Media and Journalism

In an article about Irish print journalists not applauding Ahern’s speech to Congress, Gayle Killilea noted the following:

“Even worse, there is a growing tendency not to bother contacting the subject of the story at all, which goes against basic, rudimentary, journalistic ethics.”

Unfortunately, before writing her diatribe, it seems she did not bother to contact the journalists in question and ask them why they had not applauded.

She might have ended up with a more considered viewpoint had she done so.

I don’t blog much about work, mainly because there is no set conditions by which we blog. And also because text sub-editing doesn’t involve much in the way of newsiness.

Yesterday though I edited our two world pages for the first time. It was an interesting day, though Sunday can be slow I guess.

From the morning I had intended to lead with Berlusconi and the Italian elections on the first page and Zimbabwe on the second world page. Nothing much happened during the day to alter that.

Half way through the day news of a coalition in Kenya came through, so I decided to sit that beside the Zimbabwe story and use a lead picture of Kenyan President Kibaki. I think the BBC used a similar, or the same, picture - mainly because it was the best of a bad lot. Zimbabwe was still my lead, and the Obama ‘incident’ was my second lead. A leg of briefs, including the 8,000 year old trees story (made sure to keep that in, it was very interesting), H5N1 in South Korea and a couple of others. Downpage was a story on Tibetan monks being arrested, and some violence in Darfur on the fifth anniversary of the conflict.

On the first page nothing much changed from my morning plan, except some design alterations. I kept the Murat libel story, led with Italian election too with a main pic and colour piece below. A leg of briefs leading with Nepal elections and British tourists killed in Ecuador. The Italian woman killed in Turkey, the Paps selling drugs to Ledger story.. and that about summed it up.

I would have liked to have got in the BAE/corruption/banking story, but space dictated. I would also have liked to put in something about the Pope’s US visit, but again not enough space. Rawstory mentioned that he may snub a Whitehouse dinner.

Besides that I was happy enough, and I shall speak to the powers that be to get some feedback on my selections. I guess the other metric I have is the competition, and since I don’t have access to the Indo as yet I should look at what the IT picked.

They led with all the same stories. And about 70% of their offleads were the same. They gave more space to the old trees story than I did. They also got the Pope in which I would have liked, and a tee-up to Merkel’s visit to Ireland today (though it was a local journo writing colour really). Overall though pretty much the same selections, though they didn’t feature Darfur, Ledger, or the Italian lady killed in Turkey.

If I was writing in my capacity as an employee of de paper I would ask you for your opinions on future direction, or stories I missed that should have gone in.

But since this is purely a personal blog I cannot do so, though of course comments are always welcome.

As a result of Ahern’s announcement, traffic to the Mahon Tribunal wiki has surged. I guess I should welcome colleagues from the BBC, Associated Newspapers, The Guardian, News International (Times), Sky News and the The Washington Post.

PS. I should ask Sadie Gray to perhaps contact me to clear up a number factual inaccuracies in her story.

On Friday’s Late Late show, Eamon Dunphy repeatedly pointed to an article by Gene Kerrigan in the Sunday Independent of March 23 . (It was, incidentally, a very good article).

1. Why can I not find this article on the Independent’s website?
2. Why did Eoghan Harris replace Gene Kerrigan on the back page of the Sindo today?

Answers in the comments section please.

For those interested, here is a copy of the article. Dunphy was right to reference it several times.

Update: Apparently Kerrigan was at a conference. It would have been nice of the Sindo to tell us that.

Hmm. Why do I get the feeling RTE are not giving this story the coverage it deserves.

People are bored with the tribunal and Ahern? Yea right.

Via Jim Fallows comes news that the Atlantic, an excellent magazine I have subscribed to for many years, is opening its archives online.

Twill be opened up tomorrow, and is definitely worth a look.

Another moment to remember, when Google ad revenue outstripped ITV1 ad revenue in Britain.

Google pulled in total revenues of £327m compared with an estimated £317m for all of ITV1’s output during the same period between July and September 2007.

The report said the new figures offered a significant milestone as it was the first time Google has overtaken ITV1 in pulling in UK advertising revenue.

Last year the ubiquitous internet firm surpassed Channel 4’s total advertising bounty, with Google generating £871m in revenue from sponsored links for 2006. For the first nine months of this year, Google’s advertising revenue increased to £925m.

Times Select is dead. Finally.

They’ve also opened up a huge part of their archives.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

I think this is probably the most blatantly unquestioning and biased piece of “journalism” I have ever seen in my 26 years.

Government propaganda in the fourth estate. Ahern using a proxy to blacken the name of an investigation into corruption, via a national newspaper, which swallows it hook, line and sinker. How on earth did Jody Corcoran put his byline to that rubbish?

Groucho makes lots of denials on behalf of our Taoiseach.

He also rubbished reports that the Taoiseach never told the tribunal about the £50,000 lodgement to Celia Larkin’s accounts when he was obliged to disclosed all such details.

Mr O’Dea strongly denied that Celia Larkin had operated nominee bank accounts for the Taoiseach which he failed to disclose, and that the Taoiseach sought details from the bank about key lodgements long before the tribunal has specific queries about these lodgements.

And the evidence to back up these denials? So Ahern is saying th Tribunal deceived us? Can we have something to back that up please?

The money quote from Mr Corcoran:

But Mr Ahern is in no mood to further facilitate the tribunal.

Then obstruct it Mr Ahern, or attempt to bring it down, as your corrupt predecessor tried to do to McCracken.

I have to stop this post, before I lose the head.

As usual, the only sane voice in the Sindo is Gene Kerrigan. And what does he say about Ahern’s story?

There’s only one word — blunt and crude as it might be — that’s appropriate to what we’ve heard. And that word is bullshit.

The New York Post is saying that the NY Times is due to abandon Timesselect, it’s pay-for wall that many believe never really made any sense. It’s a good move for the Times and can only bring in more readers - and much needed advertising revenue. Now if only the Irish Times would do the same.

