static squid

RDF, THE QUEEN AND A REMARKABLE SHARE PURCHASE

Here's the latest story on the toils of RDF, bringing with it some good news for beleaguered Stephen Lambert, the creator of the misleading 'Queen hissy fit' trailer. But read it closely and with a cynical eye and an interesting sequence of events emerges.

Here's the Media Guardian take:

RDF's share-price slumped by 16.7% on Friday to 192p, after announcements by both the BBC and ITV that they would suspend commissions from the firm until the outcome of an independent inquiry into the affair in the autumn.

This followed a plunge of 8.4% on Thursday.

The news of Mr Lambert's admission and his offer of resignation came after the markets had closed on Friday.

In early trading today, the firm's share price was up 0.96% on Friday's close of 210p.

Mr Lambert's admission of responsibility over the row followed his buying up of 12,747 extra shares in the firm on Thursday, taking his personal stake to 2,629,714, or 6.78%.

And here's how events seem to have unfolded:

1. RDF share price slumps
2. Stephen Lambert buys 12,747 shares
3. Stephen Lambert makes stabilising announcement
4. RDF share price rallies

So Mr Lambert bought a whack of shares immediately before making an announcement that caused the share price to rise. Now I'm not sufficiently expert to know if any rules have been broken and I'm sure he was simply trying to show his faith in the company, rather than engaging in any insider-ish shenanigans but if the the RDF share price recovers to its pre-scandal level, his purchase could net him a quick six grand. Not even beer money to a multi-millionaire, but still, better to avoid even the hint of controversy, isn't it?

WHERE WAS PAXMAN?

Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC1, looked pretty shifty on Newsnight tonight, as he tried to explain the Queen and Leibowitz cock-up, blustering, rambling and several times holding his hands in front of him in a protective/defensive gesture.

"As controller, I take responsibility," he said, as if he was bravely shouldering the blame for something that was not really his fault. In fact, it was he who fronted the press conference at which the mielading sequence was shown. I'm told by BBC friends that Fincham is not well liked at the corporation - though this may be because he's an incomer at an institution that values long service above pretty much all else.

Fincham vouchsafed that he did not think he should resign over the balls-up, though I suspect that had the offending sequence been broadcast, rather than just shown to journalists, he would be clearing his desk.

The BBC seems to me to have done a pretty good job of covering this issue fairly and appropriately. Gavin Esler was quite firm with Fincham - but you couldn't help wishing that it had been Paxman in the chair.

WEIRD BBC BABY PICTURES

Above is one of images that have run on the bbc.co.uk home page today promoting some vulgar and catchpenny-sounding programme called Fight for Life. As you can see it is some sort of giant baby or foetus, rendered for some reason in blue and semi-transparent so that you can see its bones, internal organs and so on. I've show it small: on the site itself, it runs across the full width of the page: a real monster.

The other baby, which was on the site this morning, was brown and its massive face was seemingly pressed against the monitor, like a fishy alien thing. The pictures are about four times the size of the normal bbc.co.uk promo and the overall effect is highly disquieting. Has a madman taken over the bbc home page? What is going on?

WEB STATS

Here's an interesting post from Inksniffer, aka John Duncan, once managing editor of the Observer. He's delved into the thorny and opaque world of web stats and come up with some interesting conclusions.

His contention is that Internet metrics substantially exaggerate the importance of the newspaper web audience. His arithmetic, which seems unimpeachable, demonstrates that, for example, the Guardian, generally hailed as the great success of newspaper websites, has around 270,000 daily readers, compared with the 310,000 or so that buy the paper each day. Other sites, we may assume, are doing less well. This is in stark contrast to the audience claimed for newspaper websites, which are routinely denominated in the millions.

Why the discrepancy? Essentially, as John explains, because the web's currency of choice is monthly unique users, which in turn is probably because, in their infancy, internet companies needed to make their audiences look as large as possible. We're now hooked on these large numbers and unable to scale down to anything more realistic.

John uses his analysis to argue that newspapers are not doing anything like as badly as people claim and this is where I part company with him. Newspapers are in serious trouble and the fact that their websites are not performing as well as they would like us to believe doesn't change that unpalatable fact.

The biggest online sources of news are not newspaper sites at all but the BBC (streets ahead of the competition) and then the likes of Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL, Sky (with the Guardian somewhere in the mix). These are the places where an increasing part of the public gets its news, rather than from newspapers, or even their websites.

SIR SALMAN

Does Salman Rushdie deserve a knighthood for his writing? Probably not - or at least no more than several other unknighted authors. Rushdie is an important writer, though not to everyone's taste, and his early work such as Midnight's Children and Shame is his best. His later work is pretty ordinary.

But think back to 1988 and the publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa that was announced against Rushdie. Remeber how a succession of weaselly appeasers such as Douglas Hurd (though he was far from the only example) went out of their way to try to mollify the extremists, book-burners and would-be assassins, rather than standing up to them and bringing them before the courts. Hurd and his sort tried to distance themselves from the Satanic Verses and the Foreign Office brought pressure to stop the book being published in paperback. Meanwhile Rushdie went in fear for his life, for years.

I think the K should be viewed as an apology to Rushdie for leaving him high and dry when the fatwa was announced and a belated acknowledgement that freedom of speech and artistic expression matter.

NEWSPAPERS: THE COLLAPSE CONTINUES

Not much to say about the latest catastrophic newspaper circulation figures except that the decline is turning rapidly into a collapse. Which will be the first paper to cease publication?

POKED

Last night I attended a Media Society dinner in honour of Jon Snow. It was an altogether pleasant occasion, rather like a memorial service except that the subject was bouncing around being jocular, instead of lying in a box. The food was pretty good too. Peter Snow was the compere and short speeches were made by the likes of Helena Kennedy, Alan Rusbridger and the great Charles Wheeler.

There were a few digs at the Mail on Sunday, coupled with heartfelt tributes to Snow's honour and loyalty. However, to judge from Madame Arcati's blog, the Precious Williams story may have further to run.

Rusbridger's speech was quite amusing. Rather than relate anecdotes from Snow's career, he went on to Facebook and found all the nice things young people have to say about "J to the Snow", as he is apparently known. There is even a discussion group called "Philip Schofield and Jon Snow: TV's silver foxes".

Word of Rusbridger's interest has clearly got around, since Jemima Kiss mentions en passant that lots of people at the Guardian are signing up for Facebook today, presumably hoping to be poked by the editor.

SCOOP!

Credit to Iain Dale for being first to the news that Andy Coulson is the Tories' new spin-doctor. In general, I think journalists overvalue the importance of being first to a story (it matters a lot to them, but not that much to their readers) but you'd expect either a lobby correspondent or a News International employee to be first to the draw on this one.

BLOODY FOREIGNERS

Interesting report from Comscore showing that the majority of traffic on British newspaper websites comes from abroad.

The Daily Mail gets 69 per cent of its users from overseas, the FT 85 per cent, the Independent 73 per cent and the Guardian 58 per cent.

It's encouraging news for British journalism that it has resonance around the world. As Comscore points out, some of this traffic doubtless comes from expats. No doubt, holidaymakers in internet cafes account for a chunk, too. I suspect a fair amount comes from the US, where there seems to be a market for British-style journalism, as opposed to the sometimes staid US equivalent. It would be interesting to know what proportion comes from the Indian subcontinent, too. And what sort of content appeals to these different audiences?

However, I suspect the papers won't be altogether pleased that these figures have come to light. The UK advertisers that make up the bulk of their business probably think they are buying a largely domestic audience. A page view in Calcutta or Chicago may be to them a page view wasted.

The challenge for the newspaper sites is to target their advertising effectively. As far as I can see, most papers are still showing UK ads to their overseas users and I'm not sure how interested a British building society, say, is likely to be in advertising to people in other countries. The Guardian seems to be showing US ads to US users, though I'm not sure how successful it is at selling this audience - there seem to be a lot of house ads on the service.

BAD VIBES AT THE BONNINGTON

Bonnington Square is a rather special part of south London, with an extraordinary atmosphere and a rare community spirit. I'm spending a fair amount of time wandering round there as I am trying to buy a house in the area, so far without any success.

Anyway, Bonnington Square and Vauxhall Grove that runs off it are lovely. In Vauxhall Grove sits the Bonnington Cafe, a charming vegetarian cafe. I had a nice, cheap lunch there with a friend the other Sunday and, though I'm not a veggie, will surely eat there again.

