Interview: Stephen Carter & David Currie, Ofcom (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

THE first thing that strikes you about the media's new "super-regulators" is how keen they are to parody the jargon of management consultants. For men shaping some of Britain's most creative industries, Stephen Carter and David Currie are strangely comfortable chatting about "workstream prioritisation", "specificity in the communications landscape", and "enforcement mechanisms attached to the outputs not the inputs".

The second thing you notice is that their cultivated aversion to expressing specific opinions has a weak link. Suggest for a moment that their extravagant Thames-side offices are perhaps a tad ostentatious, or their salary bill a little top-heavy, and you trigger a passionate polemic infused with straight-talking detail.

Two days ago, Carter and Currie became the most influential double act in British media when Ofcom assumed power to regulate broadcasting and telecoms. As chief executive and chairman of the Office of Communications, their remit covers everything from sex and violence on TV to foreign takeovers of our commercial channels. Their decisions will affect your mobilephone bill and your broadband charges, and may even determine who owns your daily newspaper. With 263 separate regulatory duties and an in-tray bursting with reviews of public-service broadcasting and BT's dominance, it is perhaps not surprising that they studiously avoid giving much away.

How, for instance, would they preserve ITV's "public-service" obligations if Americans took over? Stephen Carter's answer could be straight out of Dilbert: "The challenge is, is it possible to separate the question of ownership from the question of output, or the question of ownership from the reality of output, and the only way in which you can do that is to make the rules very clear." This is telly that we're talking about?

Surveying magnificent river views from their stunning Bankside headquarters, the Ofcom bosses face a paradox. Labour wants them to promote its free-market vision through "light touch" regulation - as exemplified in their deft handling of the Carlton-Granada merger. But that means letting the market largely take care of itself - with only minimal intervention on behalf of you the viewer (or, in Ofcom jargon, the "citizen-consumer"). "Effective regulation is a bit like the drains," explains David Currie, more formally the Labour peer Lord Currie of Marylebone. "You only notice them when they go badly wrong."

As a former Treasury "wise man" and London Business School economics professor, it is not surprising that Currie, 57, defines a thriving media in terms of "effective competition and successful markets". Carter, too, favours the thoroughly commercial approach that you would expect from a former chief executive of the J Walter Thompson ad agency.

Carter, 39, is sharp, assertive, and impatient of any suggestion that multi-channel TV may have diluted programme quality. "When it arrived a dozen or so years ago, people thought it was going to be the evil of the world," he says. "Now I don't know any of my social peers who don't have some form of pay-television, and don't regard it as an addition to their lives. Go back to read the Hansard report from 1954 when commercial television was being launched and the view then was that it was the end of the world. While there are things that have gone wrong in the world, I don't think you can lay them all at the door of commercial television."

Ofcom will, he says, seek to preserve impartial news, maintain quality UK production and regional coverage, and apply "some controls on appropriate broadcasting". But what of those in the industry who worry that Carter's commercial background - he also ran NTL - make him an unlikely advocate for public-service broadcasting (or "PSB", in the jargon)? "Well, the last time I looked, advertising paid for commercial public-service broadcasting - contributing about £1.8 billion," he fires back. Sitting beside him, David Currie adds: "And one of the things our PSB review will do is look at all the evidence in this area and the allegation that quality has fallen. Well, has it? Has anybody really quantified that?"

DO they accept some commentators' views that there is too much sex on terrestrial television? "If you look at what people really think out there," Currie says, "the evidence is that the concern is more on violence than sex and nudity. And I think we should take those views quite seriously." What about rival broadcasters' complaints that Sky has too much power as "gatekeeper" to other companies' programming? There is a long pause. "Sky is a significant player in the pay-television market," Carter says cautiously, "and it has grown that business from a standing start." He regrets the demonisation of individuals, he says. "Not everything Mr Murdoch does is a bad thing."

Another concern is the temptation for a spin-obsessed government to " nobble" a single, all-embracing regulator. There are worries within the BBC, in particular, that its journalistic independence will suffer if, as has been mooted, Ofcom assumes more of the governors' powers.

But, although Lord Currie has been a Labour Party donor, and Ed Richards recently joined the board straight from Downing Street, Stephen Carter insists that Ofcom is defiantly non-partisan. "They are only two of a large number of people here, many of whose political opinions I have no idea about," he says. "I understand why people make the accusation [of potential bias], but the truth is, it's irrelevant." On other matters that touch us all as "citizen-consumers", the regulators are determinedly noncommittal. Do they think mobile-call charges are too high? "I can see no evidence on that subject," Stephen Carter responds, before David Currie adds: "Mobile telephony is remarkably popular, and the penetration is rising all the time." He is, he says, no supporter of price caps.

What about the directoryenquiries mess? "I'm not sure it's accurate to call it a mess," tiptoes Carter. "It's undoubtedly a perceived mess, but we could have an interesting discussion about whether it's a factual mess ..." Alas, there is no time today for that interesting discussion - but Carter does reveal that Ofcom is likely to announce new performance criteria soon for 118 services.