I really don’t like the name. But I’m guessing that Kijiji will further decimate print classifieds in the US and beyond. Kijiji is owned by eBay.

More here.

Time have a cover story this week on media mogul Rupert Murdoch. That MySpace deal looks eye-wateringly cheap looking back at it. As for his thoughts on where newspapers are going: (my emphasis)

When Murdoch talks about the future of newspapers, you get a sense of how contemporary he really is. Circulation and advertising revenues are ebbing away everywhere, he notes, proportional to broadband penetration. “You’ve really got to worry,” he says. “Tribune Co.’s revenues [in May] dropped 11% across broadcasting and newspapers. That’s huge. The Times dropped 8.5%. Half of men under 30 aren’t reading print newspapers, and there’s no sign that they come back as they age.”

How does he respond to this bleak picture? By musing about investing even more in newspapers. “What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global — a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks. How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you’d make … a little bit of money. Then again, the Journal and the Times make very little money now.”

Ouch. For those of us working in the newspaper industry these are pretty harsh words. But then I and many others have been harping on about the decline of print newspapers for several years now. Increasing broadband penetration = declining newspaper buying. What is the cheapest way to publish? Online. Where are people increasingly reading? Online. Where should you be driving your readers? Online.

The traditional print industry is in real crisis in countries where broadband is increasing - the NYTimes figures speak for themselves. Online seems like the most obvious place to go.

But why does Murdoch want to buy the WSJ then? What has the WSJ got that Murdoch wants? Brand recognition, loyalty and history. He believes he can make money from it too. Online.

Since Ireland is so behind in the broadband stakes, it seems clear that Irish newspapers have extra time to adjust to the coming shift in readership. I just wonder if they will be ready.

Hehe.

… I would have thought that, although the decline in readership … will probably go on…

WSJ: They’re all going to MySpace.

Mr. Murdoch: I wish they were. They’re all going to Facebook at the moment.

The Washington Post has taken the plunge - to link to rival newspaper sites.

I can’t understand why this has not happened sooner. Most bloggers realise that linking actually helps traffic, and doesn’t drive away readers as conventional wisdom suggests.

Online media outlets like Slate or Salon prominently feature their links to other sites and some, particularly blogs, are built around the strength of their links. But newspapers have been reluctant to direct readers outside their own gates. These deals with Inform are but one indication that newspapers may be reconsidering long-held beliefs about how to compete, and cooperate, with other publishers.

“Five years ago, everybody said you have to keep readers on your site, with no links out to other sites,” said Caroline H. Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online division of the Washington Post Company. “But ultimately, people will go where they want to go.”

But still they believe in forcing new windows to open when they click on these external links. People will go where they want to go… so just let it open in the same window. But at least the executive editor at the washingtonpost.com seems to get it:

“We think it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Brady said. “It seems limiting to tell people about something another news organization has reported and not point them to it. It goes against the Web’s DNA.”

Welcome to the WWW.

A Fox reporter in the wrong place at the wrong time. He alleges later that the IDF tanks were firing warning shots to get him out of the area. The reaction of the Fox panel is quite funny.

Ouch.

O’Reilly has again been trumpeting print newspapers this time calling them the “ultimate browser”.

The response of Independent News & Media, the owner of The Independent and The Independent On Sunday, to the march of new media had been measured and thoughtful, he said.

Sir Anthony said he believed we are in another period of wild stock-market overstatement for a certain class of media assets. Although this period would pass, in the meantime conventional media - terrestrial TV, cable, radio, newspapers and magazines - had been relegated in many investors’ minds to a “show me your model status”.

Speaking at the company’s annual meeting in Dublin, Sir Anthony said the multiplication of media devices which concentrate on the individual’s needs at any given point had made it much more difficult to aggregate large audiences.

In these circumstances, TV, newspapers and magazines, and to a degree radio, remained the best and the only way for mass audiences for goods and services to be created. However, the internet could yield an extraordinary opportunity to the newspaper industry on the production side in putting together its products at a much lower cost.

“If we exempt newsprint, the real cost of newspapers lies in putting them together - writing them, editing them, producing pages, getting them camera-ready, producing plates, printing, and finally in distribution,” Sir Anthony said.

Asked after the meeting whether he would sell his London-based titles, which are loss-making, he insisted: “No, absolutely not.”

Now this debate has been raging since before I started putting pixels online. What is the place of newspapers in a world where the Internet offers a far cheaper, and some would say more efficient means of distribution?

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, recently mounted a robust defence of journalism and of printed newspapers, dismissing reports that the death knell has sounded for “old media”. This is at the same time as the Guardian becomes the “first British national newspaper to offer a “web first” service that will see major news by foreign correspondents and business journalists put online before it appears in the paper.”

The Guardian has blazed the trail for blogging, all the way back to the first Guardian blog awards in 2002. The new commentisfree portal now boasts 50,000 reader comments and 2 million montly page impressions since launching in March. Rusbridger also says things like:

“What we’re doing, which no newspaper has ever done before, is to take your elite stable of columnists, who are paid, and pitch them into the same space as people who aren’t paid,” he said.

“What is professional journalism and what isn’t, and how do they share the same space? We’re making this up as we go along.”

Have a listen to Rusbridger speak at an RSA lecture here too.

So what is happening? I’m waiting to see, but I think O’Reilly has the wrong idea and is taking an unnecessarily defensive line with regard to new media. I will be posting more about this topic.

There was speculation during the week that Kevin Myers had not been seen for some time in the pages of the IT. The SBP report that Myers has resigned, and is in talks with the Indo.

Update: The people at El Paso say its an April Fool’s day joke. They posted it on March 30th?>. Anyways that aside, the most important thing coming up is McDowell’s defamation bill.

Now that is serious.

Dearbhail McDonald contacted me about that John Gray saga I went through a couple of years back. She wrote an article in today’s Sunday Times about a case being taken against the El Paso Times blog up in Dundalk. This is important stuff, especially since McDowell will shortly be publishing the new defamation bill.