The people who run and cook at the Bonnington have no pretensions to be Gordon Ramsey - they are volunteers and enthusiasts and this is a little place serving the local community. So it was slightly odd of the Observer to send its restaurant critic, Jay Rayner, to review the place.

To be fair to Rayner, he is a Brixton resident and does review local places from time to time - it was through one of his pieces that I discovered the marvellous Gallery, a fantastic Portuguese restaurant in Brixton Hill. But sending him to review the Bonnington was a little like sending a theatre critic to write about a school play, or the chief football writer to report on a Sunday League game - all the more so since Rayner is no fan of vegetarian cooking.

So, predictably enough, Rayner hated the Bonnington and wrote what was pretty much a hatchet job over a page in today's Observer. That's his right, of course, but you wonder what the point of the exercise was, when he's clearly more at home in the Dorchester.

UPDATE: Jay Rayner has added a comment below arguing, reasonably enough, that I was unfair to say he hated the Bonnington. "Liked the place, hated the food" may have been a fairer summary.

And here's a view on the Bonnington and Jay Rayner's review from another blogger.

LIES AND LIE DETECTORS

The Portuguese police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann say they have no grounds to arrest or charge Robert Murat. This has not deterred the British press from their dogged pursuit of the man who they have nominated as "prime suspect" in the case.

Today the Sunday Express reports on its front page that Murat has refused to take a lie detector test. The inference many will draw is that he is refusing to co-operate with an aspect of the police investigation. However, buried deep in the story, is the salient fact that it was the Sunday Express itself that was proposing to carry out the test.

It was, in other words, a newspaper stunt and the Express must have known Murat would refuse to participate. Who can blame him? Apart from anything else, lie detector tests are notoriously unreliable, especially, perhaps, those carried out by British newspapers with an agenda.

Still, it is all grist to the Express's mill. "What do YOU think?" the paper asks at the end of the story, "Does this prove he's guilty?".

This really is the worst of British journalism. Papers can make just about anybody look bad, if they put their mind to it, by a mixture of inference, 'nudge, nudge' suggestion and selective use of facts.

It doesn't matter that much to papers like the Sunday Express whether Murat is innocent or guilty, or whether the investigation proceeds smoothly and successfully - they can and do wring headlines out of xenophobic attacks on the alleged incompetence of the Portuguese police.

Whatever the police say, the papers will not let go of Murat until another suspect comes into view. It was, after all, a newspaper that reported him to the police in the first place. The unthinkable alternative would be to admit that they have nothing new to tell us about the investigation. Their obsessive and disproportionate interest in Murat, together with their amateur sleuthing, can not be helping the investigation and may well be hindering it (as has, it is said, the massive reward on offer). But the sad fact is that the papers couldn't care less.

SWEATING ON

"Hansen sweated on Lineker in 1986 but now they just want to talk a good game" is the headline from a piece in the sports section of today's Guardian. It made me think about this phrase "sweating on", which is generally used as a synonym for "being in a state of uncertainty and apprehension about" as in "City sweat on Weaver's fitness" or, I suppose, "Mourinho sweats on Terry's groin".

It's quite new, I think - at least, I've only noticed it in the last few years. And it is exclusively confined to the sports pages. You never hear "Brown sweats on Blair's endorsement", for example.

It's a phrase that is useful for headline writers, especially on tabloid newspapers where space tends to be highly limited and was certainly coined for that purpose. You never hear anybody saying it, just as you never hear anyone using "rapped" to mean criticised as in "Brown rapped over pensions fiasco".

But like rapped in this context, "sweating on" has moved beyond tabloid headlines and you now see it quite regularly in copy and in broadsheets, where there is no need for brevity in the headline, as in today's Guardian example. How long before we start seeing it in political stories?

SELF-INTERESTED, SECRETIVE MPs

Nothing seems to motivate MPs like self-interest - look at the pension arrangements they have awarded themselves, if you don't believe me. More evidence came today in a vote on a grubby little private members' bill to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act, put forward by veteran Tory David McLean (who has refused to appear on radio or TV to debate the issue). The bill was passed by 96 votes to 25 and now proceeds to the House of Lords.

There are simply no good arguments in favour of the measure. Some MPs claim that their correspondence with constituents needs safeguarding, but this is already ensured by the Freedom of Information Act. It seems that MPs voting for the bill simply want to avoid being scrutinised too closely by the media over issues such as expenses.

Freedom of information should apply to everyone; indeed our elected representatives should be subject to more scrutiny than most. David McLean's bill, and all those who voted for it, are simply a disgrace.

MORE BBC

Rod Liddle in the Spectator wittily points up the BBC's unspoken cultural and political assumptions.

HEWITT AND THE SMOKING HOSTAGE

"It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people," Patricia Hewitt was quoted as saying about the television coverage of the Marines captured in Iraq. It is a quotation that seems to sum up a kind of New Labour health-faddist bossiness and has been trotted out repeatedly since - by Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, by Jonah Goldberg in the National Review, by countless blogs and websites and today by Fergus Kelly in the Daily Express (not online, as far as I can see).

Hewitt has been ridiculed for weeks over this remark, being described as 'humourless', 'purse-lipped' a health fascist and worse. The trouble is, she didn't actually utter the words for which she is being pilloried, or anything like them. they were invented by Daily Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker as an April Fool hoax. Here's his grudging apology to Ms Hewitt. Maybe journalists should check their sources slightly more assiduously.

JOURNALISTS AS DETECTIVES

Robert Murat, the Englishman currently under investigation over Madeleine McCann's abduction was dobbed in by a Sunday Mirror journalist, on grounds that seem vague, at best.

"He was very vague about his background. When I asked him he wouldn't give his surname or tell me where he lived. He wouldn't give me a phone number and he was vague about what he did for a living."

Time will tell whether or not the Mirror's suspicions were correct but I'm uncomfortable with journalists intervening in stories that they are working on. On the one hand, like any of us, they want to help the police and bring the investigation to a happy conclusion. On the other, they have an interest in moving the story on and creating headlines. Did this play a part in the Mirror's decision to report Murat to the police?

UPDATE: It was, of course, the Sunday Mirror that effectively fingered Tom Stephens in the Ipswich prostitute murders case. He turned out to be innocent but was given a few nasty days as prime suspect. I think reporters should stick to reporting and let the police do the sleuthing.

BBC BIAS?

Jane Garvey and Peter Allen lift the lid on the mood at Broadcasting House when Tony Blair was first elected ten years ago. Inevitably this has been grist to the mill of those who claim that the BBC is institutionally biased to the Left.

For what it's worth, I think that's a highly simplistic view.

1. Hard though it is to remember, the mood around the country was pretty euphoric, the morning of Blair's election. It would be surprising if that wasn't shared by a fair number of BBC journalists.

2. I listen to and watch a fair amount of BBC coverage and it seems to me overwhelmingly fair. Sometimes individual reporters allow their personal views to intrude - Michael Buerk in Africa, Feargal Keane passim - and I would sooner they didn't. However, the mood these days is clearly for more engaged, personalised reporting. On the whole, people don't object to Buerk, Keane and so on, but they do complain when people reporting on, say, the Middle East or the US are seen to be less than impartial. But these cases - and they do happen - look to me like individual lapses, rather than a systematic policy of bias by the BBC.

3. Most of us see only a fraction of the BBC's output and we should be wary of drawing absolute conclusions based on what we see.

4. However, BBC journalists tend to be young, metropolitan, university educated so, unsurprisingly, they have more liberal views than the population as a whole. It seems to me that there are a series of shared assumptions on, for example, multiculturalism, that haven't been subjected to sufficiently rigorous scrutiny. It feels a lot easier for a Guardian journalist to get airtime on Radio 4 than it is for someone from the Mail even though that paper has five times the Graun's circulation.

My sense is that in the last year or so, the BBC has begun to face up to some of these issues - some of it's reporting on immigration, for example, has been a lot more multi-faceted than previously.

6. Even defining 'impartiality' as regards, say, Israel-Palestine is a thankless job. Trying to hold a line that is recognised by all as impartial is even harder. It seems to me that the BBC does a pretty good job, most of the time.

(Incidentally, Peter Allen and Jane Garvey are great and nobody who listens to their show at all regularly could plausibly accuse them of bias.)

