Interview: Peter Bazalgette, Endemol UK (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

HE is, according to his critics, the cynical vulgarian who killed serious television with Big Brother and Fame Academy, a "cold manipulator of people", in Victor Lewis-Smith's view, or quite simply one of the Daily Mail's "100 worst Britons". So imagine the highbrow fury last week when the Royal Television Society, no less, praised Peter Bazalgette's "unabashed populism" as it gave him a special award for "changing the terms of factual television".

Wasn't this the man for whom " factual" broadcasting meant Jade Goody's observations that "East Angular" was abroad and Rio de Janeiro a person? Bazalgette, the rather posh chairman of Endemol UK, has become accustomed to criticism for shows ranging from Changing Rooms to Pet Rescue, their popularity blamed for helping take television downmarket. "I call it the Tchaikovsky first piano concerto syndrome," he says in a wine bar near his Notting Hill home.

"It states that if everybody likes something, it can't be any good. How many food snobs would still be raving about white truffles if they were ubiquitous? I've always enjoyed entertaining people - and the more the better."

A gastronome himself, who created the formats for Ready Steady Cook and Can't Cook Won't Cook, Bazalgette, 49, has become a powerful force in the television establishment since bringing mass audiences to Changing Rooms, Ground Force and, most famously, Big Brother. He delights in the fact that, as last summer's third series was being mauled by critics, its viewing figures were up by almost 30 per cent - and that 110,000 people applied to be in Big Brother 4 this summer.

"We're down to the last 50 or 100, and that's after weeding out all the Sun reporters," he says. "This year there's also been a Daily Telegraph reporter - he admitted it to me the other night." There will be a few changes to provide more "wit and warmth" - the house partition lowered audience satisfaction last year, so it won't be returning - but as Bazalgette admits, not everything can be planned for. "We thought that last year's were the nicest bunch of people, but they bickered more than earlier groups."

The public ridiculing of Jade, however, put Bazalgette on the defensive last year, as the programme faced accusations of exploiting her apparent emotional instability. He still resents the barbs. "We pick people very carefully, using psychologists to screen them, and giving them the 'talk of doom' to warn them of the pressures ahead. Only robust people get through, and Jade was robust - she's splendid. We were told we had ruined her life, even though she was able to complete her education with money she earned from the News of the World.

"The Jade phenomenon was extraordinary. A lot of the things the tabloids said about her were disreputable. It's one of the only times I can recall where the papers realised how cruel they were being and atoned for it by urging her to win." Last December, on behalf of the the Conservative Party, Theresa May invited Bazalgette to join a non-partisan commission to examine why young people were not voting.

Some interpreted this as an attempt "to improve Iain Duncan Smith's image - which was mindcrunchingly ghastly, more than I could bear." He did not pursue Ms May's call. Bazalgette is astutely aware of politics with a small "P", though, and sprinkles our discussion with flattering references to executives with influence. He's also no slouch at being upbeat about his own successes, skimming lightly over any disappointing viewing figures.

AFTER leaving Cambridge, where he was president of the Union, Bazalgette joined the BBC in 1977 as a news trainee. He worked as a researcher on That's Life and reported for Man Alive before getting his big break producing the Food and Drink programme, where he claims to have created the celebrity chef. He continued producing the show under his own company, which is now part of Endemol, a company that extends to 21 territories.

He is just back from a management meeting in Courchevel, where attention focused on designing shows which, like Big Brother, can be exploited on a variety of media, from digital TV to mobile phones. "We are saying to people: 'join in, it's yours'. And the audiences love being drawn in. It's the beginning of something very big." But how far can the "reality TV" trend stretch? Bazalgette disdains the very phrase. "I don't know what 'reality TV' means," he says, aware that, to his critics, it has become a term of abuse. "TV programmes used to be either light entertainment, sitcom, soap, sport, or news. We've invented shows that are all this and more. Look, when TV does something new, it doesn't replace what went before it; it adds to it. All I'm concerned about is delivering entertainment experiences to people on multiple media.

"On current evidence, this type of programming has rather a good future. When there's a breakthrough in a TV format, it'll instantly be ripped off and they'll be lots of lookalike shows. The broadsheet commentators might slag it off, but they're neophytes." Are there any populist formats, then, that he would not pursue? "Well, I've heard of one idea that was too extreme," he says. " Infertile couples would play in a game show to win free IVF. Now, that's not a show I'd like to be involved in." He smiles. "I'd hate to think of where the webcam would be."

