These are some of the things that have caught my attention lately. It’s a more eclectic mix than just the news business, but then so’s life:
- World ‘must tackle space threat’ | BBC News — Whilst we fret about the credit crunch: “The international community must work together to tackle the threat of asteroids colliding with Earth, a leading UN scientist says.
Professor Richard Crowther’s comments come as a group of space experts called for a co-ordinated science-led response to the asteroid threat.
The Association of Space Explorers (ASE) says missions to intercept asteroids will need global approval.” - Lies, damned lies and actually just more damned lies | Virtual Economics — “I am overjoyed by the proposal contained in the Queen’s speech to subject benefit claimants to lie detector tests. Not that I have any particular axe to grind with benefit claimants, nor any real hope that that lie detectors are more than pseudoscience — I’m just delighted by the precedent it sets that it is acceptable for dealings between citizens and the state to be monitored by lie detector where there is a reasonable expectation that one party is lying at the expense of the other.
So I look forward to extending this precedent to all my dealings with the government: with my local authority (“so you’re quite sure I need to pay this bill again even though I paid it last month and you seem to have simply lost the cheque?”); with the police (“just hold this wire officer while you tell me precisely what law I’m breaking and under what authority I am being detained”); and of course PMQs and all other Commons debates (“so these weapons of mass destruction, Tony. Really sure?”)”
- Journalist or campaigner? You can be both with City’s new postgraduate degree — Postgraduate Study, Postgraduate — The Independent — “City University … is steadily building a reputation as the Oxbridge of journalism.”
- World Service dropped report on piracy after Foreign Office request | The Guardian — “The BBC has been accused of putting the independence of the World Service at risk after agreeing to pull an episode of the series From Our Own Correspondent following a request from the Foreign Office.
Angry World Service staff and union officials said the decision to withdraw the programme, about the Somalia pirate hijackings, could “seriously damage” the Foreign Office-funded operation’s reputation for independent journalism.
The programme, about how reporter Mary Harper was able to speak to the pirates holding the Sirius Star and its captain, had been broadcast on Radio 4 and 48 times on the World Service network before the Foreign Office intervention on Sunday.
Sources said the FCO had asked for the programme to be pulled as it claimed that after each broadcast the phonelines to the Sirius Star were blocked by callers — even though the number was not aired — and that it was hampering efforts by Saudi Arabia to end the hijack.”
- Why you should take reports from the scene of a massacre with a grain of salt | Jack Shafer — “[H]ere’s an assortment of misinformation, quarreling facts, and bunk published by the world press about the Mumbai rampage.”
- Eliot Spitzer: We’re using the bailouts to rebuild giant financial institutions. But what we really need are small ones | Slate — “We are realizing that the service sector—all the lawyers, investment bankers, advertising agencies, and accountants—follows its clients and wealth creation. This, not over-regulation, is the reason investment-banking activity has begun to migrate overseas.”
