Michael.Blackburn.Poet.

Out of the frying pan into a different frying pan - the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:48:01 +0000

Tourists look at individually-painted dominoes along the former route of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

Update 5pm:
Here’s are some of the best quotes from the today’s events:

Angela Merkel: “Sometimes people forget today how many could not leave (the country) for years, how many sat in prisons … before the joy of freedom came, many people suffered.”

Mikhail Gorbachev : “My clairvoyant skills and those of (then-Chancellor Helmut) Kohl were up to nothing then. We did not think the wall would fall so fast.”

Hillary Clinton: “Now, we have to turn our attention to the challenges of the 21st century. A wall, a physical wall, may have come down but there are other walls that exist that we have to overcome and we will be working together to accomplish that.”

Gordon Brown: “The wall that had imprisoned half a city, half a country, half a continent, half a world for nearly a third of a century was swept away by the greatest force of all the unbreakable spirit of men and women who dared to dream in the darkness, who knew that while force has the temporary power to dictate, it can never ultimately decide.”

Update 3.30pm:

Today’s best Zelig moment comes from the French president Nicolas Sarkozy who used his Facebook page to suggest he was there 20 years ago.

Sarkozy, or a minion on his behalf, posted a picture of the young Nicolas chipping away at the wall, with a caption that reads: “Memories of the fall of the Berlin wall, November 9, 1989”.

The French media have pointed out that archives showed he was there a week later.

Meanwhile, back in Berlin “the atmosphere is fantastic”. Visitors to the city today tell Kate Connolly what the fall of the wall meant to them.

Link to this audio

Update 3pm: Under drizzly skies Merkel crossed the Bonhomer Bridge flanked by Walesa and Gorbachev. She paid tribute to the courage of both men and to the bravery of the people of East Germany.

She said: “This is not just a day of celebration for Germany, (but) a day of celebration for the whole of Europe.”

Residents remember the fall of the wall 20 years ago as politicians from around the world arrive to join in the celebrations Link to this video

Today’s events to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall will range from solemn reflection to high kitsch celebration.

Memorials are planned for the 136 people who died when they tried to cross the border while – in an event reminiscent of International It’s a Knockout – 1,000 foam dominoes placed along the wall’s route will be tipped over. Dancers dressed as angels will descend from prominent buildings.

At around 2pm, Angela Merkel, the first German leader to grow up in the communist east, will cross the Bornholmer Street bridge, where the first border post opened on the evening of 9 November 1989.

She will be accompanied by the former Soviet president Michael Gorbachev and Poland’s former opposition leader and ex-president Lech Walesa.

At around 6pm, Daniel Barenboim, who was in Berlin to witness the events of 1989, will conduct his Staats Kapelle orchestra on an outdoor stage at the Brandenburg Gate.

From 6.30pm, world leaders including Merkel, Gordon Brown, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, will give speeches.

Afterwards, the dominoes will be toppled and there will be fireworks at the Brandenburg Gate at 8pm.

To mark the anniversary, the Guardian has put together a special Berlin Wall package including a series of videos, audio from those whose lives were affected and interactive guides.

• The historian and columnist Timothy Garton Ash remembers the mood in the German capital after the wall fell. “As as symbol, it lives on, above all, as a image of peaceful liberation,” he writes.

• Take a historical and geographical journey of the Berlin Wall through five videos.

• A gallery of images shows the wall from its construction to the commemoration of its demise.

• “Without the Leipzig demos and the will of the people, it would never have happened.” Author Anna Funder reflects on life since the fall of the wall in this audio.

Link to this audio

• Our interactive timeline guides you through the dates and events that shaped the Berlin Wall and finally brought about its downfall.

• Our Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, reports on today’s celebrations and the mood of anticipation in the city.

Link to this audio

The Berlin Twitter Wall provides live updates and thoughts from across the world. The subject is also trending on Twitter at #fotw.

For a historical perspective, the writer Gunter Grass has just published his diaries for 1990.

And writer Lisa Selvidge describes her experiences and how they inspired her to write her new novel, The Last Dance over the Berlin Wall.

