Happy New Year

How was your Christmas? Mine was our usual relatively low-key family affair, the way I like it, then I managed to go to a New Year’s Eve party that wasn’t cancelled and… paid the price the following day but it was all great.

Then we went into some kind of mini lockdown of our own from 4 January when my younger daughter tested positive for Covid, having picked up the virus from someone she’d seen five days earlier at her part-time job. It really is rife. So, I spent several days passing meals through her bedroom door and feeling like an outcast myself, even though I and my older daughter continued to test negative.

I will allow myself a small brag about the Run Up to Christmas, a competition to clock up all the miles you run between 1 and 25 December. I managed to run 50 miles over that time and just pipped into the top 100 (of 133 in our Salisbury team). I was well chuffed and not too achey.

The lead runner ran more than 477 miles, which is just bonkers. Don’t people have jobs? At number two someone had run 350 miles but I was pleased to see a woman in the top 10 with 300 miles. Overall, our City of Salisbury Athletics and Running Club team ran more than 13,415 miles combined and came first out of 291 teams competing. Looks like I’ve joined a good club!

Since starting to work for ITN at the end of November, I’ve been reflecting on the changes in journalism and journalists’ relationships with politicians in the past 20 years since I was editing Broadcast.

Veteran news anchor Jon Snow stepped down from Channel 4 News at the end of December and, in various recollections, he mentioned getting along with Margaret Thatcher during several 1980s interviews, even though he was on the opposite side of the political divide. Compare that to Boris Johnson being empty chaired on C4 News because he refused to appear on a debate about climate change in November 2019. It’s clear that some politicians do not engage with journalists in the same way that they used to.

Back in 1999-2003 it was relatively easy to schmooze Number 10’s media policy advisor and I’m sure we even had John Whittingdale visit our Emap Media offices on a fact-finding mission about the world of broadcasting. I’m not sure it’s quite the same now.

Separately, but still in the world of media, organisations are moving away from using the acronym BAME, an acronym for Black and Ethnic Minorities, where more specific terms are available. This follows a report and recommendations from the Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity in November 2021. ITN and other broadcasters are doing this.

My arts client Activate is also doing this – the suggestions being that we use terms such as the global majority or people of colour.

As a white woman I feel hopelessly unqualified to talk about race, but I’m passionate about clear, concise language and will sign up to anything that doesn’t lead to further ‘othering’ of people based on ethnicity or any other characteristic for that matter.

In other news

From the Audience Agency newsletter came this story about a digital strategy at the Museum of Freemasons. As friends will know, I used to have a connection to the Freemasons when my ex partner worked for them as, I kid you not, Information Officer.

This story from C4 News about climate change action advertising being watered down by airports and railway stations broke just as I was posting my last blog in December so it’s a bit old. But I include it here as an example of muddying the waters, if not actual censorship.

This story is from the Guardian, but really from the Radio Times which interviewed Melvyn Bragg who says the BBC has ‘earned our respect’ and deserves to be protected. Hear hear.

I’m one of the Virgin Mobile/Media customers who will be affected by the above-inflation price rises from April – which is a tad annoying to say the least and explains why I had a call from a lovely, well trained but overly insistent Virgin Mobile sales person, suggesting I upgrade my phone early and switch to some data bundle I don’t understand for slightly more than I’m paying now… The headspace it takes to think these things through. Or is that just me?

We’re spending a record amount on home entertainment, apparently, which is good news for media companies in the UK (including Virgin) but especially Netflix and Spotify.

Some terrible PR for energy supplier Ovo which published a blog suggesting people “do star jumps” and cuddle their pets to keep warm, instead of turning up the heating while we face energy price hikes of up to 50% this spring. Clearly offensive and a totally mindless message to put out to people – everyone – who is bracing for whopping energy bills this year.

Finally, this is really interesting with Robert Moore of ITV News (full disclosure, I’m working for ITN which produces ITV News) about US broadcast networks and how ill prepared they are to cover Donald Trump if he chooses to run for the US presidency in 2024 – raising important questions about the impartiality of news versus a perceived need to be pro-democracy.

That’s quite enough for January when I suspect that, like me, you’ve been inundated with Happy New Year articles. Over and out.