(Evening Standard, March 26 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - War technology/spammers

By David Rowan

THERE IS nothing like a war for boosting the popular adoption of new technologies. The first Gulf War let CNN establish cable as a mainstream television force, and the Afghanistan conflict sold the videophone as a credible business conferencing tool. This time round, the immediacy and breadth of much internet coverage has, for news junkies, already given it the edge over TV and print. Think of this as the first broadband war.

The signs are everywhere, from the lightweight Sony PD-150 digital cameras instantly beaming reporters' footage back to newspaper websites via satellite videophones, to the thousands of amateur weblogs vying with professional streaming webcasts to dissect every conceivable detail of the conflict. Never has so much information been available so quickly from the battlefield: if you cannot bear to see al-Jazeera's screenshots of mutilated Iraqi civilians, then Ari Fleischer's extended presidential briefings are a click away on the White House website. If you choose not to read Rageh Omaar's middle-of-the-night contemplations on the BBC reporters' weblog, you can follow events from an Iraqi's viewpoint at a fascinating personal weblog (dearraed.blogspot.com) apparently filed from Baghdad.

For a couple of pounds, you can also watch raw battlefield footage on sites such as Yahoo and ABC News - an offer that millions of office workers have been taking up.

The huge volume of material coming out of Iraq is also changing how the information war is being fought. Military news managers know that any dubious rumours will be torn apart within minutes - not just by the amateur commentators, but by the hundreds of professional journalists carrying kit such as the IPT Suitcase, a 75lb (34kg) broadcasting system that uses internet protocols to transmit video at up to two megabits a second.

Those opposed to the war have also turned to the web in unprecedented numbers, using sites such as moveon.org to organise their protests, and in some cases to hack in to "pro-war" websites. In the first days of war, security firms identified more than 1,000 website defacements by anti-war activists - including the US Navy site, hacked by someone called Apocalypse to display the message: "No War, USA think they can tell the world what to do."

Tom Ridge, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, says that his team is monitoring the net for "state-sponsored information warfare". But with this medium empowering ordinary citizens like no other, it's not just enemy states that want to shape how this war is being perceived.

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IF YOU HAVE ever wondered how junk-mail "spammers" get hold of your e-mail address, you might like to read an enlightening report from the Centre for Democracy and Technology (at www.cdt.org). The Washington-based campaign group created hundreds of e-mail addresses, used each of them once, and then waited six months to see what happened. Sure enough, more than 8,800 unsolicited e-mails arrived - almost all of them to addresses that had been placed just once on the internet.

Only when an address was obscured in some way - such as writing the @ sign as the word "at" - did the spam fail to get through. This is because spammers use software that automatically "spiders" the web to harvest what it recognises as e-mail addresses. So if you do list your address on a website, consider making it harder for the software to read - perhaps by using HTML equivalents of individual characters. Addresses in busier domains, such as ebay.com, face another problem: software that generates millions of character combinations on the assumption that some will exist. The answer? Choose a long name over a short one. They're harder for the software to guess.

(The Times, March 25 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - Cluetrain Manifesto/Video e-mails

By David Rowan

ALMOST four years ago, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, Rick Levine and David Weinberger set out their vision of how the internet was going to transform the business world. Their Cluetrain Manifesto consisted of 95 thoughts addressed to "people of Earth" who needed to realise that, thanks to the web, markets were becoming "better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organisations".

It was a timely vision, defining for the non-geek world how the networked marketplace would empower customers to demand new levels of service, using message-boards, chatrooms and e-mail conversations to undermine the traditional ways in which corporate marketing departments had controlled the information flow.

"You're too busy 'doing business' to answer our e-mail?" began Point 77 in typical style. "Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe."

In the frenetic gold-rush days of 1999, Cluetrain quickly became a sacred text - even if its visionary language probably contributed to several of the battier dot-com business plans. Now, though, Searls and Weinberger are back with a follow-up manifesto for the web, which they are calling the World of Ends (www.worldofends.com).

It is just ten points long and begins, as it has to, with an acknowledgment that mistakes have been made. "For example: thinking that selling toys for pets on the web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again." It goes on to explain more instances of "repetitive mistake syndrome", but as a clear, simple examination of what the internet actually is, it is a useful antidote to hype and potentially a way to save the venture capitalists their next few billion pounds.

