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Scepticism – the other side of trust
This is an excerpt I posted as a comment at Steve Boriss’s futureofnews site, but worth repeating here. It’s from 1983, and it’s Theodore Lowi reviewing Seymour Martin Lipset and Bill Schneider’s trust epic The Confidence Gap. I think Lowi has probably the neatest re-framing the whole trust conundrum: If the so-called confidence gap is…
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Alan Yentob: mea maxima exculpa
So Alan Yentob is in the clear. Phew! There’s no evidence that ‘noddies’ were inserted into his broadcast work. Ahem. What it actually looks like, is that although it is more than likely that he filmed fake cutaways, they never ended up being aired. He told an old chum: “I’m sorry – I hope you…
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Phoney calls
The news that someone from the Jo Whiley show called in pretending to be a listener is obviously a one-off. It can never have been industry practice to behave so, erm, underhandedly… Back in the day, however, TV execs did used to pay inordinate attention to “viewers’ calls.” The editor of a famous series –…
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The last word on noddies
In response to criticism that this blog is “turgid” and “heavy-going” – here is a clip from an old Aussie sketch show, suggested by one reader, in the hope that it “will lighten things up”: