Matters of inquiry with the BBC and British media

By macleans.ca - Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 12:20 AM - 0 Comments

CARL COURT//AFP/Getty Images

As the BBC hyperventilates over grave mistakes in its news coverage, an earlier media scandal prepares to sting anew. The government-ordered Leveson inquiry, prompted by charges of criminal mischief at British tabloids, is expected to issue recommendations this month—perhaps calling for legal curbs on press freedom, a prospect of distress to journos and delight to their targets.

The British press—often dubbed “raucous,” apparently as a compliment—has a tradition of wit and wilfulness, from Samuel Johnson to George Orwell to Christopher Hitchens. Publications investigate boldly, comment amusingly. But there’s oodles of rubbish too, some obtained by dubious means that have included impersonating a sheik and, it is alleged, illegally accessing the voicemail of crime victims and celebrities.

The actor Hugh Grant, enraged by intrusive tabloid reporting, has become a prominent advocate of press regulation. “We’re not the wicked Goliath of the establishment taking on the plucky David of the press,” he wrote recently in The Spectator. “It’s the other way round. They are the establishment. They have effectively run the country for the past 40 years. They are Goliath. We need help.” Continue…

A Holmes for our times

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

David M. Russell/CBS

Sherlock Holmes used to be a dour Victorian, and now he’s the detective who’s bringing sexy back. Or at least that’s the impression you’d get from the latest television trend: modern-day versions of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective. Robert Downey Jr. was a younger-than-usual Holmes in the 2009 film version, but in recent TV adaptations Holmes is much cooler. People are watching Sherlock, the hit BBC drama starring 36-year-old Benedict Cumberbatch as a contemporary, computer-using Holmes, or they’re tuning in to Global to see Elementary, in which Holmes lives in New York and Watson is a female doctor. “I think the character of Sherlock Holmes is innately attractive,” says Naomi Roper, who runs a fan site for Cumberbatch. He’s even more attractive now that he’s been converted into a contemporary TV hero.

The traditional portrayal of Holmes is as a haughty intellectual with a bumbling sidekick. Aidan Quinn, who plays a key role on Elementary as a policeman who turns to Sherlock for help, says he “just knew Holmes from the Basil Rathbone movies,” in which the character was middle-aged and distant. The new Holmes shows have gone in another direction. Cumberbatch has become an international heartthrob, with fans dubbing themselves “Cumberbitches.” And in Elementary, Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes is an anti-authoritarian rebel, particularly when it comes to wisecracks: Quinn says most of the humour is between Holmes and Watson, with Holmes exposing other characters as square and humourless. Continue…

BBC trust head: Radical overhaul after broadcaster’s chief resigns over sex-abuse coverage

By The Associated Press - Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 7:29 AM - 0 Comments

LONDON – The head of the BBC’s governing body said Sunday the broadcaster needs a radical overhaul following the resignation of its chief executive in wake of a scandal over a botched report on child sex-abuse allegations.

Chris Patten vowed to restore confidence and trust in the BBC, which is reeling from the resignation of George Entwistle and the scandals prompting his ouster.

Entwistle resigned Saturday night amid a storm of controversy after a news program wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal, deepening a crisis sparked by revelations it decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars.

Patten told the BBC on Sunday he will not resign, saying he must ensure the publicly-funded broadcaster “has a grip” and gets back on track.

“My job is to make sure that … we restore confidence and trust in the BBC,” he said, and called for a “thorough, radical structural overhaul.”

The scandal comes at a sensitive time for Britain’s media establishment, struggling to recover from an ongoing phone-hacking scandal which brought down the nation’s bestselling Sunday newspaper, led to the arrests of dozens of journalists and prompted a judge-led inquiry into journalistic ethics and the ties between politics and the news media.

Kevin Marsh, a former senior editor of the BBC, said the resignation does little to re-establish public trust in the BBC, which is funded mainly by a tax on U.K. households that have televisions.

“The BBC asks the British public to pay its bills every year, and the only way it can do that is if the British public trusts the way it is spending its money,” he said.

Entwistle took over as head of the BBC two months ago from Mark Thompson, who will become chief executive of The New York Times Co. this month. The broadcaster was emerging from a difficult period marked by budget cuts, job losses and mounting calls to justify its 3.5 billion pound ($5.6 billion) budget.

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Associated Press writer Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

BBC chief resigns after network wrongly implicated politician in sex abuse scandal

By Cassandra Vinograd, The Associated Press - Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 5:27 PM - 0 Comments

LONDON – George Entwistle, the director general of the BBC, has resigned over a TV program it aired that wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal.

