“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
Note:
I think this BBC Panorama documentary and reporter Joe Casey should go down in history, not only for raising awareness of the evil actions it witnessed, but also to highlight the reasons why serious investigative journalism should never die out. How will these investigations be supported in the blog, social media and citizen journalism news landscape? Some digital & alternative media activists call for the overthrow of the traditional media regimes, but it seems to me that “old media” still serves an important function in society. It has always been my view that in the UK alternative/community media platforms should co-exist with, but not overthrow, traditional media networks. Alternative media activists in different countries will have different arguments as to whether this is the same for them.
I’ve just finished watching the first episode of ’Famous Rich & Homeless‘ on BBC1. On seeing the title of course I was sceptical – five ‘celebrities’ pretending to be homeless for a few nights wasn’t my idea of in-depth investigation and sincerity. It just sounds wrong, crass, cringe worthy, and a symbol of everything that is wrong with television documentary.
Though I have to admit on watching it, I found it was an extremely powerful programme and the format worked well. One of the ‘celebs’ - the extremely rich and spoilt aristocratic Marquis of Blandford – left the experiment on the second day after reverting to type and cheating, spending two nights in a hotel instead of on the streets. The others however took to the challenge of sleeping rough, begging for money, and trying their best to understand the homeless experience and living in that situation.
Even writing this I know it sounds awful, as it is obvious they had a *camera crew following them and they had the knowledge their warm homes and families were awaiting them in a few days. The opening 10 minutes are crass and nearly made me want to switch over, but it really is worth staying with and watching in full. I’ve directed a tv documentary about youth homelessness in the past and know the difficulty of representing such a tragic life situation and engaging an audience in something they don’t necessary want to see.
I did feel however that this programme showed what life can be like living on the streets, not from the perspective of someone who has been there for years, but showing how difficult it would be to cope if you found yourself in that situation tonight. It was fascinating to see how each of the ‘clebz’ coped with the situation according to their personality.
The former tennis player Annabel Croft, who is quite possibly the poshest, politest and most innocent woman in the entire world, was (understandably) too shy and scared to beg for money, so she made “friends” with other homeless people. She was so polite to them they not only offered her THEIR money (she politely refused – “Oh you are so kind, I couldn’t possibly take your money.”), one of them gave her a leaflet showing where all the free ‘soup kitchens’ were. She commented on how friendly the homeless community were to each other. She made another homeless friend who showed her where the soup kitchens were, and basically she managed to stay alive on sheer politeness alone. On the second night however this nearly came undone when another homeless person started an argument with her and another pulled out a knife behind her. A crash course in the need to be street wise. Understandably that night, as she slept in a shop doorway, she felt less safe, and cried herself to sleep.
Bruce Jones, former actor of soap opera Coronation Street, did not want to beg either. He used his work ethic to earn money by offering to take photographs of tourists using their own camera on Westminster Bridge. He then asked them for some change, which they happily gave. The entrepreneurial opportunity came to him when some tourists asked him to take their photo, and he took the initiative to take the business opportunity. He became proud that he was earning money and not begging for it, and was so exhausted and stressed after the long day and bad night’s sleep in a subway, he went to a pub with the £12 he had earned and drank Guinness and watched football all evening. Not thinking first he should get some food, he went to sleep back in the subway hungry. The next morning he was too hung over and hungry to earn any more money (lack of enthusiasm from lack of energy!), he did not make a single penny and didn’t eat again for another 48 hours.
Here is a clip I found that I think is from next week’s episode. It is the Bruce at the end of his patience with living the homeless way. I don’t necessarily agree with what he is saying but I totally understand why he says it. No room for scepticism here. Powerful stuff!
On the first night the comedian and media presenter Hardeep Kohli used his wit and charm to beg for money, and made a substantial amount, and seemed to make the whole experiment look easy. He slept in a doorway that night, and the next day the grind of begging, tiredness and coldness started to get him down, and each person that refused to give him money, began to eat away at his pride and depression set in. He tried to find cash-in-hand casual work, but with no success. That night he slept on the streets hungry and depressed, with his usual optimism knocked out of him.
