From the category archives:

Journalists

Censoring Arab journalists

January 29, 2008

A Middle East­ern journ­al­ist friend recently had an oppor­tun­ity to sit round a table with a senior polit­ical fig­ure from the region. He asked the man a fair, but crit­ical ques­tion. The politi­cian brushed it aside. When the meet­ing ended, the politi­cian sought him out for a quiet word, along the lines of: Your own­ers sup­port our pos­i­tion on […]

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Breaks off News At Ten

January 14, 2008

News At Ten returned. With no com­mer­cial break. Delib­er­ate? Per­man­ent? Odd feel­ing in what was oth­er­wise a very famil­iar pro­gramme pack­age (well, I did work on it years ago). But down to busi­ness. You want an old-fashioned cri­tique of an old-fashioned show? Start with the Bongs (the head­lines). Hasnat Khan exclusive/Diana Geor­gina Edmonds murder Ant­arc­tic spe­cial report […]

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The return of News At Ten

January 13, 2008

The old wis­dom would have been that the com­ing News At Ten battle is between two types of tele­vi­sion news. One side, the Beeb, driven by the need to inform. At its best patri­cian and pro­voc­at­ive. At its worst dull. The other side, ITN, driven by the need to tell stor­ies, at its best emotionally […]

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What’s gone wrong at Al Jazeera English?

January 4, 2008

Check out the anonym­ous piece below on Al Jaz­eera Eng­lish, pos­ted — bizar­rely — in the com­ments sec­tion of a Dubai media blog on 26 Decem­ber, 2007. It cer­tainly chimes with some of the things I’ve heard. And fur­ther below, more on soft-pedalling re. Saudi Ara­bia at AJE’s Arabic sis­ter chan­nel: What’s gone wrong at Al […]

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Do Readers Know What They Want?

January 2, 2008

That was the title of a speech by Vinod Mehta, editor of Indian magazine Out­look, as he picked up the Inter­na­tional Press Insti­tute award for expos­ing cor­rup­tion and incom­pet­ence in the Indian navy. Here is a little excerpt: [C]ontent is a mix of what the reader wants and what he does not want. The trick is to marry […]

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Policy Exchange vs. Newsnight: Round 2

December 17, 2007

Here is Policy Exchange chair­man Charles Moore using his Tele­graph column to attack News­night editor Peter Bar­ron in round 2 of the pop­u­lar Think Tank vs. BBC battle. Moore, a former editor of the Spec­tator, the Sunday and the Daily Tele­graph does not do him­self any favours, as you can see. Over the sum­mer, Policy Exchange produced […]

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