Slashdot Mirror
BBC Buys Google News Keywords In Kelly Case
foreign devil writes "BBC has purchased keywords related to coverage of the Hutton Inquiry in an attempt to direct all traffic to their special news coverage. This would be only moderately interesting, except the BBC is complicit in the death of Dr. Kelly and the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier. The article in the Guardian says this is coming out of the GBP 63.5m ad budget. I wonder how much it would cost them if someone, say, automated searching for those links on Google." It doesn't seem fair to pronounce the BBC complicit in Kelly's death (unless that's proven by the facts of the case), but it's certainly an interested party.
This guy is just being a bastard with this line, "I wonder how much it would cost them if someone, say, automated searching for those links on Google."
vampirical
Did anyone else notice that when you google "Kelly", this story (as in, this /. story) comes up under 'News'?
I guess I knew that googleheads read slashdot, but now google does too!
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The BBC didn't name Kelly. His name was leaked by the Goverment. He was subjected to Goverment's Foreign Affairs Committee on the 15th of July 2003, 24 hours later at the Goverments intelligence and Security Committee, the next day he was found dead. As for media attention it was a major part of his day to day life, there is plenty of evidence that Dr David Kelly met with a variety of journalists. "I have been involved with the press for ten to 12 years" - Dr David Kelly, FAC transcript Evidence from the Hutton Enquiry is here, with the report appearing at lunchtime in the UK. http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/
history is written by the victors man.
I've ceased to believe this. After looking at the current state of the world I find that the victors write thier history and think that no one else knows any different while the victims (and much of the rest of the world) remember. It's not hard to find grudges in europe that go back thousands of years where the victors thought they wrote history and it turns out that 300 generations later thier decendandts still remeber the old hatred.
At one time a bunch of people hiding in the woods and sniping at officers was beyond reproach, and were the "terrorists" of their time.
Not really, I've heard this one said many times. While it wasn't normal it was by no means so extraordinary that one would call it "terrorism". That statement needs a little more backing up than "I said so". The British at the time used it as propaganda but pretty much every known army has *always* done so, it so foolish not to that any and all commanders know to do it.
During the civil war, the north took a radical step by attacking civilian and logistical targets instead of purely military ones. A move that would have been reviled had the north ended up losing, instead it's hailed as tactical genius.
Have you ever been to the south? Having grown up there and currently living there I can tell you that is a *very* reviled thing that Sherman did. It went well beyond "unconventional warefare" even for it's time. Grant tried to reign Sherman in and was pretty much unable to. It is probably the number one reason for resentment between the north and the south today. Seeing a northerner on TV dreamily talking of poisoning, raping, and torturing my great great grandparents doesn't make me feel too happy.
Conventions of warfare go OUT THE WINDOW when you are faced with a militarial superior enemy. Calling palestinians freedom fighters is no more or less accurate than calling our american forefathers heroes.
The reality is that for one side they do, that doesn't make it legitamate. Our American forefathers fought pretty much within the rules of war, many other revolutionaries have also.
A large part of terrorism is attacking civilian targets (not as collateral targets, but as the main targets), as far as I know they didn't attack innocent civilian targets over in england. Neither did the British for the most part. Most of the civil war was fought in the same way, in the places civilians were specifically targeted the victims hate the agressors (no need to look further than native americans for another example). There are few recent wars where people did and in most of those cases it was normal rules of wars (WWII for instance, though even then the fire bombing of dresdin was seen as over the line back then and that was probably the most "no rules" modern war ever).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
It's a massive, disparate, semi-controlled corporation where one arm can frequently operate without the others being aware. There is the occasional shitstorm which flies up because of this (when, accidentally, the BBC 6 and 9 o'clock News programs almost entirely neglected the ruling Conservative Party's campaign in one election they went nuts and refused further interviews, threatened funding changes etc.) but on the whole the system balances out, given time.
Hutton is a big story in the UK. I don't work in News (thankfully) but I am willing to bet that what we have is an entirely regular attempt to drive traffic to the BBC for coverage of a major story. The BBC is an interested party, but news.bbc.co.uk couldn't give a damn about protecting Andrew Gilligan, broadcast news or any other part of the corporation.
In another situation, maybe you would have Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch flaying the different section chiefs about contradictory coverage, or maybe not. But in the beeb, it simply doesn't happen. Nobody knows about anyone else's activities, and if they want to find out they've got to investigate, like journalists should. It's not efficient, but in terms of a free press, it's effecive.
Ok besides the fact that in the end, your tax money just went to google.. a good thing..
There is *NO* news source out there that you could say does not have a 'side' to a story. No matter how you say how something happen, there is someone else saying 'but my story is better', and so on. Thus why we have that whole free speech thing.. To say that the BBC can't have an ad up just becuase you don't 'agree' with it, is what fighting 'big media' was suposed to be about.
The point comes down to, it's an ad on google. MANY MANY different links are right there, for the user, to click on. And google of all places is about the best thing for them to put it on. Google, puts right up, and infornt.. "hay I'm an ad, paid for, by some company". You might even have a glimps of a change of this agument if it was a banner ad, tricking the user, or a normal link.
They did a good thing with your tax money (google rocks), and they are getting 'their side' out to the public, being wrong or right. If this was a topic yourself felt was 'under known in the news', you'd be happy for the extra bit of coverage.