For one rare moment, though, the regulators reveal a fiery side that belies their studious detachment. It concerns press criticism of Ofcom's "bloated" structure, its 28 staff earning more than £100,000, and those luxurious gym-equipped offices.

"It's such tosh," snaps Carter, who points out that Ofcom's 880 staff replace 1,200 employed by the previous regulators. The salaries are "appropriate" for attracting talented people who, if coming from business, have invariably taken a pay cut. As for those sumptuous offices ... "Do you know, I sometimes think we'd have been better off if we'd chosen a really expensive building with poor views, rather than a very efficient building with nice views," Carter says. Besides, the rent is £25 per square foot; Croydon, both men say in unison, would have cost £40.

It proves a forlorn hope that such "specificity" (as Ofcom's bosses would say) might extend to disclosing their own favourite TV shows. Stephen Carter is back to giving nothing away. "I am a big fan of television, I love radio, I'm a big user of the internet and I'm probably slightly too addicted to newspapers," he says. "But you know what? I never comment on specifics."

(Evening Standard, December 31 2003)

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Interview: Guy Black, PCC director/Conservative Party (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

IT has taken a month of persistent lobbying to prise Michael Howard's new spin doctor out of the shadows. When Guy Black finally agrees to talk, he makes clear that this interview "will be the last anybody sees or hears from me for quite some considerable time". After seven years as director of the Press Complaints Commission, few are better placed than Black to understand that subtle behind-the-scenes forces are what really shape the news agenda.

The appointment of Black, 39, as director of communications is a coup for the Conservative Party. He is on first-name terms with every national newspaper editor, goes on holiday with the present editor of The Sun, and counts television executives and celebrities among his impeccable social contacts. For good measure, his partner, Mark Bolland, is Prince Charles's former press adviser and now writes a News of the World column.

"I guess what I'll bring to the job is a special knowledge about how this industry works," Black says in the PCC offices near Fleet Street, which he finally vacates next week. "Not just national newspapers, but the regional press, which has more readers during the course of the week. I'm not sure others have acknowledged their influence - there is a huge opportunity there."

He is not, he insists, being brought in simply to turn the Murdoch papers back to the Tory cause, despite his close relationships there (he grew up in Brentwood, Essex, with Ross Kemp, who is married to Rebekah Wade, editor of The Sun). "It would be arrogant beyond belief to think that any individual other than the News International editors will have the ultimate say," he says. Instead, he will simply build "good newspaper coverage on the back of good policies". Papers will back his party, he says, when they identify a sensible, coherent policy agenda that serves their readers' interests. "And I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't believe the Conservatives will, not just could, win the next General Election. The party has a remarkable instinct for renewal, and anybody who says the task is impossible is wrong."

A lifelong Tory who studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, under Maurice Cowling, a guru of the Thatcherite Right, Black previously worked for the party in the late Eighties before moving into PR. He never sought a seat but jumped at Howard's recent offer to return to politics.

Black is charming and tactful, and chooses his words precisely, as if a lawyer. He gained a reputation at the PCC as a conciliator and a stickler for detail, but he has also made some enemies.

His friendship with Wade, formerly at the News of the World, has led to particular accusations that the commission has been soft on her papers' complaints. The Guardian was furious last summer when it was censured for paying £720 to a former cellmate of Lord Archer, just as the News of the World was exonerated for paying £10,000 to a convicted criminal whose role in the so-called "Beckham kidnap plot" led a judge to report the paper to the Attorney General.

"There isn't even a shred of truth in the suggestion that the News of the World had lightertouch regulation because I'm a friend of Rebekah," Black says firmly, never quite losing his cool. "I'm a friend of a lot of the editors. I'm a friend of a lot of the complainants. You might ask how I could possibly do this job. The answer is quite straightforward: I don't make a single judgment here. That's the job of the commission, which is independent, with a clear balance of editors and lay people." The PCC's unusually proactive investigation of The Guardian's payment, he says, was entirely consistent with the code.

But what about the News of the World's supposed "exposé" of Prince Harry's drug-taking last year which arguably duped the public? Bolland recently admitted that he and the paper knowingly conspired to create a misleading story, which Black knew about in advance. "I'm not speaking for Mark," Black says, "but that was a classic PR operation. A newspaper comes to you with evidence of all sorts of things - and what Mark and Colleen [ Harris, the Prince's former press secretary] got involved in was classic damage limitation. I've never understood the fuss." Bolland's subsequent falling-out with the Palace appears to have affected Black's own attitude towards royalty. He is remarkably critical of the royal family's recent handling of the press, notably its response to allegations about Prince Charles's sexuality.

"Since the Burrell trial, they've gone into a much more combative mode, using injunctions and legal threats," he says. "Once you hand media relations over to the lawyers, you're lost. You're no longer in control of the agenda, and you have decided to take newspapers on rather than try to work with them." This, he suggests, is a fundamental-error. "I think they are entering-dangerous territory. That's not to say it's all over - but the point about the PCC and its code is that newspapers respect it and try to stay within its terms, and you can always have a mature argument. But the moment you get a writ, then it's full steam ahead to seek some way to get round it." Within two years, he believes, the law on prepublication injunctions will have broken down as the internet inevitably leaks stories out.

