-
Northern Ireland: now just a police state
Belfast’s own Peter Barron blogs on the end of British army operations in Northern Ireland after 38 years. Having taken a call from the IRA announcing they were going to blow up Whitehall Place, walked through streets paved with broken glass after having had my windows blown out in the Bishopsgate bomb, and having spent…
-
Stockwell 2: Policing public information
The IPCC‘s Stockwell 2 report is undoubtedly the best account of the management confusion surrounding the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. Well, it’s the only one. There is a key problem. The central claim in all police communications was that de Menezes was challenged, refused to comply and was then shot. This, Stockwell 2…
-
When do security journalists stop being journalists?
I‘d love to see the difference between a US Defence Dept Video News Release and the piece Frank Gardner presented tonight on the BBC 10. Go view it. The pay-off to his online copy notes: …until terrorists actually detonate a dirty bomb, the funding for coping for one [sic] is thin on the ground. Some…
-
Advertising, content and discontinuity
I was just reading Vin Crosbie‘s latest post in which he repeats the line that newspaper circulation has been falling for 30 years. (Leo Bogart noted that it was 1971 when total US newspaper circulation dropped below total number of households.) Since the 1980s TV has been facing similar decline. Crosbie says it’s all about…