Audiences (archive)
- Amanda Farnsworth
- 26 Sep 06, 03:15 PM
We've had a few comments about our coverage of , after she was mauled by two Rottweiler dogs.
Did we vilify Rottweilers? Did we create panic amongst dog owners? I think the answer to the latter point is no, judging by the responses from the audience I've seen, but it's a fair point, and a good thing for us to take a look at our coverage and see what we said.
Looking back I really don't think we demonised the dogs. They did kill a child, and it's news exactly because it is very unusual. Every broadcast outlet and national newspaper covered this story for this reason. But we didn't refer to them as "devil dogs".
I think it would have been irresponsible for us to speculate on the exact circumstances that led to the dogs attacking the child, because we simply didn't know them and we couldn't blame parents, friends or family - we had no information.
We did however put some context about controlling dogs in the coverage from the local councillor (watch the report here).
Personally, I am a big animal lover, and know two Rottweilers. I wouldn't want our coverage to imply any blanket assertion about any breed. I hope in this case we didn't.
Amanda Farnsworth is editor, Daytime News
- David Kermode
- 22 Sep 06, 04:51 PM
Richard Hammond . His doctors are apparently "cautiously optimistic".
When news of his accident broke on Wednesday night, details were sketchy. It had an, "oh god, that's awful" factor, and I was in doubt that it should lead Thursday morning's Breakfast.
Decisions over which story should get most prominence are often very difficult. Thursday morning's news agenda was relatively quiet and this story stood out to me, and the rest of the team working on the programme.
Was it the right lead? There's definitely a debate to be had. Quite a few viewers got in touch, either by email and text during the show, or by the more formal complaints procedure route, to suggest it was the wrong call.
"Is there nothing more important going on in the world?" was one view. "The coverage was excessive," was the view of many others. One person even complained that the accident "was self inflicted and should not be news".
At the same time, we had a big response from people who wanted to relay their shock and pass on their best wishes for Richard's recovery. We use a panel of viewers to monitor which news stories have the most impact and which stories viewers want to know more about. The answer, on both counts, was 'Richard Hammond's accident'.
We don't always get the choice of lead story right and the clarity provided by hindsight is powerful. However, on this occasion, I would stick with our choice of lead. He is a well known and much loved presenter, he was attempting something extraordinary and, as we now know, there was a huge amount of interest in what happened and in his condition.
I share my thoughts on this not because I think they are necessarily particularly important (self important journalists annoy people) but because I think it's important to try to shed light on our decision-making process.
What's much more important is that he recovers - and there are clearly so many people out there who want to see him back on screen as soon as possible.
David Kermode is editor of
- Peter Barron
- 22 Sep 06, 04:02 PM
Every time we run an item about climate change - which let's face it is quite often - we get a number of complaints about media hysteria.
"Oh no! Branson has just pledged 3 billion to fight Global Warming. ANOTHER excuse for Newsnight to champion the cause. It is becoming so tiresome."
"By your own standards tonight's item on global warming was a disgrace... One oversimplified interpretation of global warming is now force-fed to the public."
"Exxon funding groups critical of the increasing hysteria around climate change? Great news!"
Then you get articles like Tom Utley's in the Mail today, railing against the bien pensants of the 大象传媒, using to dismiss concerns about melting ice-caps his own ice-in-gin-and-tonic theory. It goes like this. If the doomsayers are right why doesn't your gin and tonic overflow when the ice melts?
I remember debating that one myself - a little incoherently - over iced drinks in my student days about 20 year ago.
So are we at the 大象传媒 peddling some sinister international climate change myth, or are sceptics like Mr Utley in hock to the CO2 nay-sayers of big business?
Neither I think. For years on Newsnight we've reported concerns about the effects of climate change with caution, due scepticism and balance. But at a certain point I think you've got to assemble all the available evidence and decide whether the threat is real or not. I think we're past that point and that the threat is real.
It doesn't necessarily mean, as Mr Utley mocks, that his beloved Norfolk will be under the sea any time soon, it's much more likely surely that Britain will feel the strain from the refugees from the effects of climate change who will make their way to our shores.
So what explains the staying power of the sceptics' argument?
One possibility is that they're right. But I think the real reason is that subconsciously many of us hope they're right. If Mr Blair really believed climate change was a bigger threat than terrorism, for example, wouldn't he devote more of his energies more urgently to it?
And Ethical Man aside, wouldn't you and I change our lifestyles more than the bits around the edges we've done so far?
I think most of us have an inner George Bush, or a part which is in denial and believes it can 't be as bad as all that, that surely something will turn up.
I hope we're right.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Richard Porter
- 21 Sep 06, 01:44 PM
If you'd been watching 大象传媒 World at 23:50 GMT last night, you would have seen a report about the Thai prime minister arriving in London, after flying from the United Nations in New York.
Except in Thailand, however. There, just as the report began, a caption appeared in place of our signal to say "programming will resume shortly" - and then, bizarrely, a montage of Western movie stars appeared. We'd been censored... as we have been since the coup began on Tuesday.
Things have got a little better. Initially we were taken off air completely, as were CNN. We re-appeared yesterday morning, Thai time, but since then have both been subject to selective censorship.
Footage of the coup leaders appears to be allowed to go out uncensored, but anything involving Thaksin Shinawatra is being blocked. Does this mean, however, that the Thai people know nothing of what he is saying?
I doubt it very much. In this digital age, information travels freely - if it's not by satellite television, it's via email, the Internet, or by SMS. The crude censorship being deployed in Thailand may hark back to an age when Governments really could control all the information, and surely those days are gone.
Incidentally, we know exactly what's happening thanks to our colleagues at , based at . They have been carefully monitoring all the media reports in Thailand, and I'm grateful to them for providing us with the necessary information.