You can see how the Guardian covered the events at the time on our digital archive.

via guardian.co.uk

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Very exhilarating to be shot, say Herzog.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:07:28 +0000

“It’s something very exhilartating for a man to be shot at with little success…” So says Werner in this interview with Henry Rollins.

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Poem 202

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:18:00 +0000

the season gathers up

its last warmth in the sunlight

no wind for obstruction

along the cycle path

leaves over water

muscle over metal

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Dug in 19 new raspberry canes.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:06:52 +0000

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Open Minds: Glyn Hughes - Times Online

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:58:33 +0000

It is obvious the young and beautiful are favoured in our times and the growing numbers of the old are a problem, encouraged to work but with an unspoken assumption that what they have to offer is of inferior value. But why should it be so in the arts and literature, where the products of age have traditionally proved to be a positive contribution?

How many literary prizes are there for the under-thirties or similar? Yet I have not come across any for the products of age. One of my previous publishers is on record as saying of the publicity photograph of a well-known author that she “could never publish a book by someone looking like that”. He was, of course, oldish and not beautiful. And I recall one poetry reviewer, a friend, castigating me privately even for writing about age.

Yes, physical frailty precludes much. But in the world of the imagination it can offer more than it takes away. William Blake described himself before his death in 1827 as “an Old Man feeble & tottering, but not in Spirit & Life, not in The Real Man The Imagination which Liveth for Ever. In that I am stronger & stronger as this Foolish Body decays”. The decaying body might affect stamina but has no other influence on artistic product.

Blake was then nearly 70, an age we could now easily boast “life begins” at, much as we used to argue life began at 40. What is our expectation of these modern long-livers? Is it only to set them up to be armchair-soporific, with a free TV licence? To keep them cosy and out of sight? It seems to me just as likely that a talent may emerge at the age of, say, 60 — with experience behind it — as at 20.

Yeats speculated that everyone “has one myth…which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought”. (He was referring to Shakespeare.) It is cruel to amputate the later part of life from expression through a silencing prejudice. Artists themselves can be defeatist and support the prejudice. Martin Amis claimed recently at a literature festival that “all” writers “go off” in age. Yet to complete the cycle of work at the end of life — his or her “myth” — should be an artist’s aim; and a poet, artist or musician who does not achieve anything especially marvellous in their latter years perhaps wasn’t so certainly in the first rank earlier. Prominent examples of late achievement are Rembrandt, with his penetrating self-portraits, Titian, who in old age painted virgins with a love more sensuous than many young men could achieve, the older Michelangelo, and Beethoven in his late quartets. Thomas Hardy was thrust from disappointment at his “failed” novels into writing poems that surpassed everything he had written before, and WB Yeats would be remembered as a minor poet were it not for his later work.

These works show not just a stupendous development but a quantum leap on the verge of age, as if they had crossed over and experienced in a short time a transformation of the spirit through a lifetime’s experience of their craft.

Yet we persist in looking for the “cutting edge” rather than the wise. Because of it, writers and artists at mid-stretch grow coy about mentioning their age. People still assert that “poets die young”, even though it is clearly nonsense. Of course, many were cut off too soon (as were many who were potentially great in all fields): Keats, Dylan Thomas, Shelley, Chatterton, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen. Maybe it is true that the “gods choose first those whom they love best” — but how well would they have survived my test?

For one can soon add up those who didn’t. How difficult it is to achieve that final glory is shown by the low success rate. One great poet, William Wordsworth, turned into an unreadable bore as he wheeled the remnants of his muse figure, his sister Dorothy, in a bath chair up and down a terrace in the Lake District. (He was an exception to my general thesis, because his poetry followed a disastrous social course.) Philip Larkin complained that “poetry has given up on me”.

Older artists often give up from weariness, or from feeling deserted, and settle for pensions and royalties if they have them. Some, like Hemingway or John Fowles, batter with preposterous late ambitions at the windows of the infinite, like ignorant flies against a window pane. Job-like, they have achieved all that their ambition desired and yet have nothing; the muse deserted them, or they did not deserve, or prepare for, the later muse.