Curious that Gardai were apparently ‘monitoring’ the blog. In other words the boys in blue read it.

Gardai have been monitoring the site, which is hosted on the Blogger network owned by Google, since it attacked local TD Dermot Ahern, and plain-clothes detectives will attend a public forum due to be hosted by members of El Paso today at a local hotel. The site gives no indication of who is behind it and the only means of contact is an e-mail address. It is not clear to what extent, if any, it is connected to the domain Dundealgan.com, which is registered to an entity calling itself dundealgan information, based in Willowdale, part of the Bay Estate on the outskirts of Dundalk.

“We have been keeping an eye on the site for some time,” said a senior officer in Dundalk. “But nobody has a clue who is behind it, and defamation is a civil matter, so there is little we can do to help.”

Will Google give up the details of login IP addresses? How much would it cost to take these guys to court in Ireland and the US?

Definately one to watch.

Yes I am still on hiatus.

SO pissed off was I today with the Gerry Ryan show that I emailed them to complain. The subject of my anger was a very ill-thought out quiz, where Aer Lingus are promoting their new route to Dubai. Now as readers know I have been there quite a few times, so I would have known alot of the answers anyway.

Maybe I have a little too much time on my hands these days, but I thought some of the questions to be entirely unfair, and appear to be as a result of very poor research. If you are going to do a quiz for a prize, then at least ask the people fair questions. And no, I wasn’t trying to get the prize myself :-)

Here were the questions:

1. How many Emirates make up the UAE?
2. Name the smallest Emirate.
3. When was Aer Lingus first registered as an airline?
4. When is Aer Lingus’s inaugural flight to Dubai?
5. What is the official language of Dubai? (Would have accepted Arabic, English, Urdu…and more)
6. Who is the current ruler of Dubai? (Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rasheed al Maktoum)
7. What hotel is the most luxurious hotel in Dubai?
8. What is Aer Lingus an anglicisation of? (Confused a number of callers, answer was Aer Lungus)
9. What is the largest Emirate? (Abu Dhabi)
10. When was Dublin airport completed? (1936 given, 1950 given, 1952 given, caller questioned the question, Gerry then scrapped the question)
11. Dubai has a land reclamation project currently going, what is that project called? (Palm Island Jumeirah given, accepted, but correct answer is given as the ‘3 palm island project’
12. Name the annual horse racing event in Dubai (World Cup)
13. Name the main beach in Dubai (Jumeirah)
14. When was oil discovered in Dubai? (1966)
15. What mountain range are the Hatta rock pools located on? (al Hajar)
16. What is the time difference between Ireland and Dubai? (3 hours given, told she was wrong, and therefore lost the chance to win)

The last question was especially ridiculous. The time difference varies since there are no Daylight Savings. For half the year it’s 3 hours, for the other half it’s 4 hours. Technically both callers were both right and wrong. Question 11 could have been several answers also, including the World, which Gerry didn’t mention.

I thought it was all quite unfair to the callers, IMHO.

Rant complete.

Michelle Malkin linked to images of Mohammed, the notion that any images of Mohammed are forbidden in Islam seems odd to me, but then I’m not religious myself.

What I had not realised is that this story has been brewing since October. That this is the case lends more weight to an argument that the controversy is less reactionary than people might think.

South Park also showed Mohammed, one would imagine in a more satirical light:

I wondered if directly showing the cartoons on here, for the purposes of debate, and in order to see what all the fuss is about, would be a directly offensive exercise to Islamic people?

Or does one wait a few months until the furore has died down? I am getting a spike in visitor activity today too - since many media organisations are not showing the cartoons, it appears that the Internet is the place to go.

Another question, in circumstances like this where it involves a foreign language newspaper essentially only available in that country, what would have been done before the Internet was invented? Is the decreasing ’size’ of the world partly to blame?

Would the cartoon have even caused an outcry? If it did, how would it be reported in the news, and how would people get their eyes on the offending cartoons?

Here is an interesting statistic according to a recent study, 25% of US workers read blogs. This contributes to a loss of 9% of the working week. In other words U.S. workers in 2005 wasted the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. Here’s the money quote:

According to a survey (sub.) by the magazine Advertising Age, a leading culprit is Weblogs. The survey indicates that one in four U.S. workers reads blogs regularly while at work, losing, on average, some nine percent of the workweek. This amounts to 551,000 years of labor lost in 2005 alone. If only the bloggers whose words seem so compelling were the ones sending us e-mail: 34 percent of workers surveyed by Information Mapping, Inc. reported wasting thirty to sixty minutes a day trying to interpret “ineffectively” written messages. A third study offers comfort—or at least a way to pass the buck for all the lost time. Having examined productivity in nine countries, it concludes that 37 percent of the time spent at work is wasted—but that poor management and inadequate supervision are largely to blame.

This really has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Michelle Malkin has, perhaps rightly, been going to town on it.

Last night RTE’s Prime Time decided not to show any of the cartoons.

I have decided to link to the cartoons, I actually think they are not that good, and to be honest I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Decide for yourselves whether you think these are offensive, feel free to comment below.

Here are all of them.

Click here to see images of Mohammed from history.

The Daily Show do a great piece on how the journalists of America could learn something from Oprah’s grilling of James Frey.

Watch the video here.

I find the Random House blurb by Coates Bateman quite funny:

What’s interesting is that the most affecting scenes (for me at least) are not gratuitously violent. They’re not graphically explicit. They’re not emotionally manipulative. They’re quiet conversations between a son and his parents. But, they are some of the most devastatingly honest, heartfelt, self-loathing, eloquent and hopeful conversations one will come across in a book.

He succeeds because of his honesty, responsibility, a sense of humor and a greater sense of purpose.

James Frey lied. Nobody died. (Or did they?)

Normally I like Vincent Browne, even when I don’t agree with him. But todays piece in the Irish Times is bordering on lunacy, at least in my opinion. An opinion that I am expressing freely. On a blog. On the ‘Internet’.

Has Vincent heard of new media?

