大象传媒

Iraq

A PR disaster for nulabour. First Tony and his dodgy wmd now Gordon and his dodgy figures. It must be something systemic in the DNA of Nulabour? They just can't get it right. And getting it right is just being honest.

Actually Gordons behaviour is an insult to the public. His team think we must be really thick not to see through this vanity posturing and election taunting. He deserves to lose the election for taunting the public.

The privatization of the US army has been an operating reality since the invasion of Iraq. The security companies, some of which are British, have the appearance of a private army or mercenary group. As long as they are granted immunity by the Iraqis via an order published by the Coalition Provisional Authorty, and as long as UK and US troops back them up, turn a blind eye or otherwise are seen supportive, questions should be asked. After all, Iraqi citizens probably perceive all armed Foreigners as part of the same army.

Who can be surprised about Labour's desperate attempts to steal the limelight away from the Tory conference? No doubt a certain Milliband or Browne (Des) will appear on Newsnight and brazenly deny this.

Vintage Jeremy Paxman tonight, asking the questions and tolerating no nonsense from the hapless defence minister. Public service broadcasting at its very best. The country understood the questions Jeremy was really asking, and the answers that the Minister really gave, and failed to give. Mr Brown will not be pleased.

I can't believe how bad the 'Muslim punks' piece was.

I mean, I'm as down with the kids as the next guy, but it was an excruciatingly awful, overly long and ultimately pointless segment.

I though it was going to stop at some point but it just kept going and going and getting worse.

How does something like this get pitched successfully internally?

If we are to believe the polls I throw my arms up in complete despair,what has happened to the nations common sense?,who are these people the polsters ask?, are the midges Carrying a hitherto unknown strain of Brown brain disease?. We have a Prime Minister who according to the polls the people think would be better in a crisis, I seem to remember that in recent years whenever there was a close vote or a crisis this man went walkabout. This is the man who has taxed you to the hilt and he has'nt finished yet, wait for the next two fuel rises, not to mention the imminent passport increase.This is the man who stole your pensions, this is the man who says we have low unemployment, not that they have moved the figures from the DSS to the Inland Revenue but still collate from the DSS, this is the man who says inflation is 1.8% keeping your pension down,this is the man who suddenly became religious last week. Now we have this latest lowdown stunt involving our armed forces and the supposed deployment from Iraq. Are you really going to vote for this con merchant, you thought Blair was bad!.

I wonder if the PM spared a thought for the friends & families of the troops over there, who for a brief few hours thought they may see there loved ones at Christmas only to find out it was a con?

I didn't quite understand the reason for having such extensive coverage of the punks who claim to be muslim. They used foul language, were desrespectful and couldn't even sing. Hasn't Newsnight heard that punk is dead.

Newsnight has attacked muslim groups, attacked islamic bookshops, islamic literature, etc. It is quite noticeable that Newsnight is only perpetuating negative muslim stereotypes to the extent that your programme is creating fear ( Of Islam and muslims ) amongst the British public.

At this rate newsnight will easily win the award for the most Islamphobic TV programme on the British airwaves.

Thanks so much for the taqwacore piece last night. It was really refreshing to see that kind of topic and that kind of film style given a platform on Newsnight. Very interesting...

The Muslim Punk piece was certainly different Peter...very different!..how do they get away with it?

The interview with Bob Ainsworth was dire night for him & just showed how untrustworthy they all are... despite JP's insistence on a straight answer to a straight question the minister just flanneled & displayed his incompetence....& I had the gut feeling he just hadn't been told by Brown it was to happen.. what a mess!
John Major's broadcast also said it all, in his subtle manner, about this so called "Son of the Manse "PMs perceived hypocritical actions in blatantly exploiting our Troops for political short term gains. The electorate will have seen the headlines & make their judgements accordingly at the Polling stations.

I thought the piece on Taqwacore was interesting - as was the fact that the book on which they were based was censored over here. By the publisher presumably. (Shades of Danish cartoons-type protest) This viewer would have liked to know more; surprising that the author accepted to be censored for the sake of publication here. What was Islamophobic about the film? It's so easy to scatter this term around as a reflex action; so May Abdulla is supposed to be an Islamophobe ("self-hating Muslim" presumably, or Newsnight only ran it because it is an Islamophobic slot... " The film was hardly presenting a Muslim stereotype. Muslim Lesbians from Vancouver included on the bus. Shock horror.

The media once more getting itself into a frenzy aided on by the Tories whose policies appear so flimsy that a trip to Iraq would discount them all. So much for policies.
Mr.Paxman earned his brownie points but to my arithmetic 1000 from 5,500 is 4,500? Thats all Brown has said. Now wherever the "lot" who are currently in Germany are going is anyone's guess and probably Afghanistan. As to who will hear it first, us or Parliament, does it matter, so long as some are coming home? Plenty of dummy spitting.

Ho-hum it's election time so we have now 4 weeks of such political banter and invective. I'm off to a monastry or some hermitage until it is all over.

I'm really surprised at the negative comments about the piece last night on muslim punk. As someone who doesn't normally watch Newsnight but happened across the programme by chance last night, I thought the film was fascinating, and definitely deserving of the slot it was given. I honestly felt I learned something new from it, and that doesn't happen very often with tv these days. What I found most interesting was the stuff about the differences between Muslim integration in the U.S. and in the U.K, the statistics there were really eye-opening and were given real bite by the actual footage of the tour. You can't get a more pertinent topic today, and the film gave a really fresh angle on it.
Also, don't want to harp on, but aren't the fringes of our culture often the places where change starts, where prejudices and cliches are challenged and where tomorrow's cultural agendas germinate? I think it's important that cultural change on the margins is considered alongside the mainstream, and that our news agenda is not solely dominated by the kind of safe, predigested events that a small minority of white middle-class old people think are worthy of reporting. Any young person will have been able to relate to the film last night, to the issues raised and to the way the Taqwacore show there's a lot more to Islam and spirituality in general than the fundamentalist extremists would have us believe.

