Learning Mandarin Chinese is easier than working out the finer threads of the News Corp/Shine Group/BSkyB/News International tapestry. The basics are that they are linked via a network of relatives and close friends last seen in the days of the Hapsburgs. To avoid treading on the world’s anti-monopoly laws, they’ve carefully divided control of each unit.

We’re all too aware of the monopoly of one Sergio Berlusconi. Murdoch the Elder is not doing a large-scale version of Italian media. Under Berlusconi, everything from newspapers, magazines and television is dictated by one man whose sole purpose is to hang on to power and escape prosecution for dodgy dealings. Murdoch is a businessman addicted to acquisition – he has a typical collectors mentality of wanting to have everything with little regard for the consequence. Being able to pull the puppet strings of business and government is one of the benefits of his unique position…but it is not his drive.

Life under Murdoch, at least my erstwhile parish Sky News, is not the plot to Tomorrow Never Dies. Rupert does not have a secret phone to editorial footsoldiers on newsdesks. When I was on the foreign desk, producers invoked the muscle of John Ryley, Head of News, when they were trying to swing the editorial eye. “John’s very keen” is a line often heard. Clever editors rebut with “let’s give him a call”.

Critics of Murdoch bias will invariably bring up the Adam Boulton and Kay Burley affairs during the last General Election. Casting personal opinion of these strong-willed stakeholders aside, let us look at the facts.

In Adam’s case, as Political Editor he was the pivot point for Sky’s election coverage. He is also a workaholic who hadn’t slept for days. When pitted against the stable and calm winds of Alaistair Campbell, Adam buckled. A moment of abandon – to be seen by all on YouTube.

In Kay’s position, a gaggle of demonstrators took advantage of Sky News having an open broadcasting stage as opposed to the BBC’s enclosed one. It’s like offering a crowd a large screen and a live Twitter feed. Someone is going to abuse it for a laugh.

Gaza, the Israeli raids on it and Sky News’ refusal to run the subsequent DEC Appeal is the only time I truly felt a corporate hand muzzling the mouth. And that on the day both the BBC and Sky said they would not be running the appeal, Sky News correspondent Emma Hurd opened a news item with a wide shot of the Gaza Strip and the line “this is the scene of a war crime”.

Should a takeover occur, broadcasting standards aren’t what journos at Osterley will be worried about. They’ll wonder if they’ll still have their jobs. As the axes fall, hacks will keep their heads down, produce the breaking news they’re so good at and pray they’re not next for the chop. Emails will be sent about how to cover stories on the cheap, deals and alliances with sister broadcasters will be forged to pool manpower. Quality of content won’t matter as much as appearing to tick the right boxes. Fear is a good way of keeping the rats in the hold.

Arguments against a Murdoch monopoly are usually based on events in print. Sky News knows it can’t get away with blanket bias on air. They can’t declare an allegiance to a political party like their ink-stained counterparts. Actions are watched closely by Ofcom and if one side of an issue appears to be getting too much air time, balance is restored one way or another.

Because television is not “self-regulating”, quality and content are dictated by public interest – or an editor’s perception of it. It’s hard to break truly original journalism in broadcast because editors closely monitor their competitors to see what they’re running – and run that. The process becomes a mobius strip of information dependent on precedence of events.

What I am worried about is what will happen elsewhere. Business-wise, a monopoly like that planned should a takeover occur is frightening…it will send shockwaves into other industries – healthcare, property, construction, natural resources. That’s what we should really be concerned about.

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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 17 June 2010, and in a different version on The Comment Factory.

Here are a couple questions I’ve had to answer recently…along with the answers.

Which TV programme has been the most innovative over the last year and why? * (Max 200 words)
Newswipe. Through the laconic sarcasm of Charlie Brooker, BBC4 have tapped into the sort of demographic that reads Private Eye, claims to have read Shakespeare and secretly dances to Baccara.
Brilliant in its use of news archive, it jump cuts its way through the haze. Most Britons have no clue that a good number of the reporters giving them their news gleaned their information from press releases, newswires, the BBC News website and Wikipedia. Ten minutes before broadcast. Fewer still know that some news presenters are little more than bedtime story readers who ply their trade with autocue – the clever questions they ask are bellowed down their ear by an anonymous gallery producer.
Newswipe unashamedly bares these truths. It’s Private Eye for telly.
Brooker’s editorial combs through the news and uses facts and deeds to trip The Man up. Televisual aikido.
Brooker takes us on a journey. On his sweaty sofa we see a man who is as baffled with how the world works as we are. The sort of chap you’d have on your pub quiz team.
It’s infuriatingly perceptive. Newswipe cuts through bullshit in a way that makes you think “I wish I said that.”

