Recently in Media Category

For my own personal sanity i'm going to start collecting some of the more aberrant reporting i'm seeing on this saga. Chris McGreal from The Guardian writes (from Jerusalem):

"But military and political analysts say that Hamas can block the Israeli strategy simply by refusing to agree to a ceasefire, no matter how bad things get. The military would then be stuck inside a potentially anarchic Gaza Strip, attempting to stop Hamas rockets, every one of which fired into Israel would amount to a victory for the Islamist group."

Chris needs to do a little more research and a little less conjecture. The Israeli government has broken a 6-month ceasefire that began on June 19, 2008, as reported by the New York Times on June 18, 2008. The Israeli invasion that began November 4, covered by The Guardian, obviously breaches that agreement. Given that this date was election day in the US, and an upcoming election in Israel, is it cynical to think this was seen as an opportunity?

The implication of the above paragraph, from the article, is of Hamas holding the key to a successful ceasefire, even though it is Israel who has breached the previous agreement. There is also a somewhat strange logic that the reader should be pitying Israeli forces (I can't in all consciousness call them a defence force) if they have to continue fighting in Gaza. These are not two equally trained and armed combatants who have decided to war with one another, it is an invasionary force with a great deal more firepower than anything within Gaza, and it is an invasionary force targeting civilian areas.

Until the last 2 weeks, 20 Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets in the last 8 years. As i write this, the current estimated death toll is 820 Palestinians, and Israel is discussing an increase of force. I won't even discuss the idea that rockets being fired by Hamas "would amount to a victory", it's too ridiculous.

I just saw this exchange between the 'Journalist' Simon Dallow and Gerry Brownlee, the deputy leader of the National party on Agenda. One kind of agenda was certainly on display. If this is objective media reportage i'd hate to see what happens next. I always thought Dallow was a conservative little prig, but this was just stunning.

GERRY [....] no one can argue that and we are very pleased to be leading in those agenda issues, next week will be a great week for us, we will culminate that week by being able to form the government after the votes are counted on Saturday night.

SIMON We're all certainly looking forward to it. Gerry Brownlee and Pete Hodgson thank you so much for joining us on Agenda today.

Coincidence? I didn't think so either.

There's quite an interesting piece from the editor of the BBC News website about the practice and style guide of captioning images. I've seen some awful work over the years that ideologically loads many of the images they show, such as this one.

There's mention of revisions being made to the style guide, but I thought i'd include the guide extract here to hopefully encourage some debate, if not with them then with yourself about the practices involved.

BBC News Website style guide extract CAPTIONS (FOR PICTURES*) (REVISED 4/03) LENGTH OF CAPTION: Picture captions can be one or two lines long, ideally one. Never three, except rarely in picture galleries.

WORDING OF CAPTION: The wording should follow the geography of a picture, from left to right (eg if Blair is on the left, and Mandelson on the right, the caption should NOT say " Mandelson and Blair"). But captions should not be literal descriptions of the picture's contents - so "Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson", though an improvement, is still poor. Better to say, eg Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson: Longtime friends

NAMES IN CAPTIONS: In News, you should ideally use both first and second names of anyone pictured - though there will often not be enough room for this, especially if two or more people have to be identified. Sport can follow the sporting convention of surnames only (eg Giggs is confident of another title ) - though take care that first names are given where necessary (eg Neville wants the England captaincy leaves us wondering, "Gary or Phil?").

PUNCTUATION OF CAPTIONS: If you are including a direct quote, use a colon and double quotation marks (eg Homer Simpson: "D'oh!"). Any colon in a caption - whether or not introducing a quote - must be followed by a capital letter (eg Lisa Simpson: Genius at work ).
If you need to focus in a caption on one individual among several, use brackets and NOT commas eg a picture of a group of children might be captioned Bart Simpson (centre) was never his teacher's pet rather than "Bart Simpson, centre, was never...". If space is very short, you can abbreviate such labels to their initial letter only. But since (left) looks strange if rendered as (l) - because it looks like a number one - then we should capitalise all three, for consistency's sake ie (C) (L) (R).
There is NO full stop at the end of a caption, other than in picture galleries.

NB: a caption is often not necessary with a map or a generic graphic.