HAS Black himself made any mistakes? He pauses for 13 seconds before recalling the PCC's party for its 10th anniversary in 2001. "I suppose I regret that there was an aura of it being hijacked by members of the royal family," he says, referring to the appearance of Camilla alongside Charles and William at Somerset House in 2001. "That was an accident, not design, but it's rather difficult when somebody in that position says, 'Can I come along too?' It gave the impression that we were there to give a Rolls-Royce service to members of the royal family."

Black draws two particular lessons from his time at the commission. First, huge amounts of supposedly intrusive celebrity coverage is printed with the active connivance of the individuals concerned. Genuine examples of unfair treatment, he says, can be counted on one hand. Second, he hopes action will be taken to prevent "those awful scrums" on the doorsteps of those in the news.

Journalists should take pride in the surveys which show they are the least trusted people in society. "It means they're part of a vibrant, commercial industry that's working in the public interest, ruffling feathers, scrutinising people, making nuisances of themselves from time to time," he says. "Journalists who are always being nice to people are not working in the public interest." He pauses, and smiles. "And I bet I know which bit of this interview is going to be quoted against me in the future."

(Evening Standard, December 17 2004)

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The Times Magazine: Spies like us - how camera phones change everything

Spies like us

The camera-equipped mobile phone is set to be the big seller this Christmas, promoted as the latest must-have in the new age of personal communications. But recent reports suggest that the uses to which these cameras are being put are often far removed from the manufacturers' original intentions. From sexual voyeurism to crime detection and news-gathering, the phones are having a profound social impact. And, in a world already awash with surveillance technology, they seem set finally to spell the end of privacy

By David Rowan

Daniel McLarney is a new kind of publisher. Picture-savvy and web-literate, McLarney, 27, considers the raw spontaneity of a snatched street-scene close-up to be infinitely more seductive than any professionally enhanced studio shot. Since he launched his photographic website in June, he has attracted hundreds of unpaid contributors armed with the latest camera-equipped mobile phones. Lurking behind women in streets or workplaces from Southampton to Sydney, they have sent the site more than 10,000 photographs, all taken in secret, the demand for which is now strong enough for McLarney to contemplate a £12 subscription fee. And although he is at pains to stress that these images of unsuspecting strangers are in no way pornographic, he makes no apologies for the site's particular anatomical focus. It is, after all, called MobileAsses.com.

"I won't use photographs taken in certain private situations such as locker-rooms, but in a world increasingly dominated by camphones it's a promise that's hard to fulfil," says McLarney. Instead, his site - slogan: "The real reason mobile phones have cameras" - encourages its hundreds of thousands of visitors to rate the month's sexiest images, with T-shirts and e-mail accounts on offer to the winners. Recent awards have gone to "Johnny Crunch" of Budapest (for snaps of catwalk models parading in leopard-skin bikinis), "Blaster" in the Dutch city of Nijmegen (shoppers wearing tight white jeans and faded denim) and Laurent from Paris (a tanned woman in minimalist lingerie apparently in the process of dressing). There is, however, "no nudity", as the submission rules helpfully state, "but G-strings are great!"

Last year, about 16 million camphones were sold around the world. This year, the total is predicted to be more than 60 million - a couple of million of them in Britain, although the manufacturers will not make precise estimates. But with handsets equipped for video and stills photography destined to be Christmas best-sellers, this newest communications technology is having a profound social impact. Just as texting has changed the way we write, flirt and pay bills, so picture and video-messaging are making an impact on everything from news-gathering and crime-detection to sexual voyeurism. For the first time, anyone with a camera-enabled phone, such as the Ericsson T610 or the Sharp GX10, can publish images instantly and relatively cheaply to a potentially global audience. As these phones become ubiquitous - they are already outselling digital cameras - we will all fall into their range on every street corner.

And there appears to be nothing we can do to protect our privacy.

This is not yet something that bothers Daniel McLarney, whose Los Angeles-based website has still to face its first legal challenge for breaching a subject's privacy. "If someone e-mailed me saying they'd seen their ass on my site and objected, and could prove it, then I'd take it down immediately," he insists, adding that most women he talks to "want to see their pictures there as they're curious about how other people would rate them". But other picture-messaging websites are pushing the boundaries to the limit. Last month, one British-based site published seven blurry images purporting to be "two international footballers and a mystery girl engaging in the activity known as 'roasting'". The sexually explicit photographs, all faces obscured, were said to have been uploaded to the site from "an international footballer's Nokia 3650".

Sex was never far from the phone networks' business plans when they launched what is technically called the multimedia messaging service (MMS). That was clear from their suggestible ad campaigns encouraging us to "muck about", and from the deals they struck with pornographers to offer paid-for downloads. But for all the grand corporate marketing scenarios, this has become mostly a grassroots revolution. It has been Japanese schoolgirl prostitutes, and Hong Kong pimps who have adopted picture-messaging to advertise their particular services. And rather than simply pay to download celebrity photos, as the networks intended, users have discovered that camphones turn us all into potential paparazzi.