In a brief statement outside BBC headquarters in London, Entwistle said Saturday night that he has decided to do the “honourable thing” and step down.

“When appointed to the role, with 23 years’ experience as a producer and leader at the BBC, I was confident the trustees had chosen the best candidate for the post, and the right person to tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead,” he said.

“However, the wholly exceptional events of the past few weeks have led me to conclude that the BBC should appoint a new leader.”

National Unity Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Denis Coderre said yesterday that a Wild Rose win in Alberta might have an impact on national unity.

“We have to be very, very careful to have a Wildrose government because when the leader’s saying, ‘well, Quebec is complaining all the time, we shouldn’t give them (equalization), they have to understand where the money’s coming from …’ Hello? What’s that?” said Coderre. ”Everybody at one moment of their history was there to help each other. So I think we have to remember what Canadians stand for.”

Meanwhile, Michael Ignatieff sat down with the BBC to talk about Scotland and ended up musing about the potential eventuality of independence for Quebec.

Both men seem to forget that in defeating the Liberals in 2008 and electing a majority Conservative government last year, Canadians have already assured this nation’s unity.

London’s long, hot summer

By Leah McLaren and Patricia Treble - Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 6:30 PM - 4 Comments

Reuters/Luke MacGregor

What began as a peaceful public vigil outside a north London police station last Saturday rapidly morphed into several days of rampaging protests—a frightening flashpoint in a season of increasing unrest in the British capital. By midday Monday, more than 200 protesters had been arrested in skirmishes that left scores of officers injured and several down-at-heel neighbourhoods severely damaged by fire and theft. And there was no end in sight. By Monday evening, riot police were busy in Oxford Circus, and BBC commentators were advising Londoners to stay indoors—meanwhile, violence had erupted in Birmingham, Liverpool and other large cities.

How did it all start? The initial protest in Tottenham, a socio-economically depressed and ethnically mixed district in the city’s north end, was organized in response to the shooting earlier last week of Mark Duggan. The local man lived in a nearby housing project and was, depending on which sources you believe, either a peace-loving family man or an active gang member. There are reports that he was carrying a weapon, allegedly a starter’s pistol converted to fire live ammunition; Duggan’s death came after a minicab he was in was stopped during a pre-planned police operation.

What’s inarguable is that police were involved in the shooting, though it’s still not known who actually killed Duggan. Why the protest turned violent is similarly murky: at least one witness claimed it all began when a 16-year-old girl was viciously attacked after throwing a champagne bottle at officers, yet others blamed unsubstantiated rumours circulated on Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger claiming that Duggan was murdered in an unprovoked, execution-style shooting.

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‘This place is what Canada is all about’

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 1 Comment

Phil Noble/Reuters

What drew Yellowknife Mayor Gordon Van Tighem to the Northwest Territories 20 years ago, after years in Calgary and Toronto, are some of the same experiences Prince William and Catherine were able to sample during their 40-hour visit to the territorial capital and the wilderness beyond. “You’re on the edge of some of the little remaining, but accessible, wilderness in the world,” says the mayor. “Twenty minutes in any direction you won’t be finding any cigarette packages or Tim Hortons cups, and you can get lost.”

There was little risk of William and Catherine going astray during their whirlwind visit to what the BBC breathlessly described as “the remote settlement of Yellowknife.” The description amused rather than offended the mayor. With almost 20,000 people, representing 120 ethnic groups—and “two McDonald’s”—the mayor considers Yellowknife “a little-big city.” But he couldn’t have been more delighted with William’s glowing description of life above the 60th parallel. “This place is what Canada is all about,” the duke of Cambridge told a cheering crowd of about 3,000 at the civic plaza beside city hall, “vast, open beauty, tough, resilient, friendly peoples. True nature. True humanity.” Behind him were the glistening waters of Frame Lake. Beside him and Catherine on stage were territorial leader Floyd Roland and Aboriginal dancers and drummers. William earned an even bigger roar of approval when he closed his brief remarks by adding his thanks in the languages of the Dene and the north coast Inuvialuit. After opening with a few words of French, the duke looked pleased at acing what may have been his first-ever quadrilingual speech.

The couple, having travelled almost 3,700 km from Charlottetown through three time zones, was allowed a late start Tuesday, and looked the fresher for it. Yellowknife, this time of year, is murder for the sleep deprived. The sun pulls 20-hour days, and the city is bathed in twilight for the remainder of what passes for night. Once up, the couple had a full agenda, “the full meal deal,” as the mayor put it. After opening remarks at the plaza, they watched demonstrations of Dene hand games (a form of gambling) and Inuvialuit high kicks. They also were presented with red Canadian Olympic hockey jerseys with “Cambridge” written across the back. They watched a brief but spirited game of street hockey with a group of young people. William picked up a stick, but failed at three shoot-out attempts to get past goalie Calvin Lowmen, despite the duke’s joking plea that “You’ve got to let one in!”

