, have to take in advertising, charge a subscription or otherwise come up with a means of supporting their sites.

The most popular newspaper website, run by The Guardian, sees half the number of visitors as the BBC and is hoping to finally make some money this year, joining the ranks of the online Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph, whose sites have been making money since 2002.

Interestingly, the article notes that the BBC is making more efforts to link to other media to send traffic their way.

As for The Guardian, Simon Waldman who honchos Guardian Unlimited, spoke at the Internet World UK meeting last week and called for news websites to recognize that citizens want to interact with the news -- a decision that the BBC appears to have made some time ago -- certainly long before The Guardian or even Rupert made his johnny-come-lately pitch for taking the techie stuff seriously.

Who's getting dumbed down?

2005-06-22T08:38:00.000-04:00

Is British telly dumbing down America? Owen Gibson of MediaGuardian seems to think so. Once again the ghost of the Beatles in '64 is evoked as Gibson states, "America is in the grip of a second British invasion. But this time it's not our music that's proving a hit but our light entertainment television shows starring faded celebrities." He's talking about the newly repackaged versions of BBC and ITV formats being bought up by US media "in unprecedented numbers." London Calling has talked about this before (see, e.g., Format programming: UK rules and our take on The Office) but apparently it's getting worse - or better, from a UK balance-of-payments perspective.

Gibson's piece notes the particular success of Granada America, part of Granada International, ITV's export/production arm - that as of last week, "the company provided a fifth of the weekday prime time schedule for Fox and NBC, until recently a proportion that would have been unthinkable to most US TV producers."

Just to keep things straight, he runs through some of the British shows at the trailer-trash end of the spectrum, currently repacakaged for an American audience:

Dancing With the Stars (adapted from BBC's Strictly Come Dancing, and pulling in "more than 15 million" viewers on ABC after three weeks on air).
Hit Me Baby One More Time (Granada America, ITV's export/production arm, now on NBC)
Nanny 911 (Granada America, now on Fox)
Hell's Kitchen (Granada America)
Fire Me Please (based on BBC3's The Sack Race)

The piece reminds us that for many years "it tended to be mostly one-way traffic" from the US to the UK, "with Anglophiles restricted to watching imports" on cable channels "and the big four US networks selling their best comedies and dramas to the BBC and Channel 4." Of course, "The long list of hit US imports, from Dallas to The Sopranos, and game show formats wasn't matched by a reciprocal flow of programme ideas the other way." (He's actually thinking back to the 1970s in particular, when US programming often dominated UK prime-time schedules; US imports are still huge, but for years even the top US imports to Britain, such as Friends and The Sopranos, have been pushed off to "minority" channels - such as C4 or Sky - and lesser timeslots.)

Anyway, Gibson's piece paraphrases Mike Phillips, deputy chief executive of BBC Worldwide (the Beeb's commercial arm), noting "the success of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Pop Idol changed the game."
Phillips say he overcame network skepticism and convinced ABC chief Andrea Wong to take a risk with Strictly Come Dancing, drawing on the experience of the show's huge sucess in Britain and Australia (where the link to Baz Luhman's Strictly Ballroom undoubtedly helped).

Paul Jackson, CEO of Granada America, says another reason for the current US opening is the vacuum in American broadcasting as networks cast around desperately for Big Hit replacements for their now-defunct moneyspinners such as Friends and Frasier. Says Jackson: "America is a much more faddish market than over here. While entertainment shows have remained a staple of the British market, that Saturday night type of entertainment show hadn't been seen in America for 20 years. . . . This summer, they've latched onto the British entertainment market and decided to take a risk on it."

So is this a case of the Brits dumbing down American TV? Britain, the land of The Forsyte Saga, Upstairs Downstairs, and David Attenborough's Life on Earth? You betcha. This is the other side of British television, the side that Americans never used to see. It's similar in many ways to Britain's two-tier, high-low class, contrapuntal press system (whose influence is also being felt in the US). Now we're seeing a similar two-tier, high-low class, contrapuntal TV system spreading its influence across the Atlantic.

Update: Girl in Cafe

2005-06-21T21:57:00.000-04:00

Here's the pitch:

Charming 50ish British PM elected on a Third Way platform of centrist politics gets hit by a football during a national match, temporarily loses his mind and decides to follow a dangerous and slightly batty American president into a baseless, de-stabilizing and unpopular war against a pathetic Third World dictator addicted to Doritos. PM Smarm, er, Charm, barely survives this political disaster, partially regains his senses, and settles on a last-ditch effort to burnish his tattered legacy: He will join forces with a group of witty, slightly kooky actor-writer types to save every last African child from poverty. I see it as a musical.

Well it turns out Richard Curtis' "The Girl in the Cafe" HBO movie tied to the G8 summit happening July 6 in Scotland is a tad bigger than London Calling first surmised. In fact, this web of do-gooders, Hollywood glory hounds and British politicos may have created the most synergized bit of development-entertainment the world has every known. And please note my friends, this is where British good intentions meets American entertainment, falls head over heels and, well, you know rest.

To be sure, debt relief, now morphed into Make Poverty History has always been a British-driven issue. Sure, a lot of Third World activists were calling for this years ago but they're really only good as extras in the political pagentry necessary to launch a global campaign that anybody actually notices.

So this is where the story begins. With the 25th anniversary of Live Aid coming up, Sir Bob Geldof working with Comic Relief types such as Curtis hatched the idea of this Poverty-polooza with Live8 concerts across nations (the free tix were being scalped on e-Bay!), the "Girl" movie written by Curtis, commercials featuring Brad Pitt and other Hollywood celebrities and also some actors such as Helen Mirren and Emma Thompson. The key motif running through all this is clicking one's fingers -- the click indicates a child dying needless of poverty every few seconds.

Now it also turns out that at the same time British Prime Minister Tony B. has got some fence mending to do with well just about everybody in the world other than W, and some image repair to undertake. Since he just so happens to be the chair of the G8, this is the perfect opporunity for him to take the global stage and proclaim his commitment to helping poor African children who everyone knows are much better behaved than poor Iraqi children.

And the ball just keeps rolling. More than 400 British charities and related agencies have signed on this Poverty-polooza. Media outlets such as the Observer and apparently Marie Clare have decided to be part of it. In what was apparently a serious news story, The Daly Telegraph reports that Penguin will publish a book called How to Defeat Poverty in Seven Easy Steps (#1 Marry Rich, #7 Work for Halliburton) and shared the fact that British school children were being asked to jump up and down instead of clicking so as not to injure themselves. I guess America's overfed kids will be asked to use the remote control three times in a row to indicate their support.

The BBC1 is joining the fun too, airing "Girl" during what has shaped up to be a BBC Africa week. Various shows will feature an African theme and the wildly popular "Strictly Dancing" will be a "Strictly African Dancing." A popular hospital show will have a main character traveling to Africa, a family will leave behind their British comforts to live in a remote village, and other specials will focus on African art and music. Geldof will have a six-part African series. In all, BBC is estimated to have spent some 15 million pounds on the various programs.

At any rate, the entire effort truly is a British extravaganza married to Tony Blair's legacy aspirations. And while we all want to end poverty, it's still not quite clear how this clicking thing works.

A tale of two Curtises

2005-06-21T12:06:00.000-04:00

It seems that not all Curtises are treated equally in US media-land.

While Richard Curtis is making his own kind of transAtlantic "New Labour Agitprop"(!) splash with "The Girl in the cafe," another British Curtis - Adam, no relation, I think - is having less success State-side.

Adam Curtis is responsible for a somewhat less Blair-friendly media project on the political scene, thanks to his three-part BBC documentary series, The Power of Nightmares - described by Peter Bergen in The Nation as "arguably the most important film about the 'war on terrorism' since the events of September 11. It is more intellectually engaging, more historically probing and more provocative than any of its rivals, including Fahrenheit 9/11."

