大象传媒

And in this brave new world of multiple news outlets, why should I be forced to pay for one I do not want? Why should I have to pay the TV tax when I can get all I want elsewhere?

Striving for excellence is a commendable quality and is vital in every profession. Journalism is all about truthful, accurate reporting and writing. Professional training is highly necessary as there are so many pitfalls journalists could fall into. Any journalist worth his salt needs excellent journalistic qualifications and good training. All this does not come cheap. Just as all major disciplines in the sciences and arts are paid for by the government in the form of scholarship and bursaries, the tax payer should not grudge paying for journalists wanting to reach the apex of their field through creative dint!

Yes. All right.

But what concerns me is the growth of journalists seeking 'personality' status: the growing number of doyens posing as gurus or authorities on anything and everything.

Dateline London; Daily Politics; 大象传媒 News. Any action and the same faces pop up to opine their opinions instead of reporting the news.

Worst of all are their blogs, outlets for their ballooning egos.

I think that's about all.

And in this brave new world of multiple news outlets, why should I be forced to pay for one I do not want? Why should I have to pay the TV tax when I can get all I want elsewhere?

---------

So stop paying the licence fee then, as long as you are not using the TV signal you don't have to pay for it.

JGScotland: If you don't want to pay for it, it is simple, get rid of your TV sets and you don't have to pay a single penny.

The modern media has one problem,political bias, it often doe's not give the whole story mostly a slanted view point.In todays world anyone who will not go along with "the sky is falling global warming nazi's"is shouted down,or this idea every country must agree and run their affair's the same way sickens me.I believe that when the wall fell the west fell with it.

Mr Sambrook, I have a great deal of sympathy with you. 'Flat Earth News' highlights a lot of the problems with respect to fewer journos covering more stories with consequent over reliance on news agencies, due to the closure of foreign bureau offices.

But don't you see that for many people, it is difficult to reconcile that view with the 'cult of personality' presenters like David Dimblebore and Matt Frei [who I concede is excellent] who are parachuted in, along with about 170 others, to cover the American elections ??

Granted you do have lots of foreign offices and try to cover 'world news' extensively, but please don't pretend that the problems lie elsewhere - you have to look inwards as well. 'People in glass houses..' and all that.

Maybe you should show 'Network' on 大象传媒 soon..



There never seem to be many good films on the Beeb these days - why is this ?

#5. "JGScotland: If you don't want to pay for it, it is simple, get rid of your TV sets and you don't have to pay a single penny."

Sadly it isn't. Boris Johnson ended up in court for non-payment of his licence fee on a cottage that doesn't have a TV. It is impossible to prove a negative and the licence people (who used to use detector vans and now just use databases) refuse to believe you don't have a set and issue court summons automatically.

I don't mind paying my licence fee in general, but what I do object to is the backdoor commericialisation of the 大象传媒 while they simultaneously shout for more licence fees. Decent programs funded by the licence payer (the new doctor who, Rome, Tudors, Spooks etc) are shown once then sold on DVD and flogged to satellite channels. The terestrial schedules are filled with 30 year repeats like Dads army and open all hours while the decent stuff is sold on and never reshown.

To those saying "don't want to pay the license fee, get rid of your tv" I would just like to say that I have a 32" TV, I used it for my PC and my PC alone, yet I HAVE to pay the TV Tax. WHY? I don't know!! I wrote to the TV Licensing department, they didn't bother to reply.

If the 大象传媒 became subscription based then those who want it can pay for it. It's unfair to make people pay the tax (or rather over-inflated salaries of it's "stars") if they never watch the programmes. After all, they are just being 'dumbed down' and lacking in anything ground-breaking these days. Same old drivel, different channel.

Oh before anyone says it, sure, I use the 大象传媒 news website but I could easily switch to any other for the same news items.

Come on 大象传媒, you used to be better then this. I _DOUBLE DARE_ you to make the 大象传媒 a subs channel. Perhaps then it may become less politically unbalanced and provide better content.

Mr Sambrook,

Your headline:
"Reinventing News".

News is News, surely. Why on earth should it be re-invented?

RS: "Anyone setting out now for a career in journalism needs to motivate themselves to overcome a vast array of forbidding problems."

