Regulating the PSBs - Regulation proposals FOOD FOR THOUGHT - is the world insane?

The cones hotline's legacy...
By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News
Westminster sophisticates sneered at it. Comedians were guaranteed a laugh just by mentioning it. The Labour Party could hardly believe its luck.

Who can motorists turn to now that the hotline has gone?
John Major's "cones hotline" was probably the most ridiculed policy ever to be introduced by a British government.
How the critics hooted at its apparent pettiness and lack of ambition. Could the party that gave us Churchill and Thatcher really have come to this? A telephone line for motorists to moan about road works?
But Mr Major and his modest proposal may be about to have the last laugh.
For although the cones hotline itself is long dead (it was quietly killed off in 1995) its spirit lives on.
And the initiative that spawned it - The Citizen's Charter - has been revealed as the inspiration behind Gordon Brown's latest attempt to reform the public services.
The government has spent the past 11 years wrestling with what should, on the face of it, be the simple task of finding out what people want from public services and then giving it to them.
'Unsung success'
Its latest initiative, the Customer Service Excellence standard, based on the recommendations of former Passport Agency chief Bernard Herdan, aims to involve people in setting targets for local services.
But although it is dressed up in fashionable buzz words, such as "empowerment" and the dreaded "bottom up", it is essentially a refined, less centralised version of the Citizen's Charter.
The debt is acknowledged in the government's response to a recent select committee report, which describes the Citizen's Charter as "something of an unsung success story" with an "important legacy" in shaping the relationship between citizens and public services.

Will John Major be having the last laugh?
Not bad for something that was written off in 1991, by the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, as "a mixture of the belated, the ineffectual, the banal, the vague and the damaging".
The Citizen's Charter was, in fact, the first serious attempt to raise standards in public services by listening to the demands of consumers. It guaranteed waiting times for hospital patients, introducing performance-related league tables and new scope for ordinary citizens to complain (hence the cones hotline).
And despite ridiculing it at every opportunity, New Labour secretly coveted it, embracing its culture of targets and league tables as a way of ensuring the extra money it poured into schools and hospitals was not wasted (something its critics say it has failed to do).
Blue plaques
In 1996, John Prescott said he wanted to go one better than the Citizen's Charter and create a "complainer's charter" - allowing voters to register their protests via their television remote controls or, in the quaint jargon of the time, "on line".
It never happened.
The Charter itself survived until 2000, when the unit in charge of it at the Cabinet Office was replaced by the Service First team, which was then closed down itself a few years later.

The Charter Mark is being phased out in favour of a new scheme
But the Charter Mark - the blue plaques awarded to organisations for excellence in customer service, without which no leisure centre foyer would be complete, survived until June 2008 when it was finally scrapped in favour of the new Customer Service Excellence programme.
In its response to the public administration committee report, the government seems in awe of Mr Major's modest little policy, expressing the earnest hope that Customer Service Excellence "like Charter Mark before it - upholds and develops the aims of the Citizen's Charter programme".
Before the economy became the government's top priority, the idea of putting citizens in the driving seat of public service reform was Gordon Brown's big idea.
A whole series of measures in last month's Queen's Speech - from the NHS Constitution, which sets out the rights of patients for the first time, to more police accountability - were designed to hand more power and control to the consumers of public services.
Rubbish collection
The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have also seized on the idea of citizen empowerment - both claim to be the true party of localism and the sworn enemy of Labour's target culture.
Labour, for its part, admits it was too obsessed with centralising control in its early years in government and did not give enough thought to how the thousands of targets it set from Whitehall would actually be met by hard-pressed teachers, doctors and nurses.
It has promised to repent, claiming the plans contained in its Local Government Empowerment White Paper will finally shift power and influence "away from existing centres of power into the hands of communities and individual citizens".
But 12 years after John Prescott first dreamed of angry citizens firing off complaints from their armchairs before flipping over to Coronation Street, the government is still trying to find an effective way of making people feel they have a say in the way things are run in their local area.
If only they could come up with a simple, easily-understood way for the public to voice their dissatisfaction with local irritations like rubbish collection or road works.
Perhaps some kind of hotline....