I do not think it coincidental that a lack of interest in the creativity of the old comes at a time of equivalent scorn of spirituality. I can hear the word “spiritual” dropping like a stone in a dark well, dear reader. But do not confuse it with religious attendance. In our century, thrown into intellectual freedoms (and loneliness) unknown before, the spiritual might find its home more easily in the free and lonely range of what Blake called the “divine” imagination — in art that comes from the experience and wisdom of age.

Publishers — especially of poetry — and gallery directors, as well as writers and artists, should endeavour to pierce that screen of prejudice, which, from experience, is directly linked with our sceptical lack of expectations. As in all great and previous societies, while our hope is in the young, our primary expectation should be of the old s

Glyn Hughes’s autobiographical poem, Life Class (Shoestring Press, £13.95), is available at the Sunday Times BooksFirst price of £12.55, including postage and packing. Tel: 0870 165 8585

via entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

Maybe I’ll get it right this time.

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What is NaNoWriMo? | National Novel Writing Month

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:13:39 +0000

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2008, we had over 120,000 participants. More than 20,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!

via nanowrimo.org

National Novel Writing Month - go on, you know you want to do it.

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201

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:55:16 +0000

the outside is in
the roof is gone and the walls
broken
nature is back inside with its dark trees
rising like a pubic thatch
between the white thighs
of the broken walls
prepared, the ancient
invitation to entrance
and a boat approaches
with a stiff white figure
erect

Cretin plans university drop-out rates and graduate earnings to be tagged

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:38:02 +0000

The plans are part of a consumer revolution in higher education to be unveiled by Lord Mandelson on Tuesday. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

University courses are to be tagged with their drop-out rates, graduates’ future earnings and the number of contact hours students can expect with tutors. The move, which will be modelled on a food-labelling system, is part of a consumer revolution in higher education to be unveiled this week by Lord Mandelson, the universities secretary.

Students should be treated more as paying customers and given better information about the quality of their courses before they embark on a degree, the new government framework for universities is expected to say on Tuesday.

The plan aims to set out the future priorities for universities before a major shake-up of the student funding system. It is also expected to recommend greater business involvement in universities and new admissions systems to identify talented applicants from poorer backgrounds in an attempt to break middle-class domination of the top institutions.

But the heavy emphasis on providing better value for money to students by making it clearer what their contribution is being spent on will fuel speculation that the government is paving the way for a rise in fees after the general election. Universities are lobbying to be allowed to charge more in top-up fees to increase their income – or protect it against looming public spending cuts. Ministers have already indicated that they will expect both students and employers to pay more towards the cost of university studies.

Under the plans for England, each course will come with a list setting out what the subject involves, how much teaching time students can expect, how often they will have tutorials with star academics and how much work they will be expected to do independently. It will also state the assessment methods and how often they will be examined.

Drop-out rates and statistics on employability of graduates will be given for six months and three years after they complete their studies. Future earnings could also be factored in to calculate the premium of studying high-intensity courses such as engineering and medicine. The government is expected to launch a consultation about how the system would be introduced. There could be a central website or universities could be expected to publish details in their prospectuses.

The National Union of Students said the system could warp universities’ priorities in the way that school league tables have encouraged schools to focus disproportionately on Sats tests.

The plan reflects the fact that there is growing anger among undergraduates about how their £3,225-a-year fees are being spent. In May this year undergraduates at Bristol University staged a tuition fees rebellion, complaining about reduced teaching hours and attempts to have essays marked by undergraduates instead of lecturers. Some 600 students reading economics and finance signed a complaint arguing that the university had failed to improve since fees were raised to more than £3,000 in 2006.

By clearly labelling each degree course, it is thought students will have more realistic expectations and universities will be forced to improve how they operate.

David Willetts, the Conservative shadow universities secretary, is working with Microsoft on plans to set up a Wikipedia-style guide to universities that would draw together data on graduation rates and job destinations and encourage students to give feedback to help other applicants. He has said universities should not be allowed to charge more in fees unless they can prove students are getting better value for money.