The net is not rocket science, according to their thinking: it is merely a world with you at one end, and everybody and everything else at the other. As such, the net is not a "thing" but an agreement to work together using a certain protocol. As long as you agree to this protocol, you can do what you want around its edges - from swapping songs to sending video e-mails. Because no one owns it, everyone can use it, and anyone can improve it. That's it: just a means of moving bits around, for whatever purposes you choose.

This might not suit mega corporations and governments which, until now, have acted as if the internet were theirs, to saturate with pop-up adverts or censor for commercial or political reasons. But it does help to explain why the most useful innovations in recent online history have been about communities communicating with each other, rather than businesses making a quick buck. Why didn't we think of that in 1999?

++++

I AM writing this from Los Angeles, where it has been an expensive week, tech-wise. First, I made the mistake of travelling without a laptop, assuming that I would find a plentiful supply of internet cafes from which to contact the office. Wrong. This place is so advanced that every other coffee-shop and hotel seems to be kitted out for wireless networking, so that, for about £5 a day, you can stay online wherever you take your laptop. If, of course, you have brought one. The alternative has been the Omni Interactive kiosks that are spreading around hotel lobbies and shopping malls. You have to stand up and pay £8 an hour to type on a clunky keyboard as advertisements flash all around you.

But you do at least get to record "video e-mails" using the inbuilt camera and microphone. At $2 (£1.25) for 20 seconds, it is not the best crack at fame that Tinseltown offers, but I'm hoping it keeps the folk at T2 amused.

(The Times, March 11 2003)

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The Observer: Marketing food to children - investigation

Today, Mummy, we ate... sodium benzoate (E211), Sunset Yellow (E110), Ponceau 4R (E124), salt, Aspartame (E951), Carmoisine (E122) - oh, and lots and lots of sugar

So you think you know what your kids eat at school? Some food manufacturers are paying to bypass parents, putting their new product 'samples' into the playground. David Rowan investigates

For breakfast in the car today, Jake ate a Kellogg's Real Fruit Winder and half a pack of Dairylea Lunchables washed down with a Blackcurrant Blast-flavoured bottle of Sunny D.

Mum gave him a packet of crisps and a Diet Coke for breaktime, and at lunch he chose the turkey drummers with smiley faces followed by iced vanilla sponge and custard. 'I don't really like the broccoli or the salad stuff,' Jake says with a scowl, perhaps reflecting some quality-control issues at the multinational contract-catering firm that feeds his Bedfordshire primary school. He is, though, looking forward to pizza for tea, followed by a Muller Bat's Blood yoghurt with strawberry flavour sherbert. 'And a McDonald's milkshake and Smarties if I've been good,' he grins, his eyes wide in anticipation.

At six, Jake is noticeably fatter than his classmates, his dimpled arms and pasty jowls marking him out as a certain target for bullying, and his asthmatic wheeze an early indicator of the health problems likely to lie ahead. He does not yet know this, but as one of 80 million obese children in Europe, Jake faces a shorter life expectancy than his parents, its quality diminished by an increased likelihood of illnesses such as type-two diabetes. That is a lot for a boy to take in as he opens yet another packet of Doritos.

Neither is Jake in a position to comfort himself with the knowledge that he represents a pervasive fashion in playgrounds across the country. Obesity in the UK has doubled over the last decade, with about one in 10 children affected and health committees warning of a looming crisis as overweight children reach adulthood.

A sedentary lifestyle is partly to blame, but so, increasingly, is diet. According to the Government's National Diet and Nutrition Survey, 92 per cent of children consume more saturated fat than the maximum recommended level for adults, and 83 per cent consume added sugars above suggested adult limits. And while they are dutifully responding to marketing pitches for fizzy drinks and high-fat breakfast bars, British children are finding time to eat less than half the recommended daily portions of fruit and vegetables.

Professor Philip James, a former government adviser on food policy and chairman of the International Obesity Task Force, warns that without action, we face an 'epidemic' of childhood obesity - 'with Britain in the worst category'. Last autumn, the task force - an international coalition of medical experts and nutritionists - demanded a Europe-wide ban on advertising for 'inappropriate' food and drinks aimed at children, as well as restrictions on the installation of vending machines in schools, which it said had made the problem more acute.