Curtis is described by Andy Beckett of The Guardian as "perhaps the most acclaimed maker of serious television programmes in Britain. His trademarks are long research, the revelatory use of archive footage, telling interviews, and smooth, insistent voiceovers concerned with the unnoticed deeper currents of recent history, narrated by Curtis himself in tones that combine traditional BBC authority with something more modern and sceptical: 'I want to try to make people look at things they think they know about in a new way.'"

Perhaps that's why we haven't yet seen it in the States. Although it was aired in the UK (on BBC 2) last October 20, and, as Bergen notes, has been shown "at Cannes and at a few film festivals in the United States, it has yet to find an American distributor, and for understandable reasons." Such as?

The Power of Nightmares

There are good reviews of the documentary in the UK press, e.g., at The Times of London and The Guardian. Yet interestingly, Bergen is more skeptical of Curtis than the aforementioned UK reviewers. While Bergen notes that "The fact that the film has not been widely shown here [in the U.S.] is our loss, since it raises important questions about the political manipulation of fear," he also thinks the documentary series is "troubling for reasons other than the ones Curtis supposes. For the thesis he advances--that the war on terrorism is driven by nightmares rather than nightmarish potentialities--is one that merits considerable skepticism." Bergen goes on to pick holes in the narrative - unable, perhaps, to accept the true power of Curtis's thesis (although I'll have to wait to see the film myself to make sure). Yet he still concludes that The Power of Nightmares

is a richly rewarding film because it treats its audience as adults capable of following complex arguments." This is a vision of the audience that has been almost entirely abandoned in the executive suites of American television networks. It would be refreshing if one of those executives took a chance on The Power of Nightmares. After all, its American counterpart, Fahrenheit 9/11, earned more money than any documentary in history. And what Curtis has to say is a helluva lot more interesting than what Michael Moore had to say.
But is it possible that what Curtis has to say is also more interesting than what the other Curtis (Richard) has to say? And could HBO's resident Brit Colin Callender be "one of those executives" who might take a chance on this other film in America? I'm not so sure. HBO might like to think of itself as a bit edgy, but I don't think it's ready for that kind of heat. What about BBC America, which in May 2003 rebroadcast “War Spin: Saving Private Lynch”, which embarrassed the US in its attempts to mytholigize Private Jessica Lynch. Well, as far as I know, BBC America hasn't taken it up, and I doubt that it will.

So who will show The Power of Nightmares in the US? Will anyone? I'd guess that if anyone could really tackle this subject and get it aired in the US, it's probably the Brits. There's something about doumentaries and authoritative British accents that allows US audiences to negotiate meaning from such texts at a greater cultural distance - just far enough but not too far - than would be the case with a domestic attempt. But even so . . .

Perhaps the trouble is, while Richard Curtis's project has the backing of Blair (and, perhaps covertly, even the Bush administration), Adam Curtis's project is still well beyond the Washington pale. The Power of Nightmares is the sort of project that can still get funding and screening on a (British) public service system that still displays some independence from political and commercial forces. But it deals with a subject that's more sensitive in the US than the UK (which has had a lot longer to deal with terrorism and its impact on the national psyche). In the '70s and '80s British broadcasters were able to tackle the issue of Irish Republicanism and terrorism in ways inconceivable to present-day US MSM. Perhaps the time is just not yet right. And perhaps the "tale of two Curtises" shows the limits of British media's ability to push a new political agenda onto a jaded US audience. And, to be just a little facetious, it's a subject that doesn't have a cute entertainment lead-in! Yes, it will be a long time before we see a two-hour movie about a love affair between a naive Scottish girl and a grizzled senior Al Qaeda veteran who's off to negotiate a lasting peace with the United States.

PS. The Power of Nightmares apparently is not yet available yet on DVD or video.

UK-US critiques of "The Girl"

2005-06-21T09:29:00.000-04:00

While on the subject of "The Girl in the Cafe," it might be fun in the coming days and weeks to compare the critical responses to the film on both sides of the Atlantic. Here's a flavor of what might be coming down the pike. Stateside we've got the New York Times quoting Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek's international editor, saying in a recent column, "that a romantic comedy about global poverty might sound 'sleep inducing' but that 'The Girl in the Café' was actually 'a pleasure to watch.'" Kristin Hohenadel in the LAT Kelly Macdonald interview noted by Doctor Media below, calls the film "surprisingly affecting" as it "tries to call attention to the need to end extreme poverty."

Compare this with the initial critical reception to the film - premiering June 25 on BBC and HBO - on BBC's Newsnight Review last week.

Every Friday night on Newsnight three rather pompous cultural critics take up the last third of the show to pontificate on the latest play or movie or TV show or whatever. Last Friday, leftie author John Harris, academic Sarah Churchwell, and (right-wing) Times commentator Michael Gove got a chance to discuss "The Girl in the Cafe." None of them were hugely impressed with the film, it must be said.

Interestingly it was Churchwell (a lecturer at the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia and the only American in the group) who was the most complimentary of the three - and even she only really liked the first hour of the film, dealing with the "love story" (she thinks the second half, dealing with the polemical side, becomes unbelievable). Michael Gove derided what he described as "the traditional Richard Curtis schtick" and called the film patronising "propaganda," simplistic, and "morally empty." John Harris, easily the most bolshie of the three, totally rips into the film, calling it "West London New Labour Agitprop with a distinct smell of of Princess Diana around it" (I love that imagery), and "garbage". By the end they were all mercilessly slagging off the film. But Churchwell does come back to make perhaps the most astute point that she noticed "as an American": the film's "shameless sucking up to the British government," i.e., that everyone - the French, the Germans, the Americans - is ready to sell out the poor old Africans, and only the noble, self-righteous British ministers are ready to stand up for Africa. (If you've followed the UK news on G8/Live8 you might also have noticed some serious "sucking up" to Blair and Brown by Bono and Bob Geldof.) Anyway, Churchwell's comment gives an opening to John Harris to exclaim, "This is getting dangerously close ... [to] what you'd see if you lived in a benign, Brownite [as in Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown] one-party state." Harris seems to have a knack of sounding like he's talking bollocks but actually making a compelling point!

This could get very interesting indeed.

"Girl in Cafe": Tony B. gets some synergy

2005-06-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

It turns out London Calling was not the only one to identify something interesting going on with the Richard Curtis' "The Girl in the Cafe," an HBO romantic comedy set at a G-8 summit meeting and centered around a message of child infant mortality and extreme poverty.

The first signs have been the rather ubiquitous coverage appearing in the LA Times. Since the show was last mentioned on this blog, the LAT editorial page (pre-wiki launch and crash) included an unsigned editorial (with the rather twee title "Chic Flicks to the Rescue") noting the unusual nature of having a movie based on a such a serious and seemingly unentertaining humanitarian message. Um, yes, it's a bit interesting on that front in terms of the movie being focused on a specific issue and not simply having Human Rights Watch or Amnesty insert a message product-placement style into a pre-exisiting show. And one might even argue that's the difference between the US and British media in general (Save the World as product placement versus Save the World as a documentary). And there's the fact that show is about helping people in the Third World (Naomi Klein says otherwise about the overall campaign) instead of focusing on some narrow innocuous issue -- wear a seatbelt, say.

Then the paper ran a Q & A interview with the actor who plays the "girl" of the title, Scotland's Kelly Macdonald. The first three questions were about the politics of the movie to which Macdonald didn't have much intelligent to say, eg., Q: Were you as shocked as your character to find out that 30,000 African children die because of poverty every day? Yeah, because you know the horror in the news - you kind of let things wash over you."

