Interview with Marshall T. Poe

Marshall Poe (1961) is associate professor of history at University of Iowa. Last year (2010) he wrote the book "A history of communications. Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet" (the book is "not yet published" in Cambridge University Press site but it's available in Amazon)

I had the chance to interview him.

1) When did you start using the Internet?

That would be about 1992. I remember because I'd just come back from a year in the Soviet Union.

2) We've seen the crisis of music industry, the crisis of rent of home video (and other similar examples) and do you really think that Internet changes nothing?

Since the 19th century, we in the West have had a deep bias for new technology, and particularly media technology. We think it's going to save us, to fix us, to make a brighter future for us. We fill it with our hopes, and therefore exaggerate its potential. If you read what pundits of the 1950s wrote about, say, television, and compare it to what pundits of the present say about the Internet, you get an eerie sense of deja vu. Television was supposed to "change everything" and the Internet is supposed to do the same. But the former didn't, and the latter won't either. The history of modern media--mass newspapers, radio, TV, and now the Internet--is strikingly continuous. Each provided (and continues to provide) news, entertainment, and commerce, and each is funded primarily by advertising or the state. That later media are "better" than earlier media is some technical sense is important, but not important enough to "change everything." Like its modern predecessors, the Internet will change some things and not others, and the system in which it is entrenched--modern liberal capitalism--will remain unaltered.

My sense is that many people don't know this and some don't want to believe it. If I were to write an essay called "The Internet Changes Everything," few people would pay any attention to it and those who did would probably agree. But if I were to write an essay called "The Internet Changes Nothing" (which I did), it would get a lot of attention, most of it negative (which it did). Why the radical difference in responses? The reason is not empirical: "the Internet changes everything" is just as false as "the Internet changes nothing." No modern medium changes everything or nothing. Rather, the split has to do with ignorance and investment. Again, many people don't know that the history of modern media is continuous (they believe the hype) and many others are committed to the idea of discontinuity (they create the hype).

So, in direct answer to your question, no, I don't believe the internet changes nothing. When I called my essay "The Internet Changes Nothing" I was trying to make a point about about our tendency to exaggerate the impact of modern media technologies in general and the Internet in particular. What I believe is that like mass circulation newspapers, commercial radio, and broadcast TV, the Internet will change some things and not others.

3) Don't you think that Internet may probably need longer time to change social structures of the society?

I'm reminded of that famous quip attributed to Mao. A reporter asked the Great Helmsman what he though of the French Revolution. "It's too soon to tell," he responded. The history of media shows that it sometimes takes centuries for the implications of new forms of communication to work themselves out and reach a kind of equilibrium with the other institutions and values in a society. This was the case with writing and print. But I'm not sure that it will be the case with the Internet. Writing and print were quite different than the media that came before them, so they were disruptive (though they took a long time to disrupt). That's not really true of the Internet. It looks and acts a lot like a TV. What do you use a TV for? Mostly for news and entertainment. What do corporations use TV for? Mostly to sell you stuff. What do you use the Internet for? Mostly for news and entertainment, though you can also look things up and chat with friends. What do corporations use the Internet for? Mostly to sell you stuff, though they also use it to store and communicate data. Nothing really set the stage for the reception of writing and (mass) print; TV set the stage the Internet, at least in the Free World.

4) You think that Internet won't change everything but don't you think that Obama wouldn't be president if Internet had not been existed now?

No. The reason Obama was elected has much more to do with the two-party system than the Internet. Nothing about the Internet favors Republicans or Democrats. Internet or no, a Republican or Democrat is going to occupy the White House. This time it was a Democrat; next time (some next time) it will be a Republican. The Internet won't change that, at least anytime soon.

5) What do you think about sociologists like Manuel Castells who built an entire theory around network society (a kind of Internet-society)?

I don't really like the the phrase "network society." It's redundant. All human groups ("societies") of whatever size, shape or purpose are made of networks, that is, non-random (structured) links between people. What's interesting to me is that different media technologies enable people to create different kinds (sizes, shapes, purposes) of networks. Speech makes speech networks, writing makes writing networks, print makes print networks, audiovisual media (TV and the like) make A/V networks, and the Internet makes Internet networks. Once writing was invented, none of these media-enabled networks was "pure," that is, existed in isolation from other media (and here I mean in place with writing). The first writing network was really a speech + writing network; the first print network was a speech + writing + print network; and so on. Today we in the developed world live in a speech + writing + print + A/V + Internet network. This being so, it doesn't seem sensible to speak of "Internet society," for there is no such thing. There is an Internet network, structured by the capacities of the Internet medium. But it's embedded in other, earlier media. Because it's embedded, it's hard to study the internet network in isolation. It's not impossible, though, and sociologist like Castells are doing their best.

Walter Cronkite 1916-2009

Walter Cronkite, legend of american broadcast journalism, died on 17th July 2009; he was 92.


NYT: Walter Cronkite, 92, dies; trusted voice of tv news

USA today: Iconic journalist Walter Cronkite dies at 92

Los Angeles Times: Cronkite - that's the way he was

NASA: Cronkite remembered for coverage of Apollo launches

MBC (The Museum of Broadcast Communications): legendary CBS newsman Walter Cronkite has died at 92.

CBS: television pioneer, CBS legend, passes away in New York at 92

The Times: Walter Cronkite: CBS news anchor

Telegraph: Walter Cronkite, who died on July 17 aged 92, was the avuncular anchorman on CBS Evening News for 19 years and often referred to as "the most trusted man in America"

Guardian: US salutes Walter Cronkite, giant of TV journalism's golden age

Barack Obama: "he never lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland"

Don't forget to have a look at Walter Cronkite school of journalism and mass communication

Radio's impact on public spending (USA, 1930's)

FDR (1882-1945) after giving one of his famous fireside chats

David Stromberg is a professor at Stockholm University and he wrote a paper called

Radio's impact on public spending

(quarterly journal of economics 119-1, 2004 but the paper appears in early version on 1999)

Abstract:

If informed voters receive favorable policies, then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not. These ideas are developed in a voting model. The model forms the basis for an empirical investigation of a major New Deal relief program implemented in the middle of the expansion period of radio. The main empirical finding is that U.S. counties with many radio listeners received more relief funds. More funds were allocated to poor counties with high unemployment but, controlling for these and other variables, the effects of radio are large and highly significant.

1 introduction

2 the FERA program and the expansion of radio

3 model

4 specification and data

5 results

6 conclusion and discussion

"governors allocated more relief funds to areas where a larger share of the population had radios" (page 23)

Using radio to fight corruption

Nathalie Francken - Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - LICOS Center for Transition Economics -, Bart Minten - Cornell University - Food and Nutrition Policy Program; Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - Department of Agro-Engineering and Economics - and Johan F.M. Swinnen - Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - LICOS Center for Transition Economics - in 2005 wrote a paper called

Listen to the Radio! Media and Corruption: Evidence from Madagascar

abstract: This paper investigates the role of the media in reducing corruption. We analyze data on personal capture of public education expenditures by local officials in Madagascar. We find that corruption can be successfully constrained through a combination of media programs and monitoring. More transparent funding mechanisms and access to mass media reduce capture. However, the impact of the media is conditional on the characteristics of the population. With high illiteracy in poor regions, the effectiveness of newspaper and poster campaigns is limited, and radio programs are more important to reduce capture.

