Posted by RDN under "National Media Trust" / Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 17 January 2009. No comments.
Serious journalism is in dire financial straits. All its business models are under threat. It’s time for the literate, affluent, bossy middle class to club together and fix things. They did it for buildings and landscape. Now they can do it for the national debate. More »
Posted by RDN under Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 15 January 2009. No comments.
So far as I can see almost all polite opinion is sure that Israel has behaved very badly in recent weeks in Gaza. I – rather tentatively – beg to differ. More »
Posted by RDN under Handling protest / Mind and body / Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 31 December 2008. No comments.
Jarvis Cocker of Pulp seems like a good egg, if a little coddled. He was guest editor of the Today programme on New Year’s Eve and agonised about climate and financial meltdown. Strikingly not-novel, his account was partly based on a trip to the Arctic made by a group of artists. How deliciously lacking in irony it all was. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 28 December 2008. No comments.
Andrew Marr is so obviously nice that it seems unfair to criticise him. But Mr Marr is so infuriatingly, blandly, the decent liberal right-on that I am bound to have a go. More »
Posted by RDN under Handling protest / Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 24 December 2008. No comments.
Hardly surprisingly the Baby Boomer media elite have been reliving their youthful rebellions and revolutions of 40 years ago. More surprisingly, many have lost their triumphalism. Sadly, too few understand the death of “institution” which characterised the Sixties. More »
Posted by RDN under Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 23 December 2008. No comments.
I’ve been a bit of a feature at obesity and health conferences recently. You can imagine my line: Eat less, do more. Good right-wing stuff. And anyway, most young people seem pretty much like whippets to me, damn them. Seems I’m more right than wrong. More »
Posted by RDN under RDN's media cribsheets / TV and Radio on 4 December 2008. No comments.
It seems tasteless to look at the misery inflicted on two young girls from the point of view of the media coverage given to them. And yet these cases may be linked by the media attention they achieved. That is tasteless. More »
Posted by RDN under "National Media Trust" / RDN's media cribsheets / TV and Radio on 30 November 2008. No comments.
BBC Radio 4′s iPM show asked me comment on their finding that people might be prepared to pay (an average of) £143 for BBC services. I replied that with a National Trust of the Airwaves they might pay less and get more. More »
Posted by RDN under RDN's media cribsheets / TV and Radio on 22 November 2008. No comments.
Do the media set a perverse agenda – or do they faithfully record events with a serious sense of priorities? More »
Posted by RDN under TV and Radio on 21 November 2008. No comments.
This extraordinary show stars Martin Shaw. It is premised, like his last, on paranoid conspiracy theories. That’s the only description for a scenario which pitches Satan and his minions as – literally – real. How come it’s upbeat? More »