'Children are targeted as consumers and are vulnerable to sophisticated marketing techniques and intense, repetitive advertising for the high-calorie, high-energy foods and drinks, which are significant contributory factors to the rise in obesity,' the task force reported. The marketing pressure, it said, starts well before they reach school age, and is designed to 'overtly manipulate the child to demand a high-energy-dense diet'.

As parents wait to collect their four- and five-year-olds outside a school in Bedfordshire, they seem in little doubt that the messages are getting through. 'He's always nagging about going to McDonald's, and I know the pressure rises after Saturday morning TV,' says one mother. 'They know how to play you, and it's a constant battle to sell them something you want them to eat.'

Another mother who conscientiously limits her daughter's commercial-television viewing finds that the messages still get through via peer pressure. 'She wants the Sunny D because her friends have it and it's cool, and you don't want her to feel different. It's pretty sneakily done, but I've found a way round it - I fill the bottle with orange juice so she can still look the part.' It is a trick the manufacturer appears to have noticed: bottles now carry a warning that they should not be refilled, 'for hygiene reasons'.

But it is the food messages reaching children when parents are not present that is increasingly worrying nutritionists. Activist groups have long complained about education packs sent free to primary schools by fast-food firms and confectioners, and Walkers Crisps, Nestlé, Pringles and McVitie's have all offered books and equipment in return for vouchers.

Now, though, cash-strapped schools are selling manufacturers a far more direct way to reach the primary-school 'marketplace': they can, for a price, place their high-fat, high-sugar snacks directly into the children's hands, with no parents around to suggest that they should be eating something healthier.

Over the past few months, a London-based company called JazzyMedia has been writing to food manufacturers inviting them to buy in to a new national marketing programme that directly targets school canteens. The LunchBox programme, its literature boasts, 'allows brands to place their product samples into the hands of children during the school lunch break, when they can try them and discuss them with their friends' - and notably away from their parents.

A brochure for the scheme, seen by Observer Food Monthly, explains that it is aimed at children as young as four, and includes photographs of children consuming low-juice drinks and crisps such as Quavers. 'School canteens/dining halls are the ideal location for "lunch box" brands to conduct sampling activity,' the marketing kit boasts. 'Kids try the product and discuss with their peer group,' and there is 'implicit product endorsement of school canteen staff'.

It will cost you £18,750 to reach 62,500 pupils in 250 schools across Britain, but if you wanted to send your product to half a million children, the price goes up to £150,000. For £60 a school, you are also guaranteed a promotional poster. 'Product alternatives with low sugar and salt content are preferable but not required,' the brochure explains. Most surprisingly of all, the brochure states that their programmes are endorsed by the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations and the National Primary Headteachers Association.

JazzyMedia is not new to in-school marketing: since 1996 it has given schools more than 10 million free exercise books, featuring prominent advertisements for high-sugar food and drinks brands such as Vimto. After distributing Vimto 'Purple Ronnie' exercise books to 11-16 year-olds in secondary schools nationally, the company claims, 'Vimto's spontaneous brand awareness increased by an impressive 76 per cent and had a higher "top of mind" rating than any other soft drink including Coca-Cola'. In return, the company claims to have provided schools with £3 million in 'educational resources'.

JazzyMedia proclaims that its 'programmes are conducted in accordance with an ethical policy', but when we called on three separate days to clarify this policy, no one from the company was available to speak to us. Joe Harvey, director of the Health Education Trust, is less hesitant. 'It's absolutely scandalous,' he splutters when we introduce him to the LunchBox marketing programme.

'I'm amazed the teaching organisations should put their names to this. To let a company quite openly and deliberately market confectionery, soft drinks or crisps in our schools would be disgraceful. The questions any head teacher should always ask, as should their associations, is whether what they're doing is in children's very best interests - and this would be an unusual way of looking at kids' best interests.'

The National Association of Head Teachers is none too happy to learn that its name appears on the LunchBox marketing material. 'JazzyMedia has not given us the courtesy of letting us know they are using our name, and our involvement with them has only ever involved exercise books,' says John Randall, the association's commercial manager, when we call. 'We certainly never endorse food products and do not want to be associated with this scheme. I will be contacting the company to make this clear.'

This is not the first time a marketing campaign has allowed manufacturers to place high-sugar foods directly into children's hands at school. In 2001, Scotland, Kellogg's gave Coco Pops cereal bars (48 per cent sugar, 14 per cent saturated fat) to thousands of children participating in a healthy-eating initiative that it sponsored. But according to those campaigning for healthier children's diets, it typifies the industry's increasingly aggressive commercial efforts to attract these young consumers to inappropriate diets.

