-
The McCann coverage, my two cents
Demonstrating, perhaps, my MBO (Master of the Bleeding Obvious*) skills, here are my recent contributions to coverage of the ongoing Madeleine McCann saga. From the Associated Press: And playing commentator tag in Time with Charlie Beckett: For earlier posts – from May – see here and here. *Basil Fawlty: Next contestant, Mrs. Sybil Fawlty from…
-
The Psychology of Newspapers
From a paper by Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport and Janet Faden in the December, 1940 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly: It is well known that waves of interest in governmental reform are notoriously short-lived for the population at large; yet they do constitute a lasting tide of concern for a handful of professional reformers. So…
-
Local TV
Ten Alps has just launched a broadband TV channel for my county coucil, Kent. Sir Bob Geldof reckons every local authority will have one in five years. I wish I had the sheer brass to sell shite like this. What was the deal clincher? “A platform for your back catalogue of cheesy old VNRs.” Now,…
-
Play our new game: BBC moral equivalence
Mark Thompson writes about trust in the BBC. After condemning the children’s programme editor who apparently believed a poll had been rigged and changed the name of a cat (yes, really), Thompson lets off senior BBC manager Alan Yentob for filming reaction shots to interviews he didn’t actually show up for. Yes, according to the…