What a pity that these 'forbidding problems' forbid journalists to get on with their core business: which is surely to ask questions, get the answers and report them in a clear, honest and as neutral way as possible.

RS: "an appetite for storytelling in a way that engages interest, a need for analysis and explanation and an opportunity to debate and discuss. "

I find the order, or prioritising, of your words here most revealing:
1. Storytelling. What, pray, does storytelling have to do with news?
2. A need for analysis and explanation. Surely this should be no. 1?
3. An opportunity to debate and discuss. Great. When it works. Glancing at your blog threads here, I see very little evidence of journalists stepping in to 'debate and discuss'.

RS: "Now the number of eyeballs per page or per programme is falling"
- Ever looked into whether this has anything to do with disillusionment at the glaringly narrow news focus, or a growing awareness of bias and omission in news?

"but we have much greater detail and granularity about where they are going and what they are doing online."

Ah, so it's all about tracking us in the hope of 'extracting value' from us, rather than trying to inform us in any sincere or meaningful way, is it?

RS: "Media organisations have to find a way to extract the value from that"

Is it all about money, profit and 'extracting value'?
Not one word in your speech about journalism's social responsibility, journalistic ethics or the role of a muscular, free press in truly representative democracy.

Fascinating stuff.

The Italians have a book claiming Italian precident for all modern inventions. I'm not doubting its truthfullness. An American book tells of an earlier precedent for every invention of the modern world.

Similarly I email my children and tell them what is happening in the world least they get the wrong idea from the 大象传媒. I, like Alistair Campbell, love the 大象传媒. But I, like AC, can also get irate about some reports, prioritisation and time spent on minor issues.

For example:
1. My children know more about the Eastern Front than has been mentioned in 10's of hours of coverage about the Great War on 大象传媒.

2. My children know the bigest Battle of the second WW. I don't think it has every been mentioned by the 大象传媒.

3. My children know the impact of the 70/30 rule on the mismanagement of housing development in the UK. But in hundreds of articals about houising development, house prices, supply and demand for housing you never mention the 70/30 rule and its deliverance of 10,000's of flats that nobody wants and its converse "shortage of housing that people do want".

4. The 大象传媒/media still use the word prudence wrt Mr. Brown. This was true for the first two years of him being Chancellor but that ended 9 years ago. He increased the tax on jobs (NIC) by 10% and doubled public spending whilst renaming spending as investment.

I really could go on and on and on but I will stop.

David Lilley

The way to lose an audience:

1. Mix journalists鈥� opinions (you call it 鈥榓nalysis and explanation鈥�) with news events to the point that people don鈥檛 trust you

2. Replace or shorten real news events on the main tv news to make room for a bloke in a suit and allow the bloke in the suit to gab on, pontificating and passing judgement about MPs that we elected. Regardless of falling trust and falling audiences, persevere with this nightly party political broadcast. Call the bloke in a suit a political correspondent.

3. Get interviewers to ask questions only Guardian/大象传媒 journalists would ask. DO NOT ask 鈥渉ow much is this costing the UK taxpayer鈥�, but DO ASK: 鈥渨hat is the government going to do about it?鈥� thus ensuring that such pressure from 大象传媒 journalists results in big left-wing government solutions and even less trust for the 大象传媒

4. Keep up political campaigns such as that recently waged against George Osborne and the push to bolster Gordon Brown

Many journalists seem to enter the profession in order to change the world. It may be quicker and less painful than getting elected, but isn鈥檛 it cheating? In any case, those who want to serve some spin with their output should surely find a home in the many independent outlets that are available. However 大象传媒 News should not be the place for spinners, forecasters, speculators or philosophers. If the 大象传媒 is good at gathering news then surely it should concentrate on that. It may not meet Richard Sambrook鈥檚 intellectual ideals, but it would provide the UK public with unfettered, unbiased news, something the 大象传媒 has starved us of for too long.

With 50% share of broadcast media and overwhelming complaints of left wing bias, something has got to give. I doubt that the whole 大象传媒 will be abolished despite any funding overhaul. Rather I see 大象传媒 News will reforming itself as a matter of self-preservation by stripping out the journalists who like to bloat their coverage with spin and replacing them with decent hard working hacks who will give us facts and events

So, Mr Sambrook, who makes the news, or, more to the point, who "owns" the news. The "art" of reinventing a story is timeless because words just happen to be ambiguous be they written, spoken or imagined. Photographs and videos also suffer because they are two dimensional and are as easily made to lie as the words that accompany them.