Whatever. She does say that Curtis took a year off from movie-making to work on the issue. The paper has also promoted the Bob Geldof managed Live8 concert on a couple of occasions, including today's paper.

London Calling suggested earlier that there was something more to this blending of British politics with Hollywood and that perhaps Tony Blair would get more from promoting his politics via an entertainment platform than one shared with George Bush. And today the New York Times reports that's exactly what's happening here. In a remarkable bit of synergy, on July 2 CNN will air 25 minutes of the film followed by a sit-down between reporter Christiane Amanpour and Tony B. himself!

The Times also notes that HBO is partnering with the Council on Foreign Relations to help roll-out some premieres of "Girl" this week in Washington. IMF and World Bank policy wonks will join Congressional staffers and MM journalists to preview the flick.

An Oz view of UK TV

2005-06-19T14:03:00.000-04:00

Media Guardian provides a fascinating insight into the British TV from an Australian perspective. Former BSkyB chief Sam Chisholm - actually a New Zealander - has returned Down Under, and it seems he's missing the Old Country.

Half a world away in Australia, Sam Chisholm is missing London. He misses his Hyde Park apartment, his local boozer, the Enterprise, and Langan's Brasserie. He misses Tottenham Hotspur football club, of which he was a director. The TV executive misses English humour and manners. Not least, he misses the broadcasting. "British broadcasting is amazing," he sighs.
Chisholm has returned to Oz to run Kerry Packer's Nine Network in Australia. The last time he was in charge of Nine he created a winning culture at Nine - making it Australia's leading network - and then, in 1990, moved to the UK to turn BSkyB into a money-spinner for Murdoch.

Chisholm is described as "an admirer of the 'brilliant' branding of British channels" - he had a major role to play in successfully "branding" Sky - and on that basis is "scrutinising Nine's promos and marketing."

Interestingly, Chisholm is also an archetype of the international media-cultural axis linking Britain and the Antipodes (and, by extension, the US). He has close links with Australia's two best-known media magnates: Rupert Murdoch - at Britain's BSkyB and its Ausralian equivalent, Foxtel - and Kerry Packer, who owns the Nine Network in Australia. Although he doesn't have much direct experience in the United States, Chisholm does exemplify the type of player prominent in the new, post-colonial, global network in English-language news and entertainment media - a network that clearly includes the US, especially through the links provided by Murdoch's News Corporation.

More from the alternative, er, British press

2005-06-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

London Calling has previously commented on how mainstream reporting in Britain now passes for alternative, aggressive watchdog journalism in the United States. A particularly good example of this is the Independent's fine reporter LA-based Andrew Gumbel, who on the side pens a column for the Los Angeles City Beat. Gumbel, who just picked up an award from the Los Angeles Press Club for his on-going column, titled American Babylon, has an excellent piece in the print version of the most recent issue of the alt weekly on how the Bush administration has so effectively turned news media revelations of the administration's own misdeeds into a springboard for attacking reporters' ethics.

Gumbel argues that if the public does not trust the media it is not because of anonymous sources - as the Bushies would have you believe -- but because "they do not challenge the official line enough." Interestingly, Gumbel also points out that the Thatcher government tried a similar strategy of attacking the British media's ethics in the 1980s, citing in particular the case of BBC reporter Kate Adie whom the administration took aim at when she reported on the civilian casualities from a US bombing run into Libya.

Unlike today's scenario, Gumbel notes that Adie became a "national heroine" in the case.

Unfortunately for the US, no one -- not even the news media itself -- seems willing to take up the cause of today's journalists. Indeed, journalists high and low join in their own abuse, self-flagellating with abandon. My sense is the British media appear more willing to fight back -- or at least some elements do.

Another part of the problem seems to be that Americans do not have the same sense of connection with our media that Brits appear to have with the BBC. (Maybe I'm wrong here -- there is a move to save Public Broadcasting but Bush's attack seems more vicious than the usual jabs.) Journalists here also seem unwilling to recognize who their true allies may well be -- groups like the Media Reform Movement -- which don't want to destroy the media in this country but do want some control of the corporate conglomerates mucking up our democracy.

US press's new self-serving myth

2005-06-17T17:06:00.000-04:00

Hats off to Joe Conason in Salon for once again bursting the US mainstream news media's self-inflated myth about the Iraq war. Conason's target is the media myth that "The memo wasn't news because Americans already knew that the Bush administration was 'fixing the intelligence and facts around the policy,' rather than making policy that reflected the intelligence and the facts about Iraq [Emphasis added]." (I heard this myth expressed again even by USA Today's Mark Memmott - who finally reported on the DSM for his paper - on last week's On the Media, and then again by Susan Page, USA Today's Washington bureau chief on today's Diane Rehm Friday roundup). The myth is as pervasive as it is instant. And it's wrong, argues Conason, whose piece (reprinted in Truthout) argues for clear duplicity on the part of the MSM.

Of the journalists at the Times and even the Post, Conason states:

Only a very special brand of arrogance would permit any employee of the New York Times, which brought us the mythmaking of Judith Miller, to insist that new documentary evidence of "intelligence fixing" about Saddam's arsenal is no longer news. The same goes for the Washington Post, which featured phony administration claims about Iraq's weapons on Page 1 while burying the skeptical stories that proved correct.
This refers - quite correctly - to these papers' mea culpas about their desultory performance reporting fully on the run-up to the war. This brings Conason to the new media myth. Conason notes comments by the Times's and the Post's - as well as by Michael Kinsley - that show that what they're saying now about the inevitability of war is not what they were saying in 2002. He concludes, "Instead of pretending that we all knew what we know now, the Washington press corps should stop spinning excuses, stop redefining what constitutes news and start doing its job."

WP and Kurtz on the DSM

2005-06-16T10:19:00.000-04:00

Some more recent coverage of the DSM in the Washington Post - from Terry M. Neal ("Democrats Looking for a Road Map to Downing Street"); Jefferson Morley ("World Opinion Roundup: Britain's Deep Throat", a weekly discussion); and, from today Howard Kurtz ("News Media Give Overlooked Memo on Iraq Second Glance"). Of even more interest, also from Kurtz, is a piece from yesterday's paper: "Backlash on the left", which kicks off: "It's official: The Democrats are fed up with the press."

The two Kurtz articles in particular are interesting. Today's piece gives another useful timeine and overview of the US MSM's stilted coverage of the issue. Both suggest, significantly, that the "left" in this country are now as "fed up" and disillusioned with the mainstream news media as the right. But I have to comment on something Kurtz says in his "News Media Give Overlooked Memo on Iraq Second Glance" from today. Focusing on the efforts by "liberal" groups such as FAIR and Moveon.org to push the memo onto the MSM agenda, he states:

For the past 15 years, conservatives have used their outlets -- in talk radio, right-leaning news operations, editorial pages and, more recently, blogs -- to pressure mainstream journalists into covering stories that might otherwise be ignored. And they have had striking success, from allegations about President Bill Clinton's personal life to CBS's questionable documents on President Bush's National Guard service to the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in last year's presidential campaign. Now the left can claim a similar success.
Kurtz might be suggesting that the left-wing pressure groups have "come of age" and are now ready to challenge the right's highly-organized media "echo chamber." But he neglects to mention a crucial difference, one that suggests that the "left" is far from ready. The right-wing examples he suggests all concern domestic issues, created out of whole cloth, or researched independently by bloggers, and pushed domestically onto the MSM agenda by the partisan domestic right-wing media echo chamber. But the DSM story did not originate domestically with the left-wing in this country. It came out of a foreign story - broken, in fact, by a right-wing (Murdoch-owned) British newspaper, and was propelled into the UK and international MSM spotlight by all UK media, left and right. Without that crucial foreign-based newsgathering and reporting - as well as seemingly rock-solid documentary evidence - the story could never have gotten even the minimal traction it is now receiving. If Kurtz is suggesting that some sort of left-right "level playing field" has been acheived, he's wrong!