This is why Britney Spears demanded that all camphones be confiscated before she appeared at a recent press party, and why Prince partied at the Embassy nightclub in London only after his minders had first frisked guests to ensure that he would be out of picture range. To celebrities used to controlling their visual image, the new phones represent chaos. For every magazine promising picture approval, there is now a website such as Buzznet.com packed with user-submitted camphone snaps of Janet Jackson in a restaurant, Jay Leno revving his motorbike down an LA highway, and an unkempt Randy Newman watching a tennis match. Even politicians are targets: the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, recently complained that he could not go for a drink without risking being phone-snapped. "You've somebody lurking behind the back of a wall at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night to take a picture of me (to) sell it to the newspaper," he said. "And there's nothing you can do about it."

In a world where a grainy image can dominate the news agenda - remember the footage of a Palestinian boy dodging Israeli bullets? - we are suddenly all potential news reporters. When 12 cars were involved in a fatal accident on the Tomei Expressway in Japan this June, the first television footage came from a lorry driver's videophone. During President Bush's recent state visit to London, anti-war activists used camphones to monitor police movements in real-time on "mobile weblogs". "Soon, an event of major proportions is going to happen on the streets of London or Tokyo or Helsinki, and millions of people will see photographs and even video via the internet before the world press arrives," says Howard Rheingold, an early web visionary whose book Smart Mobs predicted the social revolution fuelled by camphones. By turning us from passive TV viewers into active media communicators, Rheingold sees the technology creating "a new literacy of internet publishing" - just as Gutenberg's press inspired a new print-based literacy.

For the award-winning fashion photographer Nick Knight, the revolution has already arrived. Three years ago, Knight set up SHOWstudio.com, a London-based website for "broadcasting" new work in art, fashion and design. At this year's couture shows, its photographers used camphones to beam catwalk images instantly to a large international audience. "You can take these cameras anywhere, flick the button and be published globally in an instant," Knight says excitedly. "Before, all our information had to be channelled through money-making companies such as record firms, publishing houses or art galleries, filtered through people who decided what you could and couldn't see. Now you have a truly democratic way of speaking to other human beings."

Having photographed numerous covers for Vogue and The Face, as well as album covers for David Bowie and Bjoerk, Knight now favours camphones over his other cameras. He is not bothered by the images' relative fuzziness. "I really don't mind that," he says. "It's the message of a photo that's important. Besides, there's a certain quality to a camphone image - a particular beauty in the light. They have a very painterly feeling."

Since the first camphone, the Sharp J-SH04, was launched in November 2000, it has been the technology's more nefarious potential that has dominated media coverage. In an effort to protect children, camphones have been banned in swimming pools from Bolton to Brisbane, after changing-room images were discovered on the internet. In Japan, the use of the phones to take "upskirt" photographs on commuter trains is fast rising. Last summer, videophones also prompted lurid headlines when police claimed that one had been used to film an alleged rape in a Brighton pub. But Emily Turrettini, who monitors the industry for the news site Picturephoning.com, thinks the fears are grossly exaggerated. "Let's not panic," Turrettini says. "You'll always get some people misusing a new technology, but the threat is blown out of proportion. We've got politicians clamouring to ban them by law from public changing rooms, when it would be more sensible simply to put up a notice."

Instead, Turrettini suggests, we should celebrate this new medium for recording everyday life - as Jonathan Margolis shows each week in his "Random" column for this magazine - and even the phones' potential for exposing wrongdoing. "Sooner or later there will be a videophone equivalent of Rodney King (whose brutal beating by Los Angeles police in 1991, captured on video, led to charges being brought against four officers)."

Sam Gedeon, for one, is grateful for the technology's ability to support law and order. One evening last April, Gedeon, 45, was at his grocery shop in Gothenburg, Sweden, when a youth walked in threatening violence if he did not hand over 100 kronor (£7.80). Thinking quickly, Gedeon remembered his Nokia 7650, which he had left in an upstairs office. After telling the robber that he had to go upstairs to fetch the cash, Gedeon returned with the phone and photographed him as he banged on the counter. Gedeon then used his computer to print out the image for the local police.

Within half an hour, the suspect had been found in a nearby restaurant. In July, a 15-year-old was convicted of attempted robbery and sentenced to youth detention. The prosecutor, Peeter Aaw, said it was the first time a camphone image had been used as evidence in court.

Camphones have also led to arrests in a foiled child abduction in New Jersey, a Japanese hit-and-run and a recent burglary in Manchester. Chief Superintendent Ian Alexander, a divisional commander with Tayside Police, is convinced that the phones will become a vital weapon in the war against crime. So far, the Tayside force has used the phones mainly to catch graffiti taggers and record non-standard car number-plates, but Alexander sees huge possibilities for increasing covert surveillance of suspects. In five months, he says, the phones have led to 40 arrests. "These phones are very powerful tools," he says. "They're already increasing detection rates significantly - our vandalism detection rate is up 18 per cent this year. The technology is a key part of speeding things up."

