-
“Balance” in diplomacy: lessons for journalism
I am sorry to say I have never had much time for diplomats. Prejudice, you understand. Reading former British diplomat Carne Ross’s enjoyable and self-critical memoir – Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite – hasn’t exactly changed my mind. But as well as reminding UK tax-payers that they could save a lot of money…
-
What’s gone wrong at Al Jazeera English?
Check out the anonymous piece below on Al Jazeera English, posted – bizarrely – in the comments section of a Dubai media blog on 26 December, 2007. It certainly chimes with some of the things I’ve heard. And further below, more on soft-pedalling re. Saudi Arabia at AJE’s Arabic sister channel: What’s gone wrong at…
-
Two views on TV news
I had a chance to look over the memo from ITN’s Dave Mannion on the return of News At Ten. Without repeating it in full, it offers important insights into the thinking of one of Britain’s best television journalists. We have been given a prime time slot. Our job is not simply to split the…
-
What the US military thinks of journalism
So what does the US military really think about journalists? Below are excerpts from a report that addresses wider issues about the first Battle of Fallujah but contains some interesting points about “information operations,” in Orwellian milspeak. The document is chiefly the work of Jane Austen fan Dr Sean Edwards, on whom more below. But…