So at this point, I would suggest four things:

1.) Like Howard Kurtz, I agree that liberals are now just as fed up with the MSM as conservatives, and rightly so;
2.) The circumstances around the US coverage of the DSM show again just how far right the country's MSM have moved - even in comparison with the UK.
3.) Unlike Kurtz, I think that the left are still far, far away from being able to match the right in independently pushing a domestic story onto the MSM agenda; the scales are still tipped decidely in favor of the right; and
4.) for the time being, the only way the "left" will be able to successfully leverage anything onto the MSM agenda will be through strong backing by extensive foreign-based (probably UK) newsgathering and reporting, plus rock-solid documentary evidence.

Kaplan on the memo(s)

2005-06-16T08:25:00.000-04:00

Fred Kaplan of Slate asks, "What's really in the Downing Street memos?" Actually, he notes not one memo, or two, but seven, including the "famous" memo/minutes of the UK ministers' meeting; the secret Cabinet Office briefing paper written two days before that meeting (see here and here for London Calling's take); and "five eyes-only memos, written around the same time, about various official British meetings with President Bush, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz." These new documents, described by John Daniszewski in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, have, notes Kaplan, been available in full for a while on the Think Progress Web site. These newly revealed documents "help flesh out" the background to the DSM, notes Daniszewski.

The additional materials provide more evidence for duplicity by both Blair and Bush - but Kaplan questions whether it's an open-and-shut case. He's staying skeptical, and draws on Michael Kinsley's "Officer Barbardy" skepticism ("what's New Here?") in a Sunday Washington Post article. In fact, Kaplan suggests the new memos' emergence "weakens" the anti-Bush case. He contends that the "memos do not show, for instance, that Bush simply invented the notion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that Saddam posed a threat to the region. In fact, the memos reveal quite clearly that the top leaders in the U.S. and British governments genuinely believed their claims." He's pushing it to say the Brits "quite clearly" bought the WMD argument. But worse, Kaplan does not address the legality issue; he does not use the term "legal" or "illegal" in his article. (American commentators just seem not to want to deal with the fundamental issue that the war was almost certainly illegal in international law!)

Kaplan then seems to get caught up in some tortured reasoning over the supposed meaning of "policy" being "fixed" versus "fixed around" the intelligence. He asks, "Does this distinction [between the two terms] matter? If all you want to know is whether Bush was deceptive, no; he was deceptive. If you want to know how government works, how officials make bad mistakes, yes; it matters a lot." (So does it matter, Fred? Make a clear decision.)

Anyway, my prime concern is over the MSM's conspiracy of silence up to now. And at least on this point, Kaplan makes a concession:

When the scholars write the big tomes on this sordid saga, they'll want to base their findings on primary-source documents—and here is one, flashing right before us. The Downing Street Memo will be a key footnote in the history books; it should have made front-page headlines in the daily broadsheets of history's first draft.
I should be clear on this. My prime concern is not over a right-left spin war over the memos (which are finally getting some media attention, thanks as well to the unstinting efforts of John Conyers in the House). My concern is that most of the apologist spin is coming from major news media figures - "Officer Barbradys" such as Kinsley and David Sanger - who didn't do their job. These are serious journalists. I expect Hannity, O'Reilly, Hume and John Gibson to underplay or dismiss the issue, but not Kinsley and Ifill and Matthews. Instead of engaging with this UK-originated issue, they try instead to cover their tracks. I don't put Kaplan in this camp - not quite - but he's not helping much to clarify the issue either.

Murdoch reads Fleet Street's last rites

2005-06-15T14:39:00.000-04:00

As Reuters becomes the last news agency to leave Fleet Street, in rolls Rupert Murdoch to give the last rites. According to Media Guardian, "The News International boss is to read the lesson at the journalists' church St Bride's at an afternoon service [today] commemorating the departure of Reuters, the last major British news organisation based in Fleet Street." Both the Guardian and The Independent offer interesting overviews of what was long the functional and spiritual home of the British press. The Independent includes a fascinating section on "The drinking, the socialising... and the stories."

Subversive C-SPAN

2005-06-15T08:02:00.000-04:00

Gore Vidal, writing a commentary in this week's The Nation, praises C-SPAN as "the one truly, if unconsciously, subversive media outlet in these United States." Why? Because its weekly broadcast of the Westminster Parliament's Question Time allows Americans "to observe British politics in full cry." He describes Question Time - when the Prime Minister is required to take hard-hitting questions from an always-raucous House of Commons, as "the only glimpse that most Americans will ever get of how democracy is supposed to work."

Vidal also notes that C-SPAN shows other UK-originated political programs, especially around UK election time. The example he gives is of a special broadcast of the three main party leaders being interrogated about the Iraq War by a UK studio audience (he's talking about a special presentation of BBC's Q&A program, itself called "Question Time" - I talked about it in London Calling back on May 1 - though C-SPAN also regularly showed episodes of BBC 2's flagship political affairs program, "Newsnight" throughout the recent UK election campaign). He notes, as many have, how wonderful it is to see a head of government have to face his skeptical people to explain why the country had to go to war. "Blair, for just going along, had to deal with savage, informed questions of a sort that Bush would never answer even if he were competent to do so."

The rest of Vidal's commentary focuses on Rep. John Conyers' efforts to uncover presidential election irregularities in Ohio, but Vidal's use of the British example to shine a harsh light on America's creaking democracy is interesting, especially because he recognizes the power of C-SPAN to provide that light. (And just for the record, I think Britain's own democracy is pretty creaky in places - but it is far more lively, and that's crucial, I believe.) In fact, C-SPAN is one of the - very few - hidden wonders of the American media, providing wonderful insights into American government and democracy for those willing to still seek out televised information rather than mindless entertainment. C-SPAN also provides insights into other countries' political systems, including those of Canada (which has its own version of Question Time, called "Question Period") and France (e.g., during its recent referendum over the EU constitution). But undoubtedly the bulk of C-SPAN's foreign coverage goes to Britain. The crown jewel in this coverage is of course Question Time, broadcast live on Wednesday mornings and repeated on Sunday evenings. But as mentioned before, other UK political programs get aired as well (albeit infrequently). C-SPAN also regularly covers professional forums for journalists and other media professionals, and many of the participants in these forums, I've noticed, have British accents and work for British organizations.

So C-SPAN comes under a significant amount of influence from the Brits. And yes, I think this influence truly is "subversive," even as these public service channels (C-SPAN 1 and 2) continue to fly under the radar of the rest of the U.S. media system.

BBC takes top prize in Canada

2005-06-14T08:34:00.000-04:00

We don't often talk about British media's impact north of the U.S. border on London Calling, but maybe we should. Canada continues to be an important market for UK media products. And the British product is highly regarded up there too - as was shown once again at the annual Banff World Television Festival - Canada's top international media event, currently underway in Banff, Alberta (click here for the festival site). According to the Canadian Press (published in the Globe & Mail), the BBC has just taken the top prize at the festival's awards ceremony; and, among the international awards, British shows bagged no less than nine trophies compared to just three each for the U.S., Japan, and Canada. The BBC alone captured six awards. The CP article calls it a "British invasion."

The BBC's series "Blackpool" (described as "A stylish British miniseries synthesizing music, gambling and drama" - though I haven't seen it) picked up the C$50,000 Global television grand prize.

The CBC notes that "more than 100 programmers and decision-makers are in Banff for the 26th annual event to represent broadcasters from around the world, including the CBC, the BBC, National Geographic Television, the Disney Channel, the Comedy Network, Germany's ZDF and Japan's NHK."

