Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs TV programme in the UK, will be blogging the G8 summit in Scotland on 6-8 July. Actually, that’s not strictly true. Although Newsnig8t (that word really needs to be in colour so you can better spot the "g8" in there) clearly is a BBC-approved blog, it’s run […]
Category: Current Affairs
Fox journalist says ‘Terrorism ok in Paris’
The London bombings yesterday are fresh in everyone’s minds. Now, 38 dead and over 700 seriously injured. The death toll will probably rise. You wouldn’t wish that on any other city, would you? Paris, for example? Yet that is a growing reaction to John Gibson, a Fox News journalist in the US, and what he […]
We’re not afraid
I had an email overnight from Pete Quily in Canada telling me about We’re Not Afraid, a blog set up last week following the London bombings that publishes photos from people around the world who aren’t afraid: […] By saying we are not afraid, we are really saying that although we have lost people, friends, […]
Two minutes silence throughout Europe today
As a mark of respect for the victims of the London bombings a week ago, two minutes’ silence will be observed throughout the European Union today at midday UK time, 1pm Central EuropeanTime (11am GMT). (Photo courtesy of gallery 55 at WereNotAfraid.com) Technorati tag: London Bombings
Police appeal for photos of London bombings
More bombings in London today, as media worldwide is reporting. Minor this time and, thankfully, no deaths reported. As with the 7 July bombings in London, people directly caught up in events record and publish those events with cameras, camera phones and whatever means of communication they have available. So direct appeals by the police […]
Disaster planning, consequences and inevitabilities from Katrina
Two thoughtful articles in as many days from the Financial Times examine broad consequences of the Hurricane Katrina disaster from the business, economic, political and social standpoints. In the first, a feature on disaster planning, the FT says the consequences of Katrina for businesses worldwide are likely to be significant. Insurance claims are expected to […]
Trade unions can demonstrate relevance
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the relevance (or otherwise) of trade unions in the UK workplace. This was commenting about a lengthy article in the Financial Times that included interviews with a number of former trade union officials who had made the switch, so to speak, to the ‘other side,’ taking management jobs […]
FIR Interview: Charles Pizzo, Katrina evacuee – September 25, 2005
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville spoke with Charles Pizzo, a 20-year veteran of communications, a top-ranked speaker and writer and a former Chairman of the Board of IABC and its Research Foundation. A native of New Orleans, Charles evacuated from that city following Hurricane Katrina and the total […]
Help victims of Pakistan earthquake
The devastating earthquake in Pakistan on Saturday that so far has claimed around 20,000 lives in that country as well as in parts of India and Afghanistan is headline news worldwide, as you’d expect. Some media reports say that the death toll is closer to 40,000. Blogs and other social media undoubtedly will come into […]
Kick starting new copyright laws
A subject I’ve posted about before is that of the inadequacies of copyright laws in this age of instant copy-and-paste and relying on decades (if not centuries) old geographical-based laws to help you protect your intellectual property rights. So it was with keen interest I read Copyright for the digital age on the BBC News […]
The blogger two heartbeats from the US President
I saw the news the other day that Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, started blogging. Interesting, I thought, even though the blog doesn’t have an RSS feed nor a way to leave comments. So I blogrolled it for a look now and again and moved on. Until I saw this comment […]
BBC web users have their say
Some lively conversations going on in the BBC News website’s Have Your Say section, a forum where anyone can contribute comment and opinion on topics presented for discussion. One of the interesting things about this forum is the comment recommendation system where readers can recommend a comment to tell the BBC and other readers which […]
Who cares about Windows XP N?
CNET News: A major U.K. retail store and three of the largest PC vendors worldwide still have no plans to sell the version of Microsoft Windows that does not contain its media player, five months after the version was released. Microsoft started offering Windows XP N, a version of Windows without a bundled media player, […]
Growth of the global internet
It won’t surprise anyone to learn that the top language of internet users is English, according to stats from Internet World Stats: English represents the language of nearly one-third of all internet users, according to these stats. What’s especially interesting, though, is to see the growth rates of languages other than English during the past […]
FT: ‘Tolerate some libel for the greater good’
There has been much written in recent weeks concerning the character assassination of John Seigenthaler over his biography in Wikipedia, prompting much discussion over the trustworthiness of an open information resource like Wikipedia which anybody can edit. The character assassin was outed and Wikipedia is now implementing tighter controls over who can edit material. The […]
The continuing rise of citizen journalism
BBC News: 2005 was arguably the year citizens really started to do it for themselves. Raising mobiles aloft, they did not just talk and text, they snapped, shared and reported the world around them. Commentary by Jo Twist of the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank illustrates the far-reaching effects and changes in the […]
FIR Interview – Gerald R. Baron, author, “Now is Too Late” – January 11, 2006
In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel enjoyed a 55-minute conversation with Gerald Baron, author of the crisis communications book, "Now is Too Late: Survival in the Era of Instant News." Download the conversation here (MP3, 21MB), or sign up for the Interviews RSS feed to get it and our future interviews […]
Blair and Cameron podcast firsts
You know podcasting has now definitely entered the mainstream when two politicians – one a Prime Minister no less, and both leaders of their parties and members of the government – use the medium in conjunction with two national newspapers to convey particular messages to voters in the UK. Yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair was […]
The Quaero oxymoron
If you’ve been following the story of the Franco-German Quaero project – a planned European multimedia search engine, the answer to Google and brainchild of the French government – you’ll know that European politics have contributed to the mire it’s been in for some months. The Quaero website used to be online and provided useful […]
Disintermediating the news
A thoughtful article on Friday by Richard Sambrook, director of global news at the BBC, on how the internet is disintermediating news: […] News organisations do not own the news any more. They can validate information, analyse it, explain it, and they can help the public find what they need to know. But they no […]