So Gordon Brown has bottled it?

According to the BBC the PM has told Andrew Marr that he is looking to 2009 to go to the country. Frankly I'm relieved. People might actually turn up now on Nov 5th if they are not in the middle of covering an election. Interesting according to an economist I interviewed last week, Brown's best chances for maximising his time in Downing Street is if he goes to the country in 2007 or 8; 2009 is late. Mostly politicians go too early - Atlee being the worst example....in fact the only ones who have gone late are Blair and Thatcher in 2001 and 1983 respectively.
I wrote a piece about this last week that got squeezed out (Sigh - the life of a freelancer)

On a more cheerful note I went to the Independents 21st bash last night, held upstairs in the Angel opposite the old offices in City Rd. Spookily even though it's eight years since I left everyone looked the same (and I wasn't drinking so this is not down to alcohol).
It reminded me of being a young and nervous trainee, sent off to the Women of the Year lunch at the last moment, terrified I was going to be late, and sacrificing my last few pounds on a taxi (so as not to get the sack for missing the story).
I had just got in the cab, when a man ran out of the Independent offices, equally in a hurry and asked if he could share the cab. I rather brusquely asked where he was going and gave in with bad grace; weighing up the chance of being able to eat dinner that night if he shared the fare versus being late.
He was niceness itself in comparison and asked me who I was what I was doing at the Inde, what story....I felt I had to reciprocate and rather gruffly asked who he was.
"Oh my name's Andy Marr," he said.
Horrorstruck and expecting to be sacked immediately he could phone the editor to tell him about this grumpy trainee, I could only stammer 'You don't look like your byline picture'...
Luckily I think he never did tell anyone about quite what a gauche northerner they had picked to be one of the trainees that year

No more secrets....?


In between trying to finish my Guardian lecture I wrote this quick blog for AlertNet about how Burmese bloggers were the latest example of UGC...the use of user generated content is a big part of my lecture following on from the seminar I gave earlier in the year entitled Can You(Tube) Save the World?
I think it's very easy to overstate the importance of UGC but I still find it fascinating that only six years ago - at the time of 9/11, the kind of citizen journalism that we take for granted now was not around. When I talked to the BBC about this they said they got no images from ordinary people and only a handful of emails....fast forward to the Pakistan earthquake where they received 3,000 in one day.

Meanwhile I am trying to think about morality and disaster reporting. One of the most famous images of famine is one taken by Kevin Carter. In 1993 Carter a member of the so-called Bang Bang Club – a group of white South African photo journalists known for their images of apartheid - went to Sudan to shoot pictures of famine victims who were then dying at the rate of 20 an hour. Seeking relief from the masses, he wandered into the open bush where he saw a small, emaciated girl collapsed from hunger. Then a vulture landed a short distance away. Carter waited 20 minutes hoping the bird would spread its wings and make a better image. It did not and after he snapped several pictures and chased the bird away.

The powerful picture, first used by the New York Times was reproduced around the world. Hundreds of people called the Times to find out what happened to the girl. Carter was praised for capturing the horror of famine and censured for not rescuing the child. Two months after winning a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph, he committed suicide. He had earlier told a friend “I’m really really sorry I didn’t pick the child up”

As Susan D Moeller comments “Being close enough to photograph the starving child meant being close enough to help. The responsibility to bear witness does not automatically outweigh the responsibility to get involved." And Jim Dwyer, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the late New York Newsday says the only ethical justification for a reporter’s intrusion into a victim’s life is that he will help.

But if you take that as a starting point where does that leave objectivity?

And (particularly if you take Amartya Sen's dictum that there's never been a famine in a democracy with a free press) what then happens to reporting?

It's difficult to have a debate like this without even sounding heartless but what is the responsibility of the journalist?

Displacement activity while writing up great thoughts on aid, the media etc

So I turn my attention to really weighty matters instead....and imagine Mr Darcy at the cinema...

Now back to guerilla aid workers, parachute journalists and Susan D Moeller.

Is nothing sacred?

Fantastic story here on Media Guardian about the latest Blue Peter woes here. The BBC denies it. What I want to know is what the inappropriate name for the cat is....

Today and celebrity

Interesting programme this morning. How far should Today get involved with celebrities? Inamidst all the Northern Wreck stuff there was an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell (who incidentally has a voice made for radio) who showed how she has stayed at the top by effortlessly dismissing any discussion over size zero etc and even managed to get James Naughtie to discuss push up bras (at which point I have to admit I was hiding under the table whimpering 'no no no I do NOT want to hear Naughtie musing about such things)
But that was followed by an excellent interview with Graeme Le Saux and the last taboo in football - being gay. Le Saux said he wasn't but had endured years of barracking because he was seen as an outsider and because he read the Guardian.
Nothing new in homophobia in football but it did make me think that if you substituted sexual orientation with race, how utterly unacceptable the kind of stuff Le Saux has put up with is. (Football has made an effort with the kick out racism campaign). And saddest of all was when Le Saux, asked what he would advise a young player who was gay....and he said that he would advise him to keep quiet.
The interview however ended with one of the best liners I've heard on the programme for some time, but it was indicative of the pressure that Le Saux felt under. Caroline Quinn asked Le Saux if he thought he had chosen the wrong career. Le Saux laughed and said "Maybe I just chose the wrong newspaper."

Floods in South Asia

AlertNet's view