Of course, the BBC and other UK TV producers have a long history of involvement in Canada. In spite of Canada's strict domestic programming quotas and stiff competition from the United States, British producers have continued to export their products to Canada - not only on the public CBC, but also on commercial networks and now on BBC Canada - a "a general entertainment channel available on cable and satellite TV" and "a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Canadian broadcaster, Alliance Atlantis." BBC Canada, in other words, is similar in function to BBC America in the U.S., except that because of "Canada's broadcasting regulations, BBC Canada must carry a quota of Canadian programming."

NYT looks really stupid - and complicit

2005-06-14T07:41:00.000-04:00

Both Salon and Slate take a shot at the New York Times over how ridiculous the paper looks over its UK briefing paper story, written by David Sanger.

Slate's Today's Papers from June 13 awards the New York Times headline the No. 1 prize for "worst headline of the day." Notes Slate:

Salon's War Room section, titled "New York Times' Downing Street shuffle", notes that, "Scrambling to play catch-up on the unfolding Downing Street memo story, [yesterday's] New York Times latches onto a single phrase from a newly leaked eight-page briefing document in order to produce the Bush-friendly headline, 'Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made.'" Just to make sure we're clear, Salon reminds us that "The truth is, the briefing document in question, dated July 21, as well as the previously leaked memo, dated July 23, both stress repeatedly how the Bush administration, despite its public rhetoric, appeared committed to war with Iraq. But thanks to today's Bush-friendly spin, New York Times readers are getting a very different story." Here's how War Roominterprets (quite accurately, I believe) the NY Times's government-friendly spin:

"no political decisions"

The [New York] Times report "completely ignores the portion of the briefing document that raises questions about the legality of going to war." It ignores the part of the memo that clearly states, "Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law." To make the contrast clearer, War Room also draws us back to the portion of the new report by the Sunday Times of London that states quite clearly: "The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was 'necessary to create the conditions' which would make it legal." No reference to that in the NYT. Continues War Room:

Apparently the New York Times did not consider that to be newsworthy. Instead it focused on the notion that "no political decisions" had been made to invade Iraq. The problem here is that the briefing containing the phrase "no political decision" was written July 21, 2002, and the memo containing minutes from a senior meeting of British officials was written July 23, in which it was reported that Washington appeared bent on war. That is, the July 21 briefing paper was distributed to participants in preparation for the meeting two days later with Bush's closest intelligence advisors, where the updated details of war planning were then discussed -- and from which one conclusion reached by the Brits was: "Military action was now seen as inevitable."
The right-wing blogosphere had already latched onto the phrase in the original memo about "the intelligence were being fixed round the policy", arguing that the term could be interpreted in more benign ways (I don't agree, but the conservatives only need to muddy the waters on this, to provide just enough ambiguity to the situation in the eyes of the electorate.) Now the New York Times, in its first pronouncement on the issue, instantly tries to discredit the whole issue by focusing on the "no political decision" term - "a single clause of a single sentence in the 2,300-word memo". That's the conservative side's Talking Point right there. So much for the liberal New York Times. And David Sanger follows Gwen Ifill (and, I think Chris Matthews) and gets one of my silly "Officer Barbrady" awards! There'll be more to come, I'm sure.

Two different predictions for the FinTimes

2005-06-13T19:34:00.000-04:00

About to be placed on the auction block, perhaps to fall into the hands of Dow Jones, the company that owns her arch-rival the Wall Street Journal, or -- worse yet, perhaps, the clutches of Rupert Murdoch? Or is the Financial Times, now back into the profit column, doing just fine, thank you very much?

The Independent suggests the paper has lost its footing from the go-go '90s when it was the go-to girl. In article with the sub-head, "Demise of Ancien Régime makes Pink Paper sale a cert," Stephen Glover writes that its UK sales have fallen to 80,000 -- about half of what they were a decade ago. Yes, there have been increases in US and Asian circulation numbers, but the elite paper has lost sight of the UK financial scene as it focused too much on international growth. And that's not all, Glower reports criticisms range from dumbing down content (US influence, perhaps?) to being too pro-EU and pro Tony Blair. (Is there a paper left in Britain that hasn't spent the last few years sucking up to Blair? I guess that's one way he is a lot like Bush.)

In a different version of the pink paper's future, The Observer's James Robinson's article which appears in the Guardian Unlimited says the paper broke even in the last quarter of last year and has the WSJ European version on the ropes. Global expansion (now available in 140 countries) isn't hurting the FT, but is saving it "[T]he paper's future rests on global expansion . . . Most of its 426,803 circulation is split neatly between the UK, continental Europe and the US (about 130,000 in each), with about 35,000 sales in Asia, its newest market."

Robinson does note the FT has been accused of shoddy reporting of late but quotes editor Andrew Gowers dismissing the sale rumors as rubbish. Gowers does say that the FT may turn to a tabloid format (WSJ tried this in Europe to no avail) and other gimmicks such as the FT- PM distributed in London as a single sheet of A4 paper with a preview of the next day's contents.

And I suppose this is a central question for all the British media with grand plans of global, and in particular US expansion, do you end up dumbed down? with lower reporting standards? dropping your UK audience's needs for others? Or do those problems arising from the desperation that drives a media company to seek global markets already exist and are merely exacerbated by the moves?

Gwen Ifill: Defensive much?

2005-06-13T17:20:00.000-04:00

While on the subject of journalists' "strikingly defensive" tones, that reminded me of a moment on the ususally-quite-good Washington Week in Review, hosted by Gwen Ifill on PBS. Last Friday night's show brought up the issue of the DSM, albeit fleetingly. Strangely, even though Tony Blair's visit to the US was one of the main points of discussion, none of the respected group of senior inside-the-beltway journos thought to bring up the subject of the DSM until the dying seconds of the show. Interestingly, it was David Sanger of the NYT (the same David Sanger who wrote the "strikingly defensive" piece on the new briefing paper in today's paper) who brought up the issue in a last-minute question to Alexis Simendinger of the National Journal. He instantly downplayed the significance of the question as follows: "Alexis, you know, one of the sideshows of [Bush and Blair's] appearance together was they were actually asked in public together for the first time about this Downing Street memo" [my emphasis].

So now that "this Downing Street memo" thing was just a "sideshow", Sanger asked what it was about (you can read the original transcript here). Simendinger began to answer Sanger's question with the words, "Precook the intelligence" -- which was all she said before Sanger jumped back in: "That's right. There are other readings of that memo as well . . ." Simendinger apparently took the hint, because she then moved off the "precooking" part and focused her answer on how Blair and Bush were in lockstep on their answers ("No daylight" was her phrase -- "no s**t, Sherlock!" was my response: what about the substance of the charges?)

But then Ifill stepped in, and this was the most disillusioning aspect of the show, since I normally regard Ifill quite highly. After acknowledging that she had actually asked Blair about the memo in a News Hour interview earlier that week (incredibly, though, she did not ask a follow-up question on the matter!), she happily agreed with Simendinger that "they stayed lockstep on their answer." Then she put the matter to rest by paraprasing Blair's response, safely minimalizing it, and editorializing in her "we're wrapping up now" tone:

So that's that then: "I don't know how many different ways you can ask the same question." But when she had the chance, she did not ask Blair even one follow-up question on the matter! Safe to say my mouth was gaping open at this point. Defensive much, Gwen? Couldn't you possibly be thinking "I had a gaping opportunity to press Blair on this, and I blew it? Possibly? Here's a good question for Ifill: "What would Jeremy do?" (Jeremy Paxman, that is.)

Another clear example of the mainstream media's "It's Old News Now/We've Covered That/Everybody Knows About it/It's not That Big a Deal/Let’s Move On" tactic. Ho hum. I think I have to start dishing out "Officer Barbrady" awards to American journalists. Gwen Ifill gets one!

