Writing on the Wall

Jeremy Paxman’s is part of an old-guard in television journalism who don’t want to face up to a generational shift going in in the workings of the Fourth Estate. In his recent speech he bemoaned declining standards in TV news. He pointed out the importance of good content, and then dismissed the rise of digital technologies, clearly disliking the idea of the medium being the message.
For many, Paxman represents the best of the British critical media. The BBC’s head of News, Roger Mosey, cited him  (in an email exchange) as epitimising the BBCs role as par of a healthy critical Fourth estate. Paxman’s role as avatar of the critical media is so significant that the Guardian editorialised his speech: Comment is free: Televisions panic attack. But, however much we love Paxman, he probably represents the past rather than the future of the fourth estate, and here’s why…
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Here is a reponse to a comment piece in the Guardian, from UN official, about the upcoming IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, particularly in the tropics:
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Tide of suffering

What needs to be borne in mind in this is the high proportion of earnings that the cost of food represents for the poor.

When we talk about climate change, we seem to forget that all these effects, rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, an overall drying trend globally, will all tend to impact on food production, and thus the price of food.

This is already happening: The world has been in net food deficit for the last couple of years: Not just because of climate change, but because of various forms of environmental degradation, that climate change is likely to make worse.

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Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Ahdaf Soueif: A project of dispossession can never be a noble cause

This is the kind of thinking on the Israel-Palestine question I would support, alongside people like Said, who never rolled over to the Isrealis, but also never lost sight of the need for a solution.

One of the key issues of defining democracy at a global level is trying to understand what we mean by ‘public’ on what is effectively a new and emerging scale for debate. For democracy to operate we need to have ways for the ‘public’ to define themselves as a body at this level, and for ‘public’ opinion to be expressed and debated. There is no polity without a population or community that is to be defined in relation it. This leads us to ask not only what sort of polity are we hoping to constitute, and around which kinds of principles and institutions, but also how are the relationships with populations to be built up within this?

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