In your view, what should be the top priority in media policy for the new Culture Secretary? Why is it such a top priority? (Max 300 words)
Jeremy Hunt’s priority ought to be encouraging quality local content – not just formats that can be replicated and readily sold on to television markets around the world [talent show TV, I'm talking to you]. He’s stated in his keynote speech that he not only intends to push superfast broadband across the UK, but to accept Ofcom’s recommendation on reforming local media ownership rules. He will “significantly relax” rules to allow local newspapers to own local commercial radio stations and establish local TV stations.
A important idea that aims to strengthen “local communities”. He’s even hired an asset management firm to publish a report in the autumn. But Hunt forgets that the internet has remapped the idea of the local. It’s no longer a geographic measure, but an interest-based one.
“New York has six local TV stations, London has none,” Hunt says. But what can a local television station achieve that neighbourhood-centric blogs given more bandwidth or a newspaper tie-in can’t? The push to digital has already killed appointment to view television. Neighbourhood-centric and interest-based new media is where extra revenue should go because the content structure is already established. Blogs like Brockley Central already have a following. Trying to manufacture a local feel by allowing local newspapers to run mini media fiefdoms can only lead to the sort of contrived quality last seen on Ghanian talk shows shot on VHS.
The DCMS should press on with pushing for more local media, local TV stations, local radio, local everything. But if this government wants to “repair broken Britain” and encourage local communities to communicate, they should look beyond the box.

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Why? Libel. Apparently.

Instead of redrafting the Amnesty International press release and passing the words off as my own [really? that happens in the press?], here’s a link to the press release.

UPDATE: The ad is causing a bit of a stir in the FT newsroom. Emails are circulating amongst staffers, freelancers and management. In pre-Twitter days, if a newspaper decided to pull an ad, the public might’ve heard about it the following day. And only in hushed whispers. These days, its all over the Guardian and the Index on Censorship and the blogosphere like a rash. A pink one.

Could this be the rebirth of Amnesty – an emergence from the shadows of letter-writing and reactive press releases? Bear in mind that one of the blogs linked to above belongs to Naomi McAuliffe, Amnesty’s Digital Campaigns manager. It was her post on Twitter that told the world about Lionel Barber’s paper and its decision to snip the ad.

Sources at the FT say that one of their advertising department’s main concerns was whether Amnesty had the indemnity to deal with any potential comeback for the advert. The division between editorial and advertisement at the Financial Times is strict. What those on the outside looking in can fail to see is that editors at the FT are more than too aware of what the repercussions of pulling advertising are. Especially when it is put up by Amnesty International and targeted to run on a specific date. Like many newspapers, they’ve pulled ads at the last minute. But not many have been of a campaigning and activist nature.

“We know how this can look bad,” an FT editor tells me. “But as far as we were concerned, it wasn’t editorially deliberate. The guys in advertising have a tight code of practise. I think the main concern was whether or not Amnesty could provide indemnity should a complaint arise.”

Is this an editor passing the buck? No. Is this a department in a newspaper being a bit over-cautious about the political nature of the advertising? More likely. When you go out on a limb [albeit a rather sturdy, low-hanging one in Amnesty's case], you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences. The free publicity generated and garnered by the buzz is invaluable. The important question is, after the smoke clears, will you have understood any more about Shell, the Niger Delta and the inhumanity its people are subjected to in the interests of bloody, black gold?

Seems I’ve narked a few true blues by suggesting that Tories at CCHQ were melting at having to shake hands with a black man. I’m a vicious, pathetic, loony lefty cretin. It’s caused a minor hullabaloo, prompting statements that read “vicious bile that shouldn’t be allowed to pass” and “You used a really flattering pic of yourself on your Twitter page.  I thought you were hot til I Googled you. Corrrrrr what a moose!”.

So… you detest free speech, say I should get out of “your country” and are outrageously sexist. Are you a Tory?

Anyway. It’s Twitter, not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Man up.

Part of my role was to spark media interest in what Merlin were offering – a surgery specific relief effort that combined plastic surgery with orthopaedic surgery. So not only could a patient have their crush injuries seen to, but someone was around to make things useable. I witnessed so many acts of miracle performed by Merlin’s surgeons and nurses. And was privileged to be part of a team that had so much heart. One of the surgeons told me that he couldn’t stay in Britain when he had the skills to make a difference in someone’s life.

I’ll expand on this soon. Until then, here’s a small photo gallery of the people I got to know in Haiti. I miss them all.

At its height, up to 26 Indian cotton farmers a day were drinking pesticides to take themselves out of debt. The cycle of death and debt, pesticides and penury, starts off by farmers approaching loan sharks to front them the money to buy cotton seeds and the chemicals to tend their crops. Due to the failed monsoons, this year’s crop turned up rather crap. The majority of farmers are young – early twenties. And the debt accumulates as quickly as the dark thoughts that compel these young people to drink the very thing that took them into this deficit.

I’m cutting a little teaser which I intend to take out on the streets of London tomorrow asking shoppers what lovely cottony bargains they managed to bag ahead of this festive season. (If I got my shit together, I’d be filming the lights on Oxford St being switched on…but Oxford St + Boris Johnson + twinkly Christmas lights + Jim Carey + thousands of swine flu ridden Londoners and tourists = me rather being stabbed in the vagina).

The teaser will feature a suicide widow, a man who tried to kill himself in the fields, and a man who sells pesticides for a living. The salesman, when asked whether he felt bad about what he did, replied with something along the lines of “Yeah but it’s a job innit?”