Let’s put his views up here for debate. Has Vincent not thought that the State putting these limits on media might not be counter-productive, and lead to yet more State censorship or power?

CanWest, the Canadian media firm that owns 45 per cent of TV3, casually announced on Monday that it is to sell its shareholding in TV3, which is otherwise owned by Granada TV (43 per cent) and an Irish company, Windmill Lane (which owns the remaining 12 per cent).

This announcement is regarded as merely of passing interest, and indeed, why should it matter which foreign multinational owns the largest stake in the only commercial television company in the State (that is of course assuming RTÉ is not “commercial”, which of course is not true)? Anyway aren’t most of the other media owned by foreign or domestic corporations?

Regional newspapers, once family-owned titles, are almost all owned by Independent News and Media plc, Thomas Crosbie Holdings, the Johnston Group (British), Dunfermline Press (Scottish) and Alpha Newspaper Group (Northern Ireland).

The national newspaper business is dominated by Independent News and Media plc, which is controlled by someone who lives somewhere in the Caribbean, we are told (and who rejoices - for once the cliche is appropriate - in the affectation of a British title).

Rupert Murdoch controls the Irish Sun, the Sunday Times and the News of the World, and Thomas Crosbie Holdings (now a sizeable Irish-owned corporation) owns the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Business Post, along with several provincial newspapers and radio stations. Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail in the UK, owns Ireland On Sunday and Metro and will soon launch the Irish Daily Mail.

In radio, State-owned goliath RTÉ has three of the four national radio stations, but almost all the other stations are foreign or corporate owned. Today FM was bought by the British Emap company recently. UTV holds the largest commercial radio market share in Ireland.

Only Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp - which owns 98FM, Newstalk 106, Spin FM and East Coast Radio - challenges this dominance.

It may seem self-aggrandizing on the part of someone in the media to make this claim, but I think it is true: the media is where it is at. It used to be that the three great transmitters of ideology were religion, education and the media. Now, with religion parked for the time being at least, and education faltering, the media is the main transmitter of ideology.

It shapes our politics, our society, our values, our culture, the way we think and what we think about. It sets the political agendas, it determines what is important and what is not politically, it decides what we talk about and, indeed, how we talk about what we talk about.

In other words, we have allowed foreign and corporate-owned media to run our country, our society, and our minds.

It will be argued that we have bulwarks against this in RTÉ and The Irish Times. But increasingly, both go along with the neo-liberal herd; for instance, with the “concern” that Iran is acting irresponsibly over its decision to develop nuclear energy, although it is in breach of no treaty or convention in so doing. Neither challenges the presumption of the US, Britain and France, all armed with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, in threatening another nation with dire consequences if it even hankers after the prospect of having a few nuclear weapons, nor their collective silence over Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons.

All the media have bought into the neo-liberal consensus that the dictates of the market have to be obeyed almost irrespective of the human consequence, and the US has to be obeyed, almost irrespective of the sovereignty consequences.

Poverty and inequality will always be with us. Those who complain about police corruption almost certainly have subversive or criminal agenda. Organised crime is the collective criminality of small-time criminals, not the collective criminality of banks, or stockbrokers or large public corporations. Of course dissident voices are permitted, even encouraged in this media environment, but more as an assurance of the fairness of the media than as a realistic balance to the overwhelming weight of the main media message.

It is entirely within our power as a society to stop this. We could have a rule that no single legal entity, be that a person or a corporation, own or control, directly or indirectly, more than a single media outlet in our country, subject to a few very rare exceptions. It would mean The Irish Times trust could continue to own The Irish Times (and long may that endure), but that’s it. It would mean the break-up of Independent Newspapers and of RTÉ and Rupert Murdoch could decide which of his media should be available here. Yes, there might be problems with EU competition law, but does that have to be a trump card? This would open the way for diverse media voices, reflecting not just competing corporate interests, but competing values, ideologies, interests and agendas. We should not allow our democracy and minds to be subverted by corporate media.

The subject of MSM versus new media has often been debated on the blogosphere, and while I have never argued that blogging or citizen journalisn will fully replace mainstream media, I think it does serve as a valuable addition. I was struck this week, after reading an article in the Evening Echo (yes I know it’s a local tabloid, but still), that if I had written the same piece on my blog, it wouldn’t have been long before I was discredited. Judge for yourself:

Business section, Evening Echo, Page 12, January 11th 2006.

Aer Lingus to increase service to Cork

Aer Lingus is to base a fourth A320 aircraft at Cork International Airport from June.

The additional aircraft will facilitate three new routes to Berlin, Birmingham abd Tenerife.

This latest increase in services will bring to over €100 million the investment made by Aer Lingus in Cork to-date, and will result in a further 300,000 seats into and out of Cork on an annual basis.

In addition to the new services from Cork to Berlin and Birmingham - both three times weekly and Tenerife once a week - additional frequencies will also be added to existing Aer Lingus routes from Cork to Nice, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Alicante, Malaga and Rome.

The developments were welcomed today by the airport management board which also disclosed that a record 202,764 people used the airport during December.

This represented an increase of 51,702 passengers, or 34.5% on December 2004 figures.

The board also confirmed that Aer Arann plans to immediately increase its daily service Cork/Dublin service from four to five flights. Further information and booking details are available at aerarann.com.

Ryanair also operates a daily Cork/Dublin service, as well as a twice daily service to London Gatwick. Further information and booking details are available at ryanair.com.

Passengers should note that Ryanair operates a strict check-in procedure on all flights, with check-in desks closing 40 minutes prior to take-off. Passengers must also be prepared to produce photo ID for inspection for all Ryanair flights, including domestic flights. Acceptable forms of photo ID are a current passport, driving licence, or national identity card.

Jet2.com is currently operating a direct service to Newcastle. Flights start from as little as 14 € one-way, inclusive of taxes.

Further information and booking details are available at Jet2.com.

Malev Hungarian Airlines currently operate a Cork/Budapest service four times a week. Further information at malev.com.