The Times acknowledges the blogosphere

2005-06-13T16:19:00.000-04:00

Here's something interesting I noticed all by myself :-) about Michael Smith's report on the second leaked British cabinet document in The Times of London; and since Juan Cole brings it up today (and since I first noticed the story on Cole's site), I'd better note it here and credit Cole accordingly. The interesting thing is Smith's crediting of the Internet in his story. He writes:

including many internet bloggers

Cole notes (quite correctly, I think): "If this story had broken in the 1970s, it probably would just have been buried by the mainstream US press and remained an oddity of UK's Fleet Street. But here you have the Times of London actually acknowledging the wind under its sails from the blogging world!"

Cole goes on to note Rep. John Conyers' www.downingstreetmemo.com web site and petition demanding answers on this issue from Bush. So, argues Cole, "Smith not only acknowledges the pressure put on the US corporate media by the bloggers, but he also points to a virtual social movement around the DSM, with emails and petitions circulating in the hundreds of thousands and giving the Democrats in Congress their first high-profile investigatory opportunity of the Bush presidency." He continues:

Times

As Cole also notes, in contrast to the almost complete US media silence on the original memo, at least some mainstream media are paying attention to the new cabinet paper -- including the Washington Post, which even put it on page A1 yesterday!

From my reading of this article, by Walter Pincus, it looks as if the Post is playing down the importance of the new document -- Pincus's piece focuses a lot of attention on the "lack of post-war planning" angle, and downplays the much more contentious issues of Bush's duplicity and the likely illegality of the invasion. Also, while it gives due recognition to Smith of the Times, it neglects to mention the role of the Internet. Instead it merely says that the DSM "has been the subject of debate since the London Sunday Times first published it May 1." (Debate? Where? Not in the pages of the Post. Is Pincus trying to sneak in an "Officer Barbrady" ruse?) Pincus then shows how gun-shy the Post still is on this issue, when he writes: "Opponents of the war say [the memo] proved the Bush administration was determined to invade months before the president said he made that decision". Is it not now possible to state clearly and unambiguously that, if you accept them as genuine, the memo and now the briefing paper, taken together, make it unambiguously clear that the Bush administration was determined to invade months before the president said he made that decision? Especially as Pincus then acknowledges that "neither Bush nor Blair has publicly challenged the authenticity of the July 23 memo"?

Anyway, Cole argues that the page 1 treatment by the WP "is clearly in part a result of the enormous pressure the bloggers and the public have put on the Post on this issue. Indeed, it is probably the case that having "ombudsmen" at the papers of record, who discuss and explain editorial decisions, is itself a response to the interactivity of contemporary culture, exemplified by the internet." The New York Times also has a story on the new document by David Sanger (in today's paper), but it is "deeply buried" in the paper (don't have a page number yet) and is, according to a contributer to Cole's site (Stanford linguist Jean-Philippe Marcotte), "strikingly defensive" in tone. Now why would the New York Times be defensive on this issue?

Another UK document surfaces

2005-06-12T22:58:00.000-04:00

Juan Cole reports on his blog that The Times of London "has dropped another bombshell document concerning the planning of the Iraq war in Washington and London." This time the document -- apparently leaked to the Times -- is the Cabinet Office briefing paper for the minutes of the meeting, now immortalized as the DSM. Says Cole:

The leaked Cabinet office briefing paper for the July 23, 2002, meeting of principals in London, the minutes of which have become notorious as the Downing Street Memo, contains key context for that memo. The briefing paper warns the British cabinet in essence that they are facing jail time because Blair promised Bush at Crawford in April, 2002, that he would go to war against Iraq with the Americans.
The Times report is here, and the contents of the briefing paper are reproduced here.

Is this is for real it is indeed a "bombshell".

The Secret to HBO's Success?

2005-06-12T21:05:00.000-04:00

An earlier post noted that HBO would be showing "The Girl in the Cafe," a politically oriented movie about reducing Third World poverty, later this month. Earlier this year, the cable company showed "Dirty War,"a fictional account of a dirty bomb dropped in the middle of London -- just the kind of production the networks would be way too frightened to run. Wouldn't want Condi making a phone call now would we? Of course it's well known that HBO pretty much has been the best thing on American television in recent years.

What might be less known but of interest on this blog is that the president of HBO films is a Brit, Colin Callender, who got his start with the Royal Court theater in London. Callender made his name in the 1980s as producer of Channel 4's "Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby." After working for HBO NYC, Callender was tapped to head the company's film division in 1999 leading Variety to dub him that "dashing Brit."

Under Callender's tutelage, HBO films has created not only some of the best television of recent memory, but productions that are often alternative or out-right risky ranging from Mira Nair's "Hysterical Blindness," to the quintessential LA-movie, Patricia Cardosa's "Real Women Have Curves." Unlike many Americans, he sees great possibilities in adapting plays to the television screen, witness Mike Nicol's amazing "Angels in America" and the heart-breaking "Wit" with Emma Thompson, both of which were award--winning HBO shows.

In a rather interesting David Gritten interview with Callender done last year, the Daily Telegraph reported that part of HBO's success seems to be their adoption of British television practices such as limiting shows (such as "The Sopranos") to a shorter season instead of the usual 22-show season found here. "That was taking a leaf out of British television's book," Callender said. "In America, there was bewilderment when Fawlty Towers ended after only 12 episodes. We looked at the success of a series with a limited run like I Claudius. That was in the back of everyone's mind." Limiting the season is said to keep the writing and acting fresh.

Likewise, the newspaper reports that the HBO practice of releasing movies in cinemas as well is on television is a practice started in the 1980s by Channel 4 with hits such as the made-for-TV "My Beautiful Laundrette."

The article continues:

"So it's no accident Callender is British? "No accident at all," he said, smiling. "Remember, some of the best movies about America were by British filmmakers - John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, Michael Apted with Coal Miner's Daughter, Sam Mendes with American Beauty.

"Being from elsewhere does give you a slightly different perspective. In America, you're something of an outsider. But, in TV and films, HBO as a company feels it's an outsider. The fact I'm a Brit is part and parcel of that."

About Ofcom and the BBC

2005-06-12T14:45:00.000-04:00

A word or two about Ofcom, the UK government's TV regulator, and its ongoing battle with the BBC. Ofcom (or the Office of Communications) is basically Britain's version of the FCC. However, Although Ofcom's designed to be an overall regulator of all British broadcasting, replacing five different regulatory agencies, it was not given ultimate authority over the BBC when it was formed. This is something it would very much like to rectify.

As I mentioned in mediaville, Ofcom currently is locked in a battle with the BBC over ultimate control of the public corporation. According to Media Guardian, Ofcom has challenged reform proposals set in a government green paper on the BBC's royal charter, published last week. Ofcom argues that the proposal to maintain an independent BBC board - called the "BBC Trust", replacing the old Board of Governors - is not radical enough.

Instead, Ofcom would prefer to see the creation of a new, independent body (doubtless under its own oversight) that will also give other UK broadcasters a slice of the BBC license fee pie. At one point, culture secretary Tessa Jowell, seemed inclined to agree, though she has apparently backed off. The green paper (government jargon for a "a tentative government report of a proposal without any commitment to action; the first step in changing the law [prior to] the production of a white paper") seems to keep BBC reforms to a minimum.

Back in March, when Jowell announced the continuation of the license fee, a new BBC Trust, and a new 10-year charter, she said that the BBC was "as much a part of British life as the NHS" and should retain its independence from the government. But worryingly, she also said that, "like the NHS it faces the need to change so that it can be as effective in the future as it has been in the past." She also "recommended that its funding should be reviewed within the next charter period," and this is the opening that Ofcom apparently seeks to exploit.

"... 'Cause I'm as free as a Freeview ..."