THE PRESS AND MADELEINE MCCANN

Following the coverage of the Madeleine McCann case, it is hard to feel very proud of British press. There is something nauseating about the endless speculation, the conflicting theories, pored over by the press with unseemly relish. The stories about paedophile gangs are particularly distasteful, given that they seem to be little more than poorly-sourced speculation.

Almost as unpleasant are the reports speculating on what the McCanns are going through and how much they are suffering. What purpose is served by this vampiric intrusion into other people's pain? "We share your pain" was yesterday's headline in the Sun: but you don't really, do you? It's a small point but the Sun, the Express, the Times, Telegraph and other papers, continue to refer to "Maddy", even though the family have asked that she be called Madeleine. No doubt "Maddy" makes for easier headline-writing, but even so...

Still, it's easy to blame the press but they are simply satisfying public demand. Take a look, for example, at these comments on a Guardian blog on the subject, full of lip-smacking grief-junkies poring obsessively over the details of the story and clearly getting some kind of vicarious thrill out of the whole thing. At least Sun readers have the good sense and taste to confine themselves to expressions of sympathy and support.

ANOTHER KIDNEY?

A few years ago I wrote a piece in the Spectator, arguing that individuals should have the right to sell their kidneys, if they wanted to. There is a long waiting list for these organs, so why not offer incentives to individuals to donate?

Since that time, the government has passed the Human Tissue Act 2004, making it unambiguously illegal for anyone to sell one of their organs and this week came the first successful prosecution under the act.

Someone who donates a kidney to a relative, friend or stranger is praised; yet someone who does the same thing for money is treated as a criminal. Why? And how does this help anyone languishing on a dialysis machine?

ABC

Here's the latest newspaper ABC circulation figures, as reported in Media Guardian. The accompanying story is headlined "Sales of all quality dailies down", a statement clearly borne out by the figures in the table, which shows, inter alia, the FT down 1.76 per cent month on month.

Yet here's Press Gazette's take on the ABC figures, as far as they affect the Financial Times - circulation up for the sixth consecutive month, apparently. The story also has the Daily Telegraph posting a 0.31 per cent decline month on month, while the Guardian's figures show it up 0.29 per cent.

I've noticed this sort of discrepancy before - the Independent media section seems to publish different figures from Media Guardian. I guess they have to do with the way bulks are counted or something of that sort. I suspect also that the FT was on to the phone to Press Gazette as soon as the ABCs came out, putting its positive spin on the figures.

Anyhow, whichever version you choose to believe, the overall picture for national papers is bleak. Circulation declines show no signs of levelling off: on the contrary, they are falling more steeply and quickly with each passing month.

SCOOPS

I wasn't a reporter for very long, thankfully, since I wasn't very good at it but I've worked with a few people who really were. What they all had in common was being highly organised, obsessive about reading every document they could get their hands on, tenacious in following up leads and good at building rapport with useful contacts.

These are not skills that are necessarily valued in modern journalism, which focusses increasingly on commentary rather than on story-getting. Investigative journalism is viewed as taking up a great deal of time and resource to produce stories that don't necessarily interest that many people and can end up getting you sued. Just about the only place that it is practised on a regular basis is in the pages of Private Eye (which most people buy anyway for the humour and gossip).

So well done Andrew Marr, who today announced that he is to launch an award for those tenacious reporters who obsessively dig out stories and break exclusives (as opposed to getting them handed on a plate through buy-ups). He is considering naming it after the late Anthony Bevins, political editor of the Independent and then the Express. I worked on the same paper as Tony for a while, though I didn't know him at all well, and he was legendary for his skill at uncovering political scandal by methodically working through the documents (reports, answers to parliamentary questions) that others wouldn't bother to read. (He was also the only journalist to leave the Express on point of principle, without another job to go to, after it was taken over by Richard Desmond.)

ONLINE LIBEL

The long-running scrap between Gina Ford, a parenting expert, and the website Mumsnet has finally come to a close. In brief, a group of people on the Mumsnet messageboards took agains Ford and posted a variety of disobliging comments about her. The comments could be read, apparently, as suggesting Ford has 'unpleasant or unhygienic' personal habits or that she 'straps babies to missiles and fires them into South Lebanon'.

A few thoughts on this:

1 Many users believe the internet is a kind of ungoverned space where the normal laws of libel do not apply. As this case shows, it isn't.

2 Internet companies generally rely on 'notice and takedown' to deal with potentialy defamatory comments on messageboards. In other words, if an aggrieved person complains about a posting, they'll take it down as soon as it is brought to their attention and the matter is considered closed. In fact, there is no real case law that supports this rule. In principle, a company could take down a defamatory comment and still be sued, because people would have read it and the complainant would have suffered damage to his reputation.

3 In any case, notice and takedown is a very weak defence of the principle of free speech since, in practice, I suspect a site will always remove comments that are complained about, even if they are true. This gives crooks a powerful tool with which to suppress even fair comment and investigation.

I predict that before long we will see a rash of cases on internet libel, centering on messageboards, forums and blogs.

NEW BUSINESS BOLLOCKS (1) and (2)

(1) "Sit down with"
People used to have meetings but nowadays they "sit down with" each other. "I need to sit down with you to understand...." is the contemporary version of "can we have a meeting about....". The phrase is supposed to invest the mundane activity of sitting in a conference room discussing performance figures with the ceremony and import of an international summit (see below). Whenever I hear the phrase used, it makes me think of warring Red Indian tribes getting together to smoke the pipe of peace.

(2) "Retreat"
First there were "awaydays", but an event named after a cheap British Rail fare is nowhere near self-regarding enough for today's business community. Then there were "offsites", but even that is a bit too, well, functional. So now, if you and your department want to go to a Holiday Inn for a meeting, you should call it either a "summit" (though this evocation of international diplomacy can sound hubristic unless most of the attendees are senior managers or above) or, the very latest term, a "retreat". Because you're deeply spiritual people, obviously.

MICROSOFT, YAHOO! AND TAKEOVER TALK

On, then off again. Reports on Friday that Microsoft was seriously thinking about buying Yahoo! lasted a single day before being fully and authoritatively denied. However, that day was enough to see Yahoo! shares soar by 15 per cent or so, with billions of dollars changing hands. The New York Post claimed the 'credit' for the 'scoop'.

Now this could simply be a case of a journalist taking a flyer on a rumour but it has at least the smell of someone, somewhere pumping the Yahoo! share price in order to make a fast killing. There should be some sort of investigation here to see if the market was indeed rigged and if any journalists or PRs (the source of many business stories) were complicit.

As it happens, there are some grounds for believing that a Yahoo!-Microsoft merger of some sort could happen. They are treading on each others' toes in many areas, which is allowing Google to steal a march on both. On the other hand, giant mergers of this sort often fail to deliver the value that seems to be there on paper and there are egos in both businesses that might not want to be subsumed into a greater whole.

RUSBRIDGER AND HIS SECRETARIES

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, has attracted a fair amount of comment for the generous salary he is paid, and for the £175,000 bonus he received at a time when his paper is, frankly, struggling. The suggestion is that he is becoming a bit grand, rather too much the sort of fat cat that his paper likes to criticise.

Now I notice that the Guardian is advertising for an 'assistant PA to the editor', Mr Rusbridger apparently requiring not one, but two, secretaries, a level of staffing that I have previously only observed in the chief executives of very large companies - and even then it looked rather like an ego-driven indulgence, rather than a necessity.

BROWNE STUDY

The fact that Lord Browne is gay is not a matter of public interest and normally a newspaper would have no justification for revealing the fact. However, Lord Browne has been accused of lavishing BP shareholders' funds on his Canadian lover (allegations that he denies) and in order for this tale (which is clearly in the public interest) to be told, his sexuality had to be revealed.

There are often calls for a privacy law, which would prevent newspapers from publishing details about individuals' private lives but this case shows how problematic such a law could be and how the rich and powerful could use it to suppress investigation into questions of legitimate public interest.

UPDATE: I understand there is still an injunction preventing publication of the details of how Lord Browne met his lover, yet Robert Peston has revealed the details on his BBC blog, as has the Guardian. Brave, foolhardy or simply an oversight?

FURTHER UPDATE: Stephen Pollard is correct. Lord Browne should be prosecuted for perjury.

