What I've been up to

I've just had a piece published in Global Magazine "Lights, Camera, Public Reaction" about the ongoing relationship between the media and aid agencies.. (you have to register to read it); the magazine has a sidebar as well on Twitter etc.

Or if you want a bit of light relief: this on 1509 and all that: what would have happened if girls could inherit the throne ahead of boys for the Telegraph.

Meanwhile I'm re-reading States of Denial (Stanley Cohen), Reporting War (Stuart Allan) New Media, Old News (Natalie Fenton)

Back to school

I'm finally back on the blog as I restart my PhD at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism on social media and reporting disasters. First seminar today. In the meantime I've been reading David Campbell's blog discussing photography and famine.

Campbell comments as follows on our understanding of famine

Few if any of us have direct experience of disasters, so we necessarily rely on mediated knowledge. That means our reality comes through representation. NGO officials understand this. As Don Redding once observed, “the construction of the event (the humanitarian emergency) becomes the event – for the purposes of public opinion and policy flow.”

One of the questions I need to look at then is how social media mediates representations of disaster - is there a difference?

Twitter and Iran/Disasters and the Media

Interesting piece on the Guardian today saying that Twitter's role in the Iranian protests was overhyped...

Also I've got caught up in a debate on disasters and the media on the ALNAP forums...

Woo hoo!

My piece on the blurring of NGOs and news organisations has just gone online at the Nieman Journalism Lab. What a great end to 2009 - and in a week where all my pre-Christmas planning has gone completely awry, a great break....

The Nieman Journalism Lab, a project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard is running a series on NGOs and the news at the moment so there's plenty of stuff to read there at the moment (and should speed up my next research considerably :)

Totally chuffed.

Dispatches from Disaster Zones

I spoke on a panel at the Red Cross's Dispatches from Disaster Zones symposium earlier this week - Charlie Beckett's account here. Our panel was particularly lively thanks to provocative statements from Sam Kiley who wrote the following piece Do starving Africans a favour - don't feed them. He got into a debate with the DEC's Brendan Parry about whether NGOs had been misusing the word famine...it all got rather hot under the collar. Thoroughly good fun.

Meanwhile the Guardian has a really interesting piece here about how Africa is leading the west in terms of mobile phone journalism....

Advent resolution

After a bit of a break from blogging due to various life situations getting in the way, I'm hoping to start blogging again on the subject of new media, aid agencies and the like. First a very interesting piece by Charlie Beckett about MSF and multimedia work in the DRC here.

Second - from a month ago there is the special that I contributed to on Al Jazeera English on 25 years since Ethiopia. Great quote from Michael Buerk on why he didn't interview any of those who had come to Korem because they were starving - shows how much times have changed. So for those who inevitably think journalism has got worse, think again. Part one here, and part two (including Buerk) here.

Holding the aid agencies accountable

Interesting to see that Peter Gill is writing a book on famine reporting 25 years on from the Korem reports. He has done a piece for Media Guardian today reflecting on this - found here. The Dimbleby quote - how many skeletons - is all too believable (although the intro about Michael Buerk made me inadvertently laugh which I don't think was either Gill or Buerk's intention).

Gill puts his finger on it. The IBT's view that we should refuse negative images has its limitations. What is really needed is an examination of what aid agencies have done over the past quarter century. NGOs frequently complain they get a hard time in the media; I would disagree. Frequently they are not examined closely enough at all....

Distraction - or the future?

Most journalists see user-generated content as a distraction from their real job according to a paper given at the Future of Journalism conference......

Certainly I think Claire Wardle is right that attitudes at the BBC have changed a lot - even from 2007 when the survey was carried out. When I last visited the UGC hub there there was a definite pro-active attitude and eagerness to embrace Twitter, Flickr et al.

Blurring the lines

Good report in the Times yesterday about Lord May attacking the BBC's decision to drop Planet Relief Day. Although this is about global warming, the issue raised (and the reason why the BBC dropped the idea) is ongoing worries about impartiality - although it's only fair to say the BBC denies this in their response to the Times. Certainly however there has been ongoing criticism from certain sections about the BBC getting involved in big issues like this....and this is the result.

Red Cross begins lobbying....

Picked up PR Week today to find a hugely interesting article by Kate Magee which reveals that the British Red Cross is setting up its first advocacy department.

Magee writes that this marks 'a radical departure from its long-standing politically neutral stance'. The BRC has hired a senior associate from PR giant Burson Marsteller.

The Red Cross has traditionally eschewed advocacy, preferring to concentrate on providing aid on the ground. But the reality of NGOs in the 21st century is that advocacy is a central part. As Ian Bray of Oxfam told me for my original research 'We don't believe aid changes the world; politics does."