The analysis is based on data collected in a budget tracking survey in 2002-2003.

1 Introduction

2 The policy framework

3 Monitoring and the media

4 Measuring capture and its determinants

5 Theory and hypotheses

6 Empirical model

7 Results

8 Conclusion

Controversial survey about muslim students in UK

In UK the "Centre for Social Cohesion" interviewed 632 muslim students and 831 non-muslim students.

Is it fair having 632 muslim people interview and the newspapers writing "Killing for religion is justified, say third of muslim students" ? The same article says "The YouGov poll was conducted for the Right-wing think tank, the Centre for Social Cohesion" but you need to reach the end of the article (how many times do we stop earlier?) to read "YouGov polled 600 Muslim students and 800 non-Muslim students at universities with a high number of Muslims."


You can read the full report:
Islam on campus - a survey of UK students opinion (126 pages, pdf file)
or read an executive summary here (3 pages, pdf file)

The Times:

A third of muslim students back killings; Abul Taher

Telegraph:

Killing for religion is justified, say third of muslim students; Patrick Sawer

Guardian:
Radical Islam gains ground in campuses; Jamie Doward

--

FOSIS is the umbrella organization of student groups in colleges and universities throughout the UK and Ireland, representing over 90,000 Muslim students

FOSIS condemns the report:

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) in the UK and Eire today condemned the publication of a report published by the Centre for Social Cohesion entitled "Islam on Campus".

Faisal Hanjra, President for FOSIS, said today, "This is yet another damning attack on the Muslim community by elements within the academic arena whose only purpose seems to be the undermining of sincere efforts by mainstream Muslim organisations to tackle the threat of terror which wider society faces. The report is methodologically weak, it is unrepresentative and above all serves only to undermine the positive work carried out by Islamic Societies across the country. Unfortunately, the views espoused by the CSC in tackling extremism involves the creation of an "Islam" outside the Muslims, which, to begin with is a sure way to failure, and far from empowering the Muslims, perpetuates a patronising tone of "we know better than you do"."

He further added, "FOSIS has been a recognised cog in delivering consistent, mainstream opinions and by maligning it, CSC has shown itself to be an unreliable and marred think tank. Muslim students have had a tough time since the dreadful attacks on 7/7, they have faced numerous challenges with courage and perseverance, it is evident that those challenges have yet to go away and what is equally evident is the resilience of Muslim students to face those challenges. The message though to those who seek to cause this mischief is clear, we will not be deterred, our work will continue and the results of our efforts are clear for all to see.

Grid: innovation or marketing?

In the overdose of information that we experience everyday, in April i found the following news:

Coming soon: superfast internet called "Grid"

Most of the articles about Grid are based on one article (April 6, 2008) of british Times. In the article you can read the words of David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project: "With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine". It's a kind of sentence that can mean everything and nothing at the same time, it sounds like an advertising of a new product. Have scientists become expert of marketing?

Not huge difference of information since another article of Guardian (July 3 2003)
Welcome to the grid: unlimited PC power at your fingertips

another article full of hype:
The Internet's over ... here comes the Grid
Daily Mirror, 7 April 2008

What is the Grid?

A very fast speed network is obviously a positive invention but what is the
content of this network? What could be the benefit for "common" people? They
didn't tell us, but they (Ian Bird, project leader for Cern's high-speed
computing project) said "It will lead to what's known as cloud computing,
where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere".
And the privacy? Who can guarantee that corporations won't search through my
private information that i could store online?

I'm not saying that the Grid is useless, probably it could be very useless,
but could anyone explain the usefulness to normal people instead of using
trendy slogans?
Is it possible to see the day when some journalists ask simple questions, instead
of just repeating/translating what they saw on the net?

In another site, at last we can read some specific information:

The EGEE Grid consists of 41,000 CPU available to users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in addition to about 5 PB disk (5 million Gigabytes) + tape MSS of storage, and maintains 100,000 concurrent jobs. Having such resources available changes the way scientific research takes place. The end use depends on the users' needs: large storage capacity, the bandwidth that the infrastructure provides, or the sheer computing power available.

You can see the blog of David Britton (don't expect much because he
started blogging 1 month ago)

Ratzinger blames mass media

Joseph Ratzinger (1927), alias head of the Catholic Church, alias Pope Benedict XVI, blames the mass media.

Warning: if you want to do propaganda pro-Pope or against the Pope, this is NOT the right place to comment. Here i'm only interested about his view of media.

MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER
BENEDICT XVI
42nd WORLD COMMUNICATIONS DAY

Sunday, 4 May 2008

The Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service.
Searching for the Truth in order to Share it with Others.

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

1. The theme of this year’s World Communications Day – “The Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service. Searching for the Truth in order to Share it with Others” – sheds light on the important role of the media in the life of individuals and society. Truly, there is no area of human experience, especially given the vast phenomenon of globalization, in which the media have not become an integral part of interpersonal relations and of social, economic, political and religious development. As I said in my Message for this year’s World Day of Peace (1 January 2008): “The social communications media, in particular, because of their educational potential, have a special responsibility for promoting respect for the family, making clear its expectations and rights, and presenting all its beauty” (No. 5).

2. In view of their meteoric technological evolution, the media have acquired extraordinary potential, while raising new and hitherto unimaginable questions and problems. There is no denying the contribution they can make to the diffusion of news, to knowledge of facts and to the dissemination of information: they have played a decisive part, for example, in the spread of literacy and in socialization, as well as the development of democracy and dialogue among peoples. Without their contribution it would truly be difficult to foster and strengthen understanding between nations, to breathe life into peace dialogues around the globe, to guarantee the primary good of access to information, while at the same time ensuring the free circulation of ideas, especially those promoting the ideals of solidarity and social justice. Indeed, the media, taken overall, are not only vehicles for spreading ideas: they can and should also be instruments at the service of a world of greater justice and solidarity. Unfortunately, though, they risk being transformed into systems aimed at subjecting humanity to agendas dictated by the dominant interests of the day. This is what happens when communication is used for ideological purposes or for the aggressive advertising of consumer products. While claiming to represent reality, it can tend to legitimize or impose distorted models of personal, family or social life. Moreover, in order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences, it does not hesitate at times to have recourse to vulgarity and violence, and to overstep the mark. The media can also present and support models of development which serve to increase rather than reduce the technological divide between rich and poor countries.

3. Humanity today is at a crossroads. One could properly apply to the media what I wrote in the Encyclical Spe Salvi concerning the ambiguity of progress, which offers new possibilities for good, but at the same time opens up appalling possibilities for evil that formerly did not exist (cf. No. 22). We must ask, therefore, whether it is wise to allow the instruments of social communication to be exploited for indiscriminate “self-promotion” or to end up in the hands of those who use them to manipulate consciences. Should it not be a priority to ensure that they remain at the service of the person and of the common good, and that they foster “man’s ethical formation … man’s inner growth” (ibid.)? Their extraordinary impact on the lives of individuals and on society is widely acknowledged, yet today it is necessary to stress the radical shift, one might even say the complete change of role, that they are currently undergoing. Today, communication seems increasingly to claim not simply to represent reality, but to determine it, owing to the power and the force of suggestion that it possesses. It is clear, for example, that in certain situations the media are used not for the proper purpose of disseminating information, but to “create” events. This dangerous change in function has been noted with concern by many Church leaders. Precisely because we are dealing with realities that have a profound effect on all those dimensions of human life (moral, intellectual, religious, relational, affective, cultural) in which the good of the person is at stake, we must stress that not everything that is technically possible is also ethically permissible. Hence, the impact of the communications media on modern life raises unavoidable questions, which require choices and solutions that can no longer be deferred.

