Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 23 March 2006 at 16:47
Tags: Independent on Sunday, Journalism, Mobile Phones
From this Sunday readers of the Independent on Sunday will be able to send letters to the editor by text. That makes the IOS the first quality newspaper to take letters by text.
Deputy editor Michael Williams, said: “Texting is the medium of the future. It’s not just about voting on Big Brother. It will allow our readers to enjoy more fully the debate of the moment.”
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 20 March 2006 at 20:31
Tags: Journalism
For one-on-one interview specialists, the winner was Rachel Cooke of the Observer.
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 20 March 2006 at 20:26
Tags: Financial Times, Journalism
Writers of a regular bylined column are eligible for this award. The judges were looking for the ability to “nail” a subject, and for agenda-setting journalism.
The Columnist of the Year is Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times.Â
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 28 February 2006 at 15:31
Tags: BBC, Ethics, Issues, Journalism, Television
Coverage of gay people on the BBC’s flagship channels is almost non existant, according to new research commissioned by gay and lesbain charity Stonewall, in spite of contributing £190 million a year to the BBC in TV licence fees. Â
A monitoring exercise carried out for Stonewall of 168 hours of prime-time BBC One and BBC Two found lesbian and gay lives realistically portrayed for just six minutes, or 0.06 per cent of airtime. A further 32 minutes of programming featured derogatory or offensive references to gay people. These came from a range of programmes including the Weakest Link, hosted by Anne Robinson, and The Lenny Henry Show.Â
The stark conclusion of this major exercise is that gay licence-payers receive astonishingly poor value from the BBC, said Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill.
At a time when the BBC is seeking renewal of its Charter, it’s difficult to argue that 1.5 million households should be expected to continue making such a substantial contribution to channels on which their real lives are hardly reflected, and which are often punctuated with derisive and demeaning depictions of them.
A BBC spokesperson said:
Stonewall’s report is a contribution towards our goal of serving all licence payers. But we feel that Stonewall has chosen to analyse a very narrow timeslot, which excludes nearly all of the BBC’s news and current affairs output. We believe the researchers would have found a great deal of richness and diversity in our output across television, radio and online throughout the eight weeks they examined. We are committed to finding ways of reflecting the audience’s daily lives in our programmes, but we feel the notion that gay men and lesbians only receive value for money from the licence fee through seeing direct representation of gay life is misconceived.
Focus groups of both gay and heterosexual people told Stonewall researchers they wanted to see better representation of gay people on screen. The BBC was singled out as the least successful broadcaster at capturing the realities of gay lives. “If you put the BBC against Channel 4, it’s just like the caveman,” said one interviewee from London.Â
Stonewall found that Gay innuendo was broadcast across a wide range of programmes in spite of BBC editorial guidelines which explicitly require staff to avoid “offensive or stereotypical assumptions”.Â
The BBC has made strenuous efforts in the last five years to serve minority ethnic viewers more effectively, added Summerskill.
Gay people are forced to pay the BBC £126.50 a year on pain of imprisonment if they fail. We hope that the BBC will now develop for the first time a similar sense of obligation to lesbian and gay licence-payers.
The report suggests eight key recommendations to the BBC. These include provision of urgently-needed “balanced and unsensational” coverage in its news and current affairs programmes, developing authentic gay characters throughout drama and soap outputs and including six per cent of gay contestants in game shows, reflecting the wider British population.
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 23 February 2006 at 17:24
Tags: BBC, Journalism, New Media, Online, Radio
The BBC’s radio websites were visited by a record 8.2 million unique users in January, who consumed 17 million hours of live and on demand radio.Â
The month beat the previous record of 8.1 million users, set in November 2005, as BBC Radio 1 pulled in more than three million users and Radio 4 contributed 1.5 million.Â
But it was BBC Radio Five Live which showed the biggest increases, with the main site tipping the million mark, whilst offshoot sites 606 and Sportdaq showed huge growth.Â
In the last full month, with 20 programmes, the download and podcast trial generated a record 1.9 million MP3 downloads.Â
Radio 4’s In Our Time saw the biggest rise in demand - up 38,000 downloads on December - while the Today 8.10am interview took the top spot with more than 400,000 downloads.
