adrian monck

Month: May 2007

  • Why no Berlusconi news channel?

    One thing I didn’t get round to blogging from the excellent Reuters Institute event at the European Studies Centre was the line from Mediaset CFO Marco Giordani. Mediaset is the Italian media giant owned by Silvio Berlusconi who you would think would want his own news channel. But Giordani said that despite the large numbers…

  • Fox on Fox

    The 400th episode of The Simpsons…Lisa Simpson: “How can Fox News be so conservative when the Fox Network keeps airing raunchy shows? They don’t fit together.” Kent Brockman: “Fox deliberately runs shows that will earn them huge fines they can then funnel through the FCC straight to the Republican Party. Everybody in the media knows…

  • Fragment

    Arranging to meet a hardcore reporter chum, I suggested a mutually convenient bar in central London. “Hope you’re feeling lucky,” he laughed. “Why?” I asked. “Last bloke I met there was blown to bits six weeks later by a suicide bomber.” His last guest, of course, went home to Iraq.

  • Madeleine McCann: defending ritual

    James Carey, ancient journalism professor, believed in news as ritual (something he may have got from Hegel). A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs. So is ritual…