4. The role that the means of social communication have acquired in society must now be considered an integral part of the “anthropological” question that is emerging as the key challenge of the third millennium. Just as we see happening in areas such as human life, marriage and the family, and in the great contemporary issues of peace, justice and protection of creation, so too in the sector of social communications there are essential dimensions of the human person and the truth concerning the human person coming into play. When communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society’s control, it ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human person. As a result it risks exercising a negative influence on people’s consciences and choices and definitively conditioning their freedom and their very lives. For this reason it is essential that social communications should assiduously defend the person and fully respect human dignity. Many people now think there is a need, in this sphere, for “info-ethics”, just as we have bioethics in the field of medicine and in scientific research linked to life.

5. The media must avoid becoming spokesmen for economic materialism and ethical relativism, true scourges of our time. Instead, they can and must contribute to making known the truth about humanity, and defending it against those who tend to deny or destroy it. One might even say that seeking and presenting the truth about humanity constitutes the highest vocation of social communication. Utilizing for this purpose the many refined and engaging techniques that the media have at their disposal is an exciting task, entrusted in the first place to managers and operators in the sector. Yet it is a task which to some degree concerns us all, because we are all consumers and operators of social communications in this era of globalization. The new media – telecommunications and internet in particular – are changing the very face of communication; perhaps this is a valuable opportunity to reshape it, to make more visible, as my venerable predecessor Pope John Paul II said, the essential and indispensable elements of the truth about the human person (cf. Apostolic Letter The Rapid Development, 10).

6. Man thirsts for truth, he seeks truth; this fact is illustrated by the attention and the success achieved by so many publications, programmes or quality fiction in which the truth, beauty and greatness of the person, including the religious dimension of the person, are acknowledged and favourably presented. Jesus said: “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). The truth which makes us free is Christ, because only he can respond fully to the thirst for life and love that is present in the human heart. Those who have encountered him and have enthusiastically welcomed his message experience the irrepressible desire to share and communicate this truth. As Saint John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life … we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete” (1 Jn 1:1-3).

Let us ask the Holy Spirit to raise up courageous communicators and authentic witnesses to the truth, faithful to Christ’s mandate and enthusiastic for the message of the faith, communicators who will “interpret modern cultural needs, committing themselves to approaching the communications age not as a time of alienation and confusion, but as a valuable time for the quest for the truth and for developing communion between persons and peoples” (John Paul II, Address to the Conference for those working in Communications and Culture, 9 November 2002).

With these wishes, I cordially impart my Blessing to all.

From the Vatican, 24 January 2008, Feast of Saint Francis de Sales.

BENEDICTUS XVI

Do mass media help terrorists?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor is an israeli professor (he's the founder and director of the Center for Democratic Studies at the University of Haifa) and he wrote a paper called "Media Coverage of Acts of Terrorism: Troubling Episodes and Suggested Guidelines"; the paper was published in vol 30-3 (2005) of Canadian Journal of Communication.

In the paper you can read a long list of unprofessional and unethical mistakes made by journalists during coverage of acts of terrorism.

Journalists should never forget that when they report some news, they do not give information only to the public, they do give information to the public and to the terrorists.

Sometimes it seems that the rule of the scoop is more important than the rule of saving human lives. And the consequence can be a matter of life or death.

At the end of the paper, the author wrote some guidelines for journalists:

- The media need to be accountable for the consequences of their coverage

- The media should not jeopardize human life

- The media are advised to co-operate with the government when human lives are at stake in order to bring a peaceful end to the terrorist episode. This is not to suggest that the police or other security organizations should have a veto power over reporting. What is suggested is co-operation and mutual respect and understanding between the government agencies and the media

- The media should not glorify acts of terror as they glorified the SLA during the Hearst kidnapping

- The media should refrain from sensational and panicky headlines, from inflammatory catchwords, and from needless repletion of photos from bloody scenes

- Terrorism should be explicitly condemned for its brutality and violent, indiscriminate nature, as the Israeli media on the whole condemn terror

- The media must not pay or be paid for covering terrorist incidents

- The media are advised not to take upon themselves to mediate between the terrorists and the government. Special qualifications are required before one assumes such a responsibility upon oneself. Journalists are there to cover the event, not to become part of it

- The media are expected to refrain from making dangerous speculations about the terrorists' plans, government response, hostages' messages, and other matters. Speculations might hinder crisis management

- Media professionals should have background information about the terrorists they are required to cover. They should do research prior to their coverage. We should learn from the Hanafi incident, which luckily did not end with the murder of a hostage just because one reporter was ill-informed and did not do his homework as he should have

- The media should not broadcast live terrorist incidents that include hostage taking. This is in order not to jeopardize human life and not to impede a government's attempts to rescue the hijacked. This is not to say that the media should not cover such incidents. Rather, there should be a delay of a few minutes during which an experienced editor inspects the coverage and authorizes what should be on air and what should not, as was the case when hostages were released from the Iranian embassy in London in 1980

- The media are advised not to interview terrorists while the terrorist incident is still in motion. Lines of communications between the authorities and the terrorists should be left open. The media should not impede the negotiations process, as they did in the Hanafi takeover in Washington

- The media should not co-operate with terrorists who stage events. The BBC's decision not to broadcast the spectacle in Carrickmore was right

- The media are required to show sensitivity to the victims and to their loved ones. This critical guideline should be observed during terrorist incidents and, no less importantly, also after their conclusion

- The media are expected not to report details that might harm victims' families

- The area in which the terrorist incident takes place should not be open for anybody who testifies that he or she is a journalist. Only senior and experienced reporters should be allowed in. Junior and inexperienced reporters should undergo a learning process during which they fathom the complexities involved. Adequate training is a necessary precondition

Media Coverage of Acts of Terrorism: Troubling Episodes and Suggested Guidelines 2005

(20 pages + 8 pages of notes and references)

Preliminaries

Troubling episodes

Endangering life

Hindering governmenti activities

Glorifying terrorists

Sensational coverage

Irresponsible terminology

Co-operation with terrorists and payment for interviews

Irresponsible mediation

Dangerous speculations

Lack of homework and live interviews during crisis

Live coverage

Staging events

Conclusion

How many inventors for radio?

When i was a child, i was sure about a couple of things: i was italian and another italian (Guglielmo Marconi) invented the radio. It was cool to know that i was born in the same nation of the inventor of a magical instrument like the radio. Now i'm not a child anymore and things seem a bit more complicated than they used to be.

