3 posts tagged “listening post”

The very lovely Meenakshi Ravi, associate producer on Listening Post, invited me to contribute to the next edition of the al-Jazeera show reporting on the media. I am not sure of the air date but I’ll be watching this week’s to see if I made the cut.
   The strange thing is the reaction I get from other Kiwis—they still look puzzled when I tell them that I am occasionally on Listening Post (three times so far in 2007). This includes cities which get al-Jazeera. Yet they would not think it were odd if I said it was the BBC or CNN—so why is being part of another global news network so strange? It’s not as though we have our own global news network here in New Zealand, so we are not exactly in a position to judge.
   Still, I’m proud to be on the show and to offer sometimes an alternative viewpoint.

I caught it on a rebroadcast, rather than on the 31st, but here is yours truly, by invitation, for a second time on Listening Post on al-Jazeera’s English service.
   The first segment goes after the Murdoch Press (Fox News) and contrasting it to non-US media. My little part is, as some of you know, was fleshed out in my blog post last week. Forward to me at 7'39": I think this is the strongest reason behind any particular angle on the Iran story, rather than saying that Fox is trying to do the White House’s bidding on creating a war with Iran.

I went back to Dick Smith and swapped yesterday’s faulty webcam for a new one costing twice as much. It kind of works, and I kind of got my al-Jazeera Listening Post spot done, but the set-up remains buggy. The main problem now is that the software stops recording whenever it damn well likes. I also have not found anything on Logitech’s tech support pages about this, or about a massive black band appearing on the left of the screen in certain situations (which situations, I don’t exactly know). Maybe there is some convention that webcammers know of to prevent these automatic turn-offs—but I sure don’t, since I missed that memo.
   This was to be a shout-out to Randy and everyone at a private Vox group, but I thought it was funny where it stopped. It’s like the program knows its masters were being criticized (cue Twilight Zone music).

Video 23