DEGENERACY AT HARRY'S PLACE

Harry's Place is absolutely one of my favourite blogs. Its team of writers are generally informed, humane, intelligent and realistic (personal favourites Brownie and David T). The debate in its comments boxes is sometimes amusing and often informative, featuring points of views from around the world. I look at it most days and comment there from time to time.

However, when the topic is Israel/Palestine, the comments boxes are routinely taken over by the vilest nutcases. Take this thread for example, in which David T urges readers to sign a petition to free Alan Johnston. An uncontroversial request, you might think but a core of commenters use the opportunity to blacken Johnston's reputation ("Fuck him. He chose to hang out with terrorists and saw it as his job to misrepresent them to the world" is a choice example), to complain about BBC bias, to bicker about Israel and Palestine and to speculate unwholesomely about whether Johnston is alive or dead. Depressing, really.

MANCHESTER CITY IS LIKE A NEWSPAPER

Football clubs, like newspapers and restaurants, tend to be run as dictatorsships with a single dominant figure (the editor, the proprietor, the manager, the chariman, the chef, the owner) telling everybody else what to do and succeeding or failing based on his judgement. Kelvin Mackenzie's Sun and Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest were two examples of the same phenomenon - a driven, charismatic boss who wasnt afraid to take decisions and seemed to get things right a lot of the time.

But for every Clough or Mackenzie there has been a host of failures -men who thought they knew what they were doing but led their clubs or papers disastrously down the wrong road. I've worked for a few editors like that, men and women who were forced by the whole history and psychology of newspapers to manage by hunch, but whose hunches were wrong. As a Manchester City fan, I've observed countless managers and chairmen behave the same way.

There is another way, less glamorous, but more reliable. Use statistics, research and data to guide your decisions. Most of the business world functions like this, but football and the press have largely avoided it. I've just been reading Michael Lewis's Moneyball, in which he tells the story of how a poorly funded baseball side punched way above its weight by using statistics to identify high-performing players who had been missed by the traditional scouting system, which relied on the hunches and prejudices of former players.

I witnessed the same sort of thing when I moved from papers to online. Suddenly we knew a very great deal about what our audience was doing, what it liked to read and what it was not interested in. No way could any online site I've worked on (with audiences far bigger than any national newspaper) justify paying hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to a star columnist. Yet newspapers do this as a matter of routine, because hunch and print tradition tell them it is the right thing to do.

It's probably too late to save newspapers from the consequences of decades of accumulated wrong decisions. It may not be too late for football clubs such as Man City. I've been interested to read reports of Ray Ranson's attempted takeover of the club. Ranson says he has a new model for running football, which doesn't involve the great dictatorial manager figure. He doesn't go into detail but, as he is involved in Prozone, which provides very detailed data on players and their performance, I strongly suspect he is in the Moneyball/internet camp and I hope his bid is successful.

SHARP

The redesigned FT print edition looks nice enough. It turns out to be the work of my old boss Richard Addis. It is hardly revolutionary though, which is presumably why, in an interview with Roy Greenslade, Lionel Barber, the FT's editor, refers to it as a 'refresh'.

Barber also mentions that one of his goals was to make the FT appear 'sharper', which immediately took me back to my newspaper days. Whenever we redesigned, refreshed or revamped the paper, or introduced a new section or a new columnist and were looking for a way to puff this to the readers, we inevitably hit on the word 'sharp'.

Why? I think because 'sharpness' in newspapers sounds utterly desirable but is almost entirely indefinable. Is the FT now 'sharper' than the Guardian or the Times? Who can say?

The truth is that the success of newspaper redesigns and relaunches is very hard to judge. Sales may go up - or, these days, a decline may be arrested - but it is very hard to attribute this to any one factor. Is it the redesign, the giveaway DVD, the Princess Diana exclusive? Are readers looking at the revamped product for longer or in more depth? Research may give a clue, but it is impossible to be sure.

In the absence of any objective measures of success, newspaper redesigns and relaunches tend to be judged as successes or failures by acclaim within the paper itself and the small world of the media. What do other editors and designers think of it? Will it pick up a gong at one of the many newspaper awards ceremonies? Loudly proclaiming your new paper to be 'sharp' may just help to influence opinions in your favour. Best of all, it is a claim that nobody can authoritatively rebut.

Contrast this with the online world, in which new designs, new launches and so on are subjected to ruthlessly objective scrutiny. How many people visit your site, how many pages do they visit, how long do they stay? A site redesign will be given clear goals - to increase page views per user, for example - and will be judged a success or failure accordingly. The question of whether or not it is 'sharp' will not enter the equation.

RUDE BLOGGERS

Thought-provoking piece by Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times about the pitfalls of blogging. The key insight is that the more anonymous we are to each other, the less considerate we are likely to be. Many bloggers simply refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem with the tone of much online debate; I think they're wrong, for the reasons set out in Appleyard's piece.

The dominant convention on the web is for users to adopt pseudonyms, so much so that it is actually quite rare to see someone posting under their real name. Why is this? Partly, I suspect, because the web was initially, and still is to some degree, a male-dominated phenomenon and blokes like nicknames (think of rappers, graffiti artists, sportsmen, musicians such as Sting and Bono). Another factor is the desire to create a different identity from the quotidien, workaday self. Nor should we forget people who need to be anonymous because they are blogging critically about repressive regimes or, simply, about their employers.

Newspapers rarely print anonymous or pseudonymous pieces and there is a reason for this. In readers' eyes, anonymity (unless for clearly understood reasons such as personal safety) detracts from the authority of the article. Also, the more I read articles by Bryan Appleyard or any other journalist, the more I understand his view of the world, his principles and prejudices, so the the more I get out of each piece I read. From the other side of the fence, most journalists are keen, for reasons of ego and career progression, to see their names - their real names - in print as frequently, and is as large type, as possible.

So I think Appleyard is right. What's true of print should be true online. The only way the Web is going to develop into a mature medium is if most people, most of the time, are prepared to acknowledge and take responsibility for what they write.

MORE ON THE NUJ BOYCOTT

The call for the NUJ boycott of Israel has become worldwide news and has, in some quarters, been seen as a manifestation of media bias against Israel and Jews generally. I think this is wrong, not least because only 66 members of a union of 40,000 voted for the motion. Granted they were delegates who spoke for their branches but I suspect in few cases had members specifically discussed this motion.

The NUJ itself has issued a statement on the vote and it is pretty clear that the leadership is embarrassed and frustrated by the motion and is virtually begging members to overturn it.

Leigh in the comments on my earlier post argues passionately and coherently in favour of the ban. I still disagree with him. Yes, the NUJ passed motions condemning China and Russia but there was no call for a boycott of their goods. This isn't a trivial distinction - it's quite right for a journalists' union to note and condemn breaches of press freedom. Calling for a boycott is something quite different (and even Israel's opponents acknowledge that it has a free and vigorous press).

Israel has done things that deserve criticism but I don't believe that Leigh's comparison with apartheid South Africa holds water. If the NUJ really thinks it should be in the business of boycotts, there are many, many countries more deserving of this treatment than Israel.

Personally, though, I think that, whatever we may think of a particular regime, journalists have a duty to engage with it and tell the truth about it, rather than turning our backs.

Leigh also argues that unions that take strong 'stands on international issues are more likely to defend members vigorously. I'm not convinced. The Israel motion has distracted attention from the good work the NUJ has been doing on low pay, contract work and so on. That hasn't helped underpaid, hard-pressed journalists.

NUJ AND PAY AND RATES

Martin Stabe links to Paul Bradshaw who reports that the NUJ is to investigate profits in the new-media sector, with a view to ensuring that journalists get a fair slice of the cake.

The money generated from internet advertising is going up in leaps and bounds. Yet, as Martin says, some publishers continue to plead that it is hard to make money out of the weband use this as an excuse to underpay journalists.

However, I think this is starting to change. Having spent the last few months recruiting web journalists, I've been struck by how few there are with experience and talent and how many businesses are pursuing them. I think this is going to start pushing salaries up quite sharply.

In print journalism it is precisely the opposite story. There is a massive oversupply of eager young graduates desperate for a job and employers are learning, even on national titles, that they can use this pool of talent to hold wages down.

If I was a young journalist looking for my first or second job, I'd certainly be looking online.

