Calling for a sense of “perspective” and “proportionality” in coverage of British youth, the BBC’s Director-General, Mark Thompson, complained on Radio 4’s Today on Tuesday that you could get the impression from much media coverage that Britain was a “nightmare landscape of roving bands of drunken teenagers”. The blunt truth is that, in certain
A set or first editions of today’s newspapers will be a collector’s item. Here are a selection of their stories, usually printed at 9pm, predicting Hillary’s downfall. “Iowa, New Hampshire, America? Obama’s incredible journey” (Independent splash). “Clinton moves to Plan B” (Guardian splash) “Hillary to sack aides as she faces defeat” (Telegraph, p1). “Obama dealt
Almost a year ago, BBC News reported (January 04), that “the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007.” In fact, temperatures in 2007 were no different from 2006, or indeed 2001. Overall, temperatures (as measured by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Britain’s Met Office, the UN’s IPCC
Fleet Street seems staggered to hear that half a million under-35s are on incapacity benefit – as publicised by the FT yesterday. Even Xinhua, the Chinese government newswire service, follows up the report (socialism, but certainly not as they know it). The Daily Mail’s leader refers to “shocking new” figures – shocking yes, but hardly
The FT’s story about 500,000 youths “too sick to work” should cause shock, but not surprise. The “figures obtained by the FT” can also be obtained by any teenager with an internet connection (for DWP time series, click here). This is a story because the degree of ignorance about the UK welfare state (and those
On Boxing Day, The Skimmer noted how the Catherine Tate Christmas Special with its orgy of swearing was hardly suitable for BBC1 on Christmas Day. Now, The Times reports that OFCOM is to investigate the show following a flurry of complaints from viewers about the “most offensive programme ever broadcast by the BBC on a
Anyone listening to BBC Radio for the latest on Pakistan would have found only Five Live running with it. When I switched on, they had a chap with a South Asian accent – who I assumed would be a Pakistani politician, or expert of some kind. Turned out he was just a random bloke who
The Catherine Tate Show’s Christmas Day Special managed over 20 uses of the F-word in the first five minutes, which must be something of a record, even by today’s debased standards of modern entertainment. True, the show was broadcast at 10.30pm, safely after the 9pm watershed when more adult material is shown, but this
Watched “Atonement”, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, the film version of Ian McEwan’s novel and the latest British costume drama which American critics affect to love (hence talk of Oscars) but to which American audiences are indifferent (in two weeks in the US it’s taken only a paltry $3.5m at the box office).
Rupert Murdoch is such a hard-right supporter of Israel — Ariel Sharon was his great hero (he even visited him on his farm) — that many regard him as a Zionist. So the staunchly pro-Israel Wall Street Journal has nothing to fear on that front as the Murdoch tentacles get to grips with it. The
The distinguishing characteristic of the three-part documentary on the Blair years which ended on BBC1 last Sunday was not just that it failed to tell us things we didn’t already know. No, what was most intriguing about it was the web of interconnecting BBC-Blairite links that lay behind it. Consider the following. The series
The BBC’s version of the Nativity this Christmas will depict Mary and Joseph as asylum seekers rejected by brutal Britain. Yes, once again the Beeb plays fast and loose with history so that we can all think the worst of our country. So let’s remember some facts. First, this country’s record in giving genuine asylum
Amazingly bad news judgement by the BBC1 News at Ten last night when it devoted only 10 seconds — and a mere voiceover at that — to the latest development in the shambles that is Peter Hain’s funding arrangements (aka Labour’s dodgy donations — the sideshow). I’m inclined to believe this was cock up rather
This morning’s Times has an interview with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan — not a bad journalistic commodity at a time when separatist Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers in an ambush near the Iraqi border and the drums of war are beating ever louder in Ankara. Curiously, The Times could only find