Airport management would like to remind passengers to allow plenty of time for check-in - at least one hour and 30 minutes before scheduled flight departure times, and at least two hours and 30 minutes before charter flight departure times.

Passengers are asked to limit hand luggage to one item, and to refrain from placing sharp items in hand luggage.

Now tell me what you think might be wrong with that article. If it was by a staffer I might understand, but it was written by the Deputy Editor of the paper.

The latest issue of FP has a catchy cover, I like it…

The show today was all about the Willie O’Dea photos in todays papers - but half way through Liveline Joe Duffy took a call from a member of the public, and discussed a particular case recently of a man being shot dead in Carlow.

Start listening around the 36.41 mark, it’s the first time I have heard Joe completely lose the head.

At precisely 42.12 Joe’s head explodes and he goes into a rant that lasts a full minute.

Juan Cole does a far better job taking Mark Steyn’s argument apart than I could hope to. Here’s a nice exerpt:

Steyn wants to create a 1300-year struggle between Catholic France and the Muslims going back to Tours. This way of thinking is downright silly. France in the 19th century was a notorious ally of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and fought alongside Muslims against the Christian Russians in the Crimean War. Among contemporary French, 40 percent do not even believe in God, and less than 20 percent go to mass at all regularly. Many of the French of non-European heritage are also not religious.

The French repaid the compliment of Tours by conquering much of the Middle East. Bonaparte aggressively and viciously invaded Egypt in 1798, but couldn’t hold on there. But in 1830 the French invaded Algeria and incorporated it into France. Algeria was “French soil.” They reduced the Algerian population (which they brutalized and exploited) to marginal people under the colonial thumb. The French government of Algeria allowed hundreds of thousands to perish of famine in the 1870s. After World War II, given low French birth rates and a dynamic capitalist economy, the French began importing Algerian menial labor. The resulting Beurs are no more incapable of “integrating” into France than the Poles or Jews were.

So it wasn’t the Algerians who came and got France. France had come and gotten the Algerians, beginning with Charles X and then the July Monarchy. They settled a million rather rowdy French, Italians and Maltese in Algeria. These persons rioted a lot in the early 1960s as it became apparent that Algeria would get its independence (1962). In fact, European settler colonists or “immigrants” have caused far more trouble in the Middle East than vice versa.

The kind of riots we are seeing in France also have occurred in US cities (they sent Detroit into a tailspin from 1967). They are always produced by racial segregation, racist discrimination, spectacular unemployment, and lack of access to the mainstream economy. The problems were broached by award-winning French author Tahar Ben Jalloun in his French Hospitality decades ago.

But read the whole thing.

I hadn’t checked in a while, but Village have a redesigned website that actually has content now. The links seem to be permanent ones too. All of the content is free to read, but I imagine only subscribers will get full access to all the archives.

I like the design too, all they need now is a blog to boost the pagerank from 4/10 upwards.

Rory Carroll missing in Baghdad? I hope he will be ok.

A curious development given the bad state of press freedom in Dubai:

Sheikh Mohammed, Dubai’s Crown Prince, has called for a new era of press freedom in the United Arab Emirates. In mid-October, he waxed poetic before 500 journalists at his palace, saying, “The UAE will continue to be an oasis of freedom, democracy and co-existence. It will also remain a podium for true words.�? But while local reports heralded the speech, they failed to mention that the UAE ranks a lowly 137th (out of 167 countries) in the 2004 Index of Press Freedom, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog in France. “Links between the media, the governments and powerful businessmen are so close that self-censorship is often the only way possible for journalists,�? wrote the organisation in its annual report on the region.

Still, many journalists working in Dubai and the UAE claim conditions are improving. International correspondents are largely free to report what they wish, and even local media organisations, which usually face more pressure, can now criticise government policy and state-run businesses—commentary that would have been impossible even five years ago.

Following the publication of an article by Carole Coleman in the Sunday Times, there has been a recent upsurge in searches fo the video of the interview she did with George Bush last year. She has written a book about her time as Washington correspondent ala Mark Little. It is an interesting take on the interview, as there was widepsread praise and criticism of the interview last year. I think Richard even featured on Liveline, criticising her interview tactics.

Interestingly she did notice the response on the web, which can be found by simply Googling her name. I have logged about 1200 visits specifically searching for information about the interview.

Anyways here’s the navel gazing blog juicy reference bit, and her conclusion. It is a good piece until she starts citing Michael Moore.

When I returned to my little world on the street called M in Washington, I felt a tad more conspicuous than when I’d left for Ireland. Google was returning more than 100,000 results on the subject of the 12-minute interview. The vast majority of bloggers felt it was time a reporter had challenged Bush.

At the White House, the fact that I had been asked to submit questions prior to the interview generated enquiries from the American press corps. “Any time a reporter sits down with the president they are welcome to ask him whatever questions they want to ask,�? Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told the CBS correspondent Bill Plante.

“Yes, but that’s beside the point,�? replied Plante.

Under repeated questioning, McClellan conceded that other staff members might have asked for questions. “Certainly there will be staff-level discussion, talking about what issues reporters may want to bring up in some of these interviews. I mean that happens all the time.�?

I had not been prevented from asking any of my questions. The only topics I had been warned away from were the Bush daughters Jenna and Barbara, regular fodder for the tabloids, and Michael Moore — neither of which was on my list.

Moore did notice RTE’s interview with the president and in the weeks that followed urged American journalists to follow the example of “that Irish woman�?.

“In the end, doesn’t it always take the Irish to speak up?�? he said. “She’s my hero. Where are the Carole Colemans in the US press?�?

I think that’s fair, at the time I seen far more blogs praising her than condemning her, and I read more right wing blogs than lefty ones.

It’s over, at least for now. And it seems it’s all because of ice hockey.

The media coverage was largely sympathetic to the locked-out employees, and towards the end of the dispute, worried Liberal government MPs, inundated by complaints from the public, applied very public political pressure on the management to end the dispute. In the end, the management backed down from its strongest demands. In the new deal, it appears to have won few concessions from the union.

