- Peter Barron
- 3 Jul 06, 01:39 PM
We've had from the Scottish papers for Friday night's piece by Tim Samuels in which he drove a car around Scotland bedecked in St George's flags ahead of England's big game with Portugal (watch it here).
Tim's experiment met with a gamut of reaction, ranging from good-natured banter, well-meaning foul language, even expressions of support for England, but when he left it unattended in the Gallowgate area of Glasgow it was attacked by a group of youths with bricks.
"The 大象传媒 was last night accused of staging a stunt to portray Scotland as a nation of English-hating thugs" raged Billy Paterson in the Sunday Mail. "There were concerns the youths involved in the attack may have even been encouraged by the Newsnight team."
Let me allay those concerns. Newsnight categorically did not encourage anyone to attack the car. This was a legitimate experiment to test anti-English sentiment in Scotland during the World Cup, following reports of a number of violent incidents. Of course we thought the car might come under attack, that's why we bought - at very little expense - an elderly banger, but there was no pre-meditated intention to portray Scots as one thing or another.
Tony Parsons saw a very different picture: "[M]ostly the Newsnight experiment revealed a Scotland that was proud, confident and enlightened enough to be well above crass Sassenach-bashing."
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Richard Porter
- 3 Jul 06, 10:52 AM
A message board called had posting a few days ago (edited slightly for length)...
A few days ago there was a bomb drama in Sweden (no-one died). 大象传媒 World ran a story about it with TV footage from the Swedish news. As an eyewitness made a statement 大象传媒 voiced over a translation and I thought it didn't sound right... something to effect of him being terrified, thinking about moving to another part of town and it was scary with terrorists so close to home.
In the Swedish news, the exact same footage was shown without voice over and what he really said was something like it was a little bit unsettling because he visited a friend and they could see the drama from the window - end.
And this set off a huge debate about standards on the 大象传媒.
I think I got to the bottom of it. In short, we made a mistake (for which we should apologise), but it's not as bad as it was made out to be. The interview with the eyewitness was sent to us in Swedish, with text of the English translation. It said...
Reporter - Are you worried?
Eyewitness - Yes, I have friends who live just above and I was there and saw the guy. I pity the man, he seems mentally ill, its nothing else.
Reporter - What will you do now?
Eyewitness - I am thinking of moving away, the terrorists have come here too it seems. I don't know, I don't think it's a terrorist, something is wrong with this society.
What we did then was to confuse the two answers - the part of the interview we used was the first answer, but the English translation we added was the second answer. So the eyewitness did talk about terrorists - we just didn't use the right bit.
The lesson for us is to find someone to listen back to these things before we put them on air.
Richard Porter is head of
Among the audience reponse received by the 大象传媒 in the past 24 hours include this e-mail from Father Paul Nicholas:
Two soldiers are killed in Afghanistan and the top news on 大象传媒 One is Beckham's resignation?? The 大象传媒 seems to becoming more like a tabloid newspaper rather than a serious news giver.
The level of sport coverage, both on the TV schedules and in news programmes, is often a cause for some complaint. Though some viewers yesterday said had not been given enough coverage.
A radio listener complained that warnings about the dangers of the hot weather for old people were given only in Celsius, when most of them would relate more to temperatures in Fahrenheit. Others contacted us to welcome Nick Clarke back to the radio, after he presented Radio 4's Any Questions.
The Guardian: A reviewer defends a new 大象传媒 Two drama series attacked for its negative stereotyping of black people. ()
Sunday Telegraph: "Revealed: how the 大象传媒 used MI5 to vet thousands of staff." ()
The Guardian: The paper's readers' editor on communication between a news organisation and its readers. ()
