The Chances of Anything Going to Mars

At just after 6:30 this morning, history was made. NASA landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. That was undoubtedly the biggest news that was happening live at 6:30 this morning. I don’t think any reasonable person could question that. The people scheduling the stories that would be covered on the BBC News Channel are obviously… Continue reading The Chances of Anything Going to Mars

Mediawatchery Blogging Meet-Up Thingy 3

We’ve done it twice before and they just can’t stop us. So we’re going to do it all over again. This is that occasional thing where the authors of some media-watching blogs get together in a pub to drink a couple of lemonades and make plans that will solve all the world’s problems. The first… Continue reading Mediawatchery Blogging Meet-Up Thingy 3

LoveFilm and Silverlight

Yesterday, LoveFilm announced that they are changing the technology which powers their film streaming service. From early in January the existing Flash-based system will be replaced by one which uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. This is extremely disappointing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there’s the immediate technological fallout. Silverlight doesn’t run on as many platforms… Continue reading LoveFilm and Silverlight

Winterval

From today’s Daily Mail corrections column: We stated in an article on 26 September that Christmas has been renamed in various places Winterval. Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham in 1997 and 1998. We are happy to make clear that Winterval… Continue reading Winterval

Daily Mail Corrections

The Daily Mail, along with its sister paper The Mail on Sunday, has recently started to print a corrections and clarifications page. It’s a pretty half-arsed affair for many reasons. The only way to find it is by searching for it by title. There’s no link for it anywhere on the site and it doesn’t… Continue reading Daily Mail Corrections

Media-Watchery Blogging Meet-Up Thingy 2

Remember back to those hazy summers days in August? A group of media bloggers got together for a high-level summit in a pub in Camden. You were invited. You might even have been there. We talked, we drank, we laughed. A good time was had by all and it seemed like we had put the… Continue reading Media-Watchery Blogging Meet-Up Thingy 2

History Repeating

Last week I thought that I had traced the origin of the Mail’s recent obsession with BC and AD back to Peter Hitchens column on September 18th of this year. In this article, Hitchens wrote: The BBC’s Chief Commissar for Political Correctness (whom I imagine as a tall, stern young woman in cruel glasses issuing… Continue reading History Repeating

The Pod Delusion

A quick plug for The Pod Delusion. Their latest episode was published today and it includes me talking about the Mail’s BBC/BCE story. Getting the piece recorded was all a bit last minute and rushed, but I enjoyed doing it and hope to do more stuff with them in the future. I highly recommend listening… Continue reading The Pod Delusion