The BBC has described this week’s royal row as regrettable “human error”. The interesting question is which human made the error.
It looks like the mistake may have been compounded by the fact that the offending clips of the Queen definitely not stomping away from a photo shoot where compiled by the company that’s making the documentary, and not the BBC itself.
Much has been made in the press of the BBC needing to put its house in order. This may be the BBC’s responsibility, but it becomes much more difficult when production is outsourced.
I meet many freelances working in independent production who have to flit from job to job and know that they are only as good as their last position. There is no security and very little concept of training and development.
It doesn’t make you a bad person, but the pressures to stay ahead of the pack are enormous. Central tennets of public service broadcasting are often not uppermost in the mind.
Contrast that with the rigour with which the BBC trains its journalists and the tonnage of bricks that would come down on any staffer who mislead the viewers in such a high profile way.
But the juggernaut of outsourcing rumbles on. In such a competitive media world I suspect this week’s human error won’t be the last.
Posted on 14 July 2007
It’s rare to wake up to the Radio 4 news and be overjoyed at the first words you hear. The end of Alan Johnston’s ordeal is good news in anybody’s book.
Cynics will argue that any Brit who works in Gaza is asking to be kidnapped. But that misses the point. The respect shown towards Alan Johnston by Palestinians as well as others around the world demonstrates that professionalism and calm impartiality are a tremendously powerful force.
It will be interesting to see whether the international attitude to Hamas changes as a result of its role in Alan Johnston’s release. Nothing will happen quickly, but this could be a catalyst.
Fascinating too to hear his abductors described in reports as one of Gaza’s ‘criminal clan’. That echoes (co-incidentally I suspect) the change in terminology from the Brown government following last week’s incidents in London and Glasgow.
Suddenly it feels like we’re trying to tackle common criminals rather than wage a war on some kind of -ism. Personally I feel more comfortable with the new approach.
Posted on 04 July 2007
One of the reason people hate filing so much is that they’d rather be doing something more exciting. Unfortunately if you run your own business and have an office at home you can’t avoid it.
The trick is to make the filing so easy that you can’t put it off. Don’t use filing cabinets for the stuff you need to deal with every day. A filing system that relies on unlocking filing cabinets is doomed to fail; all you will do is put the stuff in a pile on any clear surface – and leave it there.
So have a little shelf within arm’s reach and keep things like invoices, receipts and current project files nice and handy.
Another good tip is to touch any piece of paper only once. Never put it in an ‘in tray’ to deal with later. Just put it straight away in the place that it belongs. If you’re not sure where it belongs it probably needs to go in the shredder.
Any more filing tips? I’d love to hear them.
Posted on 26 June 2007
I was delighted to read that the Guardian student media awards are to have a broadcast category once again. It’s a little reported fact that there always used to be one. I know, as I won it in 1981 with a programme I’d made for University Radio York. It always struck me as odd when the student radio award was dropped a few years later.
I agree with Paddy O’Connell that it’s a good thing to win. I have no doubt the award helped me get my first job at the BBC, even though the winning entry was just a bit of radio fluff about a trip down the Roman sewers of York. (It may have been full of shit, but it was classy archaeological shit.)
My main memory of the win was receiving a plaque from the Guardian’s James Cameron. I was just proud to be in the same room as this legendary correspondent, and here he was shaking my hand and congratulating me. It made me feel the world was mine for the taking.
Not sure I’ve lived up to that dream , but I still have happy memories of the experience.
Posted on 11 June 2007
This week’s fascinating documentary about the role (or lack of it) of the paparazzi in Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s deaths may have been painful for their families, but it didn’t deserve some of the more hysterical reactions in the press.
More interesting was the fact that it seems to have split the TV industry down the middle. 53% of respondents in a Broadcast magazine poll say they thought that Channel 4 was wrong to show the programme without cuts.
I’m at a bit of a loss to know where the cuts could have been made, given how carefully the programme was treading. Presumably the poll was used as a protest vote against a channel that seems to be fast running out of friends.
Meanwhile did you notice how none of the ‘ordinary’ passers-by in that Paris tunnel didn’t just whip out their camera-phones? Oh, hang on. Perhaps that’s because they weren’t invented then.
It makes you wonder what the reaction of the French police would have been if the professional paps had been joined by some citizen journalists. Would they have been rounded up too? Possibly. Would videos of the crash have been on YouTube within an instant? Certainly.
Posted on 08 June 2007
An intriguing comment on Radio 4’s WATO earlier this week. An interviewee used a phrase which had me running for my notebook. Talking about grammar schools he said:
"The kids who are getting the benefit of selection where there are grammar schools are middle class kids, and there are very few kids from ordinary backgrounds who are getting into these schools."