So last night they were able to tell us more details about the terms of the censorship, by monitoring a report on the Thai Channel 9. This is the text of the statement read out:
"Having successfully seized the executive power of the country, the Administrative Reform Committee under the Democratic System with the King as the Head of State commands the ICT Ministry to censor, prevent, block out, and destroy dissemination of information in the information technology system, transmitted through all communication networks, that contains articles, messages, verbal speech or any other discourse that might undermine the reform for democracy under constitutional monarchy as already specified in the Administrative Reform Committee Under the Democratic System With the King as the Head of State's earlier announcement."
Perhaps we should be grateful that at least they're admitting to censoring the media. This morning there was a bit more detail to accompany that statement. 大象传媒 Monitoring reports the Thai Nation newspaper's website as saying...
"The permanent secretary for Information and Communications Technology Ministry Thursday (21 Sep) held a meeting with representatives of various media. Kraisorn Pornsutee, the permanent secretary, asked the media representatives to cancel the show of SMS comments of audience on TVs as well as cancelling phone-in comments on radio programmes. Those attending the meeting were representatives of state firms, website operators, mobile phone operators, print and electronic media. The meeting took place at 13:30 local time (06:30 GMT). Kraisorn also asked the website operators to monitor comments on their webboard to screen out provocative comments."
So the authorities are trying to restrict the new media as well as the "traditional". As I've said, I doubt if that can really be effective. But it would be interesting to see what you think about that - especially if you're in Thailand...
Richard Porter is Head of News,
- Jon Williams
- 15 Sep 06, 10:35 AM
大象传媒 News has bureaux in 39 foreign cities - but only in one can we go anywhere, anytime and broadcast live for radio and television using the web.
So where is this technological nirvana - Tokyo, Los Angeles, Brussels?
The answer might surprise you - it's Kabul. The city is one of the first in the world to be a giant wireless zone. Using "wi-max" and a trusty laptop, correspondent Alastair Leithead can broadcast from pretty much anywhere in Kabul - and all at a fraction of the cost of traditional satellite links.
Using a small black box on the roof of the car, the team in Kabul can pick up a 512k broadband signal right across the Afghan capital - and all powered from the cigarette lighter in the car. Gone are the days when we had to fly out staff and equipment from London to make this stuff happen.
Why does it matter?
Because Afghanistan is now rivalling Iraq as one of our biggest stories. Thirty British servicemen and women have been killed there since June. The 大象传媒 is the only international broadcaster to have a permanent presence in Kabul - and by harnessing the latest technology, it means that money we used to spend delivering the news from remote places in the world can now be spent on gathering the news. And that has to be good news.
Jon Williams is world news editor
- Jamie Donald
- 13 Sep 06, 10:31 AM
One of the perils of being an editor is the brainstorm - that time when you know the ideas need refreshing, and you ask the team to come together to think up new ways of covering the same situations and stories.
You tell them - and you think you mean it - ‘the crazier the better’, ‘nothing is ruled out’, ‘think laterally’, and - most foolishly of all - ‘you can decide on the best ones and I promise we’ll carry them through’.
In the fashionable backwater that is political programmes we don’t have ‘watering holes’ or ‘green hat, red hat’ games when we brainstorm: we toss them out over drinks, laugh about them and vote.
And so it is that political programmes will be taking a Little Andrew Neil and a Little Jenny Scott to the conferences this year, and I have to defend it as a brilliant idea.
Over 600 kids entered our competition - run with Newsround - to find a ‘Little Andrew and Little Jenny’. Thirty have been shortlisted and interviewed by phone. And the winners are 12-year-old Christopher Duffy from Inverclyde, and 12-year-old Becky Philips from Devon. We’ll take them to each conference for a day to report and interview leading politicians. And they’ll start with Sir Menzies Campbell at the Liberal Democrats conference a week on Monday.
You may say it’s a straight rip off of Little Ant and Little Dec on ITV, and so neither original nor appropriate to serious political coverage. Fair enough. But for me there are at least two good reasons for doing this, apart from the fact that it’s different and fun.
Politics is no longer the draw it used to be. Viewing figures are falling. Fewer people are voting. And most alarmingly, the average age of those who say they’re interested in politics is rising sharply. Very few people under the age of 45 take our political processes and institutions seriously. So 600 young hopefuls is a fantastic return before we’ve even started. And if it draws just a few more younger viewers to the conference coverage this autumn, and introduces the million and a half who watch Newsround every day to this annual political event, we’ll have done a public service.
The other reason: Little Ant and Little Dec got to interview the prime minister, and put to him some very challenging questions. For four years, Mr Blair and Mr Brown have consistently refused to be interviewed for the 大象传媒’s conference coverage, believing it doesn’t reach the people they want to speak to. Maybe now they’ll change their minds.
Jamie Donald is editor of live political programmes
- Gary Smith
- 12 Sep 06, 12:57 PM
Should the 大象传媒’s political editor, Nick Robinson, have asked about UK politics during press conferences over the last three days given by Tony Blair with the Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese leaders?
Nick’s questions - used in his reports on TV and radio bulletins - have sparked a heated debate on his blog. Some contributors feel they were totally inappropriate - “an embarrassment to his profession.” - one says that asking about important domestic issues is valid “anywhere at any time.”
It’s a tricky issue. On foreign trips like this, a group of newspaper journalists, broadcasters and agency reporters travels with the prime minister, and - often to the bemusement of foreign leaders - takes every opportunity to pester Mr Blair about what’s going on back in the UK.
At the 大象传媒 we try to do more than this. We have huge numbers of different programmes and platforms and audiences with different interests, and we try to cater for everyone.
So yes, of course we ask about domestic politics; but we cover the diplomatic story as well, allowing editors back in London to decide which angle is the right one at a particular time for their audience.
In the Middle East over the past few days, we’ve had Nick Robinson and Five Live’s John Pienaar in place to pursue domestic politics; but we’ve also had the Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, and correspondents based in the region such as James Reynolds, Matthew Price and Alan Johnston on the diplomatic story.
