Colette Bowe
The Government today confirmed the appointment of Colette Bowe as Ofcom’s new Chairman. She will take up the position on 11 March 2009
My kind of Girl
Heroine’s welcome for Sam Davies the fourth woman ever to have have completed the Vendee Globe. Her time of 95 days 4 hours and 39 mins was a day longer than it took Ellen Macarthur (in 2001) but she sailed an extra 3,000 miles, due to gates inserted to keep the fleet away from icebergs, and endured wretched conditions that proved too much for 19 of the 30 skippers, who dropped out. “Sam thoroughly deserves her result,” said Macarthur, “She is the first Brit to finish in the race and she has shown that she is a real force to contend with in offshore racing – and I hope that she will now get all the recognition she deserves.” Dee Caffari and fellow Brit Brian Thompson are due in today.
Love Cheats Beware
Google googled me to download Latitude – it’s a GPS spy-in-your-mobile. It tracks where you are and sends your location to whoever wants it and to Google who’ll send it to the Government for you. Today’s papers are full of Lovecheat Beware alerts. I am looking for volunteers. But knowing where people are has unexpected benefits too. When I last raced across the Atlantic we never saw another boat in three weeks. Yet we were in this nail biting drag-race with yachts beyond our horizon, but not invisible to the empyrean snooper. We plotted their every tack, inching ahead one minute, shouting ‘wait for us’ the next. And they did mostly – Ocean Spirit of Moray finished second out of 40.
Today you can track our two solo Vendee Globe ladies, Samantha Davies (on Roxy lying 3rd) and Dee Caffari (Aviva 5th) and see exactly where they are every second. Two amazing British woman at the front, as the world’s longest toughest horridest race (yes spellchecker there is such a word if I say so) comes to an end. The French will turn out to greet them. We don’t. You can jib at the gibe (sorry, awful pun) but its true. We don’t give a monkeys.
Hoo Wok Wen?
Harmless and silly puns on Chinese surnames have been around a long time. My father’s generation liked to ‘quote’ a Mr Who Flung Dung (on a par with ‘what’s a Grecian urn?’, answer ‘about 10 bob’). So when China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived, I couldn’t help a little frisson at the prospect of deliciously contrived semantic confusions (confucians, surely?).
‘Prime Minister who?’ asks the Queen,
‘No, Wen ma’am’ says Gordon Brown
‘When what?’ says the Queen
You get the drift, right? But another unintentional unexpected calembour occurred.
The Cambridge man who flung the shoe meant
Shoo Wen Now!
Here is the News and its yours, or is it?
Today alone, due to what Boris called ‘the right sort of snow, but the wrong sort of quantities’ the great British public, shirking from home, sent the BBC 24,000! (mobile phone) pictures and over a hundred videos. See for yourself, they are mostly of their kids taking a day off school; sliding down a snowy slope, skiing behind cars along suburban roads and generally having fun. Nothing wrong with that? Nothing. But who owns the copyright? The sender, the mobile phone owner, the person filmed, the broadcaster?
As you know the BBC and Ofcom guidelines define in great detail what broadcasters can do. So what about these images of children or possible breaches of privacy, anonymity? Was there consent? Are some of them technically secret recordings - in which case they enter a procedural minefield.
Just the other day the BBC had to issue a reminder (see below) to producers and PR’s saying “Only in exceptional circumstances will (the BBC) use material supplied by outside organisations (this includes individuals see Ch 6 p 56 BBC EG)) …especially if the BBC was not present when it was recorded. The fact that (the 3rd party) has a vested interest in the subject matter can lead to concerns about the editorial integrity … the BBC cannot vouch for the circumstances in which it was gathered or the editorial standards applied.
None of this seems to apply when its Mums and Dads and Mates mucking about in the snow, on a beach or at some event.
In the great scheme of things, this may seem totally unimportant, until you find yourself screwed out of hundreds of pounds or have your privacy breached with hideous consequences. Think about it. Mobile phone cameras are getting better and better. The pictures ever clearer. What happens when a piece of video footage is so good or news worthy it goes global? (eg that American jet ditching in the Hudson river). In the old days the lucky photographer could receive hundreds, possibly thousands of pounds. Who is protecting those interests?
Nobody wants to see this type of instant citizen journalism stopped - anyway you couldn’t. I just want to know what rights are being breached, or given up, by people’s urge to see their little darlings doing snow angels on the 6 o’clock news. I am going to try to find out, because some time soon, the BBC and the other broadcasters could find themselves in a very tricky situation.
If you know about this sort of thing, do add a comment in the box.
To send videos or pictures to the BBC, all you have to do is either email yourpics@bbc.co.uk, or Text 61124.
How hard is that!