Now and then. A look back at Richard Uridge on the BBC at Pebble Mill as part of Midlands Today’s 50th anniversary.
Category: General
Using social media to kick racism out of soccer
Twitter and other social media platforms were implicated by the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in his press conference after the soccer summit at 10 Downing Street aimed at tackling racism in football. Hunt and the FA chairman David Bernstein said, in effect, that while overt racism was now much less a problem inside grounds, outside people were still making racist and homophobic remarks. And while in the past their audience may have numbered just a handful of tiny-minded idiots and those unfortunate enough to overhear the bile spilling out of their twisted mouths, they now have a much wider audience – online.
But legislating against them would be both difficult and, in my view, contrary to the open spirit of the social web. Even trying to outlaw them risks drawing far too much attention to odious individuals who haven’t the courage to make their foul remarks to someone’s face and hide behind the relative anonymity afforded by social network pseudonyms. And with a billion plus social network accounts to monitor we shouldn’t expect the networks themselves to do anything but passive monitoring. We might occasionally persuade the networks and the Internet Service Providers to deactivate the accounts and cut the connections of the worst offenders, but those offenders would soon set up new accounts from new IP addresses.
Better, surely, to simply ignore them. Don’t follow them on Twitter. Don’t retweet their posts – even if only to mock their narrow-mindedness from our lofty, liberal perches. Certainly don’t dignify their comments with comments of our own. Make them social network lepers. Deny them the oxygen of publicity, as we might have said in the old media days.
So here’s my social network manifesto…
Black footballers do a Joey Barton. Gay footballers come out of the closet and start Tweeting so we can follow you and show by simple force of numbers that the overwhelming majority of us – football lovers or not – are decent human beings. Stephen Fry has more than a million followers on Twitter and is a national treasure.
Don’t just let your footballing feet do the talking. Let your tweets do the talking too.
Sorry seems to be the hardest word
Forgive the crass comparison but not since Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Adolf Hitler has a handshake (or rather a non-handshake) been so forensically dissected. Of course the rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United in 2012 may not match that of Britain and Nazi Germany in 1938 but there doesn’t seem to be much prospect of “peace in our time” between Louis Suarez and Patrice Evra. And the tardy apology issued by the Uruguayan and his boss Kenny Dalglish has been about as passifying as the piece of paper the Prime Minister famously waved on his return from Godesberg.
So what went wrong? The problem can’t have been quantitative – these days the public relations squad at major football clubs is almost as big as the playing squad. Perhaps, then, it was qualitative – poor advice. I suspect it was neither; that the guidance given was both abundant and accurate but simply ignored.
Players and managers paid £100k plus per week are unlikely to value the wisdom of those lucky to see half that much in a year. The solution? Either put PR staff on the same salary as footballers (owners like John Henry and the Glazer family please note) or make following professional advice a contractual obligation.
Rule number one in crisis communications: apologise immediately.
Rule number two: make sure the images the public see convey the same, contrite message.
Liverpool and Suarez broke both.
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Richard Uridge does Skomer
OC_SkomerAn experimental trailer for BBC Radio 4’s Open Country programme shot and edited entirely on location by the presenter using only an iPhone4 and iMovie.
HACKS WITH NO BALLS
No surprise that a certain be-knighted football club manager should try to ban the reporter with the temerity to ask a question about Rhino. But deeply disturbing that the 199 or so other hacks at the news conference agreed to abide by some PR lackey’s arbitrary rule not to ask the very questions on everyone’s lips. Asking awkward questions – however unwelcome – is at the very heart of being a journalist and once that right is abdicated one becomes a sychophant and a cipher. A sad and sorry example of just how neutered the modern so-called reporter has become. Evidently the swarthy-faced footballer has more balls than a roomful of sheepskin-clad yes men. That starlet, whose name is not dissimilar to the glass of Sanatogen I am sipping as I write this, is clearly a lucky duck. (Note to subs: yes duck).
A FUNGI TO BE WITH – eating wild mushrooms for the BBC
Sometimes you have to suffer for your art. Take tomorrow’s Open Country programme on BBC Radio 4. There I am scrunching through the leaf litter in the New Forest looking for wild mushrooms when my guide, the mycologist John Wright (off Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage show), says to me “go on try that one.” So I do. With interesting consequences. Listen out for the sound of spitting tomorrow, Saturday, morning just after six or the following Thursday lunchtime.
And if you can’t catch it on the wireless then you can listen here once it’s been broadcast.
IS NAD BAD OR MAD?
So Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, admits her blog is 70% fiction 30% fact. See the BBC’s website for details. Does that make her refreshingly honest, worryingly dishonest or just plain stupid? I know which gets my vote. Decide for yourself at http://blog.dorries.org/
AVOID CLICHÉS LIKE THE PLAGUE
So much writing (and speech for that matter) is lazy. People peck at their keyboards or open their mouths and let whatever comes to mind spill out. Which very often is cliché-laden, jargon-strewn nonsense. Take a look at “50 Office-Speak Phrases You Love to Hate” and you’ll see what I mean.
No excuses. Think before you write. Take Samuel Johnson’s advice. The 18th Century English writer of dictionary fame said: “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” Or Ernest Hemmingway’s. “The first draft of anything is shit.”
Avoid clichés like the plague. Don’t make your readers as sick as proverbial parrots. Please them with your well-crafted words. Let me show you how with one of my writing workshops.
BEAT THE CHANCELLOR – or why we’re knocking off what he’s putting on
We know how hard it is making ends meet in the Third Sector. And George Osborne’s decision to increase VAT to 20% from January 2011 can only make it harder still. But we also know that maintaining investment in staff development is vital if the Third Sector is to continue delivering high quality services to some of the most needy and vulnerable people in society. So we’ve introduced a new charity rate for all of our training and consultancy services to help training budgets go that little bit further.
To cancel out the VAT increase registered charities qualify for 20% off our “pay-later” prices and 10% off our online “book-and-pay-now” rates.* But we’re not waiting until the New Year to bring in the discount. It takes immediate effect. To ensure that you receive your discount you must enter your charity registration number in the promotional code box on our booking page. Please note that your registration number may be checked against the Charity Commission’s records in England and Wales or with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator in Scotland.
We run media training courses, provide training for trainers, can show you how to write a press release or how to make a podcast. We train people in presentation skills and public speaking and can help with writing for business
Click here to browse all our workshops, check dates and venues and book your discounted places.
*Workshops that are already discounted for promotional reasons will not be discounted by an additional 20% under this scheme but will receive discount from the full price at whichever is the higher rate.
JUST A MINUTE or GONE IN 60 SECONDS
Whether you’re a Radio Four fan and listen to Just a Minute or are more into movies and like Nick Cage in Gone in Sixty Seconds, a new feature has been added to the ACM Training website. You can now listen to our trainers give a minute long “taster” of selected courses – like media training, writing for business, writing press releases, presentation skills and training for trainers – by clicking on the media player below the hourglass icon on the workshop pages. Try it! Click here for Richard Uridge’s presentation skills course summary.