Like all "contravertial" things TaqwaPoor had to draw viewers somehow. I can only compare it to trying to attract houseflies, you need 2 things "crap" and "offensive material".

I think its time we stopped applauding stupdity and outright non-sense. We see this model over and over again from Eminem, 50 Cent to Big Brother..the more unusual, offensive, vulgar and lack-lustre the footage is, the more buzz you create.

Common sense, intellectual stimulation and simple decency is seen as "boring" "restricted" and "safe", society is prepared to sacrifice the above mentioned in the name of "contravercy" or contra-sense.

Having said that, I beleive that bands like TaqwaPoor should be given coverage and should be allowed to parade wherever they want etc etc, reporters trying to make an impression through shock tactics should also be granted this opportunity because sometimes a very bad example is the best way of learning good behaviour. "The fool is a wise man's best teacher because no one else is as effective as him in demonstrating the ill effects of a feable mind". I say, the more teachers we have, the more reason for not ending up in the same boat.

I think the muslim punk piece was an excellent example of cutting edge 大象传媒 journalism ...

As a British Muslim myself, the piece offered a completely new perspective on the islamophobia debate, reflecting real life stories

Moreover, it is the kind of challenging but accessible reporting that the 大象传媒 should be using to target audiences that are otherwise disenfranchised from mainstream media...

Did Brown lie?
Did the Minister being questioned resemble a very confused and deflective and silly person?

If Brown said that 1,000 troops in Iraq would be home for Christmas, why did he not mention that the majority already were out of Iraq?

Same old Labour Same Old Lies Same old Labour Spin going into overdrive - nothing changes in the house of Labour - does it?

Sadly, after 10 years of adopting the spinning (Lies) philosophy - they cannot change and none should be expected.
The Truth and Labour have been strangers for years.

hey!

Couldn't agree with Anthony more.

As I was watching it, it was exceeding every threshold of how bad it could get, I just couldn't believe this was not some kind of spoof on/by stupid students -it really was "A" version of this is spinal tap.

What some pretentious people might call experimental and rough, experienced viewers of Newsnight would call amateurish and embarrassing -we expect quality and thought from newsnight.

It's also a bit worrying that the editor of such an esteemed institution hadn't seen something like it - a bunch of no-hoper students/kids playing out ; oh but wait they say they're muslim!

Actually, maybe the only refreshing non-cliche in the whole thing was probably the basketball-playing teenagers having their words broadcast here on the concept that just because people say they're muslim, doesn't mean they are -but it's the "Punk-Rockers" and their ilk who will continue to get increasing media-coverage in the same way that big brother increases the freak/dumb-quotient every year and "normalises" the winner.

Newsnight shouldn't do popcorn (unless paxo is pointing out the stupidity!) -what was gained by commissioning/broadcasting this story, except filling air-time.

Actually, reading this again, Maybe just a bit too harsh, except that what did it tell us even about the broader muslim community in america (less then 60sec. on such stats) -and it's still worrying that the thundering intellect of Newsnight would confuse religion, ethnicity, wealth and culture: would the american muslims be running away/rebelling from religious societies, closed societies, be richer anyway, act like they do because of where they come from and/or where their coming to, what about african muslims, what about converts, what about war-zone asylum seeekers rather than the ideological emigre's -you know, intellectual rigour that is expected of newsnight, and unlikely from a student!

Such a rich seam, and we get a cheap indi-doc. about a crap punk-band (which is dead btw) with little original (read: nothing) to say gaining full-on virtually peaktime PR-credibility, not forgetting how widely newsnight is now distributed.

Are you SURE it wasn't a spoof???

Best wishes,

Q

Wow. I'm astonished at the vehement response to the Muslim Punk piece. I thought it was interesting, held my attention and the statistics were illuminating. I find the idea that reportage that seems rough (but in my view the roughest parts - such as where the camera was lowered to waist level to avoid detection as the police ended the impromptu performance - were extremely communicative) should somehow be second to gloss and high production.

Isn鈥檛 independent film-makers presenting unbiased reporting what makes Newsnight great - to both 'experienced' viewers (does that mean more used to a formatted mode of viewing objective journalism? Or maybe that people who haven't watched Newsnight as much won't be able to make up their own minds on what good reporting is?) - and to those more new to the programme?

I thought it was more illuminating because the band didn't come off as very good musicians or especially punk. What I saw was a bunch of kids rebelling against what they consider to be the system, something that many non-muslims would probably consider more their own area of activity. Instead of increasing Islamophobia, as a non-muslim, I found that the programme reinforced the common ground across denominations - kids are kids and like to kick against systems and be dramatic. I also found the responses of the Muslim people shown in the programme to be moderate and balanced. This doesn鈥檛 seem to reinforce Islamophobia.

These points might seem simple but they鈥檝e stuck in my head and I've thought back to the show more times since it aired than anything else I鈥檝e seen recently.

Newsnight is not an entity capable of 'thundering intellect' it is a slot in a broadcast schedule. The team that make it are extremely competent but it is perhaps a mistake to anthropomorphise a programme which is actually the collective effort of a large number of people, each with their own views.

Well done Newsnight, I look forward to seeing Ms Abdalla鈥檚 next report.