For those like myself who couldn’t make it to London, the BBC has posted videos from its Social Media Summit. I’ve put these together into a YouTube playlist to make it easier to catch up with the discussions. The summit also prompted a lively discussion on Twitter, under the hashtag #BBCsms. Print
PDF It can be hard to understand Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s seemingly delusional rantings. But this is a leader who has sought to turn Libya into a “jamahiriya” – his vision of a state of the masses. During my time covering the North Africa for the BBC in the early 1990s, I visited Libya a couple of times. One of my TV reports from the time sought to explore how Gaddafi was trying
With Libya in the news, I thought I would share this piece I did for BBC News in 1995 about the Libyan economy. As the BBC correspondent in the region, I visited Libya twice and interviewed Gaddafi during one of these trips. It was, by far, the strangest interview I have ever done. We were on standby all day until the call came late in the evening that Gaddafi was
The BBC is back in the news with more talks of cuts and savings. The Guardian reports that BBC director general is looking for additional cost savings of 20% – about £400m – over the next six years. One of the ways Thompson plans to cut costs is by reducing the amount spent on online services by 25%. This might sound like a drastic saving. But it masks the fact that
The BBC’s editorial guidelines have been updated to take account of the impact of social media on journalism. There are three specific entries that offer valuable advice to journalists. The guidelines on the use of photos sourced from social media and personal websites notes that the BBC should consider the sensitivities in using them, even though the images have been published online. It urges journalists to consider whether someone intended the
There is a wealth of material on the present and future of the news media in a report, Brave News Worlds: Navigating the New Media Landscape (PDF), published last week by the International Press Institute (IPI). The 152-page report brings together 42 essays were written by news executives, digital thinkers and educators from across the world. My attention was drawn to a provocatively entitled entry, The Future of TV News Belongs, in Part,
This visualisation of Mark Thompson’s MacTaggart speech highlights the most commonly used two words. The visualisation shows Thompson placing an emphasis on British television, public service, British public and licence fee. Print
Einar Thorsen of Bournemouth University, UK, was one of the final presenters at the IAMCR 2010 in Braga. He looked at how the relationship between BBC online journalism and ctizenship during the 2005 and 2010 UK General Elections. In a quick presentation, Thorsen explained how civic engagement as a key of the BBC mandate reflected in its election coverage online. For the 2010 election, the BBC viewed election news as a
The BBC has revised its guidelines (PDF) on the use of Twitter and other micro-blogging sites by staff. The updated guidance take account of the spread of services like Twitter which were not widespread when the advice was first published in 2008. As well as offering specific advice on friending and retweeting, the guidelines set out the BBC’s social media principles: With conversations, participate online; don’t “broadcast” messages to users
Using IBM’s ManyEyes, I did a word tag visualisation of the BBC Strategy Review (PDF), to reveal the most commonly used pair of words. The most common by far was “licence fee” mentioned 116 times. Next was “public space” with 60 mentions and “public service” at 47. As for the two digital stations facing closure, 6 Music was mentioned 21 times and Asian Network 13. Click on the image for