No sign yet of a language guide to go alongside the ethics statement at Al Jazeera. But, searching their archive of print stories online, they have reported a suicide bombing at Netanya in Israel as a bomber has blown himself up – which to me implies incompetence rather than intentionality. In the same report they referred to human bombing. They are however using the term suicide bomber in the context of violence in Iraq, which seems inconsistent.
It was a little unexpected last night to hear Helen Boaden and Len Downie, thoughtful people both, give such positive views of Fox News. Maybe sympathy is the revenge of the liberal media. Downie described FNC president Roger Ailes as a political consultant who knew how to put on ‘a show,’ – well, it sounded like praise when he said it!
Boaden referred to FNC’s high trust ratings amongst Republicans (probably referring to the box right from Pew), and the possibility that it did in fact live up to its motto: We Report. You Decide. Personally I don’t like trust. If it was relabelled credulity, we wouldn’t feel half so smug about it. And Fox is an entertaining watch, and Boaden was right that British media professionals can be smug and naive about America and Americans, but I think Fox raises many more questions…still that’s another blog.
As for the news, I think the Reuters Institute will have its work cut out. Here are some of my favourite questions, and I’m sure you have many more besides:
*Can we be relied on to get informed via the news?
*Should we incentivize citizens to become informed?
*Does democracy require an ‘informed’ public?
*Is ‘accountability journalism’ a public service?
*What space should a democratic media give to anti-democratic voices?
That’s the first lecture sorted.
Postscript: There ought to be a rule about bloggers sitting next to one another. But for an alternative perspective, you can read Glenda Cooper‘s account of last night’s proceedings here. And, despite my own Gilligan-esque slackness, she took notes in real shorthand. And the picture is St Anne’s, where Tim Gardam, who helped bring the Reuters Institute into being, is Principal.