Wes Streeting, president of the NUS, said: “There is a balance to be struck between transparency and really commodifying higher education. There needs to be very good data included otherwise universities will offer more hours in huge lecture halls and cramped seminars when fewer hours with smaller groups would be much better. The benefits may force universities to drive up quality but it is riddled with risk.”

via guardian.co.uk

Just what is needed in higher education: more pointless bureaucracy, cost, time-wasting, paper-shuffling, fabrication of statistics, mendacious PR, and distraction from the activity of teaching.

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Got back home to find newspaper totally soaked on doorstop.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:50:55 +0000

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Professor Hardtimes, Sonic88.8FM, Sunday Night, 5 - 7. Tune in.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:53:07 +0000

Sonic88.8FM, The Hangover Cure.

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Will the novel will be a minority cult within 25 years?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:13:08 +0000

Philip Roth. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag / Dagbladet / Corbis

Philip Roth’s late run of productivity has long been a source of wonder in the literary world, with his latest novel coming out this week less than a year after the last, and another already complete. But the 76-year-old’s own energy is not, according to him at any rate, any reflection of vibrant life in fiction itself. Roth has long been pessimistic about the survival of the novel in a gaudy, short-attention-span culture, but his latest prophesy is one of his bleakest yet, predicting that the form will dwindle to a “cultic” minority enthusiasm within 25 years.

The author believes that the concentration and focus required to read a novel is becoming less and less prevalent, as potential readers turn instead to computers or to television. “I was being optimistic about 25 years really. I think it’s going to be cultic. I think always people will be reading them but it will be a small group of people. Maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range,” Roth told Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast.

He said it was “the print that’s the problem, it’s the book, the object itself”. “To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don’t read the novel really. So I think that kind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by – it’s hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities,” he said.

And the advent of e-readers such as the Kindle will make no difference. “The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen,” Roth said. “Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up.”

Roth ‘s new novel, The Humbling, is published later this week (and has already received a scathing review from the Observer’s William Skidelsky, who called it “a piece of scandalous frippery”).

Roth told Brown that – like The Humbling’s hero Simon Axler, an ageing stage actor who has “lost his magic” – he worries about running out of ideas. “Routinely when I finish a book, I think ‘What will I do? Where will I get an idea?’ And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens,” he said. “I think I write and publish as often as I do because I can’t bear being without a book to work on … I don’t feel I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell, but I know I want to be occupied with the writing process while I’m living.”

Roth’s pessimism about the future of the novel is not a recent moodswing. Talking to the Observer’s Robert McCrum in 2001, he said that “I’m not good at finding ‘encouraging’ features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here.”

via guardian.co.uk

Philip Roth reckons the novel as a literary form will become ‘cultic’ within 25 years.

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What's the real news about Labour's immigration policy?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:35:20 +0000

A former Labour speech-writer, Andrew Neather, let the disturbing truth slip out in the London Evening Standard. Commenting on a paper for the Home Office in 2001 he says:

the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn’t its main purpose - to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.

As usual, this piece of news was not reported on any of the major tv channels.

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Careers advice for seven-year-olds? What about - leave the country as soon as possible?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:43:53 +0000

Careers advice for seven-year-olds

(UKPA) – 1 hour ago

Primary school children are to get careers advice from the age of seven under a new scheme to encourage them to develop aspirations early on in life.

Under plans drawn up by Schools Secretary Ed Balls, primaries will offer career-related learning, as well as opportunities to experience university life and the world of work, to children aged 7-11.

Mr Balls also outlined an ambition to provide careers advice through to the age of 18, as well as giving every young person access to a mentor who can guide them through the process of preparing for adult life.

Launching the new scheme alongside Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, Mr Balls will say that a “radical change” is needed in careers advice, as it is “too late” for children to start thinking about their future at 14, when they start choosing subjects at secondary school.

He said: “I want this generation of young people to be able to look back and say their careers advice and guidance was relevant and gave them informed options.”

End-of-year assemblies at primary school could be used to introduce children to career options, and universities could form links with primaries to get pupils thinking about higher education from an early age, he said.

“It is often too late for children to start thinking about this at 14 when they are influenced from when they are seven, eight and nine,” said Mr Balls.

Ferguson recalled his own father’s advice for him to take a tool-working apprenticeship and said it was important for teachers, parents and businesses to “spot talent early on and nurture children to achieve the best they can”.