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 22 February 2006 at 14:56
Tags: Olympics, Sky
Sky News reporter Jonathan Samuels and cameraman Neil Morris found themselves fearing for their lives when the RAF plane they were reporting from on 10 February caught fire over the Italian Dolomites and was unable to make an emergency landing.
Samuels and Morris were thrilled to have been invited onboard an RAF AWACS early-warning aircraft which was patrolling the skies above the winter games to search for any terrorist activity.
Samuels (pictured) said: “It was meant to be an eight hour mission circling over the Turin Olympic site as the opening ceremony got underway with Cherie Blair and Laura Bush in attendance. It turned out to be a completely different story — a terrifying drama at 30,000 feet as the plane caught fire.�?
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 10 February 2006 at 16:44
Tags: BBC, Muhammad cartoons, Online
The BBC’s Newsnight programme has enjoyed record traffic to its web site as a result of the cartoon controversy.
In the latest edition of his weekly column for fans of the programme, Newsnight editor Peter Barron also heralded the growth in the number of people watching the programme via broadband, providing further evidence that convergence is well and truely underway:
While the numbers on old-fashioned TV were up, so were those of people watching Newsnight via broadband.
We’ve only been doing this for a few months, but already thousands are choosing to watch the programme on demand, and this week the figures shot up.
More than 20,000 people downloaded the video of Monday night’s debate and a further 20,000 watched Fergal Keane’s film about corruption within the Kenyan government.
Still small numbers compared with TV proper, but it’s growing at an amazing rate, and new developments are happening almost daily.
Barron plugged a new broadband “web space” launched by BBC TWO which his programme will be involved in.
A “refresh” the Newsnight site will also be launched in the next couple of weeks. Barron said it will have “less clutter and easier navigation” and that shortly the best bits of Newsnight will be available in a podcast each week.
Posted by
Caitlin Pike
on 10 February 2006 at 15:25
Tags: BBC, Online, Television
“The hot topic has, of course, been the cartoons row and the ongoing debate about Islam and the West.
“That was the title of our special programme on Monday which attracted a huge response from viewers.”
He defended the programme’s decision to invite Anjem Choudary of the radical group Al Ghurabaa to appear. The group had been behind the demonstrations which caused so much controversy when placards appeared in London calling for beheadings.
Barron said: “I thought that was really the point the programme made. Debating - when they could get a word in - with Mr Choudary was an array of more moderate and representative British Muslim opinion.
“We did receive a large number of complaints about the debate - as did the BBC’s Newswatch programme before which I was hauled on Friday - but the reality, I think, is that the vast majority of Newsnight viewers love the drama and danger of a highly charged live debate. One and a half million watched Mr Choudary’s antics, and I reckon they’re well able make up their minds about what they were seeing.”
Barron also highlighted a magic Paxman moment in the programme:
“As Mr Choudary threatened to disrupt the programme entirely, Jeremy - who knows why? - punctured his bluster by saying “we’re moving on, matey”.
With evidence that convergence is well and truely underway, Barron said the numbers of people watching Newsnight via broadband were on the up.
“While the numbers on old-fashioned TV were up, so were those of people watching Newsnight via broadband.Â
“We’ve only been doing this for a few months, but already thousands are choosing to watch the programme on demand, and this week the figures shot up.
“More than 20,000 people downloaded the video of Monday night’s debate and a further 20,000 watched Fergal Keane’s film about corruption within the Kenyan government.
“Still small numbers compared with TV proper, but it’s growing at an amazing rate, and new developments are happening almost daily.”
Barron plugged a new ‘web space’ launched by BBC TWO - bbc.co.uk/bbctwo which his programme will be involved in.
And they plan to ”refresh” the Newsnight site in the next couple of weeks.
Barron said it will have “less clutter and easier navigation” and that shortly the best bits of Newsnight will be available in a podcast each week.
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