The reporting across three days has reflected different aspects of the developing stories.
So for example the 大象传媒 One Ten O’clock News on Sunday night led with Gordon Brown’s interview with Andrew Marr, and included Tony Blair’s reaction to it, which Nick Robinson then talked about from Jerusalem. But the programme also included a report by Jeremy Bowen on the substance of what the prime minister had discussed with Mahmoud Abbas.
Would it have been right for Nick Robinson NOT to have taken the opportunity to ask Mr Blair about what his Chancellor had said? Surely not – domestic politics can’t be put on hold while the prime minister travels abroad.
Political junkies will remember only too well Margaret Thatcher’s performance on the steps of the British Embassy in Paris in November 1990 after she’d failed to beat Michael Heseltine outright in the first vote for the Conservative Party leadership.
The 大象传媒’s fearless chief political correspondent, John Sergeant, pounced with his killer question: “Mrs Thatcher, could I ask you to comment?”
Her spokesman Bernard Ingham then brushed Sergeant to one side to allow Mrs Thatcher to declare her intention to fight on. Two days later, she resigned.
Who remembers now that she was actually attending a meeting about European security? I’m sure John Sergeant was right NOT to ask about that.
When the history books are written about this past weekend, will Mr Blair’s Middle East trip be remembered as a moment when negotiations restarted between the different sides in the Middle East, or as a significant staging post on Mr Blair’s way out of Downing Street. As the old reporting cliché goes, only time will tell.
But at least Nick Robinson’s questions opened up the possibilities for alternative versions of history.
Gary Smith is editor of political news
- Rod McKenzie
- 12 Sep 06, 10:36 AM
Recently, we interviewed the leaders of the three main parties on environmental policy - we called our two weeks of journalism 'The Global Challenge'. All of them talk a good game but our listeners are far from impressed with the actions that match the words.
They may have a point.
Ming Campbell, questioned by our terrier-like political reporter Rajini Vaidyanathan, told us that we should fit energy-saving light bulbs. How many in your household then, Rajini shot back. "Er, I don't have any," was the Lib Dem leader's reply. Rajini knows a jugular when she sees one, pointing out that how can he expect us to save the planet if he doesn't follow his own advice?
David Cameron's view on the subject was that if more of us cycled to work and employers fitted more showers, we'd all be better off. Not much point in doing that if you have an official car following behind with all your paperwork in though is it Mr C? That's not true, said the Tory leader, before admitting, well yes it had happened a couple of times but wouldn't again.
Tony Blair told us he'd turned down the temperature in Downing Street by one degree and enthused about the energy saving lightbulbs that Ming doesn't have… whilst clocking up more non-environmentally friendly air miles on his Caribbean holidays. But our listeners wondered why he is building more airport runways if he's so committed to the environment - and what about doing more to encourage green cars?
But to be fair - how green are the rest of us? Isn't it up to us to save the planet in little ways with a bit of recycling or switching off lights rather than expect the Government to do it for us?
Over on Radio 1's sister station 1Xtra, presenter G-Money had his home carbon energy audited - he scored a pathetic 3 out of 10. He's a big fan of power-hungry gadgets on standby - which, let's face it, doesn't help. And what's he doing about it? "Switching everything off," he told me - hmmmm, call me a sceptic but habits/lifetime/changing spring to mind.
Our reporters have travelled the world - Rajini again, to notorious high polluter India, and our US reporter Heather Alexander to check out green cars in New York - and get a 4x4 petrol head to drive one in Manhattan. We were inside the arctic circle to check on the big melt and Tulip Mazumdar went to Ireland to see how well a tax on plastic bags was working.
We did it all for journalistic reasons but we did a fair bit of polluting ourselves with all those fumes - travelling and flights. You can't win can you - so maybe politicians feel the same. But before you ask - yes, I am paying to make our reporters flights carbon neutral!
Rod McKenzie is editor of Newsbeat and 1Xtra TX
- Ben Rich
- 8 Sep 06, 05:40 PM
There are two problems with having your programme .
One is that he's a distinguished , so the defence of muttering "what would he know about news programmes anyway" is unavailable.
The other is that he is a pre-eminent prose stylist whose polemics are laced with cutting phrases - in this case describing the Six O'clock News as a "parody of something between Down Your Way and Nationwide".
His ire had been raised by our decision to send Natasha Kaplinsky out for a week to places ranging from Dorset to Glasgow to present a series of segments on social change under the banner "The Changing Face of Britain" - you can watch some of the reports by clicking here.
He took up his pen after watching the first, in which we went to Christchurch in Dorset, the town with the most elderly population in Britain, to report on what might be the future for many other parts of the country. The segment contained a report from Richard Bilton, a piece by Natasha looking at what the town was like decades ago and an interview with the 71 year old Mayor of the town about what it was like to live there.
Now I would be the first to admit that this wasn't the strongest of the five stories we covered in Six on Tour - and if I'm honest the interview with the Mayor was a bit too local in content - but there is a more general point that Martin Bell was making. Should we be out in this way - sending a presenter to cover the growing elderly population (or the exodus of young people from Wales, Polish immigrants doing the jobs Asians used to do in the Midlands, town dwellers moving to the country, and Glasgow's record in dealing with asylum seekers as we did on the other days) in this way, when there are people dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and, on Monday, a British tourist shot in Jordan.
Of course we did cover events in the Middle East well ahead of Six on Tour. But his question remains valid - why did we devote eight minutes a night to being on the road like this? There are a number of answers I would give. Principal among them I would say that the issues we covered were important and that they sometimes get lost in among the more urgent daily stories.
But we did have a wider purpose than that - to get our programme out among some of the audiences we serve to report on things that were happening locally, but had some greater national resonance. Our reporters and Natasha also appeared in the local newspapers and on local media, providing more potential viewers with a reminder of the service we offer. And our overnight research showed that our report on the elderly was the programme item people most wanted to know more about.