BOYCOTTING ISRAEL

So here's my union, the NUJ, voting to boycott Israel. A few thoughts:

1. How feeble and irrelevant. What difference will it make to anything?

2. The motion was passed on a vote of 66 to 54 out of a union of some 40,000 people. Democratic?

2. Why does a journalists' union need to have a foreign policy? How is it going to help low-paid journalists, or help deal with the transition from print to new media - the two issues that, quite rightly, are key planks of NUJ policy?

3. If the union does need a foreign policy, why is it singling out Israel for criticism while, as far as I can tell, having nothing to say about China, Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Cuba, Russia or any other regime where human rights are trampled underfoot? I'm generally resistant to the view that anti-semitism is alive and well in Left-wing politics, but sometimes I wonder.

3. Why do I bother belonging to a union that feels the need for this sort of pathetic, student-union posturing?

Ironically, as the NUJ is voting to boycott Israel, the Palestinian journalists' union has been boycotting its own government and presidency in protest at its failure to act to free Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC journalist.

http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=1685

The NUJ has spoken up strongly on the Alan Johnston case but the minority who voted to boycott Israel might want to consider the difference between the Palestinian journalists' act of principled solidarity and their own pissy political posturing.

Some reaction

Israel Matzav: Britain's National Union of Journalists votes to boycott Israel
Toby Harnden
Martin Stabe

MORE BBC BACKGROUND MUSIC

Tonight on the News at Ten, an item on CCTV cameras soundtracked to "Stars of CCTV" by Hard-Fi. When did the BBC start doing this? Why?

TABLOID vs BROADSHEET*

In the circles in which I move the prevailing view is that tabloid journalists are dimwitted and amoral, while those working on broadsheets are clever and sophisticated, and those who work on the Guardian are the cleverest and most sophisticated of all, as well as being highly moral, too. All a bit irritating, to me at least, since I worked on a tabloid for a few years - and I've met a fair few Guardian journalists so I know what they're really like.

Anyway, in this interview Piers Morgan does his bit to redress the matter, making Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger look foolish and morally rather compromised, and all that without really touching on the Marina Hyde issue.

Oh, and has losing weight improved Alan Rusbridger's sex life? As with most of the questions put to Rusbridger, we will never know the answer.

Oddly, I can see nothing about any of this in Media Guardian.

*Yes, I know the Guardian isn't a broadsheet any more.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

The BBC is running an old picture of Patrick Moore on its front page today. This is what he looked like. I remember watching him in the Sixties but I don't recall him looking so fiercely impressive.

Looking at the picture I was reminded of another figure from my TV youth, Lord Charles (that's him on the left).

Could they possibly be related?

BBC NEWS BACKING MUSIC

Tonight's BBC News at 10 had a report on the legacy of the slave trade in Britain by Clive Myrie. Every so often during the report there was a bit of atmospheric jazzy saxophone and some bluesy piano, as if we were watching a feature film or a drama series. Backing music on the news? I know the BBC is trying to be more accessible but isn't it all a bit, well, dumb?

I mean, where do you stop? A blast of gangsta rap when Huw Edwards reports on a black-on-black shooting? The theme from Top Gun, when our boys go into action in Iraq? Money, Money, Money when Robert Peston comments on the Budget?

BBC AND 9/11

I don't believe the many 9/11 conspiracy theories that float about the Web. However, this video is truly startling

It shows BBC coverage of 9/11 with a reporter announcing that the Salomon Brothers building at Ground Zero had collapsed. Thing is, the building is clearly visible over her shoulder as she speaks. Even odder is that the transmission is cut after a few minutes - apparently this was the moment that the building really did fall.

The theory that underpins this is that the building was brought down in a controlled explosion, that the BBC was warned in advance and somehow broadcast the news before it happened. It's part of a greater theory that says that 9/11 was a conspiracy on the part of the US government to make us go to war in Iraq or something.

Anyway, the noise about this video has reached such a level that the BBC has been forced to respond on its editors blog, first in this piece by Richard Porter, head of BBC World news. I have to say that, even to a confirmed anti-conspiracist like myself, he was not entirely convincing.

"Our reporter Jane Standley was in New York on the day of the attacks, and like everyone who was there, has the events seared on her mind. I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't remember minute-by-minute what she said or did - like everybody else that day she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing; what she was being told; and what was being told to her by colleagues in London who were monitoring feeds and wires services.

We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another."

So he had a second go. And this time, to me at least, he was a great deal more convincing, painting a picture of confusion, rumour, and a sort of chinese whispers in which a report that a building may be about to collapse became a statement that it had already fallen. I was working in a newspaper newsroom on 9/11 and I vividly recall the shock and confusion of the day and the difficulty of making sense of it all - and we weren't having to report in real time. So I'm inclined to trust the BBC's account, though I don't for a minute suppose that it will silence the conspiracists.

RUDE AND POINTLESS COMMENTS

Roy Greenslade reports on an interesting debate about comments on blogs and articles.

"During my City University lecture on Monday I was extolling the joys of participation between journalists and readers in the new digital environment when several hands went up. The students were amazed at my largely benign view of the opportunity the net has provided for people to post comments on newspaper websites.

A couple of them who had worked for the online sections at The Guardian and The Times reported that hundreds of commenters sent in abusive messages that they found revolting. Aside from the vulgar stuff, they also thought many of the contributions wholly inappropriate, offering nothing of value, whether to the paper or to the audience. Many simply abused other commenters, trading increasingly infantile tit-for-tat insults for hours on end."

All true, of course. Even sensible, serious blogs such as the excellent Harry's Place can get swamped by commenters who are gratuitously rude, obsessed with single issues (eg Israel, the Muslims) to the point of tedium and simply won't shut up.

It is tedious and depressing and, as Greenslade points out, creates a significant problem for site owners.

"Now Shane Richmond, communities editor with telegraph.co.uk, has touched on the same problem. He was recently warned about the burden faced by the BBC in moderating millions of comments every day. So, he asks, why moderate at all? First reason: the legal risk of unmoderated comments. He explains: "As a publisher we are legally responsible for what appears on our site. We can argue that we don't read the posts, or that we always remove things when a complaint is made or publish a disclaimer denying responsibility for the content of the posts but, though those may mitigate against damages, we can't dictate our own liability."

But he concedes that "moderation is a burden, and a costly one." Then again, the costs of non moderating could, potentially, be higher still in the case of defamation. He quotes Jeff Jarvis, who has argued: "Libels laws are outmoded and increasingly dangerous, for they threaten to chill and silence the voice of the public."

But he also quotes media lawyer David Price who says: "You are liable for what is being published, so the only responsible thing to do is read the comments before they are published.""

There is a divergence of views about this among online publishers, some of whom have received legal advice that 'notice and takedown' is sufficient to remove any legal liability. I guess the courts will decide at some point. But premoderation, as advocated by David Price, can be costly and time-consuming; it also has a deadening effect on the speed and spontaneity of online debate.

Greenslade has a sensible suggestion - make commenters post using their real names. I've never really understood the online tradition of using a pseudonym and I'm sure anonymity contributes to the abuse and triviality that infests so many comments boxes.

My hope is that this is simply a phase that a relatively new medium is going through and that over time, the stupid and offensive comments will start to melt away. My fear is of a series of expensive lawsuits for large online publishers, that will make them think twice about the point of having comments boxes at all. The ability to debate with other users is one of the internet's great virtues, and something that sets it apart from other media; let's not chuck it away.

ON OR OFF THE RECORD?

Andrew Turnbull, the former senior civil servant who gave Gordon Brown a kicking in the FT today, is embarrassed. Not surprising, really, since he has in the past deplored civil servants who make critical comments about politicians, yet he now finds himself all over the news for accusing Gordon Brown of "Stalinism". What he meant was"Gordon is a bit of a control freak" rather than "Gordon killed millions of his political enemies": for some reason Stalinism seems to be an acceptable term in the lexicon of political criticism and is tossed around quite lightly by people who would never dream of accusing someone of fascism or being like Hitler.

Anyway, Turnbull's defence/excuse is that he thought he was speaking "off the record" but this is a dangerous game, as he has discovered. For one thing, there is confusion about what "off the record" actually means. Does it signify that your quotes will be published but attributed to, say, "a senior former civil servant", "a former colleague of the Chancellor" or "a source close to the Treasury" or similar - sometimes described as an 'unattributed quote'? Or does it mean that the quotes will not be published but the views you have expressed will find their way into the piece in the form of a sentence such as: "Some who have worked closely with the Chancellor argue that he has control-freak tendencies, with some even going so far as to accuse him of "Stalinism""? Or does it mean that the views will simply form part of the writer's own thinking in sentences such as "In some of Brown's decisions, it is possible to detect a kind of arrogance or disdain for the views of others" - the sort of thing that is sometimes described as 'background'?
The point is that journalist and subject may have completely different ideas about how "off-the-record" comments may be used. Confusion sometimes arises, too, when interviewees try to specify that some parts of an interview are off the record and others on.