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Cleaning up Britain's privacy laws

By Leah McLaren - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 5 Comments

Yui Mok/PA Photos/Keystone Press

No one can whip up a scandal quite like the British press. In a country in which the kiss ’n’ tell splash is both a lucrative and time-honoured tradition, many publications here view it as their right—in some cases raison d’être—to be able to publish the raunchiest details of a celebrity’s sexual indiscretions with impunity.

But the British courts don’t always agree. For several years now, British judges have been granting anonymizing court orders, commonly known as “super-injunctions,” which prevent U.K. media outlets (usually tabloid newspapers) from publishing stories that may be damaging to the parties involved. In some cases, the orders prevent the claimants themselves from being named, and in the most “super” of super-injunctions (a slang—not legal—term), the injunction itself is also banned from public mention. The injunctions cost between $30,000 and $80,000 on average to take out, prompting widespread criticism that they are an option open to only the already rich and famous.

If there is only one thing the British press like less than being scooped, it’s being muzzled. While super-injunctions have long been an irritant to the scandal sheets, they have only lately boiled over into front-page news, after the Wikipedia entries of four protected public figures were rewritten with lurid details inserted. In response, a number of others jumped at the opportunity to speak out against these gag orders, which some see as both hopeless in the digital era, as well as a dangerous infringement on freedom of the press.

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A very pale shade of green

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 7:28 AM - 54 Comments

The BBC brings us a short article about carbon footprints by environmental author-consultant Mike Berners-Lee, who brings the rewarding news that “we can actually afford to chill out about certain carbon footprints, which aren’t as bad as many of us might think.”

I am always interested in lectures and tirades predicated on various kinds of environmental “footprint”. It seems to me that this concept and near-relatives like “food miles” are the modern analogue of the Marxian labour theory of value—the latest in a series of attempts to divorce the notion of “value” from brute considerations of exchange, and to anchor it metaphysically in some other quantity. In environmentalism, as in Marxism, this exercise appears to end by dividing the extremists and the hard men from the accommodators or “realists”, who don’t wish to frighten either the horses or the bourgeoisie and who are always ready to let some economic practicalities into the discussion through a back door.

Berners-Lee, who has a new book out, obviously belongs to the latter category. Witness item two on his top-ten list of things we don’t need to feel guilty about:

Using electric hand driers beats reusable towels because it avoids laundry and comes in at three to 20g CO₂e per go. …The footprint pays its way by reducing the burden on health services—fewer germs usually mean less illness.

The footprint “pays its way” by reducing illness? Which medium are we using to make this “payment” again? This sounds suspiciously like concern for mere human welfare at the expense of the planet, comrades.

Roughly speaking, humans emit carbon because of certain things they like to do; in descending order of general environmental harmfulness, these would include 1) travel, 2) productive work, 3) leisure, and 4) respiration. It seems to me that a burden of infection imposed by the abolition of hand dryers would reduce (2) and might well prevent a certain measurable amount of (4). It is not as though Berners-Lee is unaware that we living mammals are all exhaling carbon even in the quietest moments—see his item number eight:

Getting cremated is likely to be less than a 10,000th of your life’s carbon footprint, at 80kg CO₂e. On this one occasion you can treat yourself to whatever form of disposal you prefer, safe in the knowledge that you have already done the most carbon-friendly thing possible.

Having embraced economic opportunity costs when it comes to a little thing like hand dryers, Berners-Lee ignores them altogether when it comes to one of the few individual decisions in our lives, one with an indisputably pretty huge “footprint”, that cannot in fact make a damn bit of purely selfish difference to us or give us an experience of pleasure or convenience. This attitude is shocking to me if only for the offence it presents to my Presbyterian frugality genome. Yes, in dying, you and I will have done “the most carbon-friendly thing possible”. But we are all going to die one way or another; why should we consider, given the whole premise of “footprints”, that this gives us license to go about it in an environmentally destructive manner?

And what a curious mixture of politeness and harshness: yes, your death is altogether good for the planet, and you should be aware of this every hour between now and then, as you tot up the “costs” of every picnic, pie, and pencil; but by all means feel free to muck up the atmosphere once you’ve shoved off, carbon-blower.