As a man with a full 大象传媒 career behind him, who looks set to continue using his talents for many years to come, I might have hoped Martin Bell himself would have agreed with that.
Ben Rich is deputy editor, One and Six O'Clock news
- Peter Barron
- 8 Sep 06, 02:21 PM
There's always been a debate about what is and isn't acceptable on TV news programmes, and now that we have blogs, forums and podcasts it's only getting more complicated. And should Newsnight's on-line persona be exactly the same as that on TV? Here are a few of this week's posers.
• Our Ethical Man Justin Rowlatt caused a degree of outrage when, in a film about cycling proficiency (watch it here), he asked a youngster if he was "pissed off". By today's standards that's hardly obscene and I'm sure the minor in question had heard, and probably said, much worse, but I must admit I spluttered into my cocoa watching at home.
On the other hand, when I used the term "crap prizes" in a response on this blog, I was surprised that some viewers thought that was inappropriate language for the editor of Newsnight, even in an obscure corner of the blogosphere.
• A few of you have been writing on the blog complaining that some of your comments have been censored and asking why. In short, I don't know. On Newsnight, we censor nothing that appears on the site, but we do employ an outside moderating company who check for, among other things, "profane, abusive or threatening language" (full guidelines here).
So, in response to a question about graffiti scrawled on his abandoned car, the foul-mouthed Justin's strictly factual response was barred from publication. I'm not going to repeat it here, but it begins with "w".
• Where does informality end and falling standards begin? Yesterday on the website, we asked you - as a diverting pastime while we waited for Mr Blair - to construct a statement which might get the PM off the hook. About 300 hundred of you obliged, but one bridled: "I find this exercise pretty stupid for the level that 大象传媒 and Newsnight traditionally were holding and still claim to hold."
• I enjoyed the fact that when Laura Kuenssberg said that Jack Straw had been talking in the past tense some of you pulled her up, pointing out he was actually talking in the present perfect (the operative phrase was "has been"). Then again - as some of you have also raised - the standard of spelling and grammar among viewers' contributions to the blog is sometimes pretty appalling. Not what we would expect from Newsnight viewers.
• Two quick ones which raised eyebrows inside and outside the programme. Tony Blair portrayed as Christ at the Last Supper as an illustration of . Blasphemy or genius? And what about Kirsty's description of Gordon Brown's command and control network as Al-Qaeda-like? One of our own programme editors thought that was appalling.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Andrew Steele
- 5 Sep 06, 09:43 AM
In America, the Labor Day holiday has been and gone, marking the end of the summer. According to the etiquette of a bygone era, white shoes and gloves should no longer be worn in polite society until next May.
But as Washington’s political elite return to their desks after a summer at the beach, the gloves are coming off for a different reason. Serious campaigning starts now for the November 7 mid-term elections.
In the mid-terms, the entire House of Representatives, a third of the nation’s senatorships and 36 of the 50 state governorships are up for grabs. President Bush’s name is not on any ballot, but these elections are nevertheless a litmus test of his popularity.
His current ratings are near rock-bottom, so canny Republicans are wary of close association and Democrats scent blood. But it’s not all plain sailing for the opposition either – it’ll be tough for the Democratic Party to gain control in either House of Congress. A close fight is in prospect.
It’s a blessing to see the American media drifting back to a serious news agenda after a very silly summer season indeed. Despite bloody upheaval in the Middle East, most news editors have opted for much lighter fare – new developments in a lurid and unsolved case of a child beauty queen’s murder, the arrest of a polygamous religious sect leader and the breathless tracking of a hurricane which blew itself out even before reaching the US coast.
Although I may eat my words when, as November approaches, we find ourselves neck deep in campaign ads, shrill political lobbying and the braying tones of an American political campaign in full flow. I may find a new attraction for weather stories.
Andrew Steele is the 大象传媒's bureau chief in Washington
- Gavin Allen
- 21 Aug 06, 05:36 PM
Cricket is only a game! The e-mailer, complaining to us at the Today progamme that the ball tampering row was our lead item, wanted us to be crystal clear about this - as if the exclamation mark wasn't emphasis enough - and demanded we give him, and our other listeners, a break! (Two exclamation marks in one sentence is a surefire shorthand for You're Wrong!).
And this listener wasn't alone. Or, indeed, wrong himself. It IS only a game. But that doesn't mean it can't, just occasionally, qualify as general news too. Some blokes booting a ball into a German net four times 40 years ago was also only a game, but I'm assured it grabbed a few headlines at the time, and rightly so. Running orders don't always have to be solely about events that alter society for decades to come, or retain significance beyond the notoriously stunted news cycle (although Moore & Co did pretty well by that standard too, as it happens).
Sometimes, a news story is a news story - even a headline news story - because it fires passions or generates debate or is just inexplicably interesting. And that's it. The father who threw himself and his children off a balcony in Crete, killing his son and injuring his daughter, is only a bloke. But he's news. As is that Gunter Grass SS-soldier-turned-author chap. It makes us curious, makes us want to find out more, makes us ask questions and try to crawl towards some tentative answers in our humble mission to explain. Oh - and entertain.
In the case of Tampergate - yes, I know it won't catch on, but someone's going to grasp wearily for the cliche, so it may as well be me - there was no shortage of entertaining questions. How do you tamper with a ball? What does a ball do once tampered with? Why doesn't rubbing it against your groin qualify as tampering? In fact why doesn't rubbing it against your groin qualify as illegal?
But, protests another listener, it is not the most important thing that's happened in the last 24 hours. Perhaps not. But then, what was? Another military death in Afghanistan? New selection procedures that could propel more Conservative Party women and ethnic minority candidates into Parliament? Saddam Hussein's genocide trial? Well, yes to all that, which is why they were all lead items today - with Saddam occupying the main 0810 slot.
