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grasman

Listed below are comments made by grasman between Friday, 2nd May 2008 and Wednesday, 21st October 2009.

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Tuesday 20 October 2009 03:55am on 21 Oct 2009 The Newsnight coverage of Mervyn King's speech on the need to separate retail banking from high-risk investment activities was disappointing. A brief mention was given of the (rather uncertain) position of the Tories, but no mention of what was the really significant congruence - that Mervyn King was now proposing _exactly_ what Vince Cable of the Lib. Dems has been arguing for months: that the two types of banking _must_ be separated.

In journalistic terms surely _this_ was 'the story' - that King was now supporting Cable's position.

The BBC has been criticized recently for sticking to a 'two-party' approach to political commentary. Here was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate that the BBC acknowledges that the third party has different, clearly-articulated and highly relevant views - and it failed the test!
A sombre warning 03:37am on 21 Oct 2009 The Newsnight contribution on this was disappointing. A brief mention was given of the (rather uncertain) position of the Tories, but no mention of what was the really significant congruence - that Mervyn King was now saying _exactly_ what Vince Cable of the Lib. Dems has been arguing for months - that the two types of banking _must_ be separated.

The BBC has been criticized recently for sticking to a 'two-party' approach to political commentary. Here was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate that the BBC recognizes that the third party has different, clearly-articulated views - and it failed the test!
Mumbai, Twitter and live updates 12:18pm on 04 Dec 2008 I was concerned at the time, and am still concerned, at the inclusion of Twitter-sourced material in your 'main' story.

This is, journalistically-speaking, very dangerous. The BBC has a world-renowned reputation for accuracy and balance. You risk this by including 'editorial' material from other sources in the in-line text.

By all means have an editorially-separate section, like Have Your Say', but ensure it is clearly distinguished as being 'outside' the journalistically-sourced and editorially-verified material. Having a marginal 'Twitter' logo is not enough.

And to the comment that in a fast-moving situation there is not time to sort the content, I think that just illustrates the risk you are running in including unverified material which could be coming from anyone involved in the situation, with whatever motivation.

I know you are aware that the 'bad guys' will be monitoring all your output in real time (evidenced by your care to make sure that hostages did not say exactly where they were in the hotels). My fear is that website staff back in the UK may not be as aware as journalists in the field about the significance or political/security sensitivity of material fed to you from unidentified, unverified and unaccountable sources.

Please keep 'the brand' clean and well-separated from other material!

Chris Haynes
Waiting for Ballmer 4:00pm on 02 May 2008 It's not about technology. What MS needs is signed-up customers who might just deliver a continuing service revenue (Think it through: post Vista MS _know_ that not many people are going to keep paying for new operating systems and office suites which just consume more resources).

So its services like the Yahoo Lists - which bring millionsof signed-up people - that MS is after.

All they have to do then is (a) force them to watch adverts or (b) persuade them to pay subscription fees or (c) charge them fees to avoid having adverts thrust at them.

Think MS can do this well enough to replace the operating system revenues up to XP? Me neither.

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