In any case, "off the record" depends on trust between interviewer and interviewee. A journalist presented with a juicy quote off the record may simply decide that the story is too good to pass on and publish the quote, fully attributed. I've no idea if that is what happened in the Turnbull/FT case but I have known other instances. In the recent case of the murders of Ipswich prostitutes, the BBC discovered that it had recorded an interview with one of the main suspects. Though this seemed to have been recorded for background, rather than broadcast, the BBC took the view, once the man had been arrested, that it should put the interview on air, which added to the speculation about the man involved (who subsequently was not charged).

So going off the record, like going off piste, is a tricky business and it is for this reason that media trainers and PR people often drum into interviewees that "there is no such thing as off the record" - in other words, don't trust journalists. Good advice.

However, what the Turnbull incident also highlights is how mealy-mouthed, dull and politically correct are the pronouncements of just about everyone in public life nowadays. Having been on both sides of the fence, as a journalist and as a spokesman, I know how company PR people launder every statement to rinse it of any controversy. So when you get a genuine, unspun, reaction from a senior figure such as Turnbull, saying what he really thinks, it is refreshing but, sadly, very, very rare.

TV ON THE RATES

The Government has announced that the digital TV switchover will begin in October, whereupon old-style analogue sets will become redundant. It also re-iterates that the taxpayer will cough up so that people over 75 get digital boxes fitted for free. Why, though? Free electricity, water, gas or even food, I could understand but TV is hardly a necessity to life or a basic human right. Why should the government hand it out free of charge?

TROUBLE AT T'GUARDIAN

In September 2005 the Guardian was proudly trumpeting that its circulation was over 400,000 for the first time in two or three years, following its shift to the Berliner, small-size format.

Nearly a year and a half later official circulation figures, published today, reveal that the paper's sale has fallen to 364,491 - a drop of 10 per cent since the Berliner relaunch, leaving the paper barely 100,000 a head of the Independent, its far less well resourced rival.

The Guardian sunk £80m into the Berliner format, the brainchild of its editor Alan Rusbridger, and hopes were high that this would kickstart sales. Clearly it has failed and losses at the group are running at £50m a year.

Its internet operation, Guardianunlimited, is doing well in terms of traffic and audience but is still some way from breaking even and it is doubtless playing its part in chipping away at the paper's readership. A loyal buyer of the Guardian is in commercial terms worth about ten users of the website, so each Guardian buyer who deserts the paper for the net is costing the Guardian Media Group dear.

Little wonder that the Guardian has decided that drastic action is necessary, with redundancies threatened. This will be a big shock to Guardian journalists who, rather like civil servants, have put up with relatively poor pay in return for job security and perks such as a nine-day fortnight. The Guardian is pitching all this as a bold advance into the digital age, but it looks more like old-fashioned downsizing to me.

NEW TORIES?

Tory back-bencher Patrick Mercer speaks his brains on racism in the army. What's astonishing is how blithely unaware he was that 95 per cent of the population would find his words repugnant.

No doubt the Tories are knee-deep in spin doctors and media training but some things you simply can't change.

Update (1) commenter Daniel Pendike has taken umbrage at my 95% figure: having read some of the comment on blogs, messageboards about the Mercer case, I'm inclined to believe that he may be right

Update (2) A friend has pointed out to me that Patrick Mercer and I attended the same school, at around the same time, although he is older than I am. I don't remember him but there were a lot of self-confident posh boys there who joined the Officer Training Corps. I wonder if Col Mercer was among them?

TITTLE-TATTLE, BRIAN
Transfer rumour stories are a staple of sports pages yet, as any fan knows, the ratio of fact to speculation is tiny. Most fans take these tales with a large pinch of salt and enjoy them simply as tittle-tattle and rumour. Newspapers tend to treat them in the same light and don't always require very high standards of proof for a "Player X is considering joining Club Y" tale.

In fact, though, a story claiming that someone is secretly negotiating to breach the terms of their contract of employment (which is basically what a lot of these tales amount to) could be highly defamatory.

Liverpool's Steven Gerrard has just won damages against a sports website that falsely alleged that he was considering a move to Real Madrid. It's the first such case that I am aware of. I've no idea how much checking the reporter who wrote the story did but, if other players follow Gerrard's lead, sports pages could become speculation-free zones.

As a fan, I think that would be a shame. But I can see Gerrard's point of view in all this. Why should anyone have to sit by while journalists write untrue stories effectively labelling them as disloyal?

THE BBC HAS NOT BEEN INJUNCTED

The BBC reports that the Attorney-General has obtained an injunction against BBC News, preventing it from broadcasting a story about the cash-for-honours enquiry. What is the story? Nick Robinson, the BBC political editor, cannot say, for fear of going to jail.

Guido Fawkes, an assiduous cheerleader for Deputy Chief Constable Yates, who has led the enquiry, claims it has to do with an incriminating email - the 'smoking gun'.

Blogger prisonlawinsideout claims, on what authority I do not know, that the email incriminates Ruth Turner. On the other hand, Iain Dale, who claims to know the identity of the person in question, has tagged his post 'Lord Levy' - leading some commenters to draw certain conclusions.

I have only two observations on all this.

1 However much the A-G seeks to keep the story, whatever it is, quiet, he will fail. It will be all over the Web in a week.

2 The verb from injunction is not 'injunct'; it is 'enjoin'. So the BBC has not been injuncted, it has been enjoined.

POSTURING CLICHE

Journalists nurture the belief that PRs are vain, self-important fools who can't communicate in English. This is of course an unfair generalisation but every so often the cliche gets confirmed. Here's PR man Mark Borkowski 'writing' in Media Guardian about someone else in the business

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/02/the_power_behind_the_freud.html

"Just as a thousand liggers sharpened their patter to pass the clipboard test to slither into post Oscar parties, four days later in London I suspect the wannabes will try to assemble at Matthew Freud's send off hurrah for his arch lieutenant, Kris Thykier.
Tonight's bash promises to mimic some of the sumptuous parties that attracted the film glitterati in la la land. It has to be a fitting send off to mark the passing of a Freudian legend. I suspect it is not the whiff of vintage champagne and gourmet canapés that is enticing, but the promise of a networking frenzy.
Some whisper that Thykier has gone one better than his boss by exiting the mores of PRsville, at an age Matthew proclaimed that he would leave the profession, but has yet to find the egress. Kris leaves the PR world at a point when it is struggling to stamp real authority; it is a very different world to the one he entered as a callow youth a decade and a half ago."

What the fucking, shitting, buggering hell are you on about, you cock? What does 'exiting the mores of Prsville' actually mean? Also, you originally wrote "morays of PRsville". Illiterate cock.

"I first met him in a sweaty comedy club when I was promoting a forgotten household japester. My account handler at the time was none other than the brilliant author Jane Green who advised me to snap up the handsome dude before Matthew Freud. Jane spotted his talent but I couldn't be persuaded to scoop up the elegant young Turk. Perhaps he was just too good looking. I remember a self assured and determined kid that had his destiny mapped out. It's one hire that I regret I didn't make.
Matthew Freud his boss and mentor, entwined Thykier in his holy trinity of directors: all with differing skills they became the perfect set of clubs, fundamental in building the Freud brand. He has certainly helped morph it into something that is both respected and loathed, depending on your view of public relations. I am firmly in the camp that embraces the way Freuds have kicked the biz up the arse over the last two decades. Thykier bows out perhaps at the time when there are far too many practioners that have no idea what the game is."

"Brilliant author", "handsome dude", "elegant young Turk", "self assured and determined kid", "kicked the biz up the arse". Does this greasy sycophant have any idea how fucking ridiculous he sounds? Also, what the fuck is a "household japester"? Is it a comedian or something different? If it's a comedian, call it a fucking comedian. Cock.

"Kris is the consummate PR: not a posturing cliché but a bright and effectual operator..." etc ad nauseam.