The journalist Rosie Boycott begging very difficult, to the extent that when a young woman gave her some money after Rosie gave her a sob story about being the victim of an abusive relationship, she felt so immoral that the next morning she gave the money away to a Big Issue seller to absolve her guilt. Rather than give a sob story she chose to beg in more conventional methods, and no one gave her anything. Not even a conversation. She had to admit that she also walks past homeless people without giving them anything. Most of us do. The age-old dilemma of whom to give money to, do you give to everyone who asks, etc, became very stark. The final blow to her pride came when she went into a cafe with the few pence she had to buy a coffee, and the owner chased her out before she even made her order. She just looked homeless, and therefore not wanted. (This scene was filmed from through the window, so the owner did not know she was being filmed.) Rosie commented on how passively she accepted this prejudice, and left the cafe dejected, but peacefully without argument. She had been ground down after only two nights sleeping rough and begging. She had become passive to the inhumanity of people’s attitudes towards homeless people. She began to get by getting to know other homeless people, using her journalistic tendencies to understand how they got there, and the challenges they have faced. As a former heroin user and recovering alcoholic, she was able to relate.
The Marquis of Blandford, I’ve already mentioned him. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, that needs one inserted into his arse!
I will watch with interest at how the four remaining clebz get on. Any viewer has to leave their scepticism to the side, and immerse themselves in the feeling of, “if I was in those shoes….”.
.
.
.
* Looking at the credits at the end of the programme it looks like it was filmed using discreet one person dv camera/sound operators, not a full crew. (I did the same when I made my documentary.)
Extract from ‘History of Community Media – Literature Review Part 1′ – Shawn Sobers (c) 2010
The 1960s saw a new phenomenon arise that changed the landscape of British radio (and arguably long term also television) forever – the advent of offshore pirate radio (Coyer, 2007: 18). Finding a loophole in the law, repurposed fishing vessels became floating studios and transmitted radio shows into the UK from international waters, immune from law enforcement. Following the lead from the European stations, these ‘pirates’ created new audiences alienated by BBC’s output, and were enough competition for the BBC and the British government to take notice. In 1967, following significant BBC restructuring, Radio 1 was formed to provide popular music content, and also BBC local radio stations established in cities and towns across the UK, followed in 1973 by the commercial stations being allowed to broadcast for the first time with the creation of Independent Local Radio licences (ILR) (Coyer, 2007: 19).
Still following the theme of “alternative voices to the mainstream media”, rising levels of immigration to the UK, particularly of commonwealth citizens from the Caribbean in the 1960s, created new audiences for the European and pirate offshore stations, who were largely playing soul, funk, and others forms of African American music (Hebdige, 1987). The mid-1960s saw new legislation passed that made it harder for the offshore pirate stations to operate and they soon closed. When Radio 1 became the dominant popular music station alongside smaller commercial broadcasters in the 1970s, some members of the Caribbean communities set up their own inland illegal pirate stations “geared…around a love of music and frustration that black music was largely absent from Radio 1 and the local commercial stations” (Coyer, 2007: 19).
[End of extract. See references at the bottom of this post.]