But cricket was important too. Not life-threatening, not career-enhancing, not nation-building, sure - but just good old-fashioned interesting to a swathe of listeners who wanted to know how, why and whether this was cricket's blackest day ever, whether the Pakistan team had cheated and what would happen as a result. Events were moving in our time - we interviewed a representative from cricket's world governing body, and an umpire from the ECB clarifying the rules - and even Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf was moved to ring his cricket team captain to pick up a few pointers on what was going on.
And isn't that what news should be all about - learning about something new? Something that matters - to him and her if not to you. Finding out something you didn't know before? This was the first Test match in history to be abandoned due to cheating, or at least - according to the umpires - to a reaction to being caught cheating. Why shouldn't we help our audience understand how it had all come about and what its consequences would be? Because, chorus the complainants, it's only a game. "You have ghettos for overpaid men's 'sport' at around 25 past the hour," bellowed one. "Please confine all such items to these slots."
In other words, I don't care, I don't want it and I don't care if other listeners want it. But that's the odd thing about sport - our listeners tend not to take it or leave it so much as love it or hate it. There's very little indifference. To the chuck-it-in-a-ghetto-ers, sports fans tend to be tiresome stattos forever fretting about a pig's bladder or slab of willow or ping pong thing, while many sports fans label the ghetto-ers news snobs who are out of touch with the effort and vigour and heroism that sport provides.
Snob or statto: which are you? And which is right? Luckily, it doesn't matter - both are characterised by opinionated self-confidence. As is news. It's not an art. It's certainly not a science. It's just a judgement about what matters and what interests and what bears further analysis. News, in the end, is really only a game. And, like cricket, what a beautiful maddening game it can be.
Gavin Allen is deputy editor of the Today programme
- Rod McKenzie
- 18 Aug 06, 03:06 PM
It's like picking your nose with a rubber glove on.
That was one Radio 1 listener's description of having sex wearing a condom. We've been involved in carrying out the largest ever survey into the sex lives of young Britons - more than 30,000 people took part and the findings were widely reported , on TV as well as on Newsbeat and other 大象传媒 radio programmes.
People have expressed their shock to me at the findings on underage sex, one night stands, the relationship between drink and sex and of course the dramatic rates of STI infections and unwanted teenage pregnancies - on which Britain pretty much leads the western world.
The experts tell us that the sex safe message isn't getting through like it did at the start of the HIV/AIDS era in the 80s. The figures certainly bear that out - more than a third of those who took part in the survey said they didn't wear a condom with a new partner.
But it's the anecdotes from our audience that are the most eye catching as a snapshot of sexual attitudes today.
Many young men say they hate wearing them - "it spoils the feeling" was a common sentiment - that they prefer to risk making their partner pregnant or catching an STI rather than wearing a condom. Nathan told us "condoms are for scaredy cats".
Many young women told us they hate them, too - we heard how when men produce condoms, their lovers snatch them and throw them away - and this came from the girls by the way.
So those infection and pregnancy rates shouldn't surprise us - however much they might depress you or worry doctors.
We found politicians largely unwilling to get involved in this issue - the dangers of prying into people's sex lives and preaching show the political risks are as real for them as the sexual risks are for young lovers.
So what are the tips for those wanting to protect their health at the moment of truth in the bedroom?
Our audience came up with some sharp 'condom comebacks' to help those struggling with the dilemma of a partner reluctant to "strap up". Kate says, "if there's no rubber I ain't your lover" while Jess prefers, "it looks like I'm dealing with one baby, I don't want to have to deal with two". LouLou says simply, "no balloons, no party" but the favourite one is this simple, yet direct approach - "sorry, no glove, no love!"
Rod McKenzie is editor of Newsbeat and 1Xtra TX
- Fran Unsworth
- 18 Aug 06, 09:01 AM
Some blogs, as well as emails we've received, have said that 大象传媒 correspondents are failing to report that when covering the war, they are operating under reporting restrictions imposed by Hezbollah. Others complain that we did not refer to Israeli censorship rules on air. I'd like to answer those points.
One of the forms that all journalists sign, to be accredited members of the press on arrival in Israel, is a promise that you will obey the rules of the military censor. In the context of the latest war in South Lebanon, those rules mean - we are not allowed to report any Hezbollah hits on military bases, not allowed to broadcast news of ministerial visits to the frontline until ministers are safely back out of Hezbollah’s range.
And if rockets land whilst we are live on air, we have to be vague as to where they fall (the theory being that Hezbollah may be watching 大象传媒 World or equivalent, and using our information to help them calibrate their rockets launchers). Also we are not allowed to report on military casualties until the Israeli censor says so.
In practice, Israel finds these rules very hard to enforce. It is a small, talkative country and the media usually finds out about casualties quickly. The rolling news networks based outside the country are not bound by the censorship rules, so if they find out from other sources they will broadcast.
James Reynolds, one of our correspondents reporting from Northern Israel, writes...
“Throughout the conflict we have pretty good access to soldiers, generals and ministers - all extremely keen to put Israel’s case to the international media. By and large we’ve been allowed to go wherever we want on the Israeli side of the border. We’ve often driven straight into Israeli bases right next to the frontline - in the middle of battle preparations - and nobody has kicked us out.”
So what about Hezbollah? Were they any better able to control what reporters can and cannot see? Jim Muir - our correspondent who has just spent the last month based in Southern Lebanon - says...
“There have basically been no restrictions on reporting as such - there’s been no pressure in any direction with regard to anything we actually say, indeed very little interaction of any sort. There was however an issue at the beginning of the conflict over the live broadcast of pictures of rockets going out from locations visible from our live camera position. We were visited by Hezbollah representatives and told that by showing the exact location of firing we were endangering civilian lives, and that our equipment would be confiscated.”
Editors in London discussed both how we should handle both this request, and the Israel rules, in terms of what we said on air.
