“Please send us your money”: The BBC’s evolving relationship with charitable causes, fundraising and humanitarian appeals

Fundraising for charitable causes has had a key place in the BBC’s schedule since the earliest days of the corporation and the establishment of the weekly radio appeal. As new forms of fundraising through high-profile media events developed in the 1980s, raising unprecedentedly large sums for charity, the BBC had to adjust the way it negotiated with good causes and audiences. These changes coincided with professionalization and rapid growth of the NGO sector, which sought to elicit funds from a wider public using innovative techniques and new ways of reaching out through the media. This article uses internal BBC documents to examine how, against this rapidly changing background, the organization navigated the rules behind broadcasting of appeals. This includes the way that the BBC interacted with the Disasters Emergency Committee that had been established in the 1960s to provide an interface between broadcasters and charities to oversee exceptional fundraising for international causes. In some cases, the BBC faced difficulties in reconciling its duty to educate audiences about charitable causes with the fundraising imperative which relied on TV extravaganzas. In other cases, the BBC confronted the question of whether it was hosting a global fundraising event or simply covering an event organized by others. These kinds of emerging challenges which arose out of new innovations in fundraising via broadcasting produced interesting debates that are still evolving both within the charitable sector and in the way it relates to the media. The BBC’s role within this ecology provides some illuminating insights about the issues connected with raising funds for humanitarian causes

Rethinking balance and impartiality in journalism? How the BBC attempted and failed to change the paradigm

This article reconsiders the concepts of balance and impartiality in journalism, in the context of a quantitative content analysis of sourcing patterns in BBC news programming on radio, television and online in 2007 and 2012. Impartiality is the cornerstone of principles of public service broadcasting at the BBC and other broadcasters modelled on it. However, the article suggests that in the case of the BBC, it is principally put into practice through juxtaposing the positions of the two main political parties – Conservative and Labour. On this basis, the article develops the idea of the ‘paradigm of impartiality-as-balance.’ This paradigm prevails despite the news organisation’s commitment to representing a broader range of opinion. The paradigm of impartiality-as-balance means that only a narrow range of views and voices are heard on the most contentious and important issues. Further, it results in reporting that focuses on party-political conflict, to the detriment of a journalism which provides much-needed context

‘"[B]etween power and the people": Journalist-investigators in Nordic crime fiction'

Recent Nordic crime fiction contains numerous amateur detectives who are professional journalists. Their presence is partly explained by the shared roots and formal affinities of crime reportage and crime fiction, and by the journalistic backgrounds of many Nordic crime writers. However, the rise of the journalist-investigator as a rival to traditional police detectives is also a mark of growing distrust in the competence of the Nordic welfare state and its officials. Nordic journalist-investigators are typically crusading reporters motivated by a desire to uncover and prevent social injustice, including the neglect and abuse of vulnerable social groups by absent, incompetent or corrupt public officials. In acting as moral guardians of social justice, journalist-investigators carry out the principle of the press as a fourth estate, designed to check state power by publicising abuses of authority, and signal a possible shift from the welfare state towards a civil society. However, this role is also compromised by the ethical dilemmas journalist-investigators face between the demands of uncovering information, protecting vulnerable witnesses, informing the public, preventing crime and meeting commercial imperatives. These conflicts spotlight troubling tendencies within crime fiction and crime reportage: both kinds of writing are underpinned by a narrative structure of anticipation, suspense and dramatic revelation and premised upon the reader’s voyeuristic investment in sensational subjects

Trust and Distrust in Public Service Media: A Case Study From the Czech Republic

Although public service media is a trusted island in the media landscape of many countries, trust in public service media is not absolute and universal. This study adopts a qualitative approach to explore what trust and distrust entail for the public, a perspective rarely applied in trust research. Also, it explores the extent to which the sources of trust and distrust are the same and whether the concepts of trust and distrust are identical (only inverse), or linked but separate. It focuses on the Czech Republic, where the level of trust in the news is among the lowest in the world, yet public service media is the most trusted news source (Newman et al., 2022). Based on four focus group discussions with the general public (N = 24), this study analyzes the reasons for the audience's trust and distrust in Czech public service media. There are three main categories: trust in the message (i.e., people trust public service media if, in their view, it provides objective, truthful, reliable, relevant, and fast information without sensationalism and anti-system views); trust in the source (i.e., people trust public service media if they perceive the public service media journalists as professional); and trust in the public service media organizations (i.e., people trust public service media if they perceive the regulatory framework as effective in ensuring independence from politics and oversight boards as a guarantee for quality). As the reasons leading to trust were not identical (only inverse) to the reasons leading to distrust, our findings suggest that trust and distrust in public service media are not two sides of the same coin