I was reading an italian blog of a friend, Radiopassioni, and i found out that in Spain they released a book called "Radio in Spain 1896-1977". The author of the book is the professor Angel Faus Belau (professor of "Cultura y Comunicación Audiovisual" at University of Navarra) and his point of view is that the inventor of radio was the spanish (spanish professor and spanish inventor: what a coincidence!) Julio Cervera Baviera (1854-1929).

In a bit of confusion, i'm trying to fix few things:

1) Gugliemo Marconi (1874-1937) wasn't entirely italian: he was born in Bologna (Italy) and his parents were Giuseppe Marconi (italian) and Annie Jameson (scottish-irish).

2) We still don't know who invented radio, we know that several people were doing experiments of radio signals during 1890-1910 but we can't say who made the most important achievement.

According to history of radio of wikipedia, "several people are claimed to have "invented the radio". The most commonly accepted claims are:

- Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937)

- Alexander Stepanovich Popov (1859-1906)

- Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

- Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)

Should we add Julio Cervera Baviera ? And what about Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) ? And Reginald Fessenden (1866-1932) ? Anybody else??

If somebody has time, it would be interesting to see how the same invention was (and still is) credited to different people in different countries. Same invention, but different inventors and different celebrations.

Marconi's prediction about tv

In the magazine printed by CRIT (research and innovation of technology of Rai; Rai is italian state-owned tv and radio) of April 2001 you can see an excerpt from the italian magazine Radiorario of 1926.

"Gugliemo Marconi told the Vossische Zeitung [a german newspaper] that the problem of television will be fixed by two years and then any war will be impossible. An invisible enemy won't exist anylonger: the enemy, with the help of television, wil be seen at any long distance. Therefore it won't be difficult anymore to predict and to defend any enemy's strike. It will be the end of submarines, the end of wars."

As far as we know today, Marconi (assuming it's true that he said that) was right: since the invention of television, we haven't had any war in the world.

Fox News and 2000 US election

The day after the 2000 US presidential election nobody knew who would become the next president of the United States. The world had to wait until 12th December, when the Supreme Court (9 persons NOT elected by the people) decided about Florida's 25 electoral votes.

Stefano Della Vigna (assistant professor of economics at Berkeley) and Ethan Kaplan (Stockholm University) wrote a paper called "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting" that talks about the impact of Fox News on the 2000 election.

Probably George Walker Bush should have thanked the Supreme Court and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News.

Abstract

Does media bias affect voting? We address this question by looking at the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting. Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of US towns. Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic. Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gain 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns which broadcast Fox News. The results are robust to town-level controls, district and county fixed effects, and alternative specifications. We also find a significant effect of Fox News on Senate vote share and on voter turnout. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its viewers to vote Republican. We interpret the results in light of a simple model of voter learning about media bias and about politician quality. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect for rational voters, or a permanent effect for voters subject to non-rational persuasion.

The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting (37 page pdf file)

1 Introduction page 1
2 Fox News History and Data page 3
3 Empirical results page 7
4 Interpretations page 15
5 Conclusion page 20
References and tables

Enron: huge failure for the press

The bankruptcy of Enron (Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001) was a huge failure for the press. How is possible that journalists couldn't see what was happening?

An interesting article (Open secrets; Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information; The New Yorker, January 8, 2007) written by Malcolm Gladwell tells us many things, including that in May 1998, six students of Cornell University wrote a 23 page report, at page 12 you can read:

"As shown in Table 2, the 8-variable Beneish model shows that that Enron may be manipulating its earnings."

On 5th March 2001, Bethany McLean wrote an article for Fortune Magazine: "Is Enron overpriced?" and in 2003 she was the co-author of the book "Enron: The smartest guys in the room"; in January 2005 the documentary (with the same title) was aired in the USA.

Here you can read "Enron: uncovering the uncovered story" (March 2002) from Columbia Journalism Review (an academic publication providing coverage and analysis of journalism).

If a CEO doesn't say the truth, you can charge him/her; but what can you do when "the truth" is hidden somewhere in million of pages?

Royal communication

It's interesting to see how a very old thing (a monarchy) can deal with a very new thing (Internet).

The british monarchy decided to open a channel in Youtube: the royal channel ,"the official channel of the british monarchy".

In that channel they uploaded 18 videos, including 6 videos of Prince Charles.

As soon as you see the royal youtube channel one video starts: the first televised Christmas message in 1957. After 50 years, tomorrow they are going to upload the latest Christmas Queen's speech (you can see it tomorrow on Bbc world, 17:20 Italy time; 11:20 NYC time).

In February 1952 the throne shifted from King George VI to his daughter Elizabeth II; we can't see official footage from BBC but we can see a three part documentary made by Lord Wakehurst (1895-1970) a Conservative MP and an amateur film maker. On 6 February 1952 King George VI died in his sleep (GeorgeVI's funeral took place on 15 February 1952), the same instant Elizabeth became Queen because british law states that the throne is not left vacant. The strange thing was that Elizabeth (and her husband) were abroad; therefore she became Queen when she wasn't in the United Kingdom, but in Kenya; another strange thing: Canada (not United Kingdom) was the first country that issued the first proclamation of the Queen's accession.

The last step is the coronation: it usually takes place several months after the death of the previous monarch, as it is considered a joyous occasion that would be inappropriate when mourning still continues.

Elizabeth II's coronation took place on 2 June 1953 (over a year after the death of the King).

The film of Lord Wakehurst is about this event: the first part is dedicated to the death of King George VI, the second part to the Queen's accession and the last one to the coronation.

The modern media can reveal "backstage details" inaccesible in the past: in the video "The Queen and her Prime Ministers" (not "the" Prime Ministers but "her" Prime Ministers: she owns the country) we can see the Head of State (Elizabeth II) talking to the Head of Government (Tony Blair) during the weekly audience. Obviously we can see only the beginning of the audience, we see Elizabeth sitting down on a chair and starting to scratch a leg, the cameraman starts to zoom the upper part of the body in order to avoid the viewers to see the Queen scratching the leg: Kings and Queens must not scratch their legs in a public space!

Unlike other channels, the royal channel isn't interactive: comments have been disabled. I don't see anything wrong about that, insulting comments would damage the seriousness and the "holiness" of a monarchy, there are other places where you can comment them. Who said that everything must be interactive?

Tv and Internet can be many things, british monarchy tries to use them as a storyteller of tradition and national identity.

Italy 2007: living without privacy

Use your imagination.

Can you imagine british newspapers and tv reporting the transcript and the audio of a private phone call made by David Cameron (leader of Conservative party, opposition party now) or by Nick Clegg (new leader of Liberal Democrats, opposition party now)?

Can you imagine french newspapers and tv reporting the transcipt and the audio of a private phone call made by François Hollande or Segolénè Royal (leaders of socialist party, opposition party now)?

Can you imagine US newspapers and tv reporting the transcript and the audio of a private phone call made by Hillary Rodham Clinton or by Barack Obama (members of the democratic party running for the presidential primaries, opposition party now)?

Italy is such an interesting country because it's far beyond imagination.

What can you do when the reality goes beyond imagination?

Basically, in Italy there is (or should i write "there should be"?) 2 levels of privacy.

The normal level applies to every citizen, article 15 of italian constitution says that the freedom and the privacy of the mail and any other way of communication are inviolable. Only the law can decide theese limitations (about communication).