There is nothing new age about the media as it struggles to claim the rights to anything that it publishes. The 大象传媒 protects its intellectual copyright on its material and charges license payers the same or more than it does those who have never even lived in the UK let alone paid a license fee. Who "owns" that material, and what is the difference between the time grabbed from a casual "eye witness" and the paid for time contributed by an "on the books" expert?

There is a big "old boys" network in the 大象传媒 and the media in general, infected by rabid nepotism, factional cliques, inflated egos, self congratulatory but hugely mediocre journalists, and pivotal presenters who bring their own, largely irrelevant, opinions with them. That the quality has plummeted hasn't really registered with this insular and unhealthily dysfunctional group because they are too busy contemplating their navels.

The Internet opens an entirely new concept of "news" that is created by amateurs, disemboweled former professionals, people whose views are neither mainstream nor popular, and those who just have something to say. That it is largely unfettered by commercial considerations or "tactical" diplomacy means that it is much more likely to be either highly accurate or highly inaccurate. The "professionals" argue that this is dangerous and spend their time, just like the 大象传媒, in moderating (censoring) output.

For as long as the 大象传媒 engages in selling opinion as news (which is the disease you have sadly contracted and been consumed by) you can no longer claim to be the media of fact. One look at your record on Georgia, on Russia, on China, and on the US presidential election should be enough to chasten all of you. But it doesn't because you are not even aware of what you are doing are you?

Telling lies, skewing the news, mixing editorializing with reporting, failing to put events in context, and other crimes against journalism 大象传媒 and others perpetually commit will never go over well with an audience no matter what the technology that's used to disguise propaganda masquerading as news. The internet only exposes the lies that much more quickly and efficiently. Dan Rather was exposed in 2004 for the phony letter about George Bush within fifteen minutes of his airing it. It was demonstrated clearly as a forgery all over the internet, sharp eyed viewers knowing that the fonts in the letter didn't exist at the time it was supposedly written.

大象传媒's only hope is to go back to being the reliable and fair reporter it was many decades ago. To accomplish that, it will need to sweep out its entire nest of double talking liars. I wouldn't believe even one of them if their tongues came notarized.

I notice how the apostrophes in No. 13 have been transformed into Question Marks ! This might kill two birds with one stone - transform the mis-used apostrophe, and introduce a more questioning approach to marketing hype.

"Mr Sambrook here, I've just ?Reinvented the Wine Bottle? "

"Hmm.. Tell us Mr Sambrook, isn?t it the same old wine inside ?"

#12. Just of out of interest and quite off topic what do you think WAS the biggest battle of WW2? As an amateur historian I'd go for the Kursk campaign, but its a very hard thing to measure.

My concern about the way the news is given to the public, is the constant rehashing of the news every fifteen minutes of so. You could be forgiven for getting very pessimistic, due to emphasis on the bad news. During a days news, you will hear constantly how bad things are, or how bad a story is.

It is enough to make one depressed or worse. Yes things at present are not good in the financial world. unfortunately we are being told every few minutes, that people are not spending or so the city says. yet looking around my local area, it would seem people are still out buying for Christmas.

The time to really worry in my view, is when businesses start talking about 3/4 day weeks due to lack of sales. Even then it will only be for a short time, and then we will get through this time.


I also find the way some reporters feel the need to go for the jugular, looking to blame someone and ruin their career. Yet we seldom see the same when a reporter over does his/her job. Some small apology within their news columns. yet once they have had their way, the target will never fully recover. Why?, because many people will always assume there is no smoke without fire. The reporters need to temper the urge to crash someones career, because it is usually the family who loose out.

That you Richard for explaining to the hard of thinking how story telling and news go hand in hand.

If the beeb has a left bias (which I seriously don't think it has) the people generally commenting appear to be from Tory Central Office. In fact I feel that only a piad up member of the British National Party could seriously think that 大象传媒 news is left slanted.

I'm a 大象传媒 World New viewer (I have to watch advertisements for watches, hotels, airlines, insurance companies etc.. in addition to the subscription fee to my satellite company).