Mediating Multiculturally: Culture and the Ethical Mediator

This commentary on mediating multiculturally in a chapter of Mediation Ethics (edited by Ellen Waldman) suggests there are times when mediators should not mediate, because of their own ethical commitments. Commenting on a hypothetical divorce scenario (of Ziba, a 17 year old from her 44 year old husband, with two children aged 3 and 2, where the parties claim to want Shari’a principles to apply), the author (Carrie Menkel-Meadow) suggests that she would not mediate a case which might violate formal laws (American marriage and divorce laws) or infringe on rights that one of the parties might not be fully aware of. A variety of sources of ethics, including formal law, legal and mediation ethical rules, and personal ethical commitments may structure how mediators choose whether to take a case, educate the parties about their rights, make a referral, or how to mediate if complex (and different for each of the parties and/or the mediator) legal, moral, religious and cultural values are at stake. The chapter contains contrasting views expressed by two different mediators, with summary and commentary by the book’s editor

Locating the ‘radical’ in 'Shoot the Messenger'

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below, copyright 2013 @ Edinburgh University Press.The 2006 BBC drama Shoot the Messenger is based on the psychological journey of a Black schoolteacher, Joe Pascale, accused of assaulting a Black male pupil. The allegation triggers Joe's mental breakdown which is articulated, through Joe's first-person narration, as a vindictive loathing of Black people. In turn, a range of common stereotypical characterisations and discourses based on a Black culture of hypocrisy, blame and entitlement is presented. The text is therefore laid wide open to a critique of its neo-conservatism and hegemonic narratives of Black Britishness. However, the drama's presentation of Black mental illness suggests that Shoot the Messenger may also be interpreted as a critique of social inequality and the destabilising effects of living with ethnicised social categories. Through an analysis of issues of representation, the article reclaims this controversial text as a radical drama and examines its implications for and within a critical cultural politics of ‘race’ and representation

Technology Policy, Gender, and Cyberspace

Event based sampling occurs when the time instants are measured everytime the amplitude passes certain pre-defined levels. This is in contrast with classical signal processing where the amplitude is measured at regular time intervals. The signal processing problem is to separate the signal component from noise in both amplitude and time domains. Event based sampling occurs in a variety of applications. The purpose here is to explain the new types of signal processing problems that occur, and identify the need for processing in both the time and event domains. We focus on rotating axles, where amplitude disturbances are caused by vibrations and time disturbances from measurement equipment. As one application, we examine tire pressure monitoring in cars where suppression of time disturbance is of utmost importance

The challenge of achieving impartiality in Maltese TV news programming

This study examines some of the challenges that Maltese broadcasting is facing with respect to the news programming produced by the public service broadcaster and by the other two political stations. The thesis also investigates the concepts of balance and objectivity in news reporting and analyzes the extent to which Maltese TV news programmes succeed in providing balanced, impartial and accurate accounts. Special attention is paid to the role of the public service broadcaster, but consideration is also given to the part played by the two Maltese political stations competing with the public service broadcaster. A particular aim of this study is to measure how the requirement to preserve impartiality and balance impinges on the content of TV news bulletins and current affairs programmes produced by PSB and the other two political stations. The study will also consider the impact of current broadcasting regulations and will examine the degree to which such legislation is relevant in the attempt to achieve impartiality and balance in Maltese news broadcasting. As a basis for the study the thesis focuses on a sample of news programming material broadcast on the three television stations in Malta during a Local Council electoral campaign. The aim is to assess how various news messages are communicated to audiences and to consider whether such messages are perceived as impartial and balanced by the viewers. The study explores how news workers and news producers strive to achieve impartiality and balance in their day-to-day practices. Finally the thesis makes one or two tentative suggestions as to how current broadcasting legislation might be amended in order for the Broadcasting Authority can become a more effective watchdog and is able to intervene in cases where news programming is not deemed to be balanced and impartial