It’s pretty rare for the report of a minor parliamentary committee to generate such a buzz but perhaps less surprising when the topic is ‘fake news’ and the main villain of the piece is one of the world’s most valuable – and controversial – companies, Facebook. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Des Freedman (Page 1 of 3)
On the BBC’s Today programme on Tuesday some nine hours after the horror of the Manchester bombing, Nick Robinson was speaking to Chris Phillips, a counter-terrorism expert. ‘Terrorists don’t care who they kill,’ Phillips said. ‘It’s the number of bodybags that determines success.’ ‘And the publicity,’ Robinson interjected. ‘And the publicity,’ Phillips agreed. Continue reading
In 1996, when the web was in its infancy, the American technology writer Nicholas Negroponte predicted that the coming digital revolution would facilitate a “cottage industry of information and entertainment providers”. Continue reading
Academics like to talk of ‘critical junctures’: moments of great instability when different pressures and crises come together to produce the possibility of dramatic change. Continue reading
What is the future of television, in an era of extraordinary technological change that has brought new challengers to the established broadcasting companies and their scheduled programmes? Who should it be aimed at and how will it be paid for? Continue reading
The good folk at the Cambridge University Conservative Association must be a little disappointed. Having listened to culture secretary John Whittingdale tell them only last month that the disappearance of the BBC was “a tempting prospect”, they will now have noticed that his white paper on the future of the BBC is planning to do no such thing. Continue reading
It is hard to know whether the recent rumours about the contents of the forthcoming White Paper on the future of the BBC should be seen as light entertainment or crime drama. Three leading Sunday newspapers revealed that the government plans to interfere in the scheduling of popular programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, Silent Witness and the News at Ten. Continue reading
James Murdoch, younger son of billionaire media mogul and keen tweeter Rupert Murdoch, has been appointed as chairman of the UK’s biggest broadcaster, BSkyB. Normally, top boardroom appointments would merit perhaps a mention in business blogs and the City pages of the press but this is more significant for what it tell us about corporate power and governance in the UK today. Continue reading
Who would have expected that one of the central debates about the future of the BBC would not be about its pro-business news coverage, its financial mismanagement or its alleged cover-up of the Jimmy Savile scandal, but about whether it should show Strictly Come Dancing on a Saturday night? Continue reading
Heading into the 1992 election, polls pointed towards a hung parliament. The Sun turned up the heat on election day with a front page asking that: ‘If Kinnock [the then Labour leader] wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’ The Tories duly won the election with 42% of the popular vote leading Britain’s best-selling title to boast ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It’. Continue reading
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