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“I love the BBC and I am resigning because I want to protect it.” Andrew Gilligan, the journalist whose reporting sparked a battle over the BBC’s independence, resigned today.
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“And now the second invasion of the Iraq war proceeds: the conquest of the British Broadcasting Corporation.” Investigative journalist Greg Palast writes that the Blair government’s attack on the BBC “portends darkness for journalists everywhere.”
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WGBH has added Sesame Street to the portfolio of children’s programs it reps for national underwriting. WGBH’s Sponsorship Group for Public Television also seeks backing for Barney & Friends and Angelina Ballerina as well as the station’s own Arthur, Zoom and Between the Lions.
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Anne Wood, creator of Teletubbies and now Boohbah always chooses “to go with the mind of a child and what the child needs” says PBS’s John Wilson in a Los Angeles Times interview. Wilson says that can lead to the “I don’t get it factor” with grownups. “But all you have to do is watch it with your own child a few times and you see that they do get it.”
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As the crisis over the BBC deepened today, General Director Greg Dyke resigned. “I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that it will be hard to draw a line under this whole affair while I am still here,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff. Media analysts cautioned that the BBC’s editorial independence is in jeopardy in the Guardian.
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A senior British judge criticized the BBC for its controversial report alleging that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” its intelligence dossier on Iraqi weapons. BBC Director General Greg Dyke apologized for mistakes in the radio report, and BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies resigned. Reuters reports on the fallout. The Guardian breaks it all down into digestible bits in a special report.
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NPR’s Nina Totenberg and her counterpart at the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, were given exclusive early access to the papers of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, which go public March 4, Tony Mauro reported in Legal Times (via SPJ PressNotes).
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House Commerce Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) turned down the top movie industry lobbying job and is said to have a better offer from the drug industry, AP reported. Tauzin said he hasn’t taken the pharmaceutical lobbying job. The Baltimore Sun editorialized that Tauzin had put himself on the auction block and should resign his chairmanship or stop handling legislation involving prospective employers.
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Minnesota Public Radio is selling a commercial AM station and its parent company is selling a radio network, reports AP, for a combined $10 million. Larry Bentson, who donated the AM station to MPR, told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal that he’s unhappy with the sale of WMNN.
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An AP article details Jefferson Public Radio’s plans to open a $10 million Western States Museum of Broadcasting in Redding, Ore., which would also host its new studios.
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Patty Wente, g.m. at KWMU-FM in St. Louis, tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she thinks underwriting rules should be relaxed: “Are you saying you would deprive public broadcasting of keeping up with news and development [sic] because I can’t use the word ‘you’? Give me a break.”
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Lara Spencer, new host of public TV’s Antiques Roadshow, will discuss the show’s upcoming season tomorrow morning in a Washington Post web chat.
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Public radio stations are hosting an online chat tomorrow night about this year’s presidential campaign.
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NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin introduces a CPB-funded ethics guide for public radio journalists in his Media Matters column. “Having an up-to-date ethics guide will accomplish two things at once, in my opinion: establish public radio’s obligations and listener expectations,” he says. [Coverage in Current.]
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A Sesame Workshop project to create special programming for Arab-American children founders from lack of financial support–and mistrust of mainstream media–among Middle Eastern immigrants in Detroit. “People are leery of anything that goes on in the media, especially because of past representations of Arabs,” one supporter of the project tells Salon (subscription or daypass required).
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Early-aircraft enthusiasts and the producers of Nova are at odds over insurance proceeds from the crash of a Wright Brothers’ biplane replica in Virginia, the Fauquier Times-Democrat reported. Nova, which put up some money for the project, planned to film the replica.
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Senators escaped having their votes recorded with a nonexistent voice vote on the war-related $87 billion bill, so NPR’s Daniel Schorr suggested that people ask them how they “voted.” Fifteen members of the Society of Professional Journalists called senators and reported their findings yesterday. The bill would have passed anyway, it seems, though 19 senators refused to disclose how they would have voted.
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Lanpher watch update: Katherine L. will be Al Franken’s co-host as rumored, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported today. She leaves a big gap at Minnesota Public Radio, where she hosted a talk show, said news chief Bill Buzenberg.
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Public radio host and producer Chris Lydon tells Leonard Witt that dissatisfaction with mainstream news coverage has turned him into “one of those who goes automatically, many times a day now, to the Web, to get a sense of what people are actually thinking and doing.”
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Minnesota Public Radio talk show host Katherine Lanpher announced today she’s leaving the network. The hunch is she’s joining lefty comic Al Franken to co-host his upcoming radio talk show. Franken told Newsweek that his co-host comes from public radio: “She’s a hell of a journalist, but she’s got a great laugh.” One writer previously noted Lanpher’s “sudden, braying laugh.”