The football legend added: “Parents who want their children to be footballers know how important it is that they start playing young. But that’s not just true for football - if parents want their children to be doctors or lawyers then they should make sure their children get to see something of those careers as well.”

Careers advice will be made available through internet social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube and a dedicated online mentoring scheme, and a £10 million fund will support innovative careers education.

Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

via google.com

Remember: your children belong to the state now.

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Tea! my children, tea! and lemon cake.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:57:37 +0000

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Translating Barthes at 7.30 on a Sunday morning. Just for fun.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:32:25 +0000

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Postal dispute: stitch up by Royal Mail and Mandelson

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:47:50 +0100

Interesting interview with Royal Mail union officials on Sky. Strike being engineered by Mandelson, etc. No surprise.Privatisation is inevitable because demanded by the EU. Why don’t they admit it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael Blackburn BA MA FRSA
http://www.artzero.org.uk/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Dammit. Need drink. Two thousand words to go.

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:15:38 +0100

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Eight hundred words are not enough when you're angry.

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:06:39 +0100

Writing my final article on politics for London Magazine.

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The Westminster Conspiracy

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:10:42 +0100

october 8, 2009
THE WESTMINSTER CONSPIRACY

Former BBC Director General, Greg Dyke, On The Media-Political Opposition To Radical Change

Last month, Greg Dyke, who was the BBC’s director general from 2000-2004, described the BBC as part of a “conspiracy” preventing the “radical changes” needed to UK democracy. Speaking at the Liberal Democrat party’s conference, Dyke said:

“The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming and yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system - the Westminster village, the media and particularly the political parties, including this one - are the groups most in denial about what is really happening to our democracy.” (Brian Wheeler, ‘Dyke in BBC “conspiracy” claim,’ BBC website, September 20, 2009; http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8265628.stm)

Dyke argued there had never been a greater separation between the “political class” and the public:

“I tried and failed to get the problem properly discussed when I was at the BBC and I was stopped, interestingly, by a combination of the politicos on the board of governors, one of whom [Baroness Sarah Hogg] was married to the man who claimed for cleaning his moat, the cabinet interestingly - the Labour cabinet - who decided to have a meeting, only about what we were trying to discuss, and the political journalists at the BBC.

“Why? Because, collectively, they are all part of the problem. They are part of one Westminster conspiracy. They don’t want anything to change. It’s not in their interests.”

Dyke said the MPs’ expenses scandal had been “British democracy’s Berlin Wall moment” but the opportunity to change the system was fading. He added:

“It’s time to be radical. Our current model was designed for the 18th Century. It doesn’t fit 21st Century Britain.”

Dyke was also candid about political interference with the BBC. He discussed an internal review of the BBC’s political coverage carried out at the beginning of the decade, to which all political parties were asked to contribute. He said: “there was a lot of pressure from the government of the day not to change anything… A lot of the governors were what I call semi-politicians and they liked the present system and…. maybe they were right - it’s not the job of the BBC to change the political system and to start questioning the political system. I happen to not agree with that but, you know, we didn’t get anywhere.”

If these comments were extraordinary, the media response to them was predictable - close to zero coverage in the national UK press. Dyke’s speech was covered in three sentences in the Belfast Telegraph on September 21. A longer piece appeared in the Herald (Glasgow) on the same day. In response to our prompting, the website Journalism.co.uk covered the story on September 22. They then contacted Roy Greenslade, who covered the story on his Guardian website blog a day later - the sole national mainstream mention. Greenslade wrote of the story:

“… the national press appears to have ignored it, or missed it altogether. Yet the claim should have generated widespread interest. If true, it requires more probing. If false, it should severely dent Dyke’s credibility”. (Greenslade, ‘Dyke’s BBC conspiracy theory,’ Greenslade Blog, September 23, 2009;
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/sep/23/bbc-greg-dyke)

On September 28, one week after the speech was reported by the BBC, Media Guardian published an article by Maggie Brown titled: ‘When trust breaks down: The BBC Trust is under siege from politicians of all parties, rival broadcasters, corporation staff and the viewing public. But is it fulfilling its remit - and, if not, what is the alternative?’ Greg Dyke was mentioned, but there was no reference to his whistleblowing comments.

