CTVT Chris

The mysteries of communication and network building shed light on the relationship of the individual to media making and mass media consumption. One it seems to me is always likely to be positive, not so sure about the other.

Having said that, if you ever get a chance to see "Life on Mars" - drama series from BBC TV - take it. First class. Better.

If a paper describes its area of coverage as a "War Zone" what would you expect to be going on ?

A couple of years ago I travelled to Palestine's West Bank, walked around the very beautiful Old City of Jerusalem with young Israeli soldiers on street corners, manning the checkpoints I used into/out of Bethlehem and Ramallah, and had if you like a taste of a 'war zone'. Even that is not strictly speaking a war zone though, is it.
Anyone who has been in one will smile at you if you think otherwise.

The "War Zone" referred to above is Southwark, so-called after three murders took place in quick succession a week ago. The local paper, determined to capture the fear (and therefore spread it), is excellent in many ways but always tends to sacrifice its front page, the selling page, to hype fear and thereby maximises the potential for cranking up anxiety. They don't think they are doing this, of course. Is that a defence ? Just as they claim they are giving the public what it wants. Their sales figures presumably back up this assertion.

To dub Southwark a 'war zone' is in my view a public health issue. For whilst we are stressed by recent events, normal life is palpably carrying on. I see no armoured personnel carriers on street corners etc. Vulnerable people, those depressed, aged and infirm, the young and those of unformed minds, all are susceptible to the crazy gloom hype of tabloid culture and desparate selling. The work of such journalism is not in our general interest, though of course neither is it an option not to keep us informed of important events on our doorstep.

"Southwark feels like a war zone - so what shall we do about it ?"

That might make a challenging and truthful headline. Seeking out the positive, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Ofcom, UK regulator of media and telecoms, plans to sell off newly available spectrum to the highest bidder.

That's how it looks, at any rate. No surprise, I suppose.

Thing is, it's a once-in-a-lifetime possibility to add to the creative sum of a burgeoning community media world in a so-called sophisticated Western nation.

Apportioning culture and accessible learning according to who has the largest amounts of money is not especially intelligent. But then Blair invaded Iraq.

Does anyone care ? Not sure. Anyway there is MySpace and YouTube and local media via broadband and mobile phones, so what the hell.

People however like local TV and a good old broadcast signal, which is more than likely never to come into proper public ownership. They'll want us to pay for air soon. And implant chips and tags into babies from birth (or sooner). Orwell ? Blair's Britain, that's all. Fresh with intercepted emails (combatting terrorism of course), satellites to monitor how we use our cars and charge us for using a road (I mean, how dare we !), and an active campaign by a socialist mayor to punish people who want to use cash to buy a bus ticket.
£2 per ride now, for money. If you buy a Government card, called 'Oyster' - I'm still thinking about that, it costs you £1. In January the lovely London mayor put up bus fares by 33% for cash spenders and dropped them 33% for those happy to have their movements logged on a central computer.

It's one thing beating Australia at cricket but I'm not sure how much I love my country just at the moment.

Read this:

"Community media (like local democracy or genuine local co-operative and self-help enterprise) might well have the potential to transform British society for the better, but be sure that by the time it is rolled out and watered down as a government funded
local public service, the end result will ensure that real iconoclastic beneficial change is not a possibility..."

A Government funded local public service.
Quite a thought.
Actually why not ?

This period we are living through is a test: how much will we let
slip and slide and how much will we challenge and question and check and push ?

I read about the British Government's collusion with Indonesia's ruthless invasion of East Timor in the Seventies. US and British and Australian Governments knew what was happening and there was no media reporting at all about what was happening. None. Nothing.

We cannot depend on the media. They are doing their own thing.
For the moment the internet is the place where stories can and must be told.

This is in every way the new media, the new mainstream.

I will tell soon about a plan I am shaping for funding a large community media project across the UK. It's a long shot but I can see how to do it, if ...

Boy are people quick to judge.
Even the BBC is carrying critical voices in its news items about Kember risking the lives of soldiers who were called on to rescue him from Baghdad. I do not recall a supportive voice.