We agreed that rather than begin each broadcast with a 'health warning' to audiences, we would only refer to it if it was relevant. If rockets started to go off while were live on air, we would not show the exact location but would tell the audience that we had been asked by Hezbollah not to; on the grounds they claimed it endangered civilian lives.
In the event the situation never arose. Apart from that one incident we have been free to report whatever we wanted.
On the Israeli side, we agreed to refer to the censorship rules when it prevented us from reporting anything. In practice, it never did, so we did not see the need to mention it.
Fran Unsworth is head of Newsgathering
- Peter Barron
- 17 Aug 06, 04:25 PM
In recent months the Newsnight website has been growing like . , blog, forum etc. And as result of this rapid organic growth it's become a bit unruly.
Some of you aren't impressed. Ian Mc sent us this - "I don't think I've seen such a mess of a home page since... well, I don't know when... Web designers should ALWAYS remember: just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done."
Stung by that challenge we've resolved to enter a period of rationalisation.
Let us know what you love and hate, what you visit all the time, what you never visit but are glad is there. Some of you have said - is your forum a forum or is it a blog, and vice versa? Does it matter what it is? Tell us what would make it better.
Is there simply too much stuff? Website design fashion seems these days to be heading towards the minimal, personally I like the excitement of having loads to explore. What do you reckon?
Do you want to read long articles, view video, download podcasts or talk to each other? If there was a Newsnight Club, with all sorts of low cost freebies, would you join? And are there features we should quietly put out of their misery? In our office the cry of "Kill " has gone up. Should we?
The pruning shears are in your hands.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Alistair Burnett
- 16 Aug 06, 04:48 PM
As you may have heard, about 150 MPs have called for Parliament to be recalled from its summer break to debate the crisis in the Middle East and last week's security alert at British airports.
In a letter to the leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, they said: "There is huge concern in the country about the current Middle East crisis, and fear that the early failure to insist that Israel and Hizbullah observe an immediate ceasefire has cost many innocent lives."
Number 10 has rejected this call and said earlier this week that with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the situation has changed significantly since that letter was sent - and so there are no plans to recall Parliament at present.
So we decided The World Tonight should step in instead to give MPs an opportunity to have their say. We've tried to organize it so it resembles as closely as possible a Parliamentary debate - and so far about a dozen MPs from all sides have agreed to come back to London to take part (with Robin Lustig in the role of 'Mr Speaker').
The debate will begin on our sister programme, PM (which will carry the start), and then there'll be an hour long special on Radio 4 at 9pm before we get reaction to the debate on The World Tonight.
The idea is to hear what our elected representatives think about what has been going on in the Middle East and for them to debate what British policy should be.
Organising something like this takes a lot of time and patience - it requires an awful lot of what our journalists refer to unfondly as 'phone-bashing' - ringing lots of people trying to see if they will take part, and to their credit some MPs are making a serious effort to join us - cancelling constituency business or coming to London from Scotland for the day.
Some MPs turned us down because they are unable to break constituency engagements, many are on holiday but some have told us they feel we in the 大象传媒 are too cynical and critical of the government. Even the reassurance that they will not be interviewed in the traditonal format but will be debating with each other was not enough to assuage them - which is a pity and doesn't reflect well on the state of relations between some politicians and the media, but that's a debate for another day.
If you get a chance to listen - it will be carried live on the R4 website.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
- Colin Hancock
- 15 Aug 06, 12:15 PM
...to everyone who's emailed us welcoming Nick Clarke back to The World at One. The emails started after Shaun Ley announced Nick's return at the end of Friday's programme... continued through the weekend... then surged after Nick trailed the programme on air at 1230 yesterday.
Another flurry after the headlines and then a steady stream as soon as the programme (listen to it here) ended - with listeners in Canada, Dublin, France and Lesotho among those quickest off the block.
It was particularly pleasing to have so many adding praise for Shaun to their comments... and quite a few saying incredibly nice things about the show in general (please don't feel a need to redress the balance...).
The team marked the occasion with a quick burst of applause as Nick came out of the studio and by demolishing a beautifully-iced cake baked and decorated by two of our studio managers.
For the time being Nick will present on Mondays and Tuesdays and Shaun will continue Wednesday to Friday, as well as presenting The World This Weekend.
For now, though, the final word should rest with a listener who, 'midst the torrent of praise, emailed to admonish Nick for his one anachronistic reference to "the British Airports Authority" rather than BAA. "Sloppy journalism", the email concluded.
Nine months away or not, good to be reminded that no-one expects mistakes from Nick and WATO.
Colin Hancock is the editor of The World at One and The World This Weekend
- Amanda Farnsworth
- 14 Aug 06, 06:41 PM
It's all been pretty confusing for passengers - just exactly what can you take as hand luggage on a plane?
So some bright spark on the Six O'Clock News came up with the idea of making our own baggage size checker, and taking it to passengers so they could find out on the spot whether their bag would pass muster.
So we did it - in fact our friends at C大象传媒 made it for us for free. Not quite sure why they did, but they did...
It turns out lots of passengers are still bringing the old size hand luggage and getting told to repack - perhaps every check in desk should get one of our size checkers - we could start our own business!
Amanda Farnsworth is editor, Daytime News
- Peter Barron
- 11 Aug 06, 01:15 PM
On Newsnight we've long hankered after our own website forum. With an opinionated, argumentative, computer-literate audience it's a marriage made in heaven. So, as we launched Talk about Newsnight this week our correspondents queued up to expose themselves to your views.
First up: Justin Rowlatt - already a successful multi-media figure as and the recipient of around a thousand clunky old emails this year. A bright new age beckoned.
"This 'ethical man' crap has got to be one of the worst ideas Newsnight has ever had. An entire year? That's not serious journalism, that's moronic daytime-magazine-programme s***e. Good luck with the blog though." wrote Kate, rather charmingly by the end.
"Welcome to blogging Justin", added our business correspondent Paul Mason, in what I think was solidarity.