Spectator reports on perceived bias and copmplaints ref GAZA and BBC

An MP is shocked by al Beeb - from THE SPECTATOR

Monday, 5th January 2009
Three cheers for Tory MP Michael Fabricant, who says he has been ‘horrified and angered’ by the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza conflict, and will be making a formal complaint to the Chairman of the BBC Trust about it:
While paying scant regard to the provocation of 10,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza over the last seven years, the BBC has chosen to broadcast 'human interest' stories reminiscent of salacious photos in the cheaper red top newspapers. Thus I heard a heart rending report from a Palestinian in Cyprus how he imagined - yes: IMAGINED! - Gaza's streets would be running with the blood of dead Arab children. After that, the BBC located individuals in Gaza who have taken the opportunity of repeating over the BBC what they have already said on Al Jazeera. No balance there then. And today I heard an ‘unbiased report from a British aid worker in Gaza, from Islamic Relief’. Oh come on!
But perhaps the worst interview of all was with the Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic who dared to suggest that every country has a right to defend its citizens, that Hamas had walked away from negotiations, that they had resumed firing rockets into Israel unprovoked, and that Israel's actions are therefore defensive and not offensive. The ire and vitriol of the BBC interviewer was extraordinary. Paxman and Humphreys are pussy cats in comparison. The Czech minister sounded shell shocked. And so was I. Commendable as is Fabricant’s reaction, it is not enough for him to write to the Chairman of the BBC Trust. The BBC’s collusion with Hamas, along with coverage whose incendiary distortions cannot but have incited hatred of Israel among its viewers and listeners, should be the subject of an emergency debate in Parliament. It would be interesting to know whether the Tory front bench agree with Michael Fabricant -- or think there is nothing wrong with the BBC’s coverage. Those MPs from whatever party who understand just what is at stake in Gaza for western civilisation – alas, there aren’t many of them but there are some -- and the deeply alarming role being played in this by the BBC should now raise the alarm.

The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP. All Articles and Content Copyright ©2007 by The Spectator (1828) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Response to Gaza Strip Reporting on BBC

BBC's Gaza complaints split down middle - This article has come from BROADCAST ONLINE
Published: 07 January 2009 13:13
Author: Katherine Rushton
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Last Updated: 07 January 2009 13:46
Reader Responses

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The BBC has received more than 1,000 complaints about its coverage of the Gaza conflict – but they are evenly split between accusations of bias towards either the Israelis or the Palestinians.
The complaints and comment have been flooding in since the conflict reignited over the Christmas period, with most alleging that BBC News coverage favours one side over the other.
A source told Broadcast: "It's unprecedented. There are two very powerful lobby groups here and we've had over 1,000 complaints and comments which is huge – but so long as they are pretty evenly spread it is not a bad thing."
A BBC spokesman added: "Clearly this is a conflict that some people hold passionate views about which they are willing to express in strong terms; however, we are satisfied that the BBC's coverage of the ongoing events in Gaza and Israel is balanced, fair, accurate and impartial.
"In our reports, we have tried to explain how the current situation started and has since developed. It is our duty is to provide independent reporting and analysis of all perspectives of a story, so our audiences can make sense of what's going on."
Author: Katherine Rushton.

Liam and Matt's Presentation

Here's Liam and Matt's work - again one video extract is unavilable here but the points and comparison are still very useful.


The next two videos go together - they're about Stansted






and finally, the presentation!

Angela's Presentation

Here are Angela's Presentation and videos. Ch4 first...



This is the BBC version but I have had to substitute (the 'real' video version is on tape and I will upload it in due course). This will give you a flavour of what Angela is saying in her presentation



and finally the presentation

Emma's Space Shuttle Feedback

Here's my 10 points of feedback/stuff I've learnt:
1. Writing a script is HARD!
2. Fitting the script to the visulas with teh right speed talking is EVEN HARDER!
3. The news story often gives brief details to the story rather than anything too detailed, even though a lot of information is provided to make the story with
4. Live footage is most valuable to the story
5. Working in pairs made it harder because there was less creativity, groups of 3 or 4 might have been better & everyone should have had to have recorded a script, not just one of the pair
6. News stories are told to fit the broadcaster's image, so can vary between different channels
7. News continually changes which makes the news a fast paced place to be working
8. News anchors/presenters/correspondants do more work than just read out a script, they have to write it themselves, which I assume would be hard in a war zone...
9. Live footage causes the most problems on a broadcast when signals are lost etc, yetit's still number one in terms of content
10. Informing the audience is a top priority

Emma
x

Barnes:Space Shuttle

Some learning point and hopefully helpful feedback from the activity:

1. It made me realise how concise News script writing should be.
2. It proved to me that the story's content is very small and there is infact much more information which is left out from the news sources.
3. It highlighted how little time the News teams would have to construct a new news story between each broadcast. -(many needed on the job)
4. The house style and mode of address are crucial to the way in which an audience will percieve the news.- IT IS NOT A TRUE WINDOW ON THE WORLD
5. It showed importance of using many mediums, -photos, videos, interviews, and main anchor presenting. To sustain audience interest and provide the sense of infotainment
6. It proved that it is a demanding and everychanging job -and fun at the same time
7. Timing is a big issue and needs to be exact so as to make it easy viewing and shows the professionalism of the News team.
8. It shows the dependence on the news sources to provide good content
9. I think it would have worked better if we were given a stricter time limit with a larger group of people as ths would have been a more realistic experience.
10. ^^^this should have been done with more insight into how it is actually done. something like watching how professionals do this may have been beneficial before we had our own try.
11. overall i liked the experience and think it definately showed me the many issues that a news team are faced with.

Barnes