'I am constantly disturbed by the way the food industry concentrates on the commercial aspects of its products, adulterating their appearance and taste, while taking a cavalier approach to nutritional values and their impact on children's eating pleasure, habits and future health,' says Lizzie Vann, founder of Organix Brands. 'The industry's focus on making and marketing children's food on the basis of convenience, price and kiddie appeal means that parents are faced with little choice in feeding their children natural and nutritious foods.'

One target for campaigners is the growing presence in schools of vending machines that dispense confectionery, crisps and soft drinks. Most machines are provided by manufacturers, and even though schools or caterers may share the profits, they tend to have little say in what is offered. 'So you get high-fat, high-sugar vending which offers no choice and no balance to the youngsters using them,' Joe Harvey says. 'If they arrive at school at 8am, when the canteen is closed, the option is a can of Coke and a Mars bar. This is not joined-up thinking, consistent with what is taught in the classroom.'

According to the Government's National Diet and Nutrition Survey, the average child in the UK consumes 15 glasses of sweet soft drinks every week. A recent study (disputed by food manufacturers) by the David Hide Asthma and Allergy Research Centre, Isle of Wight, suggests that there is an indirect link between artificial colourings and preservatives in drinks to hyperactivity and aggression in children. The centre agreed with the Food Standards Agency, that the research was not conclusive, and conceded that further studies were needed.

Some schools believe the evidence is strong enough to justify a formal ban. Staff at the Charles Burrell School in Thetford, Norfolk, found that by making only water available to pupils, they improved concentration and academic performance. 'Obviously we can't stop parents from putting fizzy drinks in packed lunches, but there are no fizzy drinks machines in school now - and we used to have three,' according to Claire Barker, the school's learning coordinator.

Others identify the 'terrible' standard of school dinners as a factor leading to poor childhood nutrition. 'School dinners are cheap,' Jamie Oliver said recently. 'They're outsourced to businesses who have to make a profit out of selling them. So they end up being made of rubbish - cheaper than chips.'

Lizzie Vann has been researching just how cheap: at her local Hampshire schools, she calculates the cost of ingredients at just 35 pence a day for a two-course lunch. If cooks had twice that - 70p a day - she says nutritional standards would be vastly improved. Joe Harvey agrees. 'If you're producing a meal for, typically, 38p for a primary or 45p for a secondary, tell me where you'll be shopping for ingredients. So the most vulnerable youngsters who are on free school meals aren't getting quality ingredients.'

At the Food Commission, research officer Kath Dalmeny identifies relentless television advertising as another factor in increasing children's consumption of unhealthy foods. 'Have you seen some of the TV ads for children?' she asks. 'They tend to portray the sugary, salty foods as "cool". How did it become "cool" to eat high-fat foods?' Healthy, unbranded foods - apples and oranges - simply cannot compete.

Last year, the Labour MP Debra Shipley attracted 130 signatories to an Early Day Motion calling for a ban on advertisements aimed at under-fives to end what she calls their 'cynical manipulation' by the industry. She cites parents' worries that under-fives, in particular, fail to understand the purpose of adverts, and do not differentiate between commercials and programmes. 'A three- or four-year-old watching a TV programme probably doesn't know what's happening,' she says.

'They're watching a bear, and suddenly they're watching a food product.' As a result, she says, they are easy targets for 'brainwashing'. The commercial pressure, she says, is undermining the Department of Health's campaign to tackle child obesity.

The answer from the food industry is that sedentary habits, rather than excessive consumption of high-fat foods, are mainly to blame for the rise in childhood obesity. Food companies and their advertisers also argue that any ban on advertising, as has been instituted on Swedish television, would be pointless.

'We live in a world of brands, and brands are a mark of quality,' says Malcolm Earnshaw, director general of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers. 'We need to start to learn to choose from an early age, and advertising provides us with information.'

Back at the International Obesity Task Force, Philip James, identifies 'enormous vested interests' in the food and drinks industries which he says governments now have to confront. 'If we don't,' he says, 'the epidemic of childhood obesity is going to rip through Europe so fast - with Britain being in the worst category - that we will have clinics of diabetic children of 13, 14 years of age, where the evidence is pretty clear that they will have major problems by the time they get into their thirties.'