'News' is everywhere today. In my opinion, the 大象传媒 needs to go beyond news and into education and approach every news report as a mini documentary. Spend time on research and background as opposed to trying to be first to air a story.

Typically Al Jazeera does a better job of reporting the news than the 大象传媒 I think.

@Richard Sambrook - thanks for taking the time to respond. You've proven me wrong here on one point at least.

I was mulling over 'news as narrative' (or is it 'narrative as news') as I turned on 大象传媒 World News last night, only to find an example of this blurred category unfolding before my eyes.
Expecting news, I was surprised to find myself watching a mini-documentary, narrated by Gordon Carreira (if my memory serves me) - telling us all we need to know about a large US military base in the Thule area of Greenland.
I took my watch out about a minute in and timed another four minutes of this item, because I was struck by both its 'non-newsiness', the repetitive narration and the length of the item.
We were treated to numerous view of the base; zoom-ins of the impressive defence equipment; two soundbites about missiles shooting over the North Pole; a visit to the offices, the barracks and the mess where we were treated to a female sargeant's camouflaged rear swinging right and left as she played a Wii-game on the console; then a visit to the ten-pin bowling alley where someone tried for a full-house and then it was on to the rumpus room, where we heard a karoake song and saw female soldiers jiving on the dance floor; then a visit to the mail room where a lonely soldier collected post from his box.
As this somewhat rambling, but chummy, feel-good item drew to a close I was left to ponder the following:
- What specific NEWS did this piece encapsulate for the worldwide 大象传媒 audience?
- I've noticed these longer 'narrated documentary ' pieces in news bulletins, and often wonder what exactly they have to do with news, or whether they belong in a top-of-the-hour news bulletin at all, especially given the very numerous, fairly urgent newsworthy issues journalists could busy themselves with?

If this five-to-six-minute insert had appeared in a Russia Today news bulletin and featured, instead of Thule, a feel-good visit to a Siberian Russian army base, I wonder whether we would have put the whole thing down to puerile Putinesque propaganda :-)

I agree with the gist of the posts from *7 * 13 *14 *15 *19 *22.
When is news just news and not opinion?
If opinions from journalists and talking heads are deemed to be necessary in a news programme then they should be clearly labelled as such, and not tacked on the end of real news items to infer that the opinions are themselves news.

Watching some of the reporting on the recent U.S. elections, in which we have no vote.I was moved to wonder if the total air time devoted to the whole of this election process was not considerably more than that given over to U.K. elections, in which we do have a vote.
Was it necessary?

Was it strictly required that the 大象传媒 had to fly out more people to cover the finale of the election?

This was reminiscent of the Bejing Olympics , where despite a more than adequate coverage it was felt necessary to fly in Huw Edwards.
What for?

News stories reported on the main evening news will be repeated on the regional news, not by the same reporter but by a local reporter if the story occurred in that region.
If the local reporter is not felt to be up to the job to have their reporting on the main news
why are they there?

Duplication seems rife. The studio presenter will tell us a piece of news and will then "go over" to another reporter who will tell us exactly the same thing but from a different location.
What for?

"Analysis surely has to follow an account of the basic events". No No No. Not at the 大象传媒!

What should follow the account of basic events is a more detailed account of events. The 大象传媒's formula of basic events followed by droning analysis is your big rotten problem.

The moment you go beyond the facts you are inevitably speculating and leaving yourself, and the 大象传媒 we pay for, vulnerable to accusations of bias. Leave the analysis to independent media. Don鈥檛 do it with our money.

鈥淭he business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, so what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. They pull the strings and we dance.鈥� - John Swinton, New York Times Chief of Staff

You're all slaves, dont talk to us about political apathy, you help to keep things just so at the request of your real masters. Why don't some of you 'truthful', professional (the root of which means to believe in what one is doing) journalists actually tell the truth, or have you got mortgages to pay too....?

I want to see working class writers from all communities, ALL religions, and that includes single mothers, junkies, people on low wages etc regardless of colour. I want to know their opinion on everything, including these unelected community leaders or members.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting fed up with reading what people from Cambridge or Oxford have to say. (apologies to those who do have something to say.)

I wouldn't even mind writers from all classes who have had real life experiences.

I am saying this because I have a suggestion ;