There is a higher level of privacy for member of parliament and is totally understandable. Article 68 of italian constitution says the a MP (member of parliament) can not be recorded or listened without the majority vote of Senate or House of commons.

An italian newspaper printed the transcript (and the site the audio) of a phone call between Silvio Berlusconi (leader of one of the opposition parties) and a man working for Rai (italian state tv).

Tv news of rai1 talked about the phone call and they made the audience listening to part of the audio.

A lot of bloggers are talking about the content of the phone talk but i want to talk about the origin, how is it possible that in Italy there's no privacy?

Printing the transcipt and releasing the audio of a private phone call is a HUGE violation of privacy.

Violation of "basic" privacy and violation of privacy of a MP.

Berlusconi is upset and he, while he was talking to journalists and explaining the content of the phone call, said a bizzarre sentence (like a sociologist of communication) "sometimes the telephone is an oneiric zone".

Most people like this kind of things because most people like spying powerfull and famous people through the keyhole.

This kind of thing put the other newspapers and tv in a difficult situation, i would say a no-win situation.

If they cover the news and they talk about the content of the phone talk, people can blame them for violation of privacy.

If they don't cover the news, people can blame them for hiding the news.

Contradiction is part of modern mass media communication.

Get the money for a local news project

In the United States you can get a grant to start a micro-local news project.
I hope it would be the same in Europe (please correct me if i'm wrong).
The deadline is February 20 2008: do not be late!

You can get all the info in New Voices site

J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism invites United States non-profit groups and education organisations to apply for funding to launch new community news ventures and to cooperate with J-Lab in spotlighting best practices and lessons learned. Funding is available for start-up news initiatives only. Ongoing efforts are not eligible to apply unless they are proposing a new venture. Successful applicants will be ventures that benefit a defined geographic or special-interest community, and foster an open exchange of journalistically sound ideas, information, news and opinion in those communities. New Voices is funded by the John F. and James L. Knight Foundation. Proposals from as many as three of the 26 communities where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers will be given special consideration.

Through 2008, New Voices will help fund the start-up of 10 micro-local news projects with grants of US$12,000; support them with an educational website, and help foster their sustainability through US$5,000 second-year matching grants.

Projects will be selected on:

• The level of communications innovation.
• Plans for effectively serving an identified community with fact-based news, information and dialogue.
• Usefulness as a prototype for others.
• Specific plans for sustaining the project after New Voices funding has ended.

Eligibility:

Eligible to apply for funding under the New Voices project are 501(c)3 organisations and education institutions, including civic groups, community organisations, public broadcasters, schools, colleges and universities.

• Funding is available for start-up news initiatives only. Ongoing efforts are not eligible to apply unless they are proposing a new venture.
• Funding may be used only for news and information projects. Advocacy and government projects are not eligible.
• Funding is available for print or electronic news initiatives, including online, cable, broadcast, narrowcast, satellite and mobile efforts.
• Collaborative ventures are eligible as long as the funded party is a nonprofit or education institution.
• Religious organisations may receive grants for non-sectarian purposes only. Proposals to proselytise or to promote the tenets of a particular religious belief will not be considered.
• Funded applicants must have plans to launch their initiative within 10 months of receiving funding.
• Applicants must specifically outline a realistic vision for sustaining the project after start-up funding is spent.
• Only projects based in the United States may apply.
• Projects using a language other than English will be permitted as long as translated samples of the project are made available monthly for educational purposes and all reports are made in English.

Deadline for applications is February 20 2008.

Panos: using media for development

Today Panos is a network of 8 organizations.
In September 2007 they released a report called Making poverty the story - Time to involve the media in poverty reduction

Brief history of Panos

Panos may officially have been founded in 1986, but our origins go back to the early 1970s when the environmental movement was gathering pace.

In 1974, UK journalist Jon Tinker started Earthscan, a unit of the International Institute for Environment and Development which offered journalists (and later NGOs) objective information on key global issues and on policy options for addressing them.

By 1986 Jon had transformed Earthscan’s Southern media programme into a new independent institution: Panos.

From the outset, as part of its commitment to Southern-led development, Panos aimed to build a network of independent institutes around the world.

During the late 1990s offices opened in Zambia, Haiti, Nepal, Ethiopia and India, among others. In 2000 West Africa became the first autonomous Southern institute, and six years later Eastern Africa completed the transition.

Twenty years after the creation of Panos, the vision of a global network of institutes striving towards a common goal - ensuring that information is effectively used to foster public debate, pluralism and democracy - has become a reality.

Why communication? Panos' approach to development

The capacity to receive information, to debate, and to express one’s own ideas and needs is a right in itself and an essential part of people’s ability to lift themselves out of poverty and participate in the life of their society.

Communication is part of the fabric of societies. By receiving, giving and discussing information and ideas we are able to make decisions and form opinions – parents decide if their child will go to school, an HIV positive person decides whether to declare his or her status, and individuals decide how to vote in an election.

Communication enables health services to ensure the supply of medicines in their clinics, farmers to find out the price of their crops, and diaspora communities to send remittances back home. Communication underpins development.

The opportunities for communicating have increased enormously, especially over the past two decades. A technological revolution has brought us digital communication, satellites, the internet and mobile phones.

And many countries have become more democratic, allowing greater freedom of speech and a more varied and independent media.

So why should development agencies, donor organisations and civil society groups focus on communication? Because there are still many gaps:

1) mass media (newspapers, radio and TV stations, and online news services) may have increased in number, but this is not always matched by the quality, variety, or relevance of their content

2) poor people in rural areas of many developing countries still lack access to telephones, the internet and other forms of media, even if they could afford them

3) the English language continues to dominate the internet, which is primarily geared towards people in rich countries – little content is produced by and for people in developing countries

4) the potential of communication to be “bottom-up” - empowering poor people to speak for themselves and participate in democratic processes, not just to receive information - has not been fully exploited

5) development planners often neglect communication, failing to appreciate how essential it is for sustainable development strategies; fragmented approaches to communication for development have led to confusion, poor decision-making and missed opportunities

How Panos is helping to address these gaps

Panos believes that a communication environment that promotes development is one that enables poor people to make their voices heard, that helps people to participate in decision-making, and that encourages public debate – from the community level all the way to international policy.

We promote and support a broad and integrated view of communication. We have pioneered the use of oral testimony – training local people to conduct interviews that draw out direct personal experience and memory – as a way for ordinary men and women to articulate their perspectives on development and change.

Much of our work supports the media – especially radio, the medium that in many countries reaches poor people most easily - and analyses the role it can play in development.

As the Commission for Africa's 2005 report, Our Common Ground, noted: “The media is an educator and key information source that can help deliver the Millennium Development Goals, promote transparent governance and, through balanced reporting, help prevent conflicts. The wide benefits from plural media means it acts as a public good in development.”

For example, we help radio stations produce programmes on issues of local public concern, and we enhance the skills of journalists to report on development issues. We also endeavour to strengthen the legal and regulatory environments which allow an independent and quality media to flourish – for instance by supporting local organisations to lobby against high taxes on small radio stations.

Making the internet and other telecommunications more accessible and affordable to poor and rural people is key. At the national policy level we host debates between governments, private sector providers and researchers, for example on the pros and cons of allowing greater competition between internet service providers.