But it was more commercial than political pressure that led to the sudden end of the dispute.

It is the start of the new National Hockey League season and the TV broadcasts are a huge source of commercial revenue for the broadcaster.

This has at least led to a debate as to whether CBC television, which unlike its radio counterpart carries advertising, should be so commercially driven.

It’s a showdown and CBC look like they could lose.

SHORTLY before the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) locked out 5,300 of its 9,000 employees on August 15th, Michele Sparling, the management’s chief negotiator, declared: “This is the hill we will die on.�? Seven weeks later, those words look ominous. Many of CBC’s most familiar faces are on the picket line. Managers have had to fill the schedules with many inept stand-ins. Some in the media industry reckon that after the dispute ends, Canada’s public-service broadcaster may be badly diminished or even doomed.

The lockout followed 15 months of talks on a new agreement between CBC and the Canadian Media Guild, a merger of three unions. The dispute centres on the management’s desire to put more workers on temporary contracts, to give it the flexibility it says it needs to tackle multi-channel broadcasting, satellite radio and podcasting. The guild’s response is that 30% of CBC’s workforce are temps already, a higher percentage than at commercial rivals, and that the corporation needs a permanent creative core.

The Economist changed their website back on October 1st, and I do like what they have done with it. It’s not all scrunched to one side like it used to be, the lines are cleaner, and it’s much easier to navigate.

So when I was at the Terrorism and Security Conference in Washington everyone received a copy of the new periodical, The American Interest. It will be published 5 times a year, and judging by the first issue it will make for some hefty reading. The contributors and editorial board are a who’s who of the best American thinkers. Oh and they have a blog too.

Google seems to be directing everyone to me when people search for ‘the american interest’, I am not sure why the official website of the magazine is not indexed. There is something odd going on.

Beating market expectations, News Corp are doing really well:

…a 67% rise in quarterly profits, led by higher earnings at its Fox movie and TV networks. For its fourth quarter News Corp made net profits of $717m (£400m), compared with $429m a year earlier, beating market expectations. Its turnover rose by 12% to $6.1bn, compared to $5.5bn a year previously.

While I only really watched him when RTE cut to ABC, or during big news stories, I always found to be something of a character - certainly different to the people we get reading the news over here. And so young too. My thoughts are with his family.

MSNBC have a transcript of Bono’s appearance on Meet the Press…

…a well put together, decent, thought-out, genuine, weblog from the BBC (kind-of), using Typepad no less. It really is very good, I hope they keep it up after the one issue they have targeted is over.

Over at Perfect.co.uk, the weblog’s writer, BBC hack Paul Mason left a comment:

Thanks for that - we are looking at turning on comments if we can moderate them. Its all a bit experimental for us because we are running it as a “semi-official�? site - ie to BBC rules on fairness, impartiality and balance - and every day (I set it going 6 days ago) brings an unexpected challenge. The unevenness of trackback setting is again due to experimentation.

Ah the eternal comments dilemma. I actually think the weblog is exactly what Newsnight needs, especially for junkies like me who have to wait until 22.30 to watch it. Just get a few more hacks on board and run it during the day - the photoblog stuff is excellent, mobile phone photos included.

BBC world affairs editor John Simpson adds his thoughts on the Newsweek debacle.

Could be interesting:

An internal committee at The New York Times has recommended steps to increase readers’ confidence…recommendation #4 reads: “Consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers.”

Jeff Jarvis is, as ever, on the case.

FP popped through the letterbox today, and as ever it has some quality pieces. Only some links, the website has mainly not been updated as of yet.

The cover story is an essay by Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defence from 1961 to 1968 and president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. In it he discusses the issue of nuclear weapons - and now believes that the US must no longer rely on them as a foreign policy tool. He argues that to do so would be immoral, illegal and very very dangerous.

Ireland also features, having been beaten into second place by Singapore in the 5th Annual Globalisation Index. It notes:

The luck of the Irish finally ran out, as last year’s runner-up, Singapore, took the top spot in this year’s ranking, ending Ireland’s three-year streak. One key to Singapore’s rise was its increased political engagement. The island nation built bridges in 2003—increasing its financial contribution to U.N. peacekeeping missions by 41 percent. (Indeed, a Singaporean general commanded the peacekeeping force in East Timor for much of 2003.) Singapore solidified its first-place ranking in foreign trade by signing a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States in May 2003, the first such agreement the United States had signed with an Asian nation. Meanwhile, Ireland’s strong economy slumped, with GDP growth sliding from a robust 6.9 percent in 2002 to a tepid 1.8 percent in 2003. There was other movement in the top five. Finland fell from fifth to 10th place. The United States jumped from seventh to fourth and became the first large country to crack the top five. Nations with large populations (and large domestic markets) generally fare worse in the index because they are typically less dependent on foreign trade and investment. The strong U.S. showing is primarily a result of its remarkable technological prowess.

The issue of the Japanese death penalty comes up in an article by Charles Lanes of the Washington Post. Japanese officials keep state executions out of public view, and condemned prisoners are not even told the day they will die.

The “Think Again” section is always one of the best - this time it’s on Iran. It is written by Christopher de Bellaigue of the Economist.

I will go through each of these once the website is updated.

Rebecca MacKinnon has been blogging from Laos and Vietnam, interesting stuff and nice photos, go have a look.

F**k, F**k, F**k.

How did you read the first three words of this post? Of course, you read ‘Fuck, Fuck, Fuck’. So what is the point of putting in the gobblies ‘**’ in order to somehow disguise the word and its meaning?

F-U-C-K as four separate letters has no meaning other than they are just four letters of the alphabet. But when put together they can have any number of meanings. For instance, “Fuck off�? expressed with appropriate nuance leaves you in no doubt as to what is meant. “Fuck me�? can express great surprise (like you’ve just won a million on the Lotto) or even indicate an invitation to become ‘extremely’ intimate.

