Back in November 2008, I was at the Summit on the Global Agenda, an ambitious attempt by the World Economic Forum to bring academics, policymakers and business people together to discuss some of the more interesting challenges facing all of us.

And also to see if we could make any proposals that might address some of the concerns we shared.

My group looked at the media – well, journalism to be precise. The discussion was wide-ranging, opinionated, and almost impossible to draw into a neat and tidy bow. As anyone involved with the news media can attest, the mesmeric effects of watching the collapse of organizations, institutions and business models can be simultaneously terrifying and paralysing.

In an attempt to cut the Gordian knot of differing diagnoses, our chair Pat Mitchell, president of the Paley Center for Media and former President and CEO of PBS, had a bold idea to drag us together. You can see her talk about it on the clip below.

The idea was for a global news network, aimed at reporting problems (climate change, migration, etc. etc.) that went beyond national and regional media remits. Something that might hold transnational institutions and corporations to account, that they might do what they do a little better (e.g. not waste so much donor cash) – important things.

Like any bold proposal sketched out briefly over a couple of pages, it met with mixed enthusiasm.

Now I see it has come to the attention of Cliff Kincaid. Cliff doesn’t allow comments on his blog, so I couldn’t put him right on quite how much he manages to get wrong (including many of the people who didn’t make it to our discussions).

But to give you an idea of where Cliff is coming from, or perhaps from where he’s falling off, his post is titled Global Television For Our Future Global Leader:

Surprise and even shock were among the reactions to my recent column about how elite members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, were considering a proposal for a new global television network to usher in a state of “global governance.” It sounded authoritarian, even totalitarian, to some.

I must admit to being flattered – ok, bemused – at the thought that our group of J-school deans, media owners and think-tankers could act as midwives for a global imperium.

But luckily, we have a conference call coming up in a week’s time. Now I look at Cliff’s piece, I realise it’s time we moved on from the rather limited goal of considering the media to discussing who our new world leader will actually be. Personally, I’m going to veto Persian cat owners. Allergies, you know.