When officers see a fresh graffiti tag on a street wall, they send an image in real time by phone to the crime management desk. Intelligence officers then search for a match on the internal database. "We also go into schools, and record logos that we find on school blotters," says Alexander. "So we'll know that this tag was done by Jimmy Smith in 4B." The technique may seem intrusive - a child, certainly, would not expect their schoolbook scribbles to find their way on to a police database - but the force insists it is preventing hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of damage.

But as quickly as the police are discovering new uses for the phones, criminals are also adapting the technology. Last April, the National Criminal Intelligence Service reported that paedophiles in central Scotland had been caught swapping indecent images over the phone networks. On Alexander's own Tayside beat, drug-dealers are using them to exchange written messages about the next deal, rather than risk phone conversations. "They think their picture messages are safe from interception, unlike voice calls," he says. "If they want to think that, it's fine with us."

As for personal privacy, the spread of camphone use - among those on both sides of the law - is fast rewriting the rules. Some US states have now introduced a new offence of "video voyeurism" to penalise those who distribute salacious images of strangers without their knowledge; Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice has banned the phones entirely, and South Korea has legislated to ensure that the phones click loudly when an image is captured. In Britain, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 has established a new crime of "voyeurism", with up to two years in jail for anyone caught "operating equipment" that records other people's private activities for sexual gratification. But it will take clarification to determine exactly what a "private act", under the new legislation, will mean in practice - and whether MobileAsses.com will find its British contributors risking jail.

Howard Rheingold thinks there is no longer any point even in talking about visual privacy. "There are 25 million closed-circuit television cameras bolted to buildings, and I have seen prototypes of inexpensive wireless video webcams the size of an aspirin," he says. "Between camphones, security cams, and your neighbour's or spouse's desire to spy on you, I expect that our current ideas of visual privacy are doomed."

(The Times Magazine, December 13 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - Home media hubs

By David Rowan

A RELAXING evening in front of the box used to be so simple. You would get cosy on the sofa, wine glass in hand, and make no more demanding decision than which buttons to press on the remote control.

That was before consumer choice landed in the middle of your living room. Now, before you can choose between Changing Rooms and The Simpsons, you have some fundamental issues to address. Over the past five years, developments in television technology have brought a vast range of consumer choices. If wall-mounted flat screens are not your thing, you can invest in a bathroom mirror with in-built LCD (liquid crystal display) television screens. And if a home-cinema system sounds too conventional, you can try a domestic "media hub" that uses a personal computer to stream images and sound wirelessly to screens around your home. To entice you to upgrade to the latest kit, retailers will bombard you with jargon promoting their "widescreen high-definition projection TV monitors". What, you may be wondering, are they talking about?

First, forget about cathode ray tubes. Today's fashion is for "flat panel" screens such as LCDs, which at their best show vivid pictures even in direct sunlight.

John Lewis will sell you anything from a £199 portable Roadstar LCD television to a 37-inch model by Sharp, at a mere £4,995. A plasma screen, by contrast, relies on thousands of small tubes containing ionised gas (plasma) that glow red, blue or green when a current passes through them. £4,495 will get you a 42-inch plasma widescreen set from Panasonic. The stand will cost extra.

As Nicam VHS recorders fall to barely £100, the electronics industry has found other ways to get you spending again. While arguments continue about which DVD format will emerge as the standard, the personal video recorder (PVR), often called the digital video recorder (DVR), is gaining ground. This lets you store television programmes on a computer hard drive, pause live broadcasts, skip commercials or even watch two channels at once.

Computer manufacturers hope that you will base your "home media hub" around their systems. PCs that run the latest edition of Microsoft's Windows XP Media Centre can show, pause and record live television. With a high-quality screen and a powerful enough PC, you can also watch high-resolution digital movies in the latest HDTV (high definition television) formats. Hollywood make-up artists are reportedly so concerned about the picture quality of these formats that they are looking for new ways to disguise the stars' blemishes. Phillip Swann, a columnist for TV Week, suggests that while Nicole Kidman and George Clooney may have little to worry about, Liz Hurley and Cameron Diaz may not in future look their best.

This could be digital radio's big opportunity...

(The Times, December 12 2003)

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The Times: The iPod's appeal

By David Rowan

IT weighs less than two CDs, yet fits 10,000 songs inside your pocket. Fashion houses are designing accessories for it, directors are including it in plot lines, and word of mouth is making it the coolest Christmas gadget. The iPod may be little more than a portable hard-disk storage device, but it is revolutionising the way we listen to music.

Not since Sony launched its Walkman in 1979 has a portable music player become such a cult consumer object. The iPod was not the first digital music player to use the MP3 format when Apple launched it two years ago, but it is the only one to have become a cultural icon. Small, light and easy to use, it has taught non-technical audiences that music need not originate in a shop-bought physical package to be enjoyed on the move; now anyone can enjoy a digitised personal music library.