I know a member of CPT in West Bank of Palestine. He is over seventy years old and bases himself in Hebron. In the past he has worked shepherding Palestinian children to and from school, in an effort to protect them from the violent behaviour and sometimes actual attacks and assaults by Jewish settlers. It is unimaginable. Assaulting children on their way to school in the name of religion. Can their God be pleased with them ?

In Hebron, a once thriving Palestinian town and business hub,
the Palestinian economy sinks to its knees as the spirit of the population miraculously keeps up its resistance to appalling and protracted Israeli hostility, animosity and pressure.

The Hamas election complicates matters but indicates so clearly the degree of hopelessness amongst the ordinary citizens. To think that the beautiful town of Bethlehem, the very spring from which world Christianity flows - across all doctrines and differences, to think that the jewel of global heritage is now entirely walled in and its people in effect imprisoned. And what do we do about it ? And what does the Archbishop of Canterbury do about it ? And the Pope ?

Well, there is the odd visit to Jerusalem and the occasional gesture. An organisation calling itself Open Bethlehem was endorsed by the Pope. But as an Englishman albeit one who does not go to church, temple or mosque, I feel the absence of religious leaders standing tall against this shocking oppression and bullying and punishing of a whole people.

No-one can endorse the killings of suicide bombers. How they harm their cause and their people. But one does recognise their anger and despair. And hopelessness.

So - of course Norman Kember would want to do something. Even though his own wife thought he had been 'silly' to go to Baghdad.
Happily he has conducted himself with strength and dignity and good humour in front of the scrum of cameras and photographers.

I remain upset and concerned by the speed with which a virtual witch-hunt was whipping itself up as he made his way to Kuwait and then to London.

And I recall the shocking tone of a BBC journalist on Friday afternoon interviewing a senior policeman - a Chief Constable; the officer explained he was speaking on behalf of all senior officers and signalled their concern about Government proposals to reform the relationship between politicians and the Police: from now on, if two Bills before Parliament are made law, the relationship will be linear - with the Home Secretary at the top and the Chief Constable at the bottom. He explained his great unease at this prospect. ... The BBC journalist referred to his speaking in this way as 'squealing'.
The officer, with restraint and dignity, explained he was not 'squealing'.

Has the BBC really succumbed to Downing Street's anger and spinning that it should now operate with this unpleasant tone and considerable short-sightedness ?

Maverick MP and self publicist George Galloway is finally removed from the TV show's
Big Brother House and mainstream media descends on him like vultures and the Eumenides wrapped up together.
Ignoring his victory in overturning a national newspaper that had sought to smear him with allegations of embezzling money from Saddam Hussein (!), rather than take a look at just what this newspaper - Daily Telegraph - did that was judged illegal, newscasters merely
repeated the initial allegations. Throw mud, everyone. It'll stick.

To cap a mad night, UK's leading daily factual TV programme - Newsnight on BBC2 at 10.30pm - constructed as its lead story, not the volcanic Palestinian elections that were to lead to a Hamas victory, but further 'analysis' of George Galloway's behaviour in the Big Brother House.

As it happens I am currently reading "Guardians of Power" by David Edwards and David Cromwell (who run Media Lens). It is a devastating critique of liberal media.

We have such need of the internet.

Regeneration is an industry worth a lot of money.
Community media which is a real healing agent,
powerful, encouraging, educative in a soft way,
creative, infectious and so on, receives only
cursory support from Government.

The UK is currently looking at going digital and
therefore there is spectrum to be allocated.
Funnily enough community media projects
receive little help in the local TV sector. Some
radio licences are currently being awarded.

What interests me is the broadband option
with its territory being away from the regulator
and providing immediate access for all (more
or less anyway).

Making media is the amazing thing we now do, in
so many formats, whenever we choose.

The thing is, regulators still like and want to
regulate us and prefer to regard us as consumers
rather than producers.

This in a nutshell is what I am working on here
in the UK.

Background of broadcast TV, specialising now
in community media. I am director of UK
community media charity, Community TV Trust
[www.communitytvtrust.org].
Main project has been Southwark.TV, which is
a local media experiment in south London ...
URL www.southwark.tv