And now for a piece of suitable music. (see the lyrics below)
Pirate’s Anthem – Home T feat. Cocoa Tea & Shabba Ranks, Greensleeves Records, (C) 1989
Them a call us pirates
Them call us illegal broadcasters
Just because we play what the people want
Them a call us pirates
Them call us illegal broadcasters DTI try stop us but they can’t
One station could not run England
Two station could not run England
Three station could not please the nation
Everybody wants to listen to the free station
Advertisers stay true make your dance hall ram
They take the equipment and put it in a van
If they broke down one we make five more strong
Down in England we’ve got lots of radio stations
playing the people music night and day
reggae, calypso
hip hop or disco
the latest sound today is what we play
on and on
off and on
on and off and on
If they turn it off we have to turn it on back
If they turn it off we have to turn it on back
If they broke it down we have to build it up back
If they take away our records then we get fresh stock
Now me love these stations me love them to the max
Me release a dub plate and all boom shack
The DTI fight but they can’t stop that
Pirates
Illegal broadcasters
Just because we play what the people want
Them a call us pirates
Them call us illegal broadcasters
DTI try stop us but they can’t
Oh no they can’t
One station could not run England
Two station could not run England
Three station could not run the nation
That’s why everybody wants to listen to the free station
To advertise your dance and ram your session
If it’s music you want and get them new brand
Action stations get set everyone
If they broke down one we build five more strong
They’re passing laws
They’re planning legislation
Trying their best to keep the music down
DTI why don’t you leave us alone
We only play the music that the people want
=============
References from extract:
Coyer, K. (2007). Mysteries of the black box unbound: An alternative history of radio, in K. Coyer, T. Dowmunt, T. and A. Fountain (Eds.) (2007). The Alternative Media Handbook, Routledge, Oxon, UK. P.p. 15 – 28
Hebdige, D. (1987). Cut’n’Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music, Routledge, London
Earlier this week, John Gibson, chair of the Independent Schools Association, told its annual conferencethat many children are growing up in ”prison-like environments”because they are surrounded by technology and don’t play outdoors enough. (See the BBC story here.)
Even though I’m an advocate of media literacy and the role of digital media in education, I agree with Gibson and recognise, as with anything, that there are appropriate levels of usage for anything, and too much time at a computer or tv screen doing anything is not good for you, educational or not. I’m from the ’Why Don’t You?” generation and remember with fond memories the lines “Why Don’t You Just Switch Off The Television Set And Go Do Something Less Boring Instead?”.
I don’t let my own children stay on the computer for more than about 20 minutes at a time, (“do as I say, not as a I do kids!!”), so absolutely, get out there, get muddy, get climbing trees, and get making dens in the bushes. The problem with today’s environment though, is that parents are also scared that their children are going to get kidnapped, or whatever else horrific situations our imaginations can conjure. So now not only are screens the electronic babysitters (nurture), they are also the new nature.
Want to go bowling kids? Let’s plug in the Wii. Want to paint a picture? Go to the Cbeebies website and use their painting programmes and so you don’t get the carpet messy. Want to own, love and nurture a pet of your own? Tamagochi’s are now half price in Toyz R Us! And most of all children, do you want to meet up with your friends and chat about girls & boys & play games & just be the children that you are, then why not log onto Facebook, or one of the thousands of children’s social network sites that are child safe and protected from ‘stranger danger’? (Judging from some of the things I’ve seen on the internet, I’d rather my children being out there in the ‘real world’ thank you very much.)
A highly contradictory part of me wept every time I saw my 8 year old daughter play on her Nintendo DS since we bought it for her, as she used to spend a lot of her time doing arts & crafts activities, and now she had her nose stuck in the mini computer playing Brain Gym, figuring out timetables and anagrams and lateral thinking puzzles. Highly contradictory, as of course I was pleased she was using her brain, and also relieved she was using a very expensive present, but I was now concerned about her eyes. As parents, we need to have something to worry about, as the alternative is just too frightening to comprehend.
But that’s just the point actually, parents are also scared of the evils of the internet, so, if we believed the hype about deranged adults lurking around every physical and virtual corner, then our children would be house bound sitting on their hands. But that is purely theoretical, as I would like to hope that humans are more sensible than that (I trust). We know that all things need moderation. If a child is indeed living in a web prison, then yes they need to get out more. If they are out all of the time, then maybe they should also come in once in a while and, I don’t know, read a book perhaps. But the idealised nature of the traditional family are perhaps long gone. Watching Saturday evening television together as a nuclear family used to be the ideal demographic for programmes between 6.30 – 9pm on BBC1 and ITV regions, but now you get a situation where Britain’s Got Talent gets more people watching short clips on Youtube than anyone would ever sit down to watch the whole programme on tv. The reality is that young people’s lives are busy, just like the media they consume. A video clip, a twitter, an instant message, a text, and photo, and video call, a poke (on facebook for those who don’t know!!) At least they’re not out having sex and doing drugs, eh?