Finally, we have built up a solid reputation for our expertise and analysis on the role of communication in development. We collaborate with major international development agencies – such as the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS, the UK’s Department for International Development and the UN Economic Commission for Africa – encouraging them to devote more resources and effort to communication.

By working in a variety of ways with a range of stakeholders we aim to strengthen the voices of poor people and enable them to participate in development.

Making poverty the story - Time to involve the media in poverty reduction

This 68-page report is the culmination of Raising Debate, a three-year pilot project on the media and poverty reduction in six countries, coordinated by Panos London with members of the international Panos network and partners in Africa and South Asia. It focuses on the role of media in poverty reduction, through its ability to raise public awareness and debate, and shift public and political opinion, with the possible result of policy change. It asks for recognition and support of high quality public interest journalism that plays a role in coverage relevant to poverty reduction. According to the report, media has boosted poverty reduction from a cause to a challenge, resulting in public action on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The report makes a case for stronger media involvement on poverty reduction through citing the introduction of World Bank-approved and -supported Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)as the main instrument for dealing with poverty in low-income countries. The PRSP policy-making process, in principle, engages stakeholder participation and ‘national ownership', requiring communication strategies involving the public, including economically poor people. Because of the need for transparency and participation on issues at stake in the PRSP policy-making process, the document recommends engaging journalists to bring these issues to the public through the media and highlights these media functions:

1. "communicating with and informing a wide range of audiences on poverty reduction issues;
2. providing an open forum to reflect different public views, including those of economically poor people;
3. communicating with and informing a wide range of audiences on poverty reduction issues;
4. providing an inclusive platform for public debate; and
5. scrutinising and holding all actors to account for their actions, acting as a force for more transparent and accountable decision-making relevant to poverty reduction."

As stated in the document's second section, the challenges and constraints to media development require cognisance of the needs of the media in many of the economically poorest countries, particularly countries in Africa. Competition in the wake of liberalisation from state controls has brought a struggle for commercial survival to media in a number of regions. Because poverty reduction is not seen as a subject that is attractive to readership and advertisers, it is often not given media attention. This view limits editorial discussion of poverty issues. Also, these issues may cause media to be more subject to political pressures.

Structural problems of media finance often result in precarious employment and lack of sufficient salary and training for journalists. Time and resources for research on poverty reduction are scarce. Possible skill deficits in deciphering the existing range of information and analysis coupled with a tendency to rely on government-produced information sources exclusively, despite degrees of official secrecy and red tape, can lead to problematic professional practices. The report recognises that there are training needs in the area of analysis.

Given this context, the report identifies opportunities, some of which have opened because, as a result of the PRSP process making more information available for public analysis. It highlights the importance of policy actors needing not only to recognise media potential and strengthen engagement with individual journalists, but also needing to support the media more effectively. These policy actors include: civil society organisations (CSOs) and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), national governments, international donors, and media leaders and media support organisations. The document calls for a structural approach to strengthening the media sector, including comprehensive public policies on the media, and, in its conclusions, lists specific recommendations to these policy actors for structural change.

There is, as stated here, "unrealised potential of better understanding and working relations between civil society and the media." However, both national CSOs and international NGOs must better understand journalists' constraints and strengthen their approach to engaging and working with the media as independent partners. The report argues that media also has much to gain by engaging the public on poverty reduction issues, including sources, insights, and contacts, and greater familiarity with the issues at stake, as seen by those often working closely with or seeking to represent the economically poor. It lists fifteen specific strategies for national CSOs and seven for international NGOs to use to engage and support the media, including, for example, sharpening policy messages with accurate information, proposing story ideas that meet media values of noteworthiness, and organising public meetings to be well run and media friendly, as well as exploring partnerships and launching research initiatives.

Further, the document argues the importance of engaging media owners, managers, and editors in discussions of how to strengthen the level and quality of coverage of issues related to poverty reduction. Their understanding of what will resonate with audiences is an important starting point. Questions are raised on promoting poverty reduction stories through specialist topics such as national development plans or the institutional mechanics of policy development in the PRSPs. Recognising that the media attracts its public through controversy, the report suggests using the pros and cons of contentious decisions, such as state reform or privatisation, especially bringing together local and national politics and their real-life relevance. Also, a focus on a key aspect of policymaking relevant to poverty reduction, with links, inconsistencies, and gaps relevant to the public, may engage media that are searching for topicality, newsworthiness, and audience impact.

The concluding portion lists 17 recommendations for national governments regarding strengthening and enabling the media, particularly on effective reporting of poverty-reduction-related issues and efforts. Among these are:

• "develop public information and consultation systems, strengthening
  a participatory focus on poverty as governments develop their own homegrown strategies and national development plans;
• involve the media in helping to communicate the findings of official surveys and research exercises on poverty and poverty reduction ...;
• engage the media to provide stronger coverage of key moments in official policymaking and decision-making ...; and
• enable the development of independent media regulation and media support systems ..."
  

The report stresses the role of alternative media, such as community radio, oral testimonies, community theatre, and other inclusive forms of communication in amplifying the voices of the economically poor and scaling up their impact.

What's the purpose of radio?

Some days ago there was a videochat with an italian journalist (Beppe Severgnini) and 2 people who work in radio.

The topic of the videochat was "What's the purpose of radio?" and, during the chat, people could send messages, obviously.

I read and i saved the messages of people, some were useless and some were interesting.

Anyway, my question would be: "What's the purpose of radio, beside making money?"

John Reith (General manager and Chairman of the BBC from 1922 till 1938) was clear: unlike the USA, the mission of (public) radio (and later tv) is "to inform, educate and entertain". Still today that sentence is in BBC website.

But John Reith was a man of his era (like everybody): in 50's he was against the Television Act (1954) that allowed the creation of a private tv. Could you imagine anybody now opposing the existence of private broadcasters?

Even without public broadcasters we can be informed and entertained. I don't honestly think that radio can educate anyone now!

One message (of the videochat) was quite interesting: "Are podcasting now like pirate radio in 70's"? (In Italy pirate radio were broadcasting in 70's, not 60's).

Well, yes, that could be true. My opinion is that we are like in the UK in 60's: pirate radio were pushing and trying to reshape the whole system. The political solution of that time (law in 1967 to switch off pirates and licences in 1973 for private radio) is not possible now: you can't unplug Internet for 6 years or for 6 days! The old system of media is collapsing and mainstream radio (through the air) could be one of the first victims.

What's the purpose of radio? I can't tell but radio must rethink its mission (now the only mission is trying to sell cd of top 40), otherwise radio won't have any purpose very soon.

Luttazzi and the mass media

Daniele Luttazzi is an italian comedian, i would say he's the italian version of David Letterman.

A couple of days ago the private tv channel La7 (the majority of the shares belongs to Telecom Italia) said they cancelled his show because they said he insulted one journalist of the same channel.

Some people are saying "It's a shame, it's censorship!"
Is it really censorship?
I do not think so.
Luttazzi doesn't understand (or maybe he pretends not to understand) that every medium has its limits. Who decides the limits? Easy answer for a private tv channel: the owner does decide the limits. If you don't like those limits, you're free to look for another job in another private tv channel. In this system of society, there's no way we can establish the right to be on tv against the will of the owner, it would be the same for newspapers or radio. A journalist or a comedian should be a valuable asset for a tv channel, not a source of troubles.