So, you have an editor sitting at their keyboard doing what editors do, deciding what is the best word, phrase or sentence to convey a particular meaning or message. When considering the ‘F’ word they have three choices - use ‘fuck’, ‘f**k’ or leave it out altogether. The principal concern, I imagine, is how the reader will react.

Let’s say, for example, that it’s an Irish Times writer, very respectable paper, very establishment, but with a whiff of rebellion about it, a bit of “we can be dangerously liberal if pushed�? attitude. The writer decides to use ‘fuck’ for impact, but to reduce that impact (in case any retired archbishops are reading) by substituting the letters ‘uc’ with the gobblies ‘**’.

This choice and mindset is, of course, bullshit. Everybody, including the retired archbishop instinctively and without even considering the meaning immediately sees ‘fuck’. So why bother trying to utilise the impact of the word ‘fuck’ and at the same time try to conceal the word - it’s hypocritical. Either use the word in its full glory ‘fuck’ or use another word like ‘feck’, ‘bejasus’, or ‘by golly’.

Just this week I read the word ‘c**t’ in a newspaper article. I wonder what that word could be? Perhaps ‘cant’, ‘cart’, or maybe ‘cast’? No my friends, the word intended was ‘cunt’. So why couldn’t the paper just say so or use what it might consider to be a more acceptable word (unless they are quoting)? Obviously, the paper wanted to use the word for its impact but did not want to accept responsibility for its generally accepted meaning, so the word is disguised and in so doing attempts to transfer the use and real meaning of the word to the reader. The reader then becomes responsible for any negative interpretations of the gobblied word. “Hey, we just published some gobblies bracketed by two letters, if you automatically interpret them as ‘fuck’, ‘cunt’, ‘shit’, well… you know… it’s not our fault.”

What do you think reader? Am I right? Is it really just a case of editorial cowardice or am I just plain wrong? If you think I am then ‘fuck’ you. ;-)

Anthony Sheridan

Last Sunday, the number one item on RTE’s flagship news programme, This Week, informed the nation that the McCartney sisters were back in Ireland and would later travel on to Belfast. The next day, another RTE headline informed us that a Belfast fireman had been hit on the elbow with a stone. There are many who would think that these events were of feck all importance but when it comes to reporting on Northern Ireland, RTE should never be underestimated.

Now before I go on let me make it perfectly clear that I am interested in the evolution of events in Northern Ireland. The peace process is vital for everybody on these islands and it should be reported on and analysed in depth. No, what I’m talking about here is the obsession RTE news has of giving NI events top priority, no matter how trivial, at the expense of news in the Republic and the wider world . Let me give you a few examples.

A few years ago a helicopter crashed in Kerry and the pilot was tragically killed. The incident got second billing on the main evening news with an RTE reporter reporting by phone, as they do from Outer Mongolia. Meanwhile, top billing was given to a funeral in Belfast complete with a full report by an outside broadcasting unit. In February of 2004 there was a terrible tragedy in Dublin city when a bus killed five people and injured several more. This, the worst accident ever involving a CIE bus was introduced as follows on the This Week programme. “We’ll come back to the Dublin bus tragedy, but first to Northern Ireland…�? Again in Dublin, on St Patrick’s Day 2004, there were serious riots, racist attacks, intimidation, drunkenness and public sex by two teenagers in broad daylight. RTE news wasn’t interested. In fact, we were informed that the situation in Belfast was much worse. Some teenagers were spotted with six packs and Shane McGowan appeared on stage in a drunken state. There followed a lengthy interview with the Lord Mayor of Belfast on the possible consequences of such an outrageous public act. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking, Shane McGowan on stage drunk? Shane appearing on stage sober would have been much more newsworthy).

Last August Bill and Hillary visited the place. Hillary made sure she gave fulsome praise of how important this little piece of Irish bog was to the future of the world. I quote, and this is not a joke. “Peace needs to be secured in the North to help stop the advancement of global terrorism�?, and commenting on the importance of restoring the Stormont power-sharing executive she said “It is a signal event in the unfolding challenge we confront around this world today�?

Now of course this is waffle aimed at Hillary’s career rather than any importance NI may have on world events. After all the vast majority of the 6.6 billion people on earth have never heard of Ireland. But the citizens of NI lapped it up, here was yet another world leader confirming their vital importance in the great scheme of world history. Alas, the Clintons made a major mistake. They left Enniskillen without saying goodbye to a crowd of people that had gathered to hear how important they were. It was reported that the crowd ‘groaned’ as the Clintons sped off with one teenager shouting “Don’t come back.�?

We are also constantly reminded that the NI peace process is a shining example for all the trouble spots around the globe. Well, putting aside the 800 years it took to get rid of the invader from about two thirds of the country, let’s analyse this claim. For about fifty years after the entity was created the Unionists abused their dominant position. This eventually led to war in 1969, and what a long drawn out goddamned war it was. Thirty years - about the same time it took the Europeans to fight the First World War, take a rest for twenty years, and finish the slaughter in WW11.

And then there’s the Peace Process, ten years now and counting with no end in sight. (Look carefully at the faces of BBC reporters and newsreaders when the next ‘historic’ summit takes place, yawns of total boredom are barely suppressed) So, in total we’re talking about nine hundred years of this blight on humanity with not a hope of it being resolved before the thousandth anniversary. Some example?

And speaking of the next summit/crisis, the following is how I imagine the ultimate RTE report. “Here is the news. NASA has confirmed that an asteroid will strike earth next week completely vaporising the planet. We’ll have more on that story later, but first to Northern Ireland where a dispute on whether the colour of underwear for the PSNI should be orange or green is threatening to undermine the peace process for the 78th time…�? In my madness, before retiring to bed I regularly scan the night sky, hoping, just hoping for deliverance…..