In the past year Apple has sold almost 1.5 million iPods. With prices starting at £249, it is one of its most profitable products. Its success is due partly to the stylish design, but what makes it such a breakthrough gadget, with dozens of its own fan websites, is its functionality. For geeks, the buzz lies in the ultra-fast FireWire connection for transferring tracks from a computer, or the 40GB maximum storage capacity. The rest of us need know only that it makes it easy to live a digital lifestyle. The iPod is also an alarm clock, a games console and, with the right attachments, a voice recorder or FM radio. But mostly it is about the music. Through Apple's iTunes music download store, owners (not yet those in Britain) can easily, and legally, download any of half a million songs for about 60p each.

(The Times, December 10 2003)

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Interview: Orla Guerin, BBC Middle East correspondent (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

FOR an award-winning BBC foreign correspondent, Orla Guerin attracts more than her share of critical newspaper commentaries, scurrilous internet rumours, even the occasional death threat. She has faced frequent accusations that, as the corporation's Middle East correspondent, she is instinctively hostile towards Israel. And nothing she tells the Evening Standard today is likely to convince her accusers otherwise.

Even before she has sipped her caffe latte, Guerin has questioned Israel's claim to be a democracy, compared its press freedom with Zimbabwe's, and accused its officials of paranoia. As one of her own television reports might conclude, the attack is bound to prompt Israeli hardliners to demand swift retaliation.

Guerin, in London to collect a Women in Film and Television award for her reporting, does not appear unduly bothered by the intensive diplomacy that recently persuaded the Sharon government to drop its "non-co-operation" policy towards the BBC. In fact, she explains in a Holland Park cafe, its very decision to boycott BBC reporters last summer shows how undemocratic Israel has become. "I can't imagine any other government thinking like that - Zimbabwe is the comparison," she says. "I'm absolutely stunned that they think it's appropriate."

When she arrived from the Balkans three years ago, Guerin, 37, was "genuinely amazed" at how accommodating Israel was to journalists. But latterly there has been "an increasing knee-jerk tendency" to make life as difficult as possible - restricting reporters' movements, cancelling her Palestinian colleagues' press accreditation, and trying to force the BBC to hire Israeli camera crews. "Israel talks regularly - at this point, in my view, with less justification - about being the only democracy in the Middle East," she says. "But how can you still be a democracy and try to harass the press? This is not how a democracy behaves."

These are strong accusations to lay against a nation whose neighbours are notably less tolerant of dissent. Guerin accepts that "comparatively speaking they are way ahead regionally", and that press freedom remains "a fairy tale" in many Arab countries. But she adds: "You are either a democratic state or you're not, and they're toying with that thinking - trying to have it both ways."

SHE identifies "a huge degree of paranoia in the official psyche", which results in a tendency to blame the messenger. Certainly the Israeli Government Press Office has been targeting verbal missiles at the BBC (as well as other news outlets), accusing its reports of "verging on the anti-Semitic" and seeking to "demonise" Israelis. Guerin rejects any such suggestions. There is, she says, "a supersensitivity about anything perceived as critical comment - and objective reporting will on occasions fall into that category".

Guerin has been the subject of complaints to the BBC's governors of alleged bias and "wildly inaccurate" reporting, but none has been sustained. She has received numerous emailed death threats, and some websites falsely attribute her alleged "slant" to her marriage to a Palestinian - a claim she dismisses as "completely outrageous" and deeply racist. Actually, in September Guerin did get married - but to Michael Georgy, a Reuters correspondent currently working in Baghdad, whom she met in Bethlehem. "And he's not Palestinian."

Yet newspaper commentators too, including Norman Lebrecht in the Standard and Barbara Amiel in The Daily Telegraph, have condemned Guerin's reporting - alleging a preference for the "tear-jerking shot at the expense of impartial reason", and a reliance on "anecdotes about how frightening it was to be stopped by Israeli soldiers". Yes, she says, showing the human toll of conflict is a useful way to keep viewers' attention. But she says she is careful to reflect the grief and raw emotion of both sides equally.

Other accusations concern perceived sympathy towards Palestinian victims of aggression, such as one report in which the mother of a suicide bomber described her son's death as the "best day of my life". Guerin also stands accused of emphasising Israel's violence when reporting the deaths of its civilians.

And by failing to report on everyday life, it is claimed, she also presents a picture of a nation focused disproportionately on an aggressive quest for vengeance.

The claims, she says, are all nonsense. Amiel's "hilariously inaccurate" comments, in particular, she dismisses as "ranting". "I would only be concerned if it was established that I made a mistake about a matter of fact," she says. "People's subjective perceptions of me I pay no attention to. They will hear what they want to hear. What people are saying is not, 'We want you to be fair and impartial', but, 'We want you to be on our side'. And we're not on anybody's side."

WHEN she reports on a suicide bombing, it is her duty at that time to mention any clear Israeli plans for retaliation. "We're going to talk about it - because, although suicide bombings kill civilians, the retaliation undertaken by Israel will often kill civilians as well. I don't accept that anybody has the right to say, tell this part of the story and not that part." The great problem, she says, is "people are not listening with objective ears".

