Water Ink

Joanna Lumley complained on Channel 4 News that her peaceful protest on the day of Olympic torch relay in London was almost ignored by the media. On the other side, many Chinese students voiced the frustration of that their show of support, a pro-Olympic torch demonstration if you like, despite turning up in large numbers, was barely mentioned by BBC News 24, who broadcasted most part of the torch reply. It is understandable that stunts, especially violent stunts, always attract more media attention, however I do wonder whether those they tried to grab the torch, or throw themselves to the torch bearers, or ambush the torch with a fire extinguisher, were risking losing their case. Not only they overshadowed their colleagues who insisted on peaceful demonstration, some action, like the one happened in Paris during which several men charged from all directions, wave after wave, towards a disabled torch bearer sitting on a wheel chair in order to grab her torch (well before the flame lit up), did not do any good PR for the movement’s ‘non-violent’ image.

One thing clear is that if the protesters wanted to ‘embarrass China into submission’, they are most likely to find their efforts totally counter-productive. Not only this forces China into a stand off confrontation, but also galvanises Chinese people into showing more support of the Beijing Olympics. Chinese students in Edinburgh are organising a show of support demonstration at city centre this Saturday, followed by a separate protest against the misreporting outside BBC headquarter in London on 19 April. Some may believe Chinese students are either blinded by Communist Party’s nationalistic propaganda or totally insulated from the outside world. However what it really shows is that, just like their counterparts in Britain, Chinese students are usually not into politics, but will rise up to express their views when the issue they really care about comes by.

It is interesting to compare the live broadcast of torch relay in London and San Francisco. The NBC presenters were upbeat and giggling, often indicating the torch relay is a fun thing (even the torch run, torch drive and the cat-and-mouse “where is the torch” thing is fun), positive for San Francisco’s image, including the display of rivalry between anti-China and pro-Olympics demonstrators. BBC News 24’s broadcast, fronted by Chris Eakin, however, gave the overall impression that the torch relay in London, and in San Francisco, were distasteful embarrassment or miserable disasters. I’m not suggesting any conspiracies. Perhaps Americans are not so ashamed of highly-visible, security-minded operation, or just the weather is better there. A serious point, though, is that if violent disruption of Olympic torch relay becomes a fair game to any protest groups, or even turns into a competition of who can, literally, grab the biggest prize, if attempts of grabbing the torch, extinguishing the torch, or worse physical violating the torch bearers can be justified if you happen to like the course, as some British columnists suggest, then the biggest victim will be the Olympic movement.

Those who use violence to disrupt the torch relay may enjoy the maximum media attention they are seeking for, but the consequences are going to be suffered by all of us who rather enjoy Olympic Games and all the festival atmosphere it brings, whatever one’s views on Tibet are.

During last night’s Channel 4 News, Francesca Martinez declared on air that she had withdrawn from Olympic torch relay in London. Martinez of course should do what satisfies her conscience. Her judgement, however, was not helped by the imbalanced reporting and sometimes misinformation from some news organisations. During the introduction of the very same interview in which Martinez made her declaration, Channel 4 News used the footage of Tibetan protesters held and dragged by police, supposedly to demonstrate the brutality of Chinese authority. Except the protest happened in the neigbouring country Napal, not in Tibet. Why Channel 4 News still used the same video footage while their China correspondent Lindsey Hilsum had already reported several days ago the backlash among Chinese people towards western media’s misreporting including the misuse of this very video footage I do not know. I certainly expect more balanced reporting and accuracy from a respected news programme like Channel 4 News.

Among many commentaries about what happened in Tibet and what would happen at Beijing Olympics, some groups advocate either boycotting Beijing Olympics altogether or at least the opening ceremony, or encouraging athletics openly demonstrate during the Games, wearing a Free Tibet t-shirt while competing for example. To see what kind of reaction their proposed action may get, one can do worse than checking the response from the eighty thousand or so Chinese students in the UK. Although most of them won’t hesitate to criticise Chinese government’s handling of events, such as a blind ban of the foreign media, many believe the western media are equally biased and untrustworthy. On the overseas Chinese discussion boards, there have been heated debate, mainly among overseas Chinese students themselves, about whether Tibetan are treated well enough, and how strained the relationship between Tibetan and Han-Chinese is, however most of the participants see Tibet as an integral part of China, many also accuse western media as being one-sided or even fabricating in reporting the violence in Tibet. A seven minute video posted onto YouTube (has been viewed near two million times) reflects the feeling shared by many Chinese students.