2005-06-12T10:19:00.000-04:00

(With apologies to Lynyrd Skynyrd)

We've often talked on London Calling about how the British model of media-public, open-access information sharing - anchored primarily around the publicly supported BBC - is so attractive in comparison with the profit-based model prevalent in the US. We often focus on broadcasting and the Internet - especially the latter, where American websurfers are able directly to benefit from the wealth of riches available from across the pond. But it's also worth considering another area of British media where a public, open-access model seems to be beating back the rapacious big media companies, at least for the time being: and that would be in the realm of digital over-the-air television, and especially a completely free terrestrial digital service available across Britain, called Freeview.

Digital television in the UK is streets ahead of the United States. There are now some "15.4m digital households, a rise of 643,000 or 4.4% [over last year] meaning almost 62% of UK households have digital TV." The number is growing by some 50,000 a week, and will continue to grow rapidly. The government plans to begin switching off the analog signal in 2008 - and unlike in the U.S., this is a firm deadline, and will in effect complete the national move to multichannel television.

As the digital multichannel pie gets bigger, a public model of digital broadcasting is making a serious challenge to the for-profit approach. According to MediaGuardian, based on figures supplied by Ofcom, Freeview now atttracts five million homes in the UK - or one-third of the entire digital market in that country. This is up from 25% penetration of the digital market in first quarter 2004. The article notes that Freeview has a head of steam behind it, and "is likely to be boosted further by Channel 4's recent decision to put its entertainment channel, E4 - and E4+1 - on Freeview for the first time, as well as the addition of ITV3.

The article quotes Andy Duncan, CEO of Channel 4, as saying that Freeview was now a "critical platform alongside satellite and cable and has to be taken seriously". You bet your sweet bippy it does!

Some background: According to Wikipedia:

DVB-T

2002

ITV Digital

set-top box costing around £30 to £100

(See also the Freeview web site.)

In fact, the set-top boxes, which comprise the only additional (one-time) expense, have come down in price, and can now be had for £30 - £40 (approx. $60-$80). So all in all, Freeview is an amazing deal - almost unbelievably so. Just for the record, I live in a part of the United States dominated by Time Warner Cable, one of the two giants operators that dominate the U.S. cable market (the other is Comcast). In Time Warner Cable-land it now costs between $55 and $65 per month to receive basic digital cable service (and that's for more than 100 channels that, taken together, have less of interest on them than the five UK terrestrial channels available for free, even without Freeview, across the UK - and Freeview has a lot more than five free channels).

I saw Freeview myself for the first time last summer. My brother and his family live in an area (the Scottish Highlands) where traditional terrestrial TV reception could be pretty dodgy, so the ability to receive crisp, clear digital reception of BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV1, Channel 4, and Channel 5 would probably be worth the price of a set-top digital box on its own. But they can now get at least 30 channels for free, including the following:

ITV2
BBC Three
BBC Four
BBC News 24
ITV News Channel
Sky News
Sky Sports News
BBC Parliament
Sky Travel
UKTV History
The Hits
UKTV Bright Ideas
CBBC Channel and CBeebies (both children's BBC channels)
ITV3

Presumably this explains Freeview's expanding base - and also why cable-delivered television (which still requires subscription) has suffered, seeing its share of the digital TV decline, "falling from 18.4% in the first quarter of 2004 to 16.5% for the same period this year." In fact, cable TV has never made major inroads into the UK market - it has always been stymied by the excellent fare available on terretsrial television and by the fact that, unlike the US, satellite broadcasting took off first in the UK (back in 1989).

The necessary infrastructure component comes from significant UK government investment in digital transmission technology (including nationwide transmitters and repeaters, multiplexing and digital compression) to provide an extensive networked service - again, for free - to viewers across the UK. Meanwhile, in addition to the 5 million Freeview homes, "another 445,000 homes have access to free digital television through "Freesat" - former Sky subscribers who have kept their digiboxes." Now I'm sure people have complaints about this service, but you can't complain about the price(!), and the key thing is that it is a service that considers the wants and needs of the TV-viewing community, as opposed to considering the wants and needs of for-profit corporations first and last. Not surprisingly, for-profit entities in the UK are feeling some pressure - even BSkyB, which "remains the market leader with 7.3 million subscribers," or a 48% share. It'll be interesting to see how long Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting, which was one of Freeview's founding members (presumably hoping to entice viewers to its subscription channels), continues to support a service that is pretty attractive on its own.

In America, we benefit immensely from the free access to information and services on the web (anchored by the public behemoth of the BBC). What we don't see is the parallel operation in digital television - access limited to those living in the UK, of course - which is building a robust, working, public service alternative to the for-profit, pay-per-view system that is often seen as the only option left for national television in the United States. This provides a very appealing model for those U.S.-based dreamers among us who wish for a public service media system that can adapt to the new technological environment and avoid the gated community media model (based on the ability to pay) that increasingly predominates in the U.S.

The media's "Officer Barbrady" ruse, or Can the DSM break big anymore?

2005-06-10T08:47:00.000-04:00

This is a long post, sorry, but, ahem, I think it's worth getting down on (electronic) paper. Eric Boehlert, writing in Salon, provides a fine overview of the story so far surrounding the DSM in the States. Titled "Bush lied about war? Nope, no news there!", it asks why it's taken more than a month for the U.S. press to even begin covering the Downing Street memo. There are some interesting insights in here, but Boehlert seems to be tending toward the point of view that the media simply can't or won't "break" this as a big story now, because to do so would clearly show them up for not breaking the story weeks ago. To provide support for this pov, Boehlert examines a favorite strategy employed by news organizations caught out not covering a major story when they should. This is (what I'm calling) the "It's Old News Now/We've Covered That/Everybody Knows About it/It's not That Big a Deal/Let’s Move On" strategy applied to the DSM. Actually, it kind of reminds me of the favorite refrain of Officer Barbrady in South Park, who, after any strange, out-of-the-ordinary public happening, automatically downplays its significance by telling everyone to "Move along now, Nothing to see here!" So maybe I should call it the "Officer Barbrady" ruse. That's catchy! The kids will like that. :-)

Boehlert focuses first on Tim Russert's performance on last Sunday's Meet the Press to show how this works. Russert asked a question about the memo to Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman, but it was the way he phrased it that was interesting. Boehlert notes that "In setting up his question to Mehlman on Sunday, Russert said, 'Let me turn to the now famous Downing Street memo'" (emphasis added). The next point might be obvious to the few of us who have been following this story carefully, but for the vast majority of Americans it won't be obvious, so it needs to be spelled out. States Boehlert:

the first time NBC News had even mentioned the document or the controversy surrounding it

Did Russert have any notion of what he was saying? Was he doing an Officer Barbrady?