Can she understand how Israelis' numerous internal and external enemies may encourage this supposed "paranoia"? "The two things to me don't connect," she says in the stern, fast-talking manner in which she would report a suicide bombing. "The fact that Israel faces, or feels it faces an existential threat does not give it the right to try and silence the press." The remarks have not gone down well at the Israeli Embassy. "To compare Israel with dictatorships shows a lack of understanding," a spokeswoman responds carefully.

"There is only one Middle Eastern country that gives free and open access to information, and tolerates a wide variety of opinions, and that's Israel. That is why Israel is so likely to be criticised."

Guerin is no ingenue. She has reported from Grozny and Moscow, covered the Kosovo war until she was expelled at gunpoint, and was nominated for a Bafta for her work in Spain's Basque region. She also stood unsuccessfully as an Irish Labour Party candidate in the 1994 European elections - an unpleasant experience, not least because of false rumours put about by her opponents of a sexual relationship with Dick Spring, the party leader.

Shots were fired towards her in April 2002 while covering a demonstration in Bethlehem - deliberately, she claims. A formal BBC complaint has not yet been answered. "That wasn't a huge surprise," she says. "It's indicative of the overall lack of accountability."

In person, with her long hair down, Guerin is chatty, friendly, occasionally chuckling. Could relations improve now that the BBC has just appointed Malcolm Balen as its first Middle East editorial adviser, charged with monitoring accusations of bias? Guerin is not convinced that the rapprochement will last. "I don't believe in ceasefires," she says with a half-laugh. "I've seen too many of them come and go."

(Evening Standard, December 10 2003)

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Interview: Liz Forgan, the Scott Trust (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

MEET Fleet Street's first woman newspaper proprietor - with the power to hire and fire editors at will and determine where tens of millions of pounds get spent. As the new chair of the Scott Trust, the body that owns the Guardian Media Group, Liz Forgan now controls the destinies of The Guardian, The Observer, a swathe of radio stations and websites, and a lucrative publishing empire stretching from Autotrader to the Wilmslow Express. No wonder the former Evening Standard leader-writer has been calling friends this week to declare effusively: "I am Lord Beaverbrook!"

At this stage, in a frenzy of self-laceration, The Guardian would correct and clarify a couple of points. First, the Beaverbrook remark is a Forgan joke. Second, the term "proprietor" may imply that The Guardian papers are run like any other. And the Scott Trust, set up in 1936 to protect the paper from death duties and preserve its editorial independence, does not fire editors "at will" but is there to support them against the brutal commercial world.

"It is a peculiar arrangement, but it really works and keeps the papers fantastically strong," Forgan says in her office at the Heritage Lottery Fund, where as chair she similarly channels millions of pounds to promote worthy causes.

"The trust lets you stand as a bulwark against any onslaughts on the papers' editorial freedom. You can take a long view and add an 'X' ingredient to your balance sheet that isn't money, it's journalistic quality. It's easy to sound snooty, but a certain kind of journalism is worth sacrificing commercial objectives for."

The formula has earned The Guardian a loyal readership that allowed it to weather the broadsheet price war, and a reputation for risk-taking journalism and editorial innovation. Yet among its rivals, the newspaper remains a frequent target for mockery. "Yes, I know people say that we're sanctimonious, and we have to watch out for that," Forgan says. "It's an occupational hazard of struggling to do what is right. If you're Boris Johnson, it's easy to pen a graceful hymn to unrighteousness."

A more specific concern, within the paper and beyond, is its Middle Eastern coverage. Last Saturday, Julie Burchill wrote that her departure for The Times was influenced by The Guardian's "quite striking bias against the state of Israel", which she equated with anti-Semitism. She also highlighted a Richard Ingrams column in The Observer that called for Jewish journalists to declare their racial origins.

Forgan identifies this as "the hottest, most passionately controversial topic" in Farringdon Road. "I really do not think The Guardian is anti-Semitic, but the question is, is it fair to Israel? Because it permits polemical outspoken views, sometimes more outspoken than views tolerated in other newspapers, the impression may be created that The Guardian takes a stance it doesn't have. That's the risk that you run if you pursue freedom of expression."

Rivals' complaints concern The Guardian's dominance in public-sector advertising, prompting frequent assert ions in more conservative publications that the paper's cosy relationship with Left-wingcouncils is boosting its balance-sheet. Naturally, Forgan rejects the argument. "You might as well say it's unfair that the FT gets more City advertising," she says. "It's not unfair trading, and has nothing to do with the paper's political stance. It's a highly competitive market, in which I'm happy to say The Guardian does very well."

She says there are no plans for the paper to follow The Independent and The Times in going tabloid. "It's not a burning issue," she says. "For The Independent, it was a really bold response to a big problem, though I'm not very impressed. The Times has made a better job. But The Guardian has a very stable circulation, and there's no need for us to hurry up." Nor is she in a hurry to see The Guardian's websites and The Observer stem their long-term financial losses, said to account for more than £10 million a year. "I don't think it's sensible to make stipulations about what stage they need to break even," she says. "The website investment is about spreading those qualities of excellence and pluralism into the new world of media. We have the benefit of taking a longer than immediate view." Roger Alton, she says, has done "a fabulous job" to give The Observer "heart", and it would be unreasonable to expect it to break even any time soon.