A new website, anti-cnn.com, has been set up to expose the western media outlets like CNN, German N-TV, as well as BBC and The Times of “manipulation of evidence” and “biased reporting”. It looks many quite a few western news organisations, in the immediate aftermath of Lhasa riot, used the pictures of Indian and Nepalese police taking away demonstrators in their reports as the evidence of “Chinese army used brutal force to crack down protest”. One screenshot of BBC News website shows a picture of Chinese soldiers wearing medic arm band standing behind an ambulance with the caption of “a heavy military presence in Lhasa”. A YouTube video then shows a slideshow compilation of the materials.

In the UK, an open letter to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been circulated among Chinese students in which the author points out the biased reporting by western media and asks Gordon Brown “not to meet Dalai Lama” when he comes to the UK in May. After the disruption of Olympic flame-lighting ceremony and torch relay in Greece, there are also calls on the message boards to “support the Olympic torch” when it tours through the UK.

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On Sunday there were repeated scenes on the television news of the McCann family returning from Portugal to the UK. There were photographers on the back of motorcycles following their car, more photographers waiting at the gate of the airport, long lens images of an empty runway with the caption ‘Live from Midland Airport’. Those pictures somehow reminded me the footages of police chasing O.J. Simpson. When the photographers rushed to the car windows to take more pictures as if it is a prison car leaving the court, I had a terrible feeling. Didn’t they realise there were two children sitting at the back seat? At that moment, those photographers did look like a pack of ‘feral beasts’, who would tear apart anything on their way.

On Manday morning Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Five Live asked the audiences to debate about the media coverage of the missing of Madeleine McCann. It is a timely debate, however, it is so easy to slip into a ‘which side are you on’ kind of arguement that is purely based on speculations. The debate was stopped when more than half of the responding audiences said they didn’t want to hear it anymore. It is curious BBC would stop a programme or a debate because some audiences don’t like it based on moral ground. I still believe it’s a worthy topic, perhaps only on the broader issue of the media behaviour in these cases, or perhaps now it’s not the best time. What I don’t want to see, is the BBC, like other media, acted like paparazzi following a celebrity. It’s ture McCann family, with enough resources, have used the media to publicise their search of the missing child (wouldn’t you do anything you can at such situation?), but that doesn’t mean their privacy should not be respected.

BBC Four’s The World has an imaginative new name, World News Today, and a new slot at 7pm, which is a shame, because I’m a fan of its presenter Zeinab Badawi. I watched The World. Unlike other news programmes, The World doesn’t have to cover every news, thus allowing more time for each story, sometimes with discussion and debate, which is informative. But I have to say it hasn’t reached the status of untouchable, so when BBC Four decides to change it to the suicidal slot of 7pm, the unmissable Channel 4 News is the certain winner for me. So I’m afraid there will be one less viewer of World News Today.

Guardian’s Emily Bell defended the new front page of Guardian Unlimited website. “The shining new front door” as she put it, is currently only the front door. No doubt the make over of the whole site will take a while.

The Guardian Unlimited deserves a make-over. The old design of Guardian Unlimited isn’t the best I’ve seen. I often had difficulty to locate the contents and the fonts are too small, although the search facility improved a lot recently. The problem of the new design is, it makes the website indistinguishable among other British newspaper websites. Guardian Unlimited is renown for its unique contents, but a shining new front door is in danger of making itself look generic.

Comparing the front page of the “quality” newspaper websites, you will see the designs look too similar, only Independent has a slightly different look - but not for the better in my opinion. They all seem driven by the same ideas, perhaps dominated by framework of the same content management system (CMS). It’s all very well to improve the backend, but the front page design shouldn’t be undermined by the convenience of the backend. Surely a paper which produced such a wonderful, instantly distinguishable design for its print version, could invest some creative thinking and generate a web design innovative enough to matching its paper version?