There's been some interesting media stats released in the last few days, a Boing Boing reader discovered that MGM had a gap in their website security (since closed) that revealed a whole mess of data and sales stats they would probably prefer didn't leak. The above image merely confirms what we already know: Digital media is far cheaper to replicate and distribute than the analog (and i'm obviously including VHS here) counterparts of the past. Sony knows this too. Sony has just completed acquiring MGM and now has a full catalog of 4200 of MGM's past glories, which i fully expect to see utilised in the next 6-12 months if Sony can repackage and distribute quickly enough for consumers. Time Warner had been interested in capitalising on the catalogue too, but somehow decided that the $3 billion Sony finally moneyed up with was too much. To me 3 billion sounds a bit cheap. If they hold the rights in perpetuity the only real cost is distribution.

In its day MGM was a phenomenal studio that was as well known for its lavish productions and stars, almost as well known as Michael Bay is known for directing awful films.

MGM was responsible for a number of american classics in its time, for most, as the owner of The Wizard of Oz; but one thing that hasn't been mentioned at all is that Sony is part of a consortium of owners who have purchased MGM, the notable investor in all of this is Comcast and it's pretty easy to see why.

Ted Turner took the United Artists or UA out of MGM/UA in 1986 so he could broadcast the catalogue via his cable channel, and colourise films that should never be colourised (No Ted, The Maltese Falcon is supposed to be that dark). Although, fortunately, that phase seems to have passed from history, it's pretty easy to see why Comcast would want access to the catalogue $ 3 billion is pretty cheap when you can devote an entire channel to MGM catalogue greats, not to mention the obvious next step: Video-on-demand and the potential of digitally cleaning up the catalogue for cinema re-release and the consequent DVD re-releases that will inevitably follow.

There are some excellent U.S. political cartoonists on the web. Some of my favourites are Ted Rall, Pat Oliphant, Ben Sargent, Tom Toles, Clay Bennett (beautiful, amazing work), Tony Auth, Bill Deore etc.

Today I discovered David Rees to throw into that mix. It makes me think of what things like Dilbert should be, if only Dilbert wasn't so lame. But the humour has something of Herbert Kornfeld about it before The Onion decided it was in their best interests to shut off access to their archives. If you're a fan of Herbert's, there even appears to be a Letter-Opener-Of-Death in some of the panels.

I've probably mentioned this before, but for the last 3 or 4 years i've been toying with the idea of doing a PhD on the film work of Guy Debord. I came across his work while I was researching my degree on Jean-Luc Godard and fell in love with all of those things that supposedly make him contradictory in upper-case capitals, especially if you're one of those 'you have to be either/or' people: Militant and Romantic, Politically Sophisticated and Innocent, Darkly Absurd and Joyful. His work in The Situationist Internationale is slowly being opened up by academics all over the place, and it feels a little like the academic world has begun to wonder what the contents of that can with the missing label, stuck on the shelf for all those years, actually are.

Debord hated Godard for supposedly being unoriginal and I think he has even accused him of raiding the dust-can of cinematic history for his ideas. Fair enough. However, I came across this article by one of his SI members, Ivan Chtcheglov, today and really liked his description of the Sinister Quarter in the final paragraph. I was laughing to myself at the concept when it's introduced in the first paragraph, but the second paragraph is a brilliant satirical description of the modern city, a description of a modern city as it probably was in Ivan Chtcheglov and Debord's time in Paris, sans car alarms, cell phones and crappy radio stations doing promos on the street. Well, maybe not even that part.

If you want to read a slightly more contemporary take on city life, architecture and the way cities often shape our lives, I strongly recommend reading 'The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life' by Richard Sennett, it's a fantastic book. A quote from it has been my standard email signature for a few years now. "The difficulty now is that unexceptional adults believe the loss of youthful dreaming is itself "growing up," as though adulthood were the passive conclusion to a doomed activity and hope during adolescence."

Formulary for a New Urbanism
Ivan Chtcheglov
1953

"The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.

Bizarre Quarter--Happy Quarter (specially reserved for habitation) -- Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children)--Historical Quarter (museums, schools)--Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) --Sinister Quarter, etc. And an Astrolaire which would group plant species in accordance with the relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm, a planetary garden comparable to that which the astronomer Thomas wants to establish at Laaer Berg in Vienna. Indispensable for giving the inhabitants a consciousness of the cosmic. Perhaps also a Death Quarter, not for dying in but so as to have somewhere to live in peace, and I think here of Mexico and of a principle of cruelty in innocence that appeals more to me every day.