Forgan, 59, a product of Benenden now living in Primrose Hill, says she is not bothered by her own reputation as something of an overweening head girl - elaborated in some conservative newspapers during her days running the BBC's radio networks and before that as Channel 4's director of programmes.

When she first read newspaper columns denouncing her "patronising" manner and her "overbearing Left-wing bias", she was shocked. "But then you realise it's a special language only the tabloids use, when they set you up as an Aunt Sally of the bossy Left for their knockabout amusement." In fact, she would not even consider herself Left-wing. "At [Oxford] university, I canvassed the Cowley industrial estate in the Conservative interest in the company of a Pakistani princess," she says. "My political trajectory has been all over the place."

SHE was more upset by coverage of her personal life, notably her long-term relationship with Rex Cowan, a married older man whose wife apparently gave it her blessing. "It's not my kind of journalism," Forgan says. "I don't like it, and though I don't consider myself a public person, there is no aspect of my life that is a closed book." But she rejects calls for a privacy law. "No, we need decent newspapers. Legislating for privacy has so many risks of damaging really important freedoms." As for the Press Complaints Commission, she thinks it's "much less pathetic" than it used to be, but was "utterly incomprehending" of its condemnation of The Guardian's small payment to a convicted criminal while exonerating the News of the World over the Beckham kidnap plot.

She thinks Channel 4 is far too obsessed with sex. "I do think they have to be careful - they're still pushing the boundaries, but too much of that is in the narrow area of sex," she says. The BBC too has some "serious issues" to address, such as its over-expansion into commercial spheres and the dual, regulator /manager role of its governors. Some of these regulatory roles, she suggests, may be better handled by Ofcom.

As for Forgan's own future, will she be writing to Guardian staff as she did when she took over BBC radio? That letter, much satirised in the press, urged staff to "treat my office like Waterloo Station ... I'm simply knocked out by the treasure house of interest, revelation and pleasure you are putting out ..."

"Actually, it was a perfectly good letter," Forgan says now, with a wince. "I'm quite sensible really, if sometimes unduly enthusiastic."

(Evening Standard, December 3 2003)

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The Times: Tech column - E-voting risks

By David Rowan

GOOD news for anyone looking to fix a future British election: next Monday the Electoral Commission will announce where millions of citizens will be able to vote electronically for their MEPs next June via the internet, digital TV, the telephone or text messaging. The Government sees this expansion of "e-voting" as an important step towards our first full electronic general election, eagerly promised "some time after 2006". Why, then, are computer-security experts warning that even the best technology will throw such an election open to high-tech fraud?

IT experts in universities on both sides of the Atlantic are uneasy about the e-voting systems being implemented in Britain. Some systems, developed in the United States, stand condemned as "open to wholesale vote fraud". Others, used here in last May's local elections, allegedly contain "substantial flaws" that could alter the legitimate result. The perils range from possible interference by a determined hacker to a rogue programmer's ability to write "malicious" software to favour one party. The commercial companies supplying the technology for UK election pilots say that security is their priority. But growing evidence is emerging that some of these have covered up security flaws in the past.

Whistleblowers in the US allege that they have been fired for pointing out software problems. Independent researchers claim that the companies' lawyers have sought to silence them. Yet because these firms tend to keep their software secret "for commercial reasons", often no independent way exists to assess the risks.

Occasionally, though, a shard of light is cast on the possibilities. Diebold, a US company whose e-voting machinery has been used here, refuses to make its software available for public scrutiny. But last winter some Diebold programming code was found on an unprotected website, and passed to computer scientists at Johns Hopkins University. Their analysis suggests that a teenager could beat the system using equipment bought cheaply over the internet. Voters could cast unlimited votes without being detected, and votes could be overwritten in the system's logs.

This might all be dismissed as academic theorising, were it not for some strange happenings in US elections involving electronic voting. In Baldwin County, Alabama, the governorship was handed from a Democrat to a Republican after 6,300 votes changed overnight from one party to another. In the Georgia governor's race last year, a Republican was declared the surprise winner after Diebold applied a last-minute "patch" to its e-voting machines. A long list of similar incidents does not inspire confidence about the integrity of e-voting in the US especially when some of the companies involved have close Republican Party links, prompting all sorts of conspiracy theories. The UK electoral system is, of course, far too robust to allow anything so foreign as rogue software or hanging chads to taint our faith in democracy. Still, if Mr Blair insists on rushing towards e voting, he must ensure that any software companies awarded contracts make their computer code available for independent scrutiny, and that every time a computerised vote is cast, a paper copy is printed to let voters know that ballots have been recorded as intended. Because although technology can certainly help to reinvigorate the electoral process, it will take just one security breach to undermine public confidence irreparably.

(The Times, December 2 2003)

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