****

What's inside?

Last year 800 parents voted for the children's foods they most disliked. 'Winners' included Kraft Dairylea Lunchables, Sunny Delight, and Kellogg's Real Fruit Winders (the pack states that they contain 'over 50 per cent real fruit', but they also contain 47% pure sugar)...

Dairylea Lunchables

Parents were concerned that packs boast that it provides 36 per cent of the recommended daily allowance of calcium, while ignoring the high salt and saturated-fat content. Harvest Ham flavour: Formed Ham: Pork - 60%, Water (30%), Starch, Acidity Regulator: Sodium Lactate (E325), Salt, Stabilisers: Carrageenan (E407) and Polyphosphate (E452), Sugar, Flavour Enhancer: Monosodium Glutamate (E621), Flavouring, Antioxidant: Sodium L-ascorbate (E301) and Preservative: Sodium Nitrite (E250).

Cheese food slice: Cheese, Butter, Emulsifying Salts: Sodium Citrates (E331) and Polyphosphate (E452), Milk Protein, Whey Powder, Lactic Acid, Preservative: Sorbic Acid (E200). Wheat Crackers: Wheat Flour, Vegetable Oil, Sugar, Butter, Salt, Glucose Syrup, Whey Powder, Raising Agents: Ammonium Carbonate (E503) and Sodium Carbonate (E500), Flavourings, Preservative: Sodium Metabisulphite (E223) and Antioxidant: Tocopherols (E306).

Sunny Delight

Its juice content was raised from five per cent to 15 per cent and added sugar replaced with sweeteners Acesulfame K (E950) and Aspartame (E951). But parents were concerned that, because it was placed in chiller units, it was being sold as a 'fresh' product.

Ingredients for Orange Outburst flavour: Water (over 80%), Fruit Juice (15% - Orange, Lime, Mandarin and Grapefruit juice), Citric Acid, Vegetable Oil, Preservative: Polyphosphate (E452) Modified Starch, Natural Flavourings, Vitamin C, Thickener: Guar Gum (E412), Preservative: Potassium Sorbate (E202), Sweeteners: Acesulfame K (E950) and Aspartame (E951), Thickeners: Xanthan Gum (E415) and Gellan Gum (418), Beta-Carotene (Pro-Vitamin A), Vitamin B6, Thiamin (Vitamin B1).

*****

Sorted for Es?

Last October, the Food Commission conducted a survey of children's foods and drinks containing the additives Sunset Yellow (E110), Ponceau 4R (E124), Carmoisine (E122) and Sodium Benzoate (E211), which studies have indirectly linked to disruptive behaviour, hyperactivity and aggression among some younger children. The food industry says that no link has been proved. The Food and Drink Federation state that 'the use of additives in all foods is regulated by the Government and kept under constant review'.

These are among the popular products in which the additives were found:
Bachelors Mushy (peas): Vegetables Tartrazine (E102)
Barbie Celebration Cake: Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124)
Bob the Builder Cake: Sunset Yellow (E110), Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124)
Burger King Birthday Cake: Sunset Yellow (E110), Ponceau 4R (E124), Chewits Chewbs Ponceau 4R (E124)
Diet Coke: Sodium Benzoate (E211)
Fanta Orange Drink: Sodium Benzoate (E211)
Harry Potter cake (Lightbody Celebration Cakes): Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124)
Irn Bru drink: Sunset Yellow (E110), Ponceau 4R (E124), Sodium Benzoate (E211)
Lucozade Sport drink: Sodium Benzoate
M&M Minis Cake Mix: Sunset Yellow (E110), Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124)
Manchester United official cake: Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124)
McDonald's Banana/Strawberry flavoured milkshake syrup: Ponceau 4R (E124)
McDonald's Barbeque Dip: Sodium Benzoate (E211)
Monsters Inc cake bars: Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124)
Panda Pops: Sodium Benzoate (E211), Carmoisine (E122) some flavours
Ribena Blackcurrant Ice Lollies: Sodium Benzoate (E211)
Ribena Original/Light: Sodium Benzoate (E211)

Tips of the trade

1. Label packs as, 'full of goodness', 'wholesome' or 'nutritious' - terms which are vague and unspecific.
2. Don't call sugar 'sugar' - call it 'energy' or 'glucose'.
3. Anything labelled 'cheese flavoured' must contain cheese, but not if you shorten it to 'cheese flavour'.
4. Do a deal with a health charity or sporting event so that their logo can imply health benefits for your product. Dittto sports-star endorsements.
5. Make selective nutritional claims that do not relate to a product's high fat, salt or sugar content.
6. Boast that your product 'contributes to children's five-a-day target' for eating fruit and vegetables.