The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for those hellholes that many peoples once possessed in their capitals: they symbolized all the evil forces of life. The Sinister Quarter would have no need to harbour real dangers, such as traps, dungeons or mines. It would be difficult to get into, with a hideous decor (piercing whistles, alarm bells, sirens wailing intermittently, grotesque sculptures, power-driven mobiles, called Auto-Mobiles), and as poorly lit at night as it is blindingly lit during the day by an intensive use of reflection. At the center, the "Square of the Appalling Mobile." Saturation of the market with a product causes the product's market value to fall: thus, as they explored the Sinister Quarter, the child and the adult would learn not to fear the anguishing occasions of life, but to be amused by them."

Atrocities committed in war were one of the most significant events revealed by the media during the conflict in Vietnam. It managed to influence the course of the war as protests against both occcupying forces and Vietcong soldiers treatment influenced many. In the last couple of days there has been the beginning of intense fighting in Falluja and the media coverage (in these great days of media restriction and 'embedded journalists') has been the most benign i have seen yet. The BBC, who are supposed to be one of the better sources of global media coverage, has today posted the most hideously vapid depiction of warfare i have ever seen, in a flash animation that looks like the A4 card describing emergency scenarios sitting in the back of airline seats.

There is no blood, no loss of human life, no suffering or torment; but there are a lot of clean lines and a step by step guide on both how to fortify your home against military invasion and how to penetrate these defenses if you happen to be on a militarily led anti-terrorist hunt. Welcome to George's second term where more bloodshed won't be coming to a screen near you.

"The question of "intellectual property" is not if the producers of creative works should be denied their right to material reproduction through their creative work, or if the temporary owners of such works should be hung by the guts of their lawyers."

The owner of the website textz.com has come under the scrutiny of the copyright holder of two of Adorno's essays. The kicker of this infringement being jail time for the website owner who provided the essays on his website. A petition is currently in process and donations can be made.

How's that for a welcome to the new year?

As you would expect from a media watcher, i'm a fan of a lot of Michael Moore's stuff. I recently finished reading Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men (2001) and came across the following:

Secretary of State-Colin Powell

"When not fighting wars, Powell sat on the boards of Gulfstream Aerospace and AOL. Gulfstream makes jets for both Hollywood honchos and foreign governments like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. During his time at AOL the company merged with Time Warner, and Powell's stock rose in value by $4 million. At the time, Colin's son, Michael Powell, had been the only Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member who advocated that the AOL/Time Warner merger go through without question. Powell's son has since been named chairman of the FCC by George W. Bush; part of his job is to oversee the activities of AOL/Time Warner. He will also oversee any regulation of AOL's monopolistic "instant messaging" technology."

--Michael Moore 'Stupid White Men' (2001)

If you look a couple of pages down you'll see my post about what's been happening recently with the FCC and Michael Powell's involvement in the rise of global media conglomerates and their über-merging. I could say a lot about this, but i'll leave it for another day. However, of interest here is the following press statement in the last week and keeping Moore's statement in mind.

Thursday August 21, 5:21 AM

AOL gets FCC nod on advanced instant-messaging
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AOL Time Warner, operator of the world's biggest online service, on Wednesday won permission from communications regulators to offer advanced instant messaging services like live video streaming.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to lift a condition it imposed when America Online bought Time Warner in 2001 for fear it would dominate the emerging real-time messaging market when married with video or audio.

The agency agreed to lift the requirement after AOL convinced regulators it had lost market share to well-financed rivals including Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.

AOL's market share in the instant messaging market had slipped to 58.5 percent as of earlier this year, from 61.5 percent in late 2000, according to Media Metrix figures.

Instant messaging is a popular Internet function that allows individuals or groups to have real-time text discussions, but providers have been developing more advanced services to lure more customers.

"Removal of the condition will benefit consumers through the addition of a third significant competitor to the advanced instant messaging-based high-speed video services market," FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who voted in support to lift the ban, said in a statement.

AOL Time Warner said the instant messaging market had become more competitive and Powell noted that neither consumer advocates nor the company's competitors protested lifting the condition.

Yet, the two Democrats on the FCC, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, voted against lifting the condition, stating that it was premature because the market for such advanced services had not fully developed.

"As a matter of policy, the goal of open, interoperable Internet communications services justified this condition as serving the public interest, and nothing in the petition convincingly shows otherwise," the two commissioners said in a joint statement.

AOL has already planned to offer the ability to send recorded video clips and have voice conversations through instant messaging in the next version of its online service, AOL 9.0. But, the software will not feature live streaming video at its September launch.

"This decision, which will allow AOL to fully compete in advanced IM services, will clearly benefit consumers through increased choice and innovation," said AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.

AOL Time Warner shares fell 25 cents, or 1.56 percent, to close at $15.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.