Via

Sun editor Rebecca Wade, aka The Ginga Ninja:

Good evening.



..

I want to talk to you about journalism.



..

I started out as Eddie Shah’s tea girl and went on to attend this college before starting work at The News of the World.

When, at the age of 27, I was made deputy editor of the News of the World, some struggled with the concept.

At the corporate golf day, a senior male executive lost the buttons off his shirt.

The editor and I were busy meeting and greeting our high-profile guests when suddenly a golf shirt and some buttons were thrust into my hand.

‘’When you’ve gotta minute darlin’  - sew ‘em back on for me, I’m teeing off in twenty minutes.’’



…

———

Campaigns provide a unique connection to the public especially when the subject matter is of a serious nature.





For me, nothing can illustrate this connection better than our recent Baby P campaign.

The public outcry was deafening. And we began our fight for justice with a determination to expose the lack of accountability and responsibility for Baby P’s brutal death.

We delivered 1.5 million signatures to Downing Street and the collective power worked.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls was forced to use emergency legislation to ensure that those responsible were held to account.

 

We received many many thousands of letters at The Sun about our Baby P coverage.

I’d like to read you one:



 ‘I have never been a huge fan of The Sun, however I thank you for the coverage of Baby P. I am so grateful for the campaign. This is not a modern day witch-hunt but a petition for justice. Please, please do not relent.’

————-

Can we survive this economic climate if we keep investment in journalism at the heart of what we do?

I suggest to you tonight: in the words of Bob The Builder, plagiarised by Barak Obama.

Yes. We. Can.

Thank you.

Spotter

Obama has new Blackberry - because people who are really imporant need a special mobile phone. Right, kidz!

Developed for the National Security Agency’s Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device (SME PED) program, the Sectéra Edge is certified to protect wireless voice communications classified Top Secret and below as well as access e-mail and websites classified Secret and below.

No MP3 player.
No phone.
No Crazy Frog

Spotter: Guido

Take it… away…

Nancy Pelosi is full of it:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed this weekend that birth control funding must be part of the stimulus package – because, after all, babies are a burden to our economy.

She’s right. Babies are a burden - but not just to the economy – try everything. They can’t read, they can’t walk, they can`t hold down jobs, and like Larry King they can’t even dress themselves. In short: these smelly beasts offer nothing that can help us get our economy back on its feet.

And breathe….

“Bikes Not Bombs promotes bicycle technology as a concrete alternative to war and environmental destruction” - BikesNotBombs.org

E.U. representative says  Hamas Responsible for Gaza.

Masterchef rule:

It’ doesn’t matter what any of the hapless wannabe chefs slop up so long as the fittest, youngest bird wins.

Rule ends.

In Germany Nazis newspapers are en vogue:

German police have confiscated 280 copies of a reprinted Nazi newspaper published by a British company, Albertas. Historians had previously praised the reprint series, published in a popular history magazine in Germany. But the authorities in Bavaria fear the papers’ hate-filled propaganda may re-ignite real Nazi fervour. (Via Deutsche Welle)

I imagine that the real nutters already have the orginals, possibly framed…

Copyright:

Europe wants to extend the period of copyright on sound recordings.

Rod Blagojevich:

1. He is innocent.
2. Thanks to everyone in the media for focusing so tightly on the whole Senate seat matter, and not extorting the Chicago Tribune, or strong-arming the Children’s Memorial Hospital.
3. He should get to call “witnesses” in his impeachment trial. Like Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett. Because this will prove that Emanuel and Jarrett once talked to him.
4. The fact that he cannot call witnesses is an abridgement of the entire Constitution and a desecration of Paul Revere’s grave.
5. This could HAPPEN TO ANYONE!
6. The only reason any of this is happening is because he’s been such a good friend to the Illinois people, and the State Senate hates them, and wants them to die.
7. Also, this is about a crazy conspiracy to enact a tax increase!
8. The only reason he wanted to maybe work a deal for Obama’s Senate Seat was because it was part of his convoluted plan to pass a much needed public works project.
9. Cowboys!
10. Seriously, cowboys.