(The Observer, Food Monthly, March 9 2003)

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Evening Standard: How offensive can newspapers be?

By David Rowan

YOU could hear the editors cheering this week as the Government announced the press should continue to regulate itself. By rejecting calls for Ofcom, the new communications watchdog, to control newspaper content, ministers gave the thumbs-up to continued self-regulation under the Press Complaints Commission. As Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt pledged yesterday, "the free press will remain free".

But just how free should its leading voices - its columnists and cartoonists, in particular - be to publish offensive or divisive material? The main constraints on unfettered opinion have traditionally been the libel laws and, occasionally, a paper's commercial imperative to maintain circulation. Yet two controversial recent cases have prompted intense debate about where the limits should lie.

Last week, Scotland Yard said it was investigating an allegedly racist column by Taki in The Spectator that blamed the New Year's Day shootings in Birmingham on "black thugs, sons of black thugs and grandsons of black thugs".

Taki accused Britain's West Indian community of "multiply[ing] like flies". Peter Herbert, a lawyer who complained about the 11 January column, says he subsequently received death threats and 40 abusive emails after his objections were reported. He now wants Boris Johnson, The Spectator's editor and Tory MP, to be prosecuted "for aiding and abetting incitement of racist hate material".

Over at The Independent, cartoonist Dave Brown has been receiving abusive mail of his own, owing to a depiction of Israel's Prime Minister that was printed on 27 January. The cartoon, based on Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children, shows Ariel Sharon appealing to voters by biting into the flesh of a Palestinian baby.

According to an email campaign led by the New Jersey-based lobbying group HonestReporting.com, the cartoon resembles "something out of Der Sturmer", the propaganda sheet from the Nazi era in Germany. The Israeli Embassy in London, among dozens of complainants to the PCC, argues that such an "anti-Semitic" cartoon perpetuates the medieval "blood libel" that Jews murder gentile children for their blood.

Brown denies that he had any anti-Semitic intent, and considers the blood libel to be so "ludicrously untrue" as to make such an allegation against him laughable. "I think a lot of the people who were offended wanted to be offended, for their own political reasons," he says. "It's quite obvious the Israeli Embassy contacted various Jewish groups, and complaints got passed around on the web." The Independent's editor, Simon Kelner, insists that, as a Jew himself, he "would be sensitive to anything anti-Semitic". He defends the "powerful" cartoon as anti-Sharon, but certainly not anti-Semitic.

Nonsense, responds Anthony Julius, the lawyer who successfully defended Deborah Lipstadt against David Irving's libel claim, and who is now pushing for a PCC adjudication against the Independent. "It is anti-Semitic, in a fantastically irresponsible way, at a particularly volatile time." The Taki column, by contrast, leaves far less room for misinterpretation. Its assertions - that, for instance, "the Rivers of Blood speech by Enoch Powell in the Sixties was prophetic as well as true" - are clearly targeted at a particular ethnic group, and as such, Peter Herbert believes, breach section 19 of the Public Order Act, 1986.

Boris Johnson has called the column "a terrible thing" that "should never have gone in", but shows no sign of ending Taki's arrangement - although he has declined to say whether the columnist will continue as a fixture.

Even the proprietor, Lord Black, has publicly taken issue with Taki's acknowledged "soi-disant anti-Semitism" in the past, denouncing a 2001 column for "lies worthy of Goebbels". Yet at the time, Lord Black was wary of censoring his columnist. "Writers, like everyone else, have the right to dislike individuals and whole nationalities and ethnic groups," he wrote.

"They have the right to express their dislike if they do so rationally, are not legally defamatory, and if they are within the bounds of civilised taste." To censor him "would be to accept a muzzle on freedom of expression".

THIS time, commentators wonder if Lord Black will be quite so tolerant. "Yes, Taki's entitled to free speech, but he's not entitled to break the law," says Bill Hagerty, editor of the British Journalism Review. "Somebody at The Spectator made a mistake." Peter Wilby, editor of the New Statesman, says he would not have printed the column. "We all read Taki because he's so outrageous, but you simply should not be using a mainstream publication to say 'they breed like flies'. Though attracting attention does get you more readers - that's why editors sail close to the wind." On occasion, Wilby has sailed a little too close: last year he apologised for a New Statesman cover alleging "a kosher conspiracy" - an honest mistake, he says now, caused by a failure to appreciate the Jewish community's historic sensitivities.