Berners-Lee also veers into arbitrariness, I think, when he informs us that “adding milk at least doubles the footprint of a cup of tea,” but that “if this helps to make your life feel worth living, you can enjoy it without guilt.” The same thing could easily be said of a Ducati Monster 1100. Surely we should feel precisely as much guilt as the excess emissions, added up over a lifetime, warrant. Nobody needs hot tea at all, let alone to have it with milk. Nobody, that is, except the English. (Nobody but an Englishman would talk of tea as a spiritually indispensable bulwark against despair.)

A hundred years ago tea was a representation of imperialism, just as much as it might be, today, of capitalist wastefulness in the husbanding of BTUs. The Berners-Lees of that day would have said much the same thing that today’s model does now: “If that cuppa helps to make your life feel worth living, go ahead and enjoy it without bothering your head about tea plantations and Opium Wars.”

All this would be of purely idle interest, except to those of us who tend to see environmentalism as a scheme for sending everyone pre-emptively to purgatory and then, à la Berners-Lee, getting rich off the sale of indulgences. What strikes me is that as time goes by we can expect the earnest, radical environmentalists to direct ever greater quantities of their energy against namby-pamby greenwashers; I can’t help wondering whether a working knowledge of the history of the European left from 1928-39 will prove unexpectedly rewarding in the coming decades.

'The cultural collapse of television in Britain'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 20, 2009 at 12:08 PM - 4 Comments

Former Late Show co-host Sarah Dunant considers her former colleague and what they might do next.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all to find Michael now involved in politics. He is a substantial man, a man of sublime intelligence and taste,” says Dunant, 59. ”But I’m sure that Michael has found that the journey from being one thing to another takes time. It’s a bit like turning around an oil tanker. In my case, it has taken 10 years to change the perception from `Sarah is a television host who sometimes writes novels’ to `Sarah is a novelist who in the past did some television.’

… ”The Late Show was an extraordinary show, which you would not now see on British television, such has been the cultural collapse of television in Britain,” she says. “Now the only show that would want Michael or I back is Celebrity Big Brother and I’m not sure that he nor I would wish to be in that house.”

'I'm not sure how much people know about what he's gone on to do'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 9:21 AM - 50 Comments

Elizabeth Renzetti sketches Michael Ignatieff’s return to England this week.

Not many of Mr. Ignatieff’s former London associates would have pictured him on a podium, engaged in partisan debate. “I don’t think anyone foresaw him strutting across the stage of international politics,” said Mr. Loader, who was one of the creators, 20 years ago, of the BBC’s live culture program The Late Show . He hired Mr. Ignatieff as one of the four hosts, and the former academic quickly “became the good-looking intellectual one. He was quite well-known, he had a reputation as something of a cultural polymath.”

'A pile of fruit and lots of coffee. Now.'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 1:32 PM - 5 Comments

After endorsements from both my editor in Toronto and Wells, I finally got around to watching The Thick of It, BBC’s political satire of four years ago (and now a major motion picture).

The first episode involves a cabinet minister being fired and his successor coming up with a new policy all on his own. Canadian viewers may find both such occurrences off-putting, but apparently things like this really do happen in other Western democracies.

Episode one, in three parts, here, here and here. Warning: Clips involve adult language and funny British sayings.

Tamil questions that can't be asked

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 975 Comments

The other day, one of the least soft-headed of Canadian columnists, Lorrie Goldstein, wrote a piece in the Toronto Sun called “Protest backlash unearths racism”:

“Let’s not pretend that much of the condemnation of Tamils in Canada for protesting the plight of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka isn’t racist.

“Any journalist who’s been around knows what’s going on and we have an obligation to speak up.”

I’ve been around. Well, okay, I’ve been nearby, as Mary Tyler Moore liked to say. And, insofar as I feel an obligation to speak up, it’s only to wonder at how far even the remarkably tensile concept of “racism” can be stretched.

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Don't make Iggy angry

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 12:48 AM - 17 Comments

You wouldn’t like Iggy when he’s angry. Just ask Peter. Very briefly at the 1:48 mark (Peter reappears again for a second or two at 1:52).

And now, lest you think the Late Show was all about British people getting cross with each other… Blur! Continue…

Apropos of nothing (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, May 16, 2009 at 6:00 PM - 44 Comments

A very rough—and not entirely chronological—sketch of Michael Ignatieff’s time abroad.
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Remember the 80s?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 12:53 PM - 28 Comments

Next viral attack ad: Michael Ignatieff, he’ll take away your TV remote.