Dyke’s comments were important, providing a rare moment of honesty from such a senior insider. They were of clear public interest and doubtless chimed with the concerns of many people outraged by the scandal of MPs’ expenses. As discussed, the story was broken on the BBC’s own website - a high-profile source familiar to mainstream journalists. So what could explain the lack of interest from all mainstream national newspapers?

The answer is found in the story itself: the national media are indeed part of an elite system which is not interested in discussing, much less effecting, radical political change. Dissident outsiders attempting to challenge the status quo are dismissed as marginal figures. But even high-profile insiders - celebrity managers, journalists, writers, dramatists and diplomats - are ignored.

On September 23, we wrote to the BBC’s Brian Wheeler, the journalist who broke the story.

Dear Brian

Hope you’re well. I was impressed and amazed by your story, ‘Dyke in BBC “conspiracy” claim.’

I would have thought it was important news of great interest to the public that a former BBC director general had described the BBC as part of a “conspiracy” preventing the “radical changes” needed to UK democracy. Isn’t it extraordinary that not a single UK national newspaper has reported your story? What do you make of it?

Best wishes

David Edwards

Wheeler replied the same day:

Hi David

Thanks for your comments. I’m afraid I have no idea why the story wasn’t picked up by the nationals, although I think Media Guardian may have done something on it. It’s sometimes hard to predict which stories will get followed up.

Brian

Wheeler was of course reluctant to speculate (and to reply to our second email) because BBC journalists are not allowed to express their personal opinions - or so we are to believe.

Last month, Milton Coleman, senior editor at The Washington Post, sent a memo to staff on the issue of use of “individual accounts on online social networks, when used for reporting and for personal use”. The memo warned staff to “remember that Washington Post journalists are always Washington Post journalists”. It added:

“All Washington Post journalists relinquish some of the personal privileges of private citizens… Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything-including photographs or video-that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility. This same caution should be used when joining, following or friending any person or organization online.” (http://paidcontent.org/article/419-wapos-social-media-guidelines-paint-staff-into-virtual-corner/)

These rules echo BBC editorial guidelines. In 2005, we asked the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, if he thought George Bush hoped to create a genuine democracy in Iraq. Reynolds replied:

“I cannot get into a direct argument about his policies myself! Sorry.” (Email to Media Lens, September 5, 2005)

Reynolds explained to one of our readers:

“You are asking for my opinion about the war in Iraq yet BBC correspondents are not allowed to have opinions!” (Forwarded to Media Lens, October 22, 2005)

As these comments suggest, media guidelines require that journalists relinquish, not just “personal privileges”, but also moral responsibility. Journalists are not free to declare their “bias” even in abhorring mass murder, war crimes and climate chaos, if doing so “could be used to tarnish” their employers’ “journalistic credibility”. The problem is that the people with the power to do the tarnishing are overwhelmingly of the right - big business and political centres of power dominated by big business.

In reality, the demand for ‘balance’ means that journalists can say pretty much what they like in favouring powerful interests, but they will be severely castigated for losing ‘balance’ when they criticise the wrong people. Thus we find that it is not ‘biased’ to suggest that Britain and America are committed to spreading democracy around the world, but it +is+ ‘biased’ to suggest that they are responsible for crimes in the Third World. In short, the demand for ‘balance’ is a weapon of thought control - it is a way of policing and enforcing bias in media performance.

As Greg Dyke made clear, the truth hidden behind the sham of ‘balance’ is that political journalism works hard to protect an elite system of which it is very much a part.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to the BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson. Ask him to respond to Greg Dyke’s claim that the BBC is part of a “Westminster conspiracy” to obstruct radical change to the political system:

Email: mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

via medialens.org

A much-under-reported speech by Greg Dyke on the threat of the political class to democracy.

Posted via web from michaelblackburn’s posterous | Comment »

A David for this surveillance Goliath? | Henry Porter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:39:43 +0100

A David for this surveillance Goliath? | Henry Porter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk http://post.ly/8R4D