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New news channels
This week’s Economist has a surprisingly weak piece, A new fashion for state-owned English-language television news. It ends a hackneyed review with this conclusion: For audiences, having more news channels should be a boon. But they are expensive, and in many places the burden will fall on taxpayers. Some lucky people (in America, especially) may…
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Distorted information environments
This how the Daily Mail reported Peter Horrocks‘ speech. A tad harsh…but they do inhabit a ‘distorted information environment’. Here’s what former BBC producer Phil Woolas MP, Labour minister for community cohesion (a sort of ministerial Pritt®) reckons the corporation is for: Their job is to give a microphone to credible organisations and people, and…
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Fudge
Does James Murdoch write his own speeches? I only ask because his recent laudable articulation of free market principles and consumer choice in broadcasting contained this little nugget, or nougat: Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the BBC has managed so far to escape any meaningful oversight by concocting, as governance, fudge that Thornton’s…
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Fox hunting
Entertaining post at Media Matters, picking up on Fox News host, Bill O’Reilly. During a discussion with a Fox News military analyst on his radio show, O’Reilly got a little carried away: I hate to blow my own horn, Colonel, but … on the night that Saddam’s statue fell … I said on the air,…