We might never know how these new technologies are affecting young people’s brains and they way they think and process information. Some say it has depleted their attention spans, and others say it has improved it. Nothing was ever as good as in “our day”, the *80s/70s/60s/50s/40s (delete as applicable).
I’m sure it’s a rare teenager that only sits on a computer and never reads a single sentence on the internet, never has to figure out a query/puzzle of some kind of Facebook game or quiz, never has to count how long it will take to download the 673mb dodgy movie before their mum comes home from work in 38 minutes. (That is a complex transferable and mathematical skill!!) Also, what teenager doesn’t hate their parents so much that they just have to get out of the house and trawl the shopping malls and hang out in the park until one minute past their curfew, or getting their ears screamed at by sirens only they can hear to move them along? Young people are damned if they leave the house, and damned if they stay indoors.
I’m making light of all this slightly as, if we don’t, we start to believe the hype, and our children would grow to be as neurotic as we are. So yes, let’s listen to what John Gibson has to say as it is important, but let’s also embrace the positive things in these new technologies as well, and most of all, with guidance and clearly setting the boundaries, trust that we have brought up our children to be sensible individuals. Unless we put a microchip in their brains and cameras in their eyes, we can’t be with them everywhere they go in life.
The article talks about how Mattel are opening a new flagship store in Shanghai, hoping to encourge a whole new country to embrace the Barbie brand. They see China being their largest market in the future. Also, even though their are “Asian looking” Barbie on sale in this 6 floor store, it is the “blond, stick-thin, traditional model” that is being sold the most.
Of course here I could wax lyrical about the impact of representation in the media and the blue eyed, blond hair aesthetic as the indoctrinated face of beauty that has been imposed on the rest of the world by the culturally imperialist Western world. (I do believe that but have to get a train soon so no time to really get into it now! ) It is a well trodden debate though that you can find elsewhere. See this video for just a snippet, based on infamous experiments in the States in the 1950′s.
The BBC article then goes on to talk about how Disney have just launched the world’s first ever branded DisneySchool in Shanghai. The school will teach Chinese Chinese children how to speak English using “the very latest audio and video technology and of course enlist the help of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and all the famous characters children elsewhere in the world know so well. ”
If the Barbie store is about cultural infiltration by capitalist means, then the Disney School is about the indoctrination of culture on another culture by means of not only consumer choicem but by the imposition of an educational strategy on the youngest generation of Chinse children. Disney will no longer be a manufacture of popular culture products, but a trusted provider and source of knowledge, information and wisdom. A clear strategy to secure the world’s most populous country as your future customers. (Read Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ to read about the practice of multi-national corporations and their motive for ‘branding’.)
In this blog I’m being admittedly subjective and opinionated, as that it largly the function of a blog. Anyone expected to find impartial journalistic reporting on a blog are fooling themselves. You would expect to find impartial journalism on the BBC though, wouldn’t you?
At time of writing this, the BBC article states in its closing paragraphs that “there is nothing sinister about it of course. The company has a long history of providing educational materials for classrooms around the world and it has put a lot of effort and research into ensuring the programme works. But just as with Barbie, their Shanghai enterprise takes what they have done before a step further, in their case by opening and running their own schools.”
So there you have it. The BBC’s expert critical assessment on the motives of Disney, Mattel and other multi-national that are eyeing the Chinse market. Not even any mention that most of thse products would have been made in China in the first place and then sold back to them for astronomical prices.
And this just scratches the surface of what all of this is about.
I have a train to catch. Ironically I’m attending an BBC ”knowledge exchange” research event in London.
10 days ago I went to the Houses of Parliament with my comrades Emma Agusita and Cathy Poole, for a seminar discussing Media Literacy, hosted Danny Alexander MP and the Associate Parliamentary Media Literacy Group. After introductions by Danny, Ian Hargreaves (Dir of Ofcom & Researcher at Cardiff Uni), and Peter Packer (Strategy Adviser to UK Film Council and UK Media Literacy Task Force), there followed presentations from young people involved in news production media projects with the BBC (School Report) and Channel 4 (Breaking the News).
