Category: Media

  • Great unequal contests of our time: BBC vs. Google

    Martin Belam writes one of those blogs I read so religiously I almost never bother to pass on what is actually written. Let me make up for it. Here is Martin addressing Ed Roussel‘s piece on the Guardian PDA blog (itself a kind of Christmas footie match given the Comment is Free/My Telegraph trench warfare):

  • The death of TV reviewing: an explanation

    Why is TV reviewing dying on its knees? The Daily Telegraph has just bid farewell to its TV reviewer. Is television no longer worthy of criticism? Buzz. Dumb question. What actually has happened is that reviewing has been bypassed altogether. Take Channel 5’s Strangelove: Married to the Eiffel Tower*, a programme which featured women who…

  • What The Papers Say – RIP?

    I met the team the team behind What The Papers Say up in Manchester before Christmas, helping to sift through the list for their annual awards.

  • Democracy, markets and the BBC

    I have frequently found myself talking to reform-minded individuals in the Middle East. Many like the idea of democracy. They admire it. Personally they are liberal, progressive, secular. And yet the closer they are to power – or when holding office – the more they concede that the time is not yet ripe. Their work…