So I plan to head out into the jungle of Calle Oxford to doorstep unwitting shoppers…and hopefully get kicked out of / barred / sent to the Topshop jail (yes there is one, ask me later about this).

Will then cut it into a little taster tape I plan to take with me to the Sheffield DocFest on Friday.

Theeeeeeen…it’s full steam ahead for an exhibition I may or may not have a little hand in with some friends at the Truman Brewery in London. It’s called Signs of Revolt and looks at activist and protest art from Seattle in 1999 to Copenhagen 2009.

Participants range from David Gentlemen, Adbusters, kennardphillipps, Guy Smallman, Jess Hurd –  a kind of who’s who of the thorns in the Metropolitan Police’s side.

And theeeeeeeen…it’s off to Ethiopia. It’s a junket of some sort, though a very loose one where I’m given a lot of freedom to find the stories I want to find. I’m thinking of things outside the “hey check this it’s a starving black kid” angle. If you know of any outfit or outlet that would want something out of the Kingdom of Ethiop, drop me a line. I know quite a few news outfits are currently trawling the starving black kids route ahead of the eco summit in Copenhagen. Which is fine. It’s the newsroom bread and butter. But Ethiopia is a country that eats sour bread as its staple and is possibly where we’d find the origin of the human species (apart from Charles Darwin’s bookshelf). There’s a lot more in that land which I’d like to find in the week I’m there.

There’s more planned for when I get back from the sand and starvation but that’s for a later note.

Despite the fact that photographs from the first day of the G20 protests in April 2009 show me astride an armoured personnel carrier in black bra and blue boiler suit with another woman straddling me in red stockings and lipstick heels, the Crown Prosecution Service has charged me and 10 others with impersonating police officers. We’ve been charged with two counts under Section 90 of the Police Act 1996 – the greater of which carries with it six months in prison.

Spot the Policeman

The vehicle, owned by anarchist pranksters the Space Hijackers, bore a number of fake CCTV cameras bolted onto its turret, a plastic pipe with holes in it for a gun and a bumper sticker that read “How Do You Like My Driving? 0800 F**K YOU”. It blared Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from a sound system. If you can show me a police force that does all that, I can show you a police force on acid.

“This is ridiculous, they’ll never press charges,” lawyers who attended to the arrested said on the day. Nearly six months and one court appearance later, the CPS is showing no signs of dropping what will be a four-day trial at the City of Westminster magistrates court in February. Eleven people, witnesses for the defence, witnesses for the prosecution, at least half a dozen legal representatives, the paperwork, the man hours, the expense – to what end? There were 27 prosecutions arising from the G20 protests. The rest include violent disorder, affray and setting fire to things at the Bank of England. The Space Hijackers and their tank sought to satirise the aggression stirred up by police ahead of the protests. Police said they expected violence and were “up for it”. It was April Fools’ day. And it was apparently the start of the “Summer of Rage“.

The case of the rather large Sergeant Delroy Smellie (quiet at the back please), charged with assaulting a rather small protester, Nicola Fisher, by smacking her across the face and whacking her with a baton, is representative of the 250 complaints received by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over police violence at the G20. Sure she was short and shouty, but you swat flies. Not women.

Events surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson show police to be drunk with the illusion of their own powers. Even members of the Metropolitan Police Authority despair over how things are run. They have criticised police over not taking the issue of wearing ID numbers seriously enough. Apparently disciplining those caught without ID badges was unnecessary because they could fall off or officers could forget to put them on. Smellie was not wearing his numbers when he vented his rage at Fisher. That fuelled public anger over the overt disregard for the accountability that wearing ID badges would give. So since the G20, the Met has spent over £40,000 on force identification numbers for public order officers. A very expensive way of paying lipservice if police chiefs don’t consider wearing identification important.

There is a feeling that police chiefs and the CPS – run by director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer (formerly a defence lawyer with a long history of human rights cases) – have lost a sense of perspective. The Space Hijackers have a 10-year history of using comedy and theatre to highlight the hypocrisies and failing of the system. I was accepted as their embedded journalist to get a flavour of their version of protest.

Impersonating a police officer is a criminal offence. Murder is a criminal offence. Would you rather see your tax money go towards prosecuting 11 people up for poking fun at the police, or 11 murderers?

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This article originally appeared in the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section, 01 October 2009.

I came out with a certificate that says I know what a camera does and that computers are not just for Googling prospective boyfriends.

And the little film below. It’s W.H. Auden’s “If I Could Tell You” as read out by a friend I shanghai-ed into the job.

Many thanks to Anthony Wood, Simon Ruben, Vaughn Smith, and Alec S Loth.

Still images courtesy Westminster City Archives (who gave me some darling white gloves to handle photographs with. I felt like Michael Jackson rifling through high school yearbooks).

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This article was first published in Who’s Jack Magazine, August 2009. All rights reserved.

Or am I being overly moralistic about this?

The tag line at the end says “After all, we’re what are we all after? Just a bit of fun.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=210H8wavqbc

Activists in the West Bank village of Bi’lin staged their own mock advert where the rest of the wall is being constructed. Instead of a reciprocal kickabout, they got a different sort of welcome.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et8VGyCDt10