We launched the forum properly on Thursday and the timing - coinciding with the huge news of the foiled alleged terror plot - could hardly have been better. As our deputy editor, Daniel "King of the Blogs" Pearl, spends his evenings discovering, the great attribute of the blogger is scepticism. Sceptics duly flocked to his posting (also here), Peter Simmons summing up the mood.
"It now transpires that bottles of pop are suspect, MI6 must have just seen the Tango ads and thought 'whoo, that looks dangerous'. This is sounding more and more like a farce, dressed up by the government to frighten old ladies into not flying. Meanwhile, in Lebanon...".
Don't the trusting or the gullible ever go blogging?
As I write I've just noticed this, from the improbably named Gully Burns of California. Is Gully gullible, or just sensible?
"I live in Los Angeles. People here respond to the news with immediate relief and support for the security services. There is almost no thought of the secondary implications, or having any sort of suspicion that the timing of the event is in any way related to Lebanon, Iraq or any other theatre of conflict. I personally feel that congratulations are in order to the police for this coup. All the complainants on this post would certainly be shocked and horrified if the events described today had come true, and they would then probably be complaining that the police didn't do their jobs."
In truth, one of Newsnight's aims in life is to be heartily sceptical, so we can hardly be surprised at our viewers' demeanour. But personally my favourite piece of the week displayed no edge, no cynicism, no controversy. It was the rediscovered gem of Harold Baim's travel film showing the beautiful place that Lebanon was in the more innocent age of the 1960s (watch it here) - now a tragic and poignant document.
Perhaps you hated it?
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Steve Herrmann
- 10 Aug 06, 02:40 PM
One of our concerns in covering has been to make sure traffic load to the News website doesn't cause problems for our users.
So far our technical team have successfully made sure it hasn't, but traffic certainly has been heavy. By lunchtime we'd already had about the same number of page views as we'd normally get across a whole 24 hours. The top story alone had over three million page views, several times more than on a normal day.
According to , the second most read story so far has been our round-up of travel advice and information from all the main airports. We've given this a lot of prominence and had people dedicated to updating it all morning, helped by all the readers' on-the-spot accounts which we are getting - it looks like that has paid off as our users are clearly looking for this information.
UPDATE 1530: Anthony Sullivan, who helped develop our traffic stats monitor, adds that it has been showing traffic levels between 60% and 70% above average today - the largest volume since July 7th last year.
UPDATE, Friday morning: Yesterday turned out to be one of our two or three biggest days on record for traffic, with 6.8m unique users and 50m page views. The most read stories were , and . Audio Video usage was also very high - particularly the live stream of News 24 coverage - and we received about 10,000 emails from users.
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
- Daniel Pearl
- 10 Aug 06, 12:01 PM
So - we awake to news that a major terror plot has been thwarted. Security sources claim that the group, who have been under surveillance for months, wanted to explode as many as 10 planes, probably somewhere over the Atlantic.
Thousands of travellers are stranded, planes have been cancelled and the country's security threat has been raised to its highest level. There are a lot of questions we'll be trying to answer during the course of the day, for example:
• 1 - How close were we to "mass murder on an unimaginable scale"?
• 2 - Have the security services found any explosives?
• 3 - Why did the police decide to swoop today?
• 4 - Were they members of a foreign terror cell or were they British-born?
• 5 - How will this change the way we fly? Will we have to get used to flying without any hand luggage?
There are plenty more - let us know what questions you'd like answered, or if you can answer any of these.
Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight
- Vicky Taylor
- 10 Aug 06, 11:20 AM
A correspondent to the debate on the doctored photographs asks an interesting question about how the 大象传媒 is countering images from the public showing 'posed or inaccurate images'.
We now receive around 300 images a week to our . Most of these are interesting snaps taken of people’s families, holidays or lives in general. A fair proportion on a busy week are from news events, ie from Lebanon, or Britain during the heatwave.
Of course, we are aware that some people will use this system to try and hoax us, to send something which is not quite as it seems. It’s something we are on the look out for as we go through the images, and to date we’ve not published anything which has been problematic. But that doesn’t make us complacent. You do get a second sense with these images, and the team which are looking at them are doing so day in day out.
You can obviously follow all the usual journalistic paths; you can email or ring the photographer back and check are they were they say they are, does their number appear to be the code of the area they say, it is their photograph. If you get multiple photographs of the same image you would think that maybe they have been picked up from an agency or sharing site and don’t belong to the person sending them.
If they appear 'photoshopped', or almost too good, you would double check.
Some people take grabs off a television - these you can spot. You can do a quick technical check to see when the image was taken and with what device. You can compare with other photos from the same area, from TV images you may have of the place, you can check other photo agency wires to see if the image crops up elsewhere.
Most genuine emailers will add text, a plausible story, which can be checked out. You take care, and always use your professional judgement. No matter how pressing the need is to get that image up on the web or on the tv screen, the verification process must be gone through.
However I would say that the vast majority of people don’t want to hoax you, they want to get their image published and so share their story with the world, and that for our journalism and reflecting what is really going on in the world, can only be a good thing.
While I’m here... I wanted to add a note about the sheer volume of comments we’ve received on the crisis in Lebanon.
Since it began the Have Your Say debates have received well over 100,000 comments - and had 3.5 million page impressions. It has been consistently the only story people want to talk about or read people’s views on. On one day - 26 July - we received over 6,000 emails.
But that of course means that many people who do send their views may not get them published. There is no agenda here. On massive stories like this we do try to pick a range of views expressed differently - it would be no good if every one said more or less the same thing in the same way. We do try and pick comments from people actually living through or with direct experience of the event - on either side.
We know how frustrating it can be not to get a view which is held very deeply on the pages, but I can assure all those in this position, we are working flat out to get through as many as we can. Thank you all for your contributions.
Vicky Taylor is editor of Interactivity.