Round him up…

Der Spiegel suggests Palestinians may hold Hamas responsible for the war:

“I used to support Hamas because they fought for our country, for Palestine,” says Sadala. Hamas stood for a new start, for an end of corruption, which had spread like cancer under the moderate Fatah. In the 2006 elections Hamas won the majority with their message of change, said Sadala, who earned a living in the building business. Gesticulating wildly, the 52-year-old surveyed the ruins of the bedroom: “That is the change that they brought about. We were blasted back 2,000 years.”

Who suffers. Who alwys suffers for belicose leadership?

Sky News chief John Ryley says on Gaza and charity:

The absolute impartiality of our output is fundamental to Sky News and its journalism. That is why, after very careful consideration, we have concluded that broadcasting an appeal for Gaza at this time is incompatible with our role in providing balanced and objective reporting of this continuing situation to our audiences in the UK and around the world.

BBC Slammed For Refusing Gaza Appeal
BBC Refuses to Air Appeal for Gaza Relief, Will Rerun Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch Instead

Really, though—how does not accepting a single ad make them impartial when the BBC bias is so clear that they’ve refused to release a study commissioned to see if they are biased against Israel?

An independent panel in May found the BBC’s reporting from Israel did “not consistently constitute a full and fair account of the conflict but rather, in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture.”

However, the 38-page report commissioned by the BBC’s governors to “assess whether the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict meets the required standards of impartiality” found that apart from “individual lapses” there “was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias” in its reporting.

The panel found that BBC reporting displayed “gaps in coverage, analysis, context and perspective” and failed to “maintain consistently the BBC’s own established editorial standards, including on language.”

They recommended a senior manager be appointed to oversee BBC coverage of the Middle East, that its reporting provide a “full and fair” account of the “complexities” of the conflict, that its complaints procedure be revised, and that it reform its use of language.

It’s a joke.

SEE: BBC Gaza Appeal: Joke Of The Day

YOU! Yes you! Stop it. Whatever you are doing.. Stop it!

This EU Council decision of 20th January on the establishment of a pan-EU ‘criminal’ database includes the following ‘offences’ :-

• Offences related to waste
• Unintentional environmental offences
• Insult of the State, Nation or State symbols
• Insult or resistance to a representative of public authority
• Public order offences, breach of the public peace
• Revealing a secret or breaching an obligation of secrecy
• Unintentional damage or destruction of property
• Offences against migration law - an “Open category” (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• Offences against military obligations - an “Open category” (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• Unauthorised entry or residence
• Other offences an “Open category” (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• Other unintentional offences
• Prohibition from frequenting some places
• Prohibition from entry to a mass event
• Placement under electronic surveillance (”fixed or mobile” - eg: home, car, mobile phone etc)
• Withdrawal of a hunting / fishing license
• Prohibition to play certain games/sports
• Prohibition from national territory
• Personal obligation - an “Open category” (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• “Fine” - all fines. inc minor non-criminal offences

The database knows all. The database is watching…

Spotter

Spotter

Hamas - because they care about the Palestinians, right?

PALESTINIAN civilians living in Gaza during the three-week war with Israel have spoken of the challenge of being caught between Hamas and Israeli soldiers as the radical Islamic movement that controls the Gaza strip attempted to hijack ambulances.

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. “Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected,” Mr Shriteh told the Herald. “We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us.”

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety.

The people are trapped by their leaders. Time for the women be in charge….

Jihad Watch: Hamas offers Israel one-year truce
In pummeled Gaza, Hamas recoups | csmonitor.com

HAPPY Australia Day!

It’s the day to celebrate all things Australian but how true blue are you? Are you dinky di or dinky don’t know?

Take the test…

George Bush - a poem to chewy on. A reader writes:

The best Texan by far,
Was the chewy,
filling-sucking,
Texan Bar.