Everybody talks about "the right of satire" but not many people talk about "the right of people not to be insulted through mass media". Why?

1 year of Al Jazeera English

From The Independent: the journalist Ian Burrell goes to Al Jazeera London studio and tells us what's the mission of Al Jazeera English, difficult challenge when you have giants like CNN and BBC

Al Jazeera: 'It's no hangout for al-Qa'ida'

Al Jazeera has been bombed, banned and ridiculed – but its new English language version has accumulated viewers in 100 million homes after barely a year on air. Ian Burrell goes inside its London bureau to find out what makes the station tick

Published: 19 November 2007

Stepping out of his studio at Al Jazeera English and striding purposefully on to the street, Sir David Paradine Frost seems impervious to London's winter chill, as he briefly adjourns from filming and heads up Knightsbridge to the Library Bar of the Lanesborough hotel, where the staff nod to him in recognition and the barman promptly reaches for a bottle of the presenter's favourite Chablis.

"Good-sized glasses," he says approvingly, settling down at a corner table. "A nice bit of refreshment in the middle of the day." Sir David, 68, is enjoying life, one year after he raised eyebrows in political and journalistic quarters by signing up to the Emir of Qatar's ambitious plans to transform global news coverage.

The presence of this most high-profile of television interviewers on the fledgling network has been of incalculable value to a media organisation that still suffers pariah status in large parts of American society and a tense relationship with the Washington administration. The station's offices were attacked by US forces in Baghdad and Kabul; George Bush commented to Tony Blair that the network's headquarters in Doha should be bombed.

Yet the Friday show Frost Over the World has in its first 12 months secured interviews with the former secretaries of state James Baker and Madeleine Albright and the retired four-star general Wesley Clark, not to mention such international political figures as Tony Blair, Benazir Bhutto, Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev and Gerry Adams.

"It has been a terrific experience, everything they said it would be in terms of total editorial freedom and coming up with the facilities around the world when we need them," says Sir David, scooping peanuts out of a dish. "I ran into [the former Chancellor of the Exchequer] Norman Lamont the other day and he said, 'I'm a news junkie but now I always watch Al Jazeera English first because you keep telling me things I didn't know.' I think that is a rather good slogan for a station, actually: telling people things they don't know."

Having launched franchises such as London Weekend Television in 1967 and TV-am in 1982 – "I love new stations and new challenges" – he has always been a broadcasting pioneer. But Al Jazeera English is far more than Sir David Frost's Friday foray into politics and culture. It is a station that follows the sun as it moves around the globe. Early-morning coverage emanates from Kuala Lumpur, and is transferred at 10am to Doha in the Gulf; the London bureau takes centre stage at 8pm before handing over to Washington at 11pm, Greenwich Mean Time. At all times, the station is attempting to provide an alternative to what it sees as the Western perspective of rivals CNN and BBC World, offering a "south to north" interpretation of the news. In its first 12 months, the network has far exceeded its expectations, reaching 100 million homes, though it is shunned by most cable networks in the US, where it relies heavily on its website stream. The station's stars include Rageh Omaar, best known as the BBC correspondent in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the former BBC World anchor Stephen Cole, and the former US marine turned TV presenter Josh Rushing.

Inside the London bureau, near Hyde Park Corner, strict security reflects the al-Qa'ida fatwah that was issued against the station over its coverage of a recent Osama bin Laden video. There is more than a little irony in this, given the accusations faced by the station – which is banned from Saudi Arabia – from critics who say that it publicises the actions of the terror network.

A group of senior Al Jazeera journalists have convened in an airy room adjoining an atrium filled with small trees in planters. By conference call to Doha, they are negotiating the day's running order. "We have pictures of bodies being dragged through the streets – there's enough for a package," says an English voice in Doha, commenting on unrest in Mogadishu.

Many of the 160 London-based staff have considerable experience gained at more established news networks. Ben Rayner, the head of news, is a former editor of the now-defunct ITV News Channel. He says that AJE has distinct news values from its rivals. "There is an obsession in the West with celebrity. You just have to see a story like Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith and the amount of coverage those stories have got in the West. Stories out of Washington and London are quite often uncritically accepted. Pronouncements are given great coverage just because they come from those places – whereas we are trying to shift the balance," he says. "It's looking at the world from south to north, challenging received perspectives as to what the news agenda is. There's no domestic agenda. BBC World still does a lot of British news and CNN is very much looking at the world through American eyes."

With Pakistan in political meltdown, Al Jazeera has three crews in the country. "We have a permanent Pakistan bureau staffed by local people, we have people who have lived there for years and who know exactly what the story is, whereas ITN are sending in people from Beijing who aren't based in Pakistan," Rayner says. He speculates that Sky News will that day be concentrating on the murder in Italy of the British student Meredith Kercher. "That's a story we wouldn't particularly cover on Al Jazeera. It doesn't have the same ripple in terms of news events."

The Middle East is rarely absent for long from the Al Jazeera output, but the network is not exclusively dedicated to covering the Islamic world. "We are not a channel for Muslim viewers – we are a channel for the whole world," Rayner says. "But clearly we are Al Jazeera, we are going to attract, by our name, more viewers who are interested in the Middle East."

A story on nomads in Niger is one he says other channels would not cover in such depth. Africa is an important region for Al Jazeera English, where it can take advantage of the Al Jazeera Arabic network of bureaux and the millions of English speakers across the continent.

Asked about the bloody content of some of Al Jazeera's coverage, Rayner says that his audience is different from that of the BBC Six O'Clock News. "We try to avoid sanitising war. There are still taste and decency issues as to what you show, but I would not expect young children to be watching Al Jazeera."

In the newsroom, Stephen Cole, who shares Sir David's predilection for red socks, is preparing to go on air. He was among the first to join the new venture, which he says was greeted with unjustified criticism. "They thought they knew what the channel was about, but because it was only shown in Arabic they didn't have a clue. I was with Sky in 1989 and that was criticised as Murdoch's Page Three television. It turned out to be an award-winning 24-hour news channel." He says the ambition of Al Jazeera is unlikely to be matched again. "It's such an expensive operation to launch a news channel. You only need a breaking story and all ads are chucked in the bin – it's like a licence to lose money."

For Cole, the Al Jazeera English proposition has opened doors in high places: he has just returned from Africa, where he interviewed the presidents of Rwanda and Malawi. "We talked about the need to get connected through the mobile phone, as opposed to the PC, which I see as the catalyst to empowering Africa." He has also been backed by the station in doing reports on organised crime in Bulgaria and corruption in Romania.

The London bureau is overseen by Sue Phillips, an English-born veteran of the Canadian public broadcaster CBC, whose office has a poster showing a bomb going off and the quote "Telling the truth is hard. Not telling it is even harder." She says that during its first 12 months, AJE has established itself as an alternative to the more established news broadcasters. "I see clear examples where we have gone with Darfur and everybody else is going with Gordon Brown has done this or George Bush has done that. We are not afraid," she says. Rivals are having to up their games: CNN last week opened a new hub in the United Arab Emirates as part of the biggest expansion in international news-gathering in its history.

