I have just got back from the Edinbugh Tv festival. I was on a panel called ALT NEWS..with Gramham from Wark clements, Manu from Ambient sounds, Alan Hayling ex Channel 4, and the president of CNN Chris Cramer.

In the audience we had the Heads of ITN, C4, and BBC news and dozens of other head honchos in the media. One room and we have the most powerful men in Television news.

After 20mins of debating Seattle, and ALT World, (on Friday 31st aug 7.30pm on Channel 4) i ranted about the crap reporting from Praha, DC and Genoa and then showed them the latest IMC images of police brutality in Genoa and as Roddy from undercurrents said- " u could have heard a pin drop".

It was very powerful and we got into a debate about the mainstream coverage of globalisation.

El presidente of CNN was amicable but couldnt understand my concerns about CNN being part of the problem of Globalisation..in fact he sees CNN as an alternative to mainstream and lazy journalism.

We interviewed him afterwards for our doco on Globalisation and the media.

Anyhow this is a festival of 1700 media bods and most of it is so boring. Our session was so popular that the audience demanded it to continue..nearly casued a riot when the stewards tried to halt the debates...it was great coz the news heads have to see how strongly people feel about these issues!

Overall i think we scored a direct hit on the mainstream media in preperation for the IMF protests in Washington DC in Sepember. They will have to take the movement seriously now that the fingers of accusation has been pointed at them with dozens of witnesses!

paul
undercurrents