- Peter Rippon
- 9 Aug 06, 11:15 AM
One of the programmes I edit, Broadcasting House, really irritates some listeners. There is a small but vocal section of Radio Four devotees who just do not accept the fundamental proposition - that you can have fun as well as do serious news on the same programme.
Thankfully the show's healthy audience figures convince me that such views are a minority. So recently Mark Doyle has exposed child labour in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo (listen here), but at the same time we've made a theatrical arrest (listen here).
Getting the balance and tone right is hard. In fact it is one of the hardest things we do. It regularly dominates our editorial discussions and we get it wrong sometimes. In fact, if you want to see the blood drain from any reporter's face you do not need to send them off to doorstep the relatives of the victim of some terrible tragedy. As they leave the building on a story just say "have some fun with it!" and watch them wilt.
It may be hard but I believe passionately we must continue to do it. Radio Four is often criticised for being too stuffy, too aloof and too elitist. Humour is a crucial weapon in countering such perceptions.
Peter Rippon is editor of PM and Broadcasting House
- Steve Herrmann
- 8 Aug 06, 09:59 AM
As with any conflict, photographers are at the heart of the propaganda war - with both sides attempting to use the power of the camera to their own ends.
that it has withdrawn all the pictures taken by Adnan Hajj (one of its stringers in Lebanon), following his use of Photoshop to manipulate two images, has meant all of us need to understand the processes by which these pictures are obtained and used.
I asked the 大象传媒 News website's picture editor, Phil Coomes, to explain some of the background to the images we can easily take for granted.
"At the 大象传媒 News website we rely on a number of international news agencies to provide us with the majority of our still images. Trusted and well established names such as the Associated Press and Agence France Press sit beside new players in the game such as Getty News Images.
"All of these companies have their own staff photographers who work alongside local freelancers around the world - forwarding their pictures to an editor who will then send it on to their subscribers.
"At the 大象传媒 we receive over 5,000 pictures per day on the picture wire service; ten years ago it would have been less than 500. News websites need vast quantities of pictures and often in real-time - the days of a photographer providing the one defining image for a newspaper front page are long gone.
"All the pictures we use are checked for any obvious editing - the easiest to spot being cloning of parts of the image (which appeared to be what happened in this example).
"Today a photographer working in the field is under more pressure than ever, especially in a combat zone. He or she no longer has to just take the pictures, not to mention ensure they are in the right place to begin with, but they also have to edit, caption and transmit them.
"For this and other reasons photographers often work together, so at any major event you will usually have a number of sources to compare against each other - giving a good indication as to the basic truth of the picture.
"The are interesting, in that there are many ways to interpret the images. The basic truth is undeniable, but with so many photographers all shooting the same event, and filing many alternative pictures to their agencies, the sequence of events is hard to pin down.
"To some extent the presence of a camera will alter the event, but it’s up to those on the ground to work around this and present us with an objective a view as possible.
"Digital photography has altered the landscape of photojournalism like nothing before it, placing the photographers in total control of their output. All the news agencies have photo ethics policies, many of which are rooted in the days of film. The standard line is that photographers are allowed to use photo manipulation to reproduce that which they could do in the darkroom with conventional film.
"This usually means, colour balance, '', cropping, touching up any marks from dust on the sensor and perhaps a little sharpening. If we are honest though, an accomplished darkroom technician could do almost anything and there are many historical examples of people being airbrushed from pictures.
"All this sounds fine until you look at the reality - .
"By definition a photograph is a crop of reality, it’s what the photojournalist feels is important. But it doesn't equate to the whole truth, and perhaps we just need to accept that."
UPDATE (from Steve Herrmann): I should have said at the start - we didn't use the Reuters picture on the 大象传媒 News website.
But we have had some emails about another picture we used yesterday of a Lebanese woman in front of damaged buildings. We got the picture from AP and it was dated last Saturday but a reader pointed out it bore a resemblance to another picture - which we hadn't run - attributed to Reuters and dating from July.
It wasn't the same image, but conceivably could have been the same place and time. We weren't in a position to get to the bottom of this immediately ourselves so we decided to update the picture with a different, more recent image. But not before it was picked up by at least .
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
- Ben Rich
- 8 Aug 06, 08:13 AM
If we're not careful, it's going to become something of a theme.
Last week the Six O'Clock News ran a piece showing a dangerous game being played by teenagers on a playground roundabout - in which a motorbike engine was used to drive it around at ever greater speeds, with two teenage girls hanging on grimly in the middle. Yesterday it was a fireman who got spun round inside an industrial tumble-dryer to the vast amusement of his friends, and the horror of fire service bosses (watch it for yourself here).
In neither case was anyone injured, but they might have been. Why did we do these stories?
Well, one discussion we've had recently concerns what we should do about things that a large number of people are clearly interested in, but which do not have some political or other wider significance. These are the kind of items that get filmed these days and end up being passed around, sometimes to literally millions of people, via e-mail, or are watched by huge numbers via internet sites.
Many are just curiosities, but sometimes a particular piece of human folly strikes a chord and has that shock factor that makes people want to see it - and we've decided that at least sometimes they should be able to even if they do not have access to the web.
What made these two more relevant is that they were cautionary tales that happily did not end in tragedy and could serve as a warning.
Now that's all very well, but what about the risk of copycats? Of course that is something we have to consider (for example 大象传媒 guidelines make it clear that we should never show in detail the way people prepare and take illegal drugs) but you could argue that we might actually stop a few people doing these things too.
It's a difficult calculation to make and a potentially troublesome one for a journalist. Should we show people driving dangerously? What about film of anti-social behaviour?
I believe that as editors we have to have a fairly high threshold for censoring something just because it might lead to imitators. So long as we point out the dangers, we then have to leave it to people's own good sense, the control exerted by parents and, in this particular case, the difficulty of finding industrial-sized tumble dryers.
Ben Rich is deputy editor, One and Six O'Clock news
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