There is much more of this stuff, including a baffling description of Thykier as "a true Argonaut", but enough is, in this case, more than enough.

PRs try hard to be seen as serious professionals providing a key service to the modern media. In a single article, Borkowski has kicked their image back to 1983. Cock.

MORE BBC

Iain Dale has this to say on the BBC's desire to get exclusives

"Surely the role of BBC News is to report the news, rather than create it. Surely it is the role of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to challenge those in power, rather than BBC journalists. BBC journalists are there to report the news in the most impartial manner possible. That's not to say that no BBC journalist should report on matters unfavourable to those who wield power, but the story has to warrant it.

We need fewer hyped up reports which start with the words "the BBC has learned". This sentence is used to create the impression that a journalist has been burrowing away to discover information which someone has tried to keep from them. Sometimes that is indeed the case, but it often means that they have either picked up some good gossip which is worth a punt, or they have been leaked some information by someone with an agenda. You'll see the same thing on the front page of The Times most days. "

I don't agree completely but I think there is a lot in What Iain Dale says. The BBC is agonising over its failure to win much at the Royal Television Society awards and has identified 'exclusives' as the means of doing better next year.

Fair enough but, our expectations of the BBC are slightly different than those we have of newspapers. They have a duty to be impartial and to get things right, even if that is sometimes at the expense of splashy exclusives. That, essentially, was were the BBC went wrong over Gilligan/Kelly/Hutton.

IS THE BBC BIASED?

Robin Aitken, a former BBC reporter, has written a book arguing that the corporation has a systematic left-wing bias on matters such as Europe, immigration, the war in Iraq and so on. He was debating the issue at the ICA this evening with Peter Horrocks, BBC head of News, Tim Gardam, the former Channel 4 boss, and Jane Seaton, the BBC's official historian.

I'm not in any doubt that the BBC has a liberal bias - not a systematic centrally controlled political agenda but a set of widely shared and largely unchallenged cultural assumptions around, for example, multiculturalism, discrimination, Europe, the Third World and much else - and, even though I share many of these assumptions, I think it's wrong, even dangerous, that a publicly-funded broadcaster should be so blinkered.

These allegations have been around for a long time and the BBC has traditionally denied them robustly. Recently, though, some BBC people have begun to acknowledge that there might be problem, and so it was with Peter Horrocks, this evening.

Horrocks can't help the way he looks but he very much fits the stereotype of an upper-middle class intellectual grandee looking down his flared nostrils at the rest of us. He did accept some of what Aitken said though he denied that the BBC had a liberal bias.

His view was that, on issues like Europe and immigration, the BBC had focussed on the debate as it is in Westminster and ignored the wider spread of views held by the public at large. So the BBC had failed to represent Eurosceptic and anti-immigration views, for example.

There may be something in this but I don't think it's the full story. I think a more accurate explanation would be that the BBC was reflecting issues in the way that they tend to be reflected in the broadly liberal metropolitan circles in which BBC staff move. As a London media type, I rarely meet people who profess themselves strongly anti-European or anti-immigration. I rarely, to be honest, meet people who admit to holding Conservative views (unless it's the touchy-feely green Conservatism of David Cameron). It's easy to see how people who move in such circles could come to believe that these views are beyond the pale - when, in fact, they may well be the dominant opinions of the British public generally.

Anyway, even if Horrocks can't bring himself to accept the reality of bias at the Corporation, it's good to see senior figures acknowledge that all is not well at the BBC. Let's see if they put it right.

"Writer James Delingpole, who was at Oxford University with David Cameron, has been mischievously telling friends that the Tory leader did not entirely give up smoking cannabis after being punished for it at Eton. Suddenly, though, Delingpole has become more discreet.

“I’m not going there,” he said yesterday. Lord Delingpole has a certain ring, don’t you think?"

This little item in the Atticus column of the Sunday Times apparently conceals a deep well of bitterness. Delingpole, a nice, rather right-wing writer, is thought by ST editor John Witherow to have some tales worth telling about David Cameron. Delingpole refuses to spill and has received an email from the ST refusing to take any further pieces from him. Delingpole is a freelance writer who makes at least part of his living from the articles he sells to newspapers, so it is possible to admire his principled stand. But the fact that he needs to keep schtumm perhaps suggests that Cameron has more to hide than a couple of spliffs at the age of 15.

BBC - BITCHING BY COLLEAGUES

The BBC was highly pleased with tonight's story by security correspondent Frank Gardner, who purported to reveal how and why the US might attack Iran. The story led the News at Ten and was heavily trailed in advance. Less impressed was the BBC's US correspondent Matt Frei; when the Ten crossed to Washington for his take he commented loftily: "The US would respond if Iran attacked it: some would consider that obvious". The waspish Gardner was not given the chance to respond.

NUJ - what's it for?

My union, the National Union of Journalists, does many good things. I've worked at two places where it has provided invaluable support to striking journalists. It campaigns vigorously against the low pay and poor conditions that afflict many in the industry.

However, it has a student union-like desire to get involved in 'big politics', the latest manifestation of which is the proposal that the NUJ should affiliate to CND.

Why on earth? What has this to do with journalism? The current issue of the union's magazine carries support from Tony Benn, John Pilger and Hilary Wainwright. Benn argues that we should affiliate because journalists die in wars; Pilger says journalists should stand up and be counted and Trident is a waste of money; Wainwright says missiles create conditions of institutionalised war that lead to the suppression of the truth. On the other side of the argument are Polly Toynbee, Nick Cohen and Peter Hitchens, who say that the union should be as non-political as possible, since members will hold different views on political issues (Nick Cohen, also argues that CND is an unworthy organisation that cosies up to Iran).

I agree with Toynbee, Cohen and Hitchens. The union should concentrate on issues that affect journalists, as journalists. Nuclear weapons is not one of them. I hope NUJ members vote against affiliation (but I'm not counting on it).

PS The NUJ should be congratulated on allowing internet voting on this issue - it shows that they are committed to reaching as many of their members as possible, rather than allowing things to be stitched up by a committed minority.

RIPPER?

You expect it from the redtops but it was slightly surprising to see the Independent christen the East Anglian serial killer the "The Ipswich Ripper".

The term summons up a particularly brutal form of killing (cf Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper) so is, to say the least insensitive (though maybe the Independent doesn't think the families of dead prostitutes are worth bothering about).

Just as importantly, giving killers nicknames glamourises what they do and gives their crimes some of the lustre of fiction. Naming him "the Ripper" will very likely boost the ego and self-importance of a sick man who can now boast to himself, thanks to the Independent, that he stands in the line of the most famous serial killers in history.

UPDATE: Sky is now reporting that at least one of the victims was strangled, which makes the 'Ripper' monicker plain wrong. Will the Indy still be using it tomorrow?

OLD MEDIA v NEW MEDIA

At an Australian media awards ceremony an (old, fat, pissed) newspaper columnist storms the stage and attacks a (young, urbane) online commentator. Almost too perfect a metaphor for the frustration and stress the paper press is experiencing these days. The journalist, an Aussie poloitical commentator, says he was suffering from a migraine and was taking medication.

GOODMAN, BAD MAN

Clive Goodman, royal editor of the News of the World has pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages and could go to jail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6194988.stm

His boss, NOTW editor says: "As the editor of the newspaper, I take ultimate responsibility for the conduct of my reporters. Clive Goodman's actions were entirely wrong and I have put in place measures to ensure that they will not be repeated by any member of my staff."

Editors don't ask too many questions about how their reporters get their stories. They may have their suspicions but they really don't want to know the details. That is how deniability works.

I first came across the practice of 'phone slamming' - hacking into mobile phone voicemail - when I was on the Express in the late 90s and a showbiz reporter casually tapped into the messages of, I think, Paul McCartney.

This sort of thing has been common on papers for years (and not just the tabloids), as has the equally illegal practice of paying to get information from the police national computer. Now Goodman has had his collar felt, I wonder if reporters will be quite so ready to continue with these practices.

HANDS OFF BLOGS

Tim Toulmin of the Press Complaints Commission believes there should some sort of similar complaints system for blogs. Let's eschew the obvious jibe that he is trying to grab more power for the PCC; is he right?

He says that online generally"there are no professional standards, there is no means of redress. If you want to see how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked, then look at the internet."