The Houses of Parliament, yesterday.
Both projects and presentations were impressive, and demonstrated to the audience the great things that can happen when professional practitioners work with young people, and visa versa.
BBC’s ‘School Report’ involved 11-14 year olds from 120 schools to produce video reports about stories from their local areas and issues that effect their worldviews. This project was linked with Hackney’s City Learning Centre and Vivi Lachs, (who I first came across in 2002 at a FutureLab conference at the Watershed in Bristol named ‘Contagious Creativity’. I was immediately inspired by her back then and was pleased to see her still on the front line of media literacy education). The children talked about the video reports they produced, which ranged from Muslim children discussing their responses to feeling ‘British’, a report on the ‘true picture of Hackney’ (in response to a C4 programme naming the area the worst place to live), and the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. They also interviewed Tony Blair and had 2 days support time with BBC journalists. Helen Shreeve from BBC said their aim was for this experience to be had by EVERY 11-14 year old at least once in every school across the country.
Channel 4′s ‘Breaking the News’, as described by it’s co-ordinator Adam Gee, involved 14-16 year olds from schools and community organisations to attend C4 news briefings to get a true behind-the-scenes insight, and they came up with alternative ways of producing news stories. They also set up parallel news rooms in various schools and set up an online editor which allowed the young people to edit stories in their own way. One of the big impacts of this project was the way it made the C4 producers such as Martin Fewell, (deputy editor of Channel 4 News) think differently about their audiences, and take them out of the comfort zone of always reporting certain stories in a certain way. (Time will tell as to how this will change on screen.)
In the Q&A session with the young people, the most common responses to the question, “what impact have these projects had on you?” were;
1) Self-confidence
2) Wanting to be a journalist
3) Ability to have own voice heard
Both BBC and C4 are rolling out their projects to be taken up by schools and other groups across the country, or actually anywhere in the world as the resources are web based.
There is no doubt that these were fantastic projects, though watching the presentations I had a strange sense of de ja vu, as they (especially BBC’s School Report) was identical to our (Firstborn Creatives’) 2003 – present project Channel Zer0. (Or to see the website for Channel Zer0 in text only version rather than Flash,click here) WhatI saw in these presentations in Parliament was Channel Zer0 again, though on a much grander and gigantic scale. Please know that with these comments I’m not being a jealous playa hata as I’m applauding them on their achievements. It was slightly strange for me though as I saw before me how an institution such as the BBC could (seemingly) effortlessly mobilise in 4 months a project that we have been trying to really galvanise over 4 years. Same with the Channel 4 project which was also quite similar.
And here in lies the opportunity for a more sustainable future for both BBC’s and Channel 4′s projects, that I fear hasn’t really been grasped as yet.
Both are relying on teachers, youth workers, etc, to visit & download their online resources and replicate the projects year after year. The BBC talked about this years schools becoming mentors for the news schools. Whilst knowing the BBC I’m sure they could make this happen, but really teachers are far too busy and already swamped by initiatives for a huge number of them to take it upon themselves to deliver an online media literacy project.
Here BBC & C4 are missing the opportunity to commission community media companies across the country to take these initiatives forward in the subsequent years after this initial pilot. Helen Shreeve quite rightly said they wouldn’t be able to give the same access tob BBC journalists, etc as they did this year, but contracting smaller media companies to take this work forward would allow access to media expertise. Here it might sound like I’m touting for work for Firstborn Creatives, which I very well might be, but much bigger than that is the unique opportunity for the big institutions such as BBC & C4 work strategically with the smaller community media companies to deliver an annual project that would have national impact, and a model globally on what is achievable in the name of media literacy.
To be fair both Adam and Helen did suggest they could link with community video outfits, but the emphasis and resources definitely were steering in the direction of their online resources. For starters, they are A LOT cheaper than getting funding to commission a load of community media organisations. Finance is obviously a huge issue here. But so is the opportunity. I’ll work my hardest to at least getting it discussed at a deeper, logistical level.
