Apocolypse Tonight

I’m sure a few extra copies of the Standard fled that day.

Hat tips, Adrian Monck and NoCommentNews.

Islamophonic - Yeah yeah, so I’m gurt slow

I finally got around to listening to this brilliant podcast yesterday. Its a nice antidote to the “Islamic problem” - the problem being why all the Muslims on TV are setting fire to flags or being arrested for not being terrorists. The last two episodes contain some brilliant audio flourishes - including a moment where the presenter was harassed by some unpleasant types for being a woman at a protest, and an intro where she denied having anything to do with the South Yorkshire floods. It also seems to be managing to keep a grip on a the enormous number of muslim groups which have arisen in the last few years or so. Ignore at your peril.

Pump up (out) the volume (of water)

Not much time to blog today, but kudos should be given to the Citizen, Gloucestershire Echo and the Forester who seem to be among the few local papers who have learned what the internet is for. The papers have been updating This Is Gloucestershire practically every hour or so since the crisis hit the region, and online there isn’t any better source of information. Users have used the site to give thanks to those who have helped out in the crisis and ex-pats from all over the world have been able to send their thoughts to readers. There’s a strong use of photography throughout and the site is loaded with video.

This is great - this is exactly the sort of thing local papers need to be thinking about - using the internet as a direct connection to their readers and keeping them updated when the newspaper cannot. Now Northcliffe needs to think about their web design and how it can be adapted for extraordinary events such as this. At the moment the site simply lists stories as they are uploaded - there’s no hierarchical system indicating the most important story or a scroll with breaking news. This is a common fault across the Northcliffe stable. The drive to make the most of the internet is certainly there - now designers just have to pull their fingers out to meet their journalists’ ambition.

Bridge over undefined waters

Via PP, an Aussie news site has picked up on a little reported story that the map used during the Iranian hostage crisis might have been less than accurate:

A BRITISH map of the northern Gulf where Iran seized 15 naval personnel in March was not as accurate as it should have been and Britain was fortunate Iran did not contest it, a review into the crisis said…

A British Ministry of Defence map published during the crisis showed a territorial water boundary extending from the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq out to sea.

However experts say no maritime boundary between the two countries has been agreed and the line was based on a 1975 land boundary that could have shifted over time if the centre of the waterway had moved due to natural causes.

This was the map that was quoted as gospel by newspapers and broadcasters. It was frequently used as a way of explaning how the British patrol boat was still in international waters and, by connection, that the Iranian action was illegal. It often appeared as a graphic, or was quoted without attribution by reporters. Its credibility was reified as an irrefutable fact and almost like a pack British journalists seemed reluctant to look into this with any detail. At the time I remember only Craig Murray dissenting from the party line.

It was a crap time to be a consumer of news. Sure we all wished the safe return of the captives but for a newspack that’s said by its worst critics to be ‘feral’ and ’cynical’ it was anything but during the crisis. The emphasis in coverage seemed to back the official position, with no questioning early on of how the negotiations were proceeding or whether the British case was cast iron. The smallest chance that the Iranian action may have been legitimate was dealt with as an impossibility. I can understand that journalists may have thought that it wasn’t the time to undermine the government’s handling of the crisis, especially as lives were involved, but I can’t think of any other time where a hack has sat down and thought ‘I won’t run this story, it might upset the course of government business’. It was patroitism at work here - of a kind we rarely see, and that if not controlled can let us loose from our criticial facilities and print uncertainties as certainties and lies as facts.

Missing a trick…

I don’t remember a disaster like this in the past where people were recommended (as I just saw on BBC News 24) to check the internet for updates. Both the BBC and local newspapers are carrying lists of where water bowsers have been installed to stop Gloucestershire from drying out.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea if some web bod at the BBC, Severn Trent or the Glocs Echo could paste up this list of water bowsers into a Google Maps mash up? That would be 10 times more useful than an anonymous list of streets - and would be more web friendly.