adrian monck

Month: February 2008

  • Arguing against Nick Davies 2

    At the RSA today to argue with Nick Davies in person about (follow the link to buy a copy) Flat Earth News. One of Nick’s claims – not central to his book, but articulated in his stump speech – is that the British media gullibly accepted the Blair government’s case for war in Iraq, based…

  • Off topic: defending democracy

    The British foreign minister has just made a speech about defending democracy. You can read it all here. Except that it rings a bit hollow, because democracy is barely practised in British society. Britain runs instead on a kind of mediated patronage that would be familiar to Wolsey, Walpole or Wellington. Crown authority is delegated…

  • Can you make kids media literate?

    What exactly is media literacy? The British government takes it terribly seriously. At least it charges the UK broadcast regulator, Ofcom, with promoting it. And they chose to promote it with the BBC by putting on a news day – called School Report – for kids aged 12 to 13. You could retitle the exercise…

  • What we get from the news…

    In the turgid world of academic writing on communications you have to look hard to find the gems. Here is one of them. A survey of people’s viewing habits in old communist East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The gem (IMHO) is the last line, by the way: Apart from time and income, communication…