Completely irrelevant, but mildly amusing, clip after the jump. Continue…

Speaking Of Dickens…

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 5:16 PM - 1 Comment

PBS has picked up the North American rights to last year’s BBC miniseries based on Little Dorrit, written by their resident miniseries guy Andrew Davies. The first episode will air on Masterpiece Theatre on March 29.

The miniseries didn’t get very good ratings (nothing compared to the response to Davies’ Bleak House miniseries that made him the BBC’s star adaptor), even though it was hyped as being particularly relevant to the times: the theme of the novel is money and its corrupting influence on human relationships; there’s a very Bernie Madoff-ish character in the story, and it’s the book where Dickens introduced the idea that the government has a “Circumlocution Office” devoted to making sure that nothing ever gets done, by tying up every new idea or invention in endless red tape.

But while Little Dorrit may be my favourite Dickens, it’s a very hard book to adapt; the 1988 two-part movie version has fans, but I’m not one of them. It has at least two big problems for adaptors. One is that it doesn’t have as many colourful characters and events as Dickens’ other books; it may actually be his best-written book, but it doesn’t have any characters who have become cultural icons, and it doesn’t have as many violent and spectacular events that made Bleak House such a perfect candidate for Davies’ soap-opera approach. The lack of colourful characters may be part of what hurt it in the ratings; most of the time is taken up with the hero, a man approaching middle age and trying all sorts of failed schemes to give direction to his rudderless life, and the heroine, a tiny, mousy young woman who has great strength of character but a no strength of personality.

The other problem is that even though it has Dickens’ usual complicated, coincidence-heavy plot with melodramatic contrivances that are set up at the beginning and revealed at near the end, the story is split into two separate parts, one when the title character lives in debtors’ prison with her father (“Poverty”), the other when a long-lost plot contrivance has made her family rich but even more dysfunctional (“Wealth”). The break between the two parts is very awkward, yet neither part works as a separate story on its own. So it’s hard for an adaptor to whittle the story down to a manageable size, whereas with Dickens’ other novels it’s at least possible.

See no evil

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 4:39 PM - 2 Comments

The soft drink can looked as if it should contain Coke. It had the familiar red background and white script. But this was in Esfahan, the most elegant and beautiful city in Iran, but still part of a country where the ruling clerics periodically tie themselves in knots about Coca-Cola’s supposed connections to the governments of Israel and America. So instead of Coke, we were drinking Mecca-Cola, whose founder, a French Muslim entrepreneur named Tawfiq Mathlouthi, launched the brand with the claim that it would contribute to the “fight against American imperialism and the fascism of the Zionist entity.” A small message on the can asks that drinkers avoid mixing the drink with alcohol.

My host—I’ll call him Farouk—was a white-haired septuagenarian with a sad and gentle face. He had previously been jailed because of his secular and leftist beliefs and had written several books of poetry and philosophy, all of which sat unpublished on his apartment shelves. Farouk poured some Mecca-Cola into my glass and then added the contents of a bottle of strong alcohol that had been smuggled into Iran from Turkey or Iraqi Kurdistan. He turned on his illegal satellite television and flipped through the channels until he found one showing pornography. He sighed, sank into his chair, and raised a glass to his lips. Continue…

The International Olympic Committee: Recession Proof

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 6:17 PM - 1 Comment

From now on, we’ll be rationing tissues… Jacques Rogge, the head of the IOC recently warned member nations that the Olympic movement will have to tighten its belt, given the steadily worsening global economy. John Furlong, the CEO of Vancouver 2010, has sounded similarly gloomy warnings, suggesting that Vanoc may have to look for budget reductions. But somewhere in the Olympic world, the sun still shines.

Today, the European Broadcasting Union, a consortium of 75 public broadcasters in 56 countries, announced that its bid to carry Sochi 2014 and the 2016 Summer Games has been turned down by the IOC. The EBU stations, which claim to reach a combined 650 million people a week, have broadcast every Olympics since 1956. The nub of the dispute is—as always—money. Coming off the ratings bonanza of Beijing, the IOC is seeking top dollar for competitions that are barely on the horizon ( a host city for 2016 won’t even be selected until next year.) “EBU Members were surprised by the high financial expectations of the IOC,” said the organization’s current president Fritz Pleitgen of the German broadcaster ARD.

Jean-Paul Philippot of Belgium’s RTBF was even blunter. “The worldwide financial crisis will not stop at the doorstep of free-to-air television; it will also have an impact on the value of broadcast rights for sports events. The EBU’s offer reflected the maximum price public service broadcasters could pay for the rights, our philosophy of investing in Olympic sports throughout the Olympiad (the four years between the summer Games), and the value of offering Olympic sports free of charge to all citizens”. Continue…