Maybe so. Certainly, there is a lot of unpleasant stuff in blogs and blogs do tend to go further than papers in some areas - identifying celebrities and politicians involved in scandals, for example. But anybody who writes a blog is subject to the law and can be sued for libel or prosecuted for hate speech. It may not happen much, but it doesn't happen to papers a great deal, either. What's important is that the sanction is there.

Tim Toulmin is a regulator and naturally comes down on the side of control and protection. Many of us think the opposite: that people should be able to say and write what they want, subject to appropriate laws protecting others from real defamation (and not the hurt feelings nonsense that often ends up in the libel courts) and certain forms of speech likely to promote violence (racist language, incitements to kill) etc. (I think this principle should apply to newspapers too and the PCC should be abolished.)

Let's have debates that are vigorous, acrimonious, pungent, unpleasant. Let feelings be hurt, let pride be wounded, let offence be given and received. The internet is still a bastion of free speech: let's keep it that way.

GRADE AND THE BBC

http://paullinford.blogspot.com/2006/11/trashing-of-michael-grade.html

Paul Linford is right to take exception at the sneering tone of some of the BBC's coverage of the defection of its chairman. The fact is that the BBC breeds an attitude of superiority in its staff and they simply can't believe that there is any virtue in working anywhere else. That, plus a love of bureaucracy, is the hallmark of the true BBC employee.

FAREWELL PRESS GAZETTE

I wrote for PG a couple of times, and was a judge at one of their awards ceremonies as well as reading the mag regularly over the years. Its closure leaves a hole that I hope will soon be filled.

Naturally, I hope the staff all find jobs soon (and I expect they will).

And by the way...

http://staticsquid.blogspot.com/2006/11/save-grey-cardigan-poor-old-press.html

THE BBC AND LITVINENKO

Radio 4's Today programme on Friday morning was beside itself with excitement at what it thought was a scoop on the Alexander Litvinenko poisoned spy saga. It revealed that it had sopken to someone who had seen his X-rays, which revealed some 'packages' inside his body, about the size of a two pence piece, one of which seemed to have split open. There then followed a good deal of speculation about what these packages might be and how they might have got there, the consensus being that he must have swallowed them deliberately. There was, it seemed to me, a clear inference that Litvinenko might have poisoned himself (other people I've spoken to who heard the broadcast drew the same inference). Here's the report on the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6175424.stm

Later in the day, it emerged that the story was rubbih and that these 'packages' were in fact shadows on the X-ray caused by his treatment. This clarification was buried deep in a story on the BBC's website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6176004.stm - without any acknowledgement that the original false story was the result of BBC speculation.

The BBC holds itself up as an authoritative gatherer and publisher of news, whose standards of accuracy and verification are far higher than the scoop-obsessed press. That being the case, why did it broadcast such a highly tenuous tale without proper checking? Why did its journalists speculate in such a damaging way about Mr Litvinenko? And why, once the story had been shown to be nonsense, did it not admit its error and apologise?

A survey here shows that journalists work many more hours than they are contracted for. Roy Greenslade discusses it here

Interesting, but hardly surprising. The fact is that lots of people in lots of professions work longer than they legally need to- ask teachers, doctors, professionals in many walks of life.

What this is really about is the fact that journalists on local and regional papers have seen their wages fall in real terms and many exist on a pittance. The problem here is simply that there are too many people who want to go into journalism and the barriers to entry are quite low (compared to becoming a doctor, lawyer etc where a professional qualification is essential). Papers don't need to offer high salaries to attract staff.

It seems to me that journalism is becoming rather like acting (another profession that large numbers of young people want to get into and which has low barriers to entry). There are a small number of highly-paid people at the top of the tree (national newspaper editors, top columnists, star broadcasters) and an increasingly long tail of those (including many freelances) who are barely eking a living, in the forlorn hope that at some point they may get a big break. Somewhat reminiscent of the world portrayed by Ricky Gervais in Extras.

None of this is going to change until large numbers of people decide that the reality of low earnings in journalism is such that it is better to get a secure, better paid but arguably less glamorous job, and there a fewer journalists competing for the same scarce jobs.

Anyway, none of this is new, as any reader of George Gissing's 19th century classic New Grub Street will be aware.

SAVE THE GREY CARDIGAN

Poor old Press Gazette has probably published its last issue. Shame. Under the editor, Ian Reeves, they produce a decent magazine and a good website http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ I'm sure they'll all find jobs before long.

I do fear for the future of the magazine's Grey Cardigan column, ostensibly written by a sub on a West Country local paper. Along with the Martin Luke column in the FT, it's the best-observed, funniest column currently being published.

If PG does go to the wall, I hope that somehow the Cardigan will be saved. Maybe Media Guardian could pick it up?

UPDATE Perhaps I spoke too soon in writing off PG. Roy Greenslade seems to think it may yet be saved.

DESMOND WIELDS AXE

My old boss Richard Desmond defends his decision to lay off the entire Daily Express City desk and outsource the paper's business coverage to PA. Sorry though I feel for my former colleagues on the paper, I have to say I think he's doing the right thing.

Though the Express City pages are pretty good, they are not what the paper is about. In any case, most daily City coverage happens like this. Journalist goes to press conference, chats with colleagues from other papers, reads press release, listens to announcement, asks questions. then follows lunch during which he may discuss the story with other journalists, effectively ensuring that they are all saying the same thing. Back to office to write up story. As a result, all papers carry pretty much the same story. Frankly, PA will do the job just as well and a good deal more cheaply.

Just as papers don't individually compile their TV listings or their share price lists, neither should they individually create stories based on press releases. Get it done elsewhere, as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

This should leave more resources for the paper to focus on areas where it really can be different from the competition - be it investigative reporting or high-quality features. Unfortunately, I don't for a moment believe that Mr D is going to usethe money he saves on City coverage to invest in high-end journalism (it's more likely to go into his pension fund). However, he won't be the last proprietor to outsource his City coverage.

PARIS-LONDON, HITCHENS-LEVY
I spent a pleasant hour this afternoon at the Royal Geographical Society listening to Christopher Hitchens and Bernard-Henri Levy "in conversation", part of the IQ2 London-Paris Festival. Levy is a dashing French philosophe, once summed up in the aphorism "God is dead but my hair is perfect", and he and Hitchens seemed to agree on just about everything, especailly their own importance as 'intellectuals'. To judge by the applause that punctuated the discussion, most of the packed audience were fans of Hitchens, Levy or both, so the atmosphere was cloying, to say the least. In one especially toe-curling incident a woman at the front stood and declared that she adored Hitchens, had written a book on the Elgin Marbles "to catch your eye", and insisted that were she not already pregnant she would love to have his child.

Hitchens and Levy are good value, though there were no suprises in what they had to say on Iraq, Palestine, Israel and so on. Things got more interesting when the discussion turned to India. Hitchens argued that America, after ignoring India for many year, was showing signs that it might be about to make common cause with "the world's other great secular democracy" against Al-Quaeda and Islamism. He pointed out fairly that Hindus are demonised as much as Jews by Islamists and that India had suffered attacks from Al-Quaeda. One of the good things about September 11, said Hitchens, was that the US discovered who its friends and enemies really were.

In which case, said Levy, why does America continue to support Pakistan, the centre of Al-Quaeda activities (not just in the mountains, but in Karachi itself). The US has been duped, he said, by Musharraf who hands over alleged Al Quaeda number 2s at strategic moments (such as when the Senate is voting on financial aid to Pakistan). He had made this very point to Condoleexa Rice ("who I found charmante") and she had no adequate response.

Hitchens (in response to the nutty stalker woman) talked interestingly on the link between sexual repression, political violence and totalitarianism, citing Wilhelm Reich, China's "one-child" policy, societies after major wars in which swathes of the male population are killed (he didn't specifically mention post-WW1 Germany, but clearly had it in mind). Islamist terrorists are denied access to women, and their sexual repression is translated into political violence - hence the power of the promise of virgins awaiting the suicide bomber in paradise. Though, if they had read the Talmud, Hitchens said, they would know that for every virgin, there is a mother-in-law.

Levy related this to the veil debate, arguing with reference to a French phenomenologist that to cover the face is to deny an essential part of humanity. When women are not veiled, it is possible to have relations with them that are far more delightful and passionate. Well, he is French.

Hitchens got the loudest applause of the afternoon by coming over all Clint Eastwood on the veil issue: "I can be offended too. So don't make me say something that I can't take back".

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