- Rod McKenzie
- 3 Nov 06, 01:40 PM
"It's time to bring back the cane!"
No, not the view of a crusty colonel from the home counties in response to that British teenagers are just about the most badly behaved in Europe. That's Chloe's view - a teenager herself - who argued on our website that borstals and tough prisons work as well as corporal punishment. Teenagers need to show more respect, she argues, and if she is out of order with her parents she knows she can expect a slap.
Plenty of people had their say on this: Bear in mind our audience are both teenagers and twentysomethings - so we're not talking about a big generation gap here. Our reporters, our text response and our online talking point at Newsbeat were deluged with views. Many teenagers complained there was little for them to do, so it's hardly surprising they get into scrapes. Our twentysomethings tended to be more critical - blaming bad parenting, relaxed licensing laws and social factors such as being born into poverty or the breakdown of traditional family units.
Our teenagers were much more split in their views. There were many who argued that adults, "should leave them alone/get off their backs". Dave told us that he's a binge drinker and loves it. All had stories of Saturday night fights after the binging went bad. Others were critical of us media types, researchers and others who lump teenagers into one group of evil, snarling, aggressive, hard drinking and drug taking hoodies. Plenty of people to point out that there's a lot of good behaviour around - voluntary work - caring for sick and elderly relatives and much more teenage 'respect' than the government gives them credit for.
Lots of intelligent solutions too, from better diet to parenting classes to investment in youth and sports clubs.
Did we feel uncomfortable covering this story given our audience was coming in for a pasting? Someone asked me if this was the sort of story the rest of 大象传媒 News could happily cover but that we might want to shy away from, for fear of upsetting our audience or patronising them. The level of debate and engagement from our teenage listeners proves that wrong, I think - and say what you like about today's teenagers, but they're willing to join the debate about all aspects of modern life in Britain.
Last word to Chloe: "We're not all bad but those of us who understand manners and courtesy get blacked out by those who don't."
Rod McKenzie is editor of Newsbeat and 1Xtra News
- Steve Herrmann
- 3 Nov 06, 12:33 PM
Apologies to those who haven鈥檛 been following this, but here鈥檚 a brief update on my recent posting about the .
As far as we can see, what the site is now showing looks like a more accurate picture of which comments are removed from our - when we posted on Tuesday these looked wrong. To make things more complicated we NOW think we鈥檝e got a bug on our side which causes some comments not to show up - we're looking into this.
That doesn鈥檛 mean we aren鈥檛 removing some that break house rules - we are. To try and demystify how the Have Your Say pages work, I asked Matt Eltringham, a senior journalist in our interactivity team, to explain. There鈥檚 more on the pages themselves () but here鈥檚 a summary:
鈥淭he HYS debates are operated by a team of moderators who work across seven days a week from 0700 to 2300. Every day we receive about 10,000 emailed contributions to the debates we have started - debates often suggested by our readers.
鈥淭hese debates can be either fully or reactively moderated. If a debate is fully moderated, it means that all the comments are read first by our team of moderators before they are published on the site.
"A reactively moderated debate means that some users who have registered with us through a simple online process beforehand are able to post their comments directly on the site without first being read by a moderator. Therefore, in reactive debates, all members鈥 comments are published on the site, then comments that break the house rules are removed by the moderation team. Most of the comments that break the house rules are highlighted to us by users who click the 'alert a moderator' button.
"Regardless of whether a debate is pre or post moderated the presumption is that all comments should be published unless they break the house rules. These ban defamatory, abusive or offensive comments. We don鈥檛 edit comments or correct spelling or grammar.
"But the sheer volume of contributions means that in practice we simply aren't able to publish all of the comments that don't break any of the House Rules.鈥
One more thing - you may also be interested in of the News Sniffer site.
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
- Peter Barron
- 3 Nov 06, 11:27 AM
I hesitate to say more because I know many Newsnight fans truly hated the Madonna experience (which you can still watch here), but to put the subject to bed here are a few quick facts and figures.
It was certainly popular. Our audience share doubled, nearly three million watching three or more minutes of the interview. Grubby talk I know.
It was controversial, though not as controversial as the previous week's Taleban film. That attracted 300 comments to this blog. So far Madonna stands at half that. Most have been debating the rights and wrongs of the adoption, but a few think the episode signalled the end of a once-great TV institution.
Was it newsworthy? The interview spawned , so if it wasn't that's an awful lot of us with rubbish news judgement.
Regrets? Just a few, number one being that set. Yes, we should have tried harder to restrain the flamboyance of Madonna's stylist, which surely didn't do her any favours either. As one viewer put it: "Just promise me no more petals". I promise.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
Daily Mail: Richard Littlejohn on news coverage of the Stern Report: "The 大象传媒 is only too willing to give free rein to the wildest fantasies of the eco-nutters, especially if it can pin the blame on George W. Bush and the evil multee-nash-nuls." ()
The Sun: "Telly anorak Keith Hamer yesterday unveiled his amazing collection of 大象传媒 test cards." ()
