The BBC deserves our thanks

IT WAS NOT a particularly edifying scene, but the BBC big game hunters got a couple of scalps relatively easily after the Daily Telegraph was joined by the Daily Mail and Borid Johnson(!) in the chase.

One is bound to wonder, however, if the departure of the Director General and his head of news will satisfy the baying hounds.

The ham fisted doctoring of a Trump speech to give a mistaken impression of outright support for the Capitol rioters was as stupid as it was needless. While the President was smart enough to avoid overt support for the rioters, careful research would easily have shown a total lack of outright condemnation.

In a rapidly changing media landscape, bodies like the BBC – if there actually are any – face an increasingly impossible task maintaining 'impartiality' in the face of competition from a social media environment which has no obligation to attempt this difficult task.

To some extent the growing popularity of the podcast does allow the army of very talented staff the BBC employs some leeway to express a limited spectrum of opinions.

In tairly and accurately reporting the Gaza situation the BBC faces an even more impossible task. The state of Israel employs one of the most sophisticated news management systems of any regime in the world.

In addition, as is well known, it prevents any proper first hand reporting from the besieged territory, allowing only very occasional, rigidly controlled effectively 'propaganda' visits under army supervision.

In the circumstances, BBC journalists have done, and continue to do, a sterling job trying to get to the truth.

Rather than subjecting them to endless politically inspired sniping, we should offer them a big thank you.

Speak up for copyright

THE BATTLE for some sort of justice in the war which threatens copyrught holders throughout the world does not get any easier.

Getty Images, a major world wide holder of photographic images, recently lost a copyright claim against a UK based artificial intelligance firm that, it was claimed, had 'scraped' content from its enormous image bank.

Throughout the world, creators of artistic, literary and visual content are seeing their work literally being 'stolen' by Big – and smaller – Tech to further boost the enormous profits they stand to make from exploiting their work.

The notion of copyright protection was designed to allow the creators of artistic and intellectual material some security in an often precarious battle for survival.

It is a battle in which UK based creators seem most unlikely to get much support from their government.

So desperate does the UK government seem to be to offer a welcome to Big Tech in all its forms that they are prepared to sacrifice the very important contribution the arts make through the projection of soft power throughout the world.

Writers, artists, musicians – and their audiences – must fight back.

Not only through the law courts, but in the whole public arena of the arts we must state the case, loud and clear.

The damage that is already being done can, if allowed to go unchecked, turn out to be catastrophic.

Time to speak out

Curatorial Excellencer…

THE PRESS RELEASE sounded ecstatic:

"A Scottish gallery showing off contemporary works has won a prestigious international arts award...." At a "ceremony in London” the despatch continued, an Edinburgh gallery was named as "the winner of the Curatorial Excellence Award."

The prize was won in the face of competition from "114 other spots around the globe."

What was the background to this incredible achievement? Slightly more prosaically, it seems, the competition was amongst the 113 other stall holders at the recent Affordable Art Fair in London.

ArtWork contacted the winning gallery for comment without success.

But well done!