Anthony Sheridan

Michelle Malkin has a great review of the entire story, beginning to end…

Robin O’Brien-Lynch’s article in the Irish Times has sparked some controversy in the Irish blogosphere. In general, people have been taken aback by what some considered to be negative comments in the article. Bluire is not happy at all…

And anyway, who is Robin O�Brien to be telling the Irish Blogging community that we need to post more about Irish matters. The whole point of blogging is that it is unedited and can be whatever you want it to be. Take a look at Megnut or evhead and you will find very little political posting. They are the founders of blogger. You can also look at the blogs of Mena and Ben Trott and you will find very little political blogging. They are the founders of Movable Type.

Bernie is not too happy either:

There are problems with an article written by Robin O’Brien-Lynch in the Irish Times and I think they should be talking points for a gathering of Irish bloggers on Saturday 16 April in Dublin’s Irish Film Institute. I am especially curious about the research methods used to produce the article and the focus on which the article was commissioned.

Robin, fair dues to him, has replied and indeed defended his piece. He responded on Bluire’s blog:

In fairness Laura, just because your blog isn�t six to nine months old doesn�t make my comment inaccurate, and I wouldn�t dream of telling you what to write. I�m trying to raise the profile of Irish blogging in order to get more people reading and blogging and maybe start a few debates at the same time. Some of my comments by their nature will be sweeping generalisations. which is unfortunate, but there you go.

And on here he noted:

The aim of the article was to raise interest in blogging in Ireland and get more people involved, and hopefully it will. Of course you can write about whatever you like; I kept a blog a couple of years ago and talked complete smack. But I was approaching the story from a particular angle, comparing it to the American model, and was looking for blogs that discussed Irish poltical, cultural and social matters. I read a lot of blogs every day and I wanted to encourage more participation and variety.
John is right, I couldn�t mention Karlin�s blog as it would look a bit chummy.

And…

I�ve been accussed of missing the point by a couple of people, but I think the reverse is true. That might reflect badly on me as a reporter for not getting my point over clearly enough, but that�s my problem.
I was looking at a particular concept; whether or not the methods employed by Howard Dean�s supporters in the last US election could be used here in 2007.
The answer is probably not, because we are a small underpopulated island nation (and because most of the people within the major parties didn�t know what I was talking about and had never heard of blogs) and the Irish blogosphere is still in its relative infancy. I approached the story from that angle, came to my conclusion and then mentioned a few sites at the end to get more people involved.

I read lots of Irish blogs every day and to be honest I rarely read the ones about Irish politics for my own personal pleasure. Like Laura said, I cannot imagine how interminably dull it would be if Irish bloggers didn�t talk about anything else.

I think Twenty Major may have a point when he said “Maybe it�s just me but I detect an amount of snobbery in the reaction to this piece. Because the author isn�t an established blogger his opinions are given less credence than they would had someone who had their own blog wirtten the article.” It is great to see any article about blogging in the Irish media, even Ed Power’s piece in the Tribune (I never got round to replying to his request for my views) lent oxygen to the Irish blogosphere. So cheers to Robin and Ed, it’s better than a ‘kick in the teeth’ as they say.

I can see how Robin constructed the article, but with my writer’s cap on, I would say that if his original pitch was to discuss Irish political parties using Dean-type methods in 2007, then he failed to adequately do so. The piece kind of did, and kind of didn’t, get its teeth into the story - but then a longer piece would have been needed for that. I am still wondering whether the piece was about Irish blogs in general, Irish blogs talking about politics, Irish political parties using blogs, TDs starting to blog, or many other things. Because there is so little awareness of blogging in Ireland I would think that a piece discussing the use of blogs in a political context would be best left until people know what blogs are, and in general I don’t think the average Irish Times reader has any real conception of blogs. And if such a piece were to be written, it would be better placed in a feature or opinion section, as Ed Power’s was, not in the technology supplement.

On the issue of Dean, back in 2003 I went to an excellent debate in the US Embassy in London about the Dean campaign. Phil Noble was incredibly enthusiastic about the effect that blogging and new media had on the Dean campaign, and predicted that Dean would get the nomination. Jim Ledbetter from Time (who managed to later drink more than me somehow) was laughing at Noble, and as it turns out, rightly so. He predicted that Dean would fall flat and Kerry would get the ticket- as he did.

But back to Twenty Major’s point - snobbery is not the business we are in. And I would like to thank Robin for showing the interest and inclination to write the piece, and to follow up on it by commenting on Irish blogs. Blogger or not, it is the beginning of what I think will be a serious growth in interest about blogging in general.

Something else interesting happened here, and this is may be the first time - a guy in the Irish Times wrote a piece, Irish bloggers responded, the hack responded, we responded. We just got a conversation going here folks, and its about a million times better than getting a letter published. This is the core of what blogging is about, and by writing the piece, Robin managed to make a mini-storm in the Irish blogosphere. And there will be many more!

Update:

Treasa and Eamonn also wrote a lenghty reaction which failed to show up on my radar, apologies! Notes Treasa:

One of the positive things I have found about the Irish blogging community - and I haven’t been in there all that long myself - is that it is a community. I would never call it a clique as my personal experience of other bloggers has been pretty welcoming to say the least.

Notes Eamonn:

The Rainy Day response to this position is that on the net, all politics is local, in the sense that everything is just a click away. To be sure, the parochial is important and events at the foot of the Galtee Mountains are sometimes addressed here, even if it is with “homespun whimsy”; the provincial is significant � be it Munster rugby, Bavarian software or Catalonian wine � and is not ignored; and the national, from Norway to New Zealand, is taken seriously, but the rest of what you get here is the wide world of the web and that’s because your blogger regards this as a global medium as opposed to a countrywide one. Actually, the proportion of posts relating to Ireland is flattering when one considers the state’s size. Culturally and economically, however, the island is influential beyond its geography, and punches above its weight, as A.J. Liebling, the Shelly of the ring, would have put it, but the issue that most concerns Rainy Day is security in an age of terror and failed states, and Ireland’s policy of neutrality means that it is simply not a player in the bigger game.

I do hope that we are not considered a clique, I am sure that many of the ‘older’ bloggers like myself try to welcome any new bloggers into the fold.