It made me realise that the word ‘ordinary’ only has meaning in a relative sense. For the speaker (from an organisation that helps under-privileged children) you are not ‘ordinary’ if you are middle class. This probably came across as bizarre to listeners to the most middle class radio station on the dial.
But then perhaps middle class is a relative concept too.
Posted on 01 June 2007
I had a great day on Friday at the BECTU Theatre Festival in central London. I was running two workshops, both for theatre freelances – one on setting up a web site to sell yourself and the other on business skills.
I meet a lot of freelances in the course of my training, and am always struck how many are reluctant to think of themselves as any kind of business. Some seem to view self-employment almost the same way as having a job, just without the security and with lots of ‘down time’ (aka poverty).
I don’t believe you can be a successful freelance without taking on the mindset of a business. Of course that’s different from being a ‘company’ and perhaps too many people confuse the two terms.
If you think I’m splitting hairs, consider this example: take two identical self-employed people, one a freelance and one a small business. When they’re not working on a contract what are they doing?
Whenever I ask people this question the freelance is usually getting up late and watching daytime TV. The small business is out getting more clients or updating his publicity.
It may be just mindset and perception, but that can make all the difference.
Posted on 27 May 2007
John Sweeney’s extraordinary contribution to the Scientology debate was strangely fascinating to watch. Animal passion was the term that came to mind – or perhaps just animal frustration.
Unfortunately the knock on effect for those of us in the media training business may not be so positive. I like to work with charities and NGOs. It’s rewarding work as I meet so many dedicated and clever people.
At an exhibition for the voluntary section last year I met a lot of people who think that all journalists are rude and bullying, and would prefer not to have anything to do with them.
I find it frustrating that my training often has to start with lots of reassurance to sometimes nervous trainees that they are very unlikely to be trapped, shouted at or in any way Paxmanned.
My view is that media training is about focusing on the message and getting plenty of interview practice. After all, a 2’30" interview is hardly a normal situation. Practice helps you retain your passion for your subject while addressing the subject in question in an unnaturally short period of time. (And I agree with a lot of what Julian Henry wrote recently.)
I suppose John Sweeney has at least provided something to break the ice at the beginning of a training session. Having a good laugh about his outburst might just put trainees at their ease.
Posted on 18 May 2007
One of the thing I love about the small business training is meeting so many people with great stories to tell.
I’ll be repeating many of them here, and passing on some great tips for smoothing out the bumps of self-employment.
Here’s one which was passed on by someone who’d started her new business at home after working for many years at the BBC.
She was re-adjusting nicely to being self-employed, but one thing was getting to her; her friends would see her car in the drive and assumed that she was always in for coffee.
Being a well-brought up kind of person, she found it impossible to tell her friends to get lost. They’d be in the kitchen boiling a kettle before she had a chance to explain that she was in the middle of some work. So how to diffuse the situation?
She decided to leave a file full of old papers next to the front door. Whenever the doorbell rang she’d come to the door, pick up the file and cradle it in a business-like fashion in her left arm. When she opened the door the friend would see the file and say “Oh, sorry. I see you’re working now. I just wanted a coffee and a chat. So when would you like to meet?”
She reports that it works every time. She doesn’t see her friends any less, but she sees them at a time convenient to her. Briliant.
Got any other tips for home working? I’d love to hear from you.
Posted on 29 April 2007
I spent a fun day at the CIPD annual exhibition last week, helping out the lovely people at Unlimited Potential, a coaching and training company I’m associated with.
One of the reasons the exhibition was so successful for Unlimited Potential was the consistency of the brand message – from the images and wording on the stand to the way we described what we do when we spoke to people, to the layout of the brochures.
We even wore the same purple t-shirts, which made a huge impact and wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as it sounds.
The best stand of the whole event was a group who provide team-building exercises in the form of film production. A wonderfully simple idea that was carried through with a stand that was basically a lighting rig. They all wore the same t-shirts too. It was a great example of good branding delivering a simple message.
Another training organisation took the simple approach to an extreme. Their key message was ‘we won’t waste your money’. They had bought not one but three ‘plots’ around the exhibition hall and instead of dressing them in the time-honoured (and expensive) fashion, they left them completely empty except for a small pile of brochures. Occasionally someone would be attending the stands. Often they were deserted.
I’ve no doubt this seemed like a totally genius idea when they came up with it. The trouble was there was no way of knowing that this was supposed to be clever marketing. It just looked like they hadn’t turned up.
Posted on 28 April 2007