Few editors believe columnists should be sacked for their views.

Francis Wheen believes that newspapers would be "jolly dull" without provocative columnists, even though he dismisses Taki as a "Caliban with a computer who has nothing to say".

Anthony Julius, for all his concerns about " hate speech", believes free speech (within the law) rather than censorship is the way forward.

That may bring a columnist in conflict with his or her title - as was shown vividly last month when an Evening Standard editorial empathised with readers "who were rightly offended" by an AN Wilson column on Israel. The newspaper "fundamentally disagrees with the opinions expressed by Mr Wilson, but as with all its columnists, allows him freedom of expression".

Peter Hill, editor of The Daily Star, thinks there are too many commentators who are "too righton and miss the point". Better to go over the top occasionally than be bland," he says.

Martin Rowson was once asked to draw Alan Yentob for The Independent's magazine, but his caricature's "enormously long nose" was repeatedly rejected as potentially anti-Semitic. "I'm afraid it did look like a hideous caricature from Der Sturmer - but that's what Yentob looks like," Rowson admits.

"I ended up drawing him with no nose at all. The next week it was Frank Bruno. I said I'd try not to make him look black."

(Evening Standard, March 5 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - Scams/Googling/Number 10's website

By David Rowan

There have been plenty of warnings over the past week about the rise in identity theft, and the dangers of leaving bank statements in your bin-bags or your driving licence in your jacket pocket. But increasingly con artists are turning their attention to electronic means of securing our personal details, often using old-fashioned tricks of persuasion.

The latest internet-based identity scam targets users of online recruitment sites, using fake job ads to solicit personal data. Most of these sites are highly reputable and their databases excellent means of scouring hundreds of vacancies according to personal requirements. But, occasionally, rogues slip through, so be on your guard if you inquire about a post and receive an e-mail seeking rather too much information.

The problem is serious enough for Monster.com, which claims to be the world's biggest online careers network, to have e-mailed a warning to millions of its users last week: "Regrettably, from time to time, false job postings are listed online and used illegally to collect personal information from unsuspecting job seekers." In one case, reported last November, a US Navy lieutenant responded to an online ad that purported to be from a leading insurance broker. At the advertiser's request, he submitted his age, height, weight, Social Security number, bank account numbers, even his mother's maiden name - all before he realised that the recruiter did not exist. He was even asked to choose a four-digit code to access a special website - doubtless on the assumption that this number would also be his bank PIN code. You have been warned.

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HAVE YOU googled anyone lately? The verb - meaning to see what a web search, especially on Google, reveals about, say, a romantic suitor - has proved such a wonderfully serviceable neologism that the American Dialect Society recently voted it the most useful word of 2002.

But Google appears none too happy about being immortalised linguistically alongside such corporation-inspired verbs as "to hoover" and "to xerox". Last week, in fact, its lawyers wrote to the writer Paul McFedries, who runs the popular Word Spy language website, demanding that he delete his definition of the verb to "help us to protect our brand". But, says McFedries: "'Google' is an important new verb, so I certainly don't want to delete it."

As Google metamorphoses from a quirky outsider to an acquisitive corporate giant, such ill-judged legal demands do its PR image no favours. If the rest of us choose to turn a company's name into a verb, there is little that its lawyers can do to stop us - and certainly not by pursuing the lexicographers. Google should be flattered to have become a verb. Besides, it is far too late: there are already 34,000 web pages that mention "googled" or "googling", as you can verify by googling them.

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THE "new improved" 10 Downing Street website still lags behind its peers in Washington, Paris and, ahem, Baghdad, in omitting an e-mail feedback address for Tony Blair (though one is promised "very soon"). So what should we make of the "keyword" tags that the Prime Minister uses to direct web searchers to his official home page? The programming code, as the technology journal The Register has discovered, contains all the expected keywords that people might be typing, from "PMQs" to "war on terrorism", to bring them to the site.

Why. then, alongside a "Tony Blair" tag, has he added "Winston Churchill" and "Margaret Thatcher"? Tony, what are you trying to tell us?

(The Times, March 4 2003)

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