Adrian in Trouble with the Fuzz....Face Fuzz that is!

A Beardless Adrian Chiles courtesy of:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/damo1977/ / CC BY 2.0

I sat and wondered during Match of the Day Two this week who the scruffy looking chap who had replaced Adrian Chiles was, then I realised it was just Adrian complete with a beard!

Now although I thought he looked a little scruffy and made a few jokes with my friends about him not making the effort for MOTD2 anymore I think I could cope if he continued to sport the face fuzz. Unfortunately though, it's not down to me, The BBC have told him to "lose" the beard as it is "inconsistent" with role on The One Show. According the Media Monkey on the Guardian website, "Adrian's bush has not gone down well" so it looks like we'll be seeing the normal Adrian Chiles back on MOTD2 from now on!

Will you be welcoming back Adrian without his beard? Or do you think it's unfair for the BBC to tell him to lose it?

Ian Anderson Comes to Town...

Yesterday at University we had the pleasure of a guest lecture from Ian Anderson, recently the editor of the BBC 10 o'clock news. It was a very interesting couple of hours in which Ian analysed some news packages we had prepared earlier in the week. This seemed a terrifying prospect when we were told this and we put a lot of work into trying to make sure our package was perfect!!

All in all it went pretty well for our whole class, we got some good comments but I think the most useful thing for me was the improvement tips he gave us as a group.

There were a lot of tips on how to improve so I have just explained the one I found particularly useful. I found Ian's tips on the importance of a Piece to Camera (PTC) and how it can be used to turn a standard story towards the angle you are aiming for, most useful. For example, we did our package about University of Winchester students graduating and the possible problems they may have finding a job due to the current economic climate. Our PTC was pretty short and we didn't use it well enough to emphasise the angle of our story, and Ian recommended that we aim for longer PTC's, around 20-30 seconds long, to improve this.

I also found it very interesting to look into his career as a journalist and his rise from The Reading Evening Post, where he started, to eventually being the editor of the BBC 10 o'clock news.

I didn't take any photo's on the day so if you would like to see some of Ian looking around the TV studio at the University of Winchester and talking to students please see my friend's blog who did take some photos: http://mattcliff.blogspot.com/2009/10/university-of-winchester-welcomes-ian.html

Protests Over Question Time at Television Centre...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flem007_uk/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

I've just been watching the footage from the BBC of protesters breaking into the BBC grounds to voice their feelings about BNP leader Nick Griffin appearing on Question Time.

Griffin's appearance has been very much the media focal point this week, and rightly so, but I think when it comes to breaking barriers and storming into the grounds of the BBC then the protests have gone too far. In my previous post you can see I don't agree with the BNP and am hoping that tonight is a negative experience for the party with regards to politics but I think that it's an important, and perhaps even more importantly, correct decision to have the BNP leader on the show.

People voted for the BNP and the party won seats in the European elections and therefore he deserves the publicity and position on Question Time in the same way that the representatives from Labour or the Conservatives do for example. The people that voted for the BNP deserve the chance to see the party they voted for on the show giving his views in the same way Tory voters would expect to see Conservatives on there.

I'm not agreeing with the BNP in anyway here but I think by breaching security at the BBC today then the protesters overstepped the mark. We live in a democracy after all and although some of the BNP's policies are very questionable, whilst they are a legal political party and whilst they have voters then the BBC is right to give them the airtime.

Tonight's Question Time isn't one to miss! 10.35 p.m. BBC 1.

Here's the link to the video of the protests from today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8321199.stm

Powerful Blogging...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnett/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Since starting this blog I been interested in trying to improve it, regularly update it, make it more popular and increase the number of hits it receives a day. I have also taken an interest in blogging in general and have started to research different blogs and have started to realise how these free blogs, available and accessible to a majority of the world, can have a large impact on everyday life.

In truth, the first time i realised blogs could be powerful was last year at university when being told about Mayhill Fowler and her scoops in America, using the very popular Huffington Post blog website (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/). Here is an article from LA Times explaining what Fowler managed to do using her blog...http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fowler7-2008jun07,0,4901600.story.

But tonight I discovered a BBC article from Thursday showing how blogs in Cuba are causing a concern for it's communist run Government. In a country where only 2.1% of the population have access to the global Internet, it's impressive that ordinary Cuban citizens can cause this sort of fuss using just online blogs.

This also displays how freedom of expression can even exist in an country like Cuba and quote from the BBC article sums this up well;

"The emergence of independent bloggers is "evidence of a generation shift, a sign that even a country as isolated as Cuba is slowly moving into the 21st Century," Daniel Erikson, an expert at the Washington-based organisation Inter-American Dialogue said recently on US-based thedialogue.org." Here's the BBC article i got this from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8295503.stm

As the BBC article says, these blogs have been causing a bit of a stir with the Cuban government due to people speaking their minds and beginning to question aspects of the communist state. But the power these blogs can hold is shown by the fact that a blog from the Cuban blog community Generación Y (http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/) was named as one of the best 25 blogs in the world by Time Magazine.

It's impressive stuff, feel free to post any blogs you find interesting in the comment section below. Blog on.