Oxfam and Save the Children have been some of the strongest players in this area - along with Christian Aid which has just launched its Mass Visual Trespass Campaign. All will be nervous however about the BRC's venture into this field: it will be seen as a potential sleeping giant awakening. The BRC has huge reach, influence and will be taken very seriously.

Will this compromise the Red Cross's famous neutrality? The agency has said it will be careful not to by lobbying all parties equally and making sure its campaigns focus on humanitarian consequences rahter than root causes. It'll be a tricky one. A cliche to raise Amartya Sen at this point but it's something that the BRC will have to bear in mind.

Alagiah in hot water over Fairtrade teabags

Interesting blog from Tony Durham of Action Aid on the BBC making George Alagiah step down from the Fairtrade Foundation. Has got to be about the corporation's sensitivity following criticism  of their coverage of Live Earth and the (aborted) plans for a day long strand on climate change....

How 31-year-olds consume media

Great comeback here to the 15-year-old Morgan Stanley intern....ah it all rings rather too true....I do remember when Mum used to answer the phone with our number....

Privacy report now online...

here....

And debate with John Lloyd and Anne McElvoy on this week's Media Show is here

Why I can't recommend BT Vision

I signed up to BT Vision in April this year, after being offered a deal as a longstanding BT customer. However I'm very disappointed.

The programme takes at least three minutes to load every time you switch the TV on - it's like going back to the 1970s waiting for a TV to warm up.

And it has when recording two half hour programmes on the run recorded 3 x 20 minute bursts instead and sometimes lost sound altogether (curiously always on ITV).

On catch-up TV only BBC is free, ITV and C4 you have to pay for.

The saleswoman who signed me up also neglected to set up the direct debit which meant I got stung for a bill of £60 (the processing fee was later refunded by BT after I complained). 

All in all it has not been a pleasant experience.

BT refuses to cancel my 12 month contract on the grounds that a) the saleswoman did not mention catch-up TV in the call and b) I can get some service on BT Vision therefore it can't be cancelled on the grounds I get no service at all.

I'm sure they are absolutely correct that I cannot cancel BT Vision under the wording of my contract. But given the difficulties I've had with the service, the frustrations of getting it to work and failing, I'm afraid that I can't recommend it to anyone else.

Going public on privacy - ET and sadomasochism

So today after a year in the writing, the report that I wrote with Stephen Whittle is finally published by the Reuters Institute, in which we argue that privacy has been fundamentally changed by the net, that there needs to be a stronger definition of public interest and that the PCC should be brought into line with Ofcom. There is a piece in Media Guardian today focusing mainly on the aftermath of the News of the World hacking story and we also made Reuters, Press Gazette, and PA in which I am quoted as follows....

"The person who believes in flying saucers or is conducting a sado-masochistic relationship may be a council officer or a department store manager. But this cannot be presumed to affect their behaviour in their job.

"There is no prima facie public interest in extra-terrestrial believers or in sado-masochists."

So there you have it.

There is an event to launch the report later in the month at the Frontline Club where various luminaries will be assembled.....see here

Blog off?

Charles Arthur on how the long tail of blogging is dying....

Certainly that seems to be true. It's much easier to tweet than commit to a blog unless you've got something that has to be said in depth. 

Meanwhile John Naughton is more optimistic for print journalists.....

Twitter vs CNN

Interesting piece from the Telegraph looking at news out of Iran and the pluses/minuses of citizen journalism...

Gordon Brown: the internet is changing foreign policy

In an interview with the Guardian, the PM says that foreign policy can no longer be down to a few elites as the Twitter revolution in Iran has shown over the past few days....

In regards to humanitarian crises he claims:

"You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken.

"Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites."

I'll be interested to see if that is correct; the cynical would say Sri Lanka, Darfur etc have still happened despite the growth of the world wide web.

In other news Google and Facebook are rolling out Farsi services in the aftermath of Iran

The revolution will not be televised....

it will be coming to you via YouTube, Flickr and mobile phones....

See BBC story here

Plus see Guardian story here

Iran cont'd

Today reports on the importance of blogging/Twitter/Facebook in the Iranian election aftermath....Turi Munthe points out the second language on the web is Farsi.....points out that we are only hearing a self-selecting constituency - Western

It takes a few days for social networks to be up and running he points out.

Follow the hashtag #iranelection as the best on Twitter

Also some pictures out of Iran - thanks once again to Richard Sambrook....

PS The US state dept gets involved- although at time of writing Twitter appears to be down for maintenance