The Al Jazeera English rolling news output is broken up with specialist programming, such as the documentary strand Witness, presented by Omaar, the entertainment programme The Fabulous Picture Show, and the travel-based 48. Flora Gregory, who joined AJE from Channel 4 and is the producer of Witness, scours the world for films that will appeal to the Al Jazeera audience. Her highlights have been Being Osama, a documentary about six Canadians who happen to share a first name with Bin Laden, and Another Road Home, the search by an Israeli-born woman, Danae Elon, for the male Palestinian house servant who looked after her as a child. "We are not lowering the quality boundaries," says Gregory. "We are reflecting a side of life that doesn't get a look in at other channels." Omaar, who comes up to say hello, has made several films himself, most notably a report from the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad shortly before it came under siege from Pakistani troops in the summer.

Sir David Frost will this week be "off to Chogham" – not a comfortable jaunt into the Home Counties but a long haul to Kampala for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). It will be an opportunity for him to add President Museveni of Uganda to the list of heads of state whom he has interviewed this year (and who include the leaders of Brazil, Somalia, Finland and New Zealand, countries sometimes overlooked by rivals). The last time he was in Uganda, in the Seventies, he interviewed Idi Amin, who offered to assist the Queen in achieving peace in Northern Ireland. At a previous CHOGM, he persuaded Robert Mugabe to go on camera. "That was 10 or 15 years ago, and he hadn't really completed his transition from respected leader to the world's bête noire." As ever with Frost, though, his Al Jazeera show is not just politics. He secured the first television sit-down with Lewis Hamilton ahead of his first Grand Prix victory, and on Friday he interviewed Jean Michel Jarre.

He drains his glass just in time, for his producer, Charlie Courtauld, with his Tom Baker scarf, checked suit, boating pumps and walking stick, is almost at the hotel door to fetch his presenter back to the studio. Frost says his first year on Al Jazeera has been "exhilarating", which in spite of the channel's critics he always knew it would be. "It helped when people realised that the Emir of Qatar, the owner of Al Jazeera, is our most important ally in the Middle East, meaning Britain and America's ally. All our planes are there, all our airmen are there, all our soldiers are there. It's clearly not an al-Qa'ida hangout," he says. "But I did check that out at the beginning."

Muslims, non-Muslims and the UK media

The search for common ground
Muslims, non-Muslims and the UK media
A report commissioned by the Mayor of London

1) The search for common ground report pdf (180 pages)
2) The search for common ground report rtf (156 pages)
3) The search for common ground executive summary pdf (12 pages)
4) The search for common ground executive summary rtf (9 pages)

In 2006 the Greater London Authority (GLA) commissioned a study of media coverage of Islam and Muslims in the UK media. The study was co-ordinated by the Insted consultancy. It took place between 1 May 2006 and 30 April 2007 and involved:
• a review of recent opinion polls
• study of recent books and articles
• a survey of the news in one week
• consideration of stories about political correctness
• interviews with Muslim journalists
• analysis of a TV documentary.

The underlying questions for investigation were:
• Do the media promote informed debate about the building and maintenance of Britain as a multicultural society? Or do they oversimplify, giving insufficient information about the background to the news and pandering to readers’ and viewers’ anxieties and prejudices?
• How community-sensitive is media reporting about multiculturalism and British Muslim identities? Is it likely to foster anxiety, fear or hostility within particular communities – for example, in the views that non-Muslims have of Muslims, or that Muslims have of non-Muslims?
• Does media coverage hinder or promote mutual understanding? Does it increase or decrease a sense of common ground, shared belonging and civic responsibility?

Findings and conclusions
The project found examples of good practice. These included: the decision by every British national paper not to reprint the caricatures about Islam created in Denmark in 2005 and widely published in 2006 in most other European countries; the exercise of responsibility after 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005; a range of one-off news items, features, projects and investigative articles. But in most though not all of the UK print media, and for most, though not all of the time, the project found that:
1 The dominant view is that there is no common ground between the West and Islam, and that conflict between them is accordingly inevitable.
2 Muslims in Britain are depicted as a threat to traditional British customs, values and ways of life.
3 Alternative world views, understandings and opinions are not mentioned or are not given a fair hearing.
4 Facts are frequently distorted, exaggerated or oversimplified.
5 The tone of language is frequently emotive, immoderate, alarmist or abusive.
6 The coverage is likely to provoke and increase feelings of insecurity, suspicion and anxiety amongst non-Muslims.
7 The coverage is at the same time likely to provoke feelings of insecurity, vulnerability and alienation amongst Muslims, and in this way to weaken the Government’s measures to reduce and prevent extremism.
8 The coverage is unlikely to help diminish levels of hate crime and acts of unlawful discrimination by non-Muslims against Muslims.
9 The coverage is likely to be a major barrier preventing the success of the Government’s community cohesion policies and programmes.
10 The coverage is unlikely to contribute to informed discussion and debate amongst Muslims and non-Muslims about ways of working together to maintain and develop Britain as a multicultural, multifaith democracy.

Principal recommendations
In the light of this report:
1 News organisations should review their coverage of issues and events involving Muslims and Islam, and should consider drawing up codes of professional conduct and style guides about use of terminology. Such codes of professional conduct should be based on their own best practice.
2 News organisations should take measures, perhaps within the framework of positive action in equalities legislation, to recruit more journalists of Muslim heritage who can more accurately reflect the views and experiences of Muslim communities.
3 News organisations should also consider how best to give Muslim staff appropriate professional support and to prevent them being pigeon-holed as specialists in minority issues rather than concerned with the full spectrum of an organisation’s output.
4 Organisations, projects and programmes concerned with race relations should see and treat anti-Muslim prejudice as a form of discrimination, and as serious as other forms of discrimination.
5 The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) should focus explicitly on, amongst other concerns, combating anti-Muslim prejudice, both in society generally and in the media in particular.
6 The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) should give a higher profile to combating anti-Muslim prejudice in the media and the general climate of public opinion.
7 News organisations should treat seriously complaints relating to distorted coverage of Islam and Muslims in the media.
8 Consideration should again be given to amending the Press Complaints Commission’s (PCC) terms of reference so it can consider distorted and inaccurate coverage of groups and communities as well as of individuals, and can consider complaints from third parties.
9 Organisations and institutions concerned with education should give consideration to how they can develop a) critical media literacy and b) religious literacy in the programmes, courses and curricula that they provide.
(The report defines religious literacy as ‘skills in understanding and assessing religious statements and behaviour; discerning the difference between valuable and harmful aspects of religion and religions; appreciating religious architecture, art, literature and music without necessarily accepting all the beliefs that they express or assume; and making reasonable accommodation between people holding different religious and non-religious worldviews.’)

Introduction
1 Common ground? – issues, concerns and opinions 1

Studies and stories
2 A normal week? – threats and crises in Britain and the world 17

3 ‘Britishness is being destroyed’ – worries in a changing world 33

4 Being a journalist, being a Muslim – voices from the newsroom 53

5 ‘Full and fair debate’ – who speaks for British Muslims? 75

Discussion
6 Histories, stories and Islamophobia – the content and form of narratives 99

Conclusion
7 Responsible journalism – principles and action points 115