Anyway, the Boehlert article notes that the story is finally getting some very limited play in the mainstream media - thanks to the U.S. blogosphere that has been getting its information from overseas (overwhelmingly UK) news sources. But this follows what has been up to now a "breathtaking lack of interest" in the story by the U.S. media - in spite of the glaringly obvious news pegs. Remember (and I have to keep reiterating this to maintain my grip on reality) the DSM, which implicates both the UK and US administrations in outright lying or serious deception (take your pick) had been leaked to the Times of London and printed way back on May 1 and, coming days before the general election, generated extensive press coverage in the UK. But in the US? I repeat the data provided by Boehlert to show the extent to which this story barely existed in the United States.

approximately 20 mentions

combined

263 times

Scott McClellan

19 daily briefings

940 questions

Exactly two

counted on two hands

I'd say this is pretty breathtaking. But what's even scarier to me are the numerous instances recounted by Boehlert where TV and print journalists feigned either ignorance or disinterest. Take, for example, this May 25 exchange between actor and activist Tim Robbins and Chris Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball" (recounted by Boehlert). I’d call this another attempt to “do an officer Barbrady”:

Now that the story is finally finding some "legs" thanks to the ceaseless efforts of those in the blogosphere, the mainstream media are desperately trying to lessen its impact. As Boehlert notes:

AfterDowningStreet.org

This is the aforementioned "It's Old News Now/We've Covered That/Everybody Knows About it/It's not That Big a Deal/Let’s Move On" thing, aka “doing an Officer Barbrady”. And I don't think the "disturbing" characterization is strong enough. This whole thing is positively Orwellian. The media are learning a very dangerous, and seemingly effective trick: That if you go from completely ignoring a story for weeks or months to pretending that it's been done to death and is old news and can't we move on to something else, you can avoid the nasty controversy of actually breaking a story and following it up, because that will only bring instant opprobrium from the legions of conservative critics who will cry “liberal bias” and incessantly slam you for being "liberal", "anti-Bush", "unpatriotic" etc. And the mainstream news media are so gun-shy now that they'll go quite far to avoid that. After all, why bother? They don't need the hassle. And everyone's already made up their minds about Bush, right? (Right ....?) Let's just get back to Michael Jackson. Meanwhile, most Americans (those who still get their news from neutered domestic TV sources) will accept this obfuscation at face value - after all, research consistently shows that most viewers can't remember specifics of TV news reports, only a few salient (i.e., constantly repeated) news stories and the general tone of the coverage. If the tone of the coverage is "that's old news, nothing to get worried about" - or if the issue is ignored altogether - viewers don't get riled up by anything. The story dies - in fact, for the vast majority of Americans, the story never existed in the first place! Like I say, Orwellian. But back to Boehlert:

Also, as I mentioned before, I don't think the “bridge” from alternative to mainstream media is as strong on the liberal side as the one for the conservative media - thought that might be changing, slowly.

Slowly, the Downing Street memo is getting that attention. "Stories are starting to trickle in now only because so many ordinary people are raising hell about it," says David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, which launched on May 26. This week, thanks to constant exposure on the Air America radio network, the site is receiving 1.7 million hits a day, according to Swanson. "My colleagues are doing more radio shows than we can fit in during a day."
So, some hope, maybe. Let's see.

Addendum: Here are some useful memo links: (U.S.) Downing Street Memo site; AfterDowningStreet.org; and the Times of London original memo site.

A Grand Media Strategy that's worked

2005-06-09T15:34:00.000-04:00

Since I brought up the news media's timidity in the face of concerted Bush administration attacks, I thought it'd be good to turn to Sidney Blumenthal for some historical context. Blumenthal, writing in The Guardian yesterday, uses the current Mark Felt/Deep Throat revelation to draws a direct line from Nixon's to Bush's Grand Media Strategy:

New York Times

Mark Felt

BTW: Unfortunately, Blumenthal also contends that the press, even during its finest hour, was being used by the intelligence services. He notes a story by "the Albany Times Union of upstate New York, unreported so far by any major outlet." Apparently "Felt was not working as 'a disgruntled maverick ... but rather as the leader of a clandestine group' of three other high-level agents to control the story by collecting intelligence and leaking it." Hmmmmmm. "For more than 30 years the secrecy around Deep Throat diverted attention to who Deep Throat was rather than what Deep Throat was - a covert FBI operation in which Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was almost certainly an unwitting asset."

Interesting - and thoroughly depressing if true.

Richard Curtis gets real . . . again!

2005-06-09T14:10:00.000-04:00

Great insight from Doctor Media about how the British might be uniquely situated to insert global political messages into entertainment "without raising the rest of the world's [and America's] hackles - at least in part when their message is about global cooperation and assistance as opposed to the threats and bullying ...". I thought it'd be worthwhile adding something about that last point - that the Brits just might be able to have a go even at U.S. "bullying" and get away with it.

Take that lovely lovely man, Richard Curtis. Choire Sicha in the aforementioned LA Times article on Curtis and "The Girl in the Café" (starring the wonderful Bill Nighy and Scottish Trainspotting "girl" Kelly Macdonald) missed something when he (she?) reported that Curtis in his movies has "largely been ignorant of concerns beyond fat thighs and the rocky roads of romance." But, I ask you(!), what about the key scene in 2003's Love Actually, where the British prime minister (played by Hugh Grant) finally stands up to the philandering sleazoid American president (Billy-Bob Thornton) - and at a press conference no less! Here, courtesy of imdb.com, is the exchange.

And then the whole conference room bursts into wondrous applause, and in subsequent scenes all of Britain is buzzing about how the PM stood up to the Pres and isn't that wonderful. One in the eye for the yanks there, eh?

Yes, I know it was all cheesy and completely implausible, but I bet most Brits secretly really enjoyed that scene (I know I did!). So this has got to be a little political, no? Maybe something America should be concerned about? Yet Love Actually was pretty successful in America, making at least $60 million here by February 2004. But I don't remember a right-wing backlash against Curtis and British film generally. (Was there one?) Did Curtis get his sucker punch in under the radar? Or did Hannity and Co. merely think "It's just those eccentric Brits, bless 'em"? "It's only Hugh Grant, he's so cute"?; "What was that about Harry Potter?" Or what? So yes, I think there really is something to this idea that the Brits can take shots at the States and get away with it - while the French or anyone else trying it on would have to dive for cover. Good one, Doctor Media! And the whole G8/Live Aid thing is going to be really fascinating as it develops, and its influence is felt in the US. Stand by for action!

Fox, Fox, Fox , Fox world Part 2

2005-06-09T12:45:00.000-04:00

Columbia Journalism Review has a piece in the most recent issue speculating on the future of Fox after Rupert Murdoch relinquishes control. The 73-year-old is, as Neil Hickey puts it, the “master of a $54 billion domain.” What happens to that empire when he can no longer control it?

Hickey ultimately argues that control will stay with the Murdoch progeny who have long been groomed to succeed the emperor: Lachlan, 33, (see earlier post for more on Lachlan) runs HarperCollins, Fox, and the New York Post. CJR describes him as conservative as his father. James, 31, runs the British Sky Broadcasting, and CJR paints him as an “openly liberal . . . Clinton-Gore supporter” (too much time in British journalism, eh?) Elisabeth, 36, has also worked for the family business in lesser roles than her brothers.

His other children who look unlikely to get involved include Prudence MacLeod, 46, who lives in England and does not work in the family business, and his latest offspring by yet another wife are ages 3 and 2.

Hickey points out that another media mogul, John Malone of Liberty Media Corporation, recently upped his percentage of News Corp. shares to 18 percent, but guesses Malone doesn’t and can’t really ever assume control of the company.

Hickey: “What is certain is that after Murdoch departs, the company will never be the same. He has collected media properties the way Charles Foster Kane filled his mansion. Yet Murdoch also has created media assets virtually out of thin air — the Fox News Channel, the Fox Broadcast Network, satellite systems, regional sports networks, The Weekly Standard, the forthcoming business news and reality channels.”

How long can Murdoch stay actively involved in running the business? Can the children really continue his ever-expanding global expansions? CJR speculates that younger son James could jump ahead of Lachlan to seize control -- would we then have a political re-orientation by the so-called liberal James? Or are the children, like dear old dad, strictly about the money?

In related news, London Calling would be remiss if it didn't mention Rupert's recent award from the Big Media Hall of Shame. Murdoch was recognized at last month's Media Reform conference in St. Louis for his efforts to successfully lobby to have US media laws changed to his benefit. In the UK in 2001, "he pressured The Sun, Britain’s most-read newspaper, to drop its conservative affiliation to endorse Tony Blair; Blair later gave Murdoch the nod on a series of concessions that would allow him to control more British media. " See the Free Press website for the most recent run-down of his global holdings.