Black Mirror: The National Anthem

What is the message of 'Black Mirror: The National Anthem?'

(keywords highlighted in pig pink)

I think Charlie Brooker is trying to portray the vast influence of social networking websites such as Twitter where news is allowed to become viral as a result of citizen journalism which links to UGC (User Generated Content), in this case the ransom video demanding the Prime Minister have intercourse with a pig in order for the princess to be released. Although the whole idea may have been a publicity stunt in order to denote the prime ministers reputation and integrity  there was a lot of interactivity from the public as everyone had their vote on whether or not the prime minister should have intercourse with a pig. I think the sketch highlights the lack of privacy public figures have even though this sketch may have been satirical. Also showing the prime minister having intercourse with the pig raises the issue of desensitisation and how we as an audience are using to seeing explicit images such as this on a daily basis in mainstream media raising questions about our values or the lack of them. Black Mirror also portrayed 24 hour (rolling) news as still being the dominant force in confirming news first broadcast by the public using smartphones.

News Story WEEK 14: Google to Take Over Vevo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/17/youtube-google-stake-vevo

• Deal thought to be worth £42 for 10% stake
• Music video website founded by Universal and Sony
• Vevo already integrated into YouTube providing a channel to watch songs which are fully licensed rather than those uploaded by everyday users

This proves that Pareto's Law (80:20 rule) prevails as 20% are catering for the 80% even though the segregation for YouTube is far more contrasting. Although sometimes a hindrance with 30 second or even a minute ads, Vevo has allowed artists to claw back some money by having licensing deals with record labels. And yet again Google is showing its capabilities that even though they don't pay tax, they are still giants in the e-media world.

News Story WEEK 13: Police Officer Selling Information to News of the World

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/10/police-guilty-trying-sell-information

• Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn convicted of misconduct in public office following a £40m investigation
• Offered to sell information about phone-hacking investigation to News of the World in September 2010
• Casburn arrested 15 months later

I think that corruption, especially of such a high ranking police officer is disgraceful and should add to the decline in Rupert Murdoch's reputation but probably won't since he runs most major news outlets in the UK. £40 million of tax payers money was used to investigate whether police can be trusted, this should never occur. I think tabloids in particular need a regulatory body which they have to report to providing information about how they 'researched' their story. However, since the government is in the middle of public sector cuts, this option seems majorly flawed. 

News Story WEEK 12: Chinese Journalists Strike Against Cencorship

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2013/jan/07/press-freedom-china 

• 100 staff from the Southern Weekly title walked out on News Years Day
• Staff claim 1000 articles have been censored in the past year

I think that more Chinese journalists should go on strike in order to force the Chinese communist regimes to loosen censorship laws. I said only loosen as I don't believe China will eradicate censorship laws altogether. 

Summary of 4 Articles

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/03/the-daily-closes-app-doomed-from-start

The Daily is a paywaled, iPad only, daily news venture by News Corp

• $30m --> cost of development
• Larry Kramer (USA Today) said that he wouldn't put up an online pay wall because his product "isn't unique enough"
• Started out as iPad only, branched out to iPhone and Android tablets, and the Amazon Kindle
• News York Post loses $110m a year

I think pay walls will never work when there is always a free alternative. News organisations are taking to free news delivery services such as Twitter to announce breaking news. Another ridiculous decision is to make it daily. As if the product wasn't unique enough (news is just news and now that they can't offer exclusives due to them not hacking celebrities anymore), Rupert Murdoch had to make it update daily. Maybe the vision was for news to shift from traditional media and onto digital formats. But this daily updating thing really hasn't worked. There are other news applications for digital mobile devices that do exactly the same job for free, and a perk of those is that they update as soon as news breaks. Those used to reading the paper early in the morning maybe willing to pay for daily news they can access online but not enough of these people don't exist anymore. I think this app was a bigger failure than Rupert Murdoch's handling on MySpace.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/16/print-2013-newpapers-cut-costs

• Decline in advertising revenue predicted for publisher in 2013
• £1bn is forecast to be spent on national newspaper advertising, 9% less than 2012 and nearly two-thirds less than the £2.55bn in 2005.
• The Times loses £1m per week
• Guardian plans job cuts affecting 68 journalists

I think advertising revenue has decreased for newspapers because e-media companies such as Google (through YouTube especially) are using more advertising in their content. Also with niche advertising where keywords and cookies from your PC can be used, companies paying to advertise their services are noticing that they are far more effective then newspaper advertising.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/18/twitter-users-pass-200-million

• Twitter now has more than 200 million active users
• 10 million of these users are in the UK
• However, there are 500 million registered Twitter accounts
• 60% using smartphone apps, 80% active users in the UK use their phones to access content

I think with major events like the Presidential elections, the Olympics and even the Euro 2012 Football tournament, more people may have signed up to Twitter to express their opinions. This is evident as Twitter only had 140 million active users in May now reaching 200 million by December. However, with the introductions of injunctions and people being arrested recently for racist and offensive Tweets (Manchester Derby), the rate of people signing up will slow down.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/18/bbc-itv-apologise-lord-mcalpine

• BBC & ITV apologise to Lord McAlpine at the high court for falsley linking him to allegations of child sex abuse
• BBC to pay £185,000 plus legal costs
• ITV to pay £125,000 plus legal costs

The BBC were too haste in their decision to present the fact Lord McAlpine was a target of child sex abuse allegations. Being a large organisation like the BBC with a loyal following, viewers will doubt BBC as they have now obtained a reputation for false allegations and although it may have been one story, it is a major story at a time when the BBC is under scrutiny for how they dealt with the Jimmy Saville scandal. It also shows that news on social networking sites is not always true and cannot be trusted, in this case twitter. Also I think ITV was wrong to disclose this information to the public on live TV.