Tag Archives: Music
Creative Music Teachers Resources: Effective Ways to Motivation
Most music teachers consider teaching music to their dear students both their profession and passion. Most of them have the heart for arts and music – making each student love learning music and music as a whole. With this kind of outlook and disposition in teaching music, the inspired and motivated music teacher tends to [...]
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Rock Out with PixieTea and Her Amazing iPhone Band [VIDEO]
Remember the Stanford iPhone Orchestra and their kick-ass musical stylings? Well, there’s a new smartphone virtuoso on the scene by the name of PixieTea who could become more synonymous with the word “telephone” than Lady Gaga herself. The Chinese artist created a video and song — mostly on an iPhone 3GS — that has been going viral over in China. PixieTea’s video has become a hit on Youku (basically the Chinese YouTube), racking up 1,670,109 hits and counting since it was posted back in December. Gizmodo brought the vid to the attention of the U.S. today when it shared it on its site. According to Gizmodo, the girl made use of apps like DrumMeister, Bassist, iDrum, NlogSynthesizer, NESynth and iShred, as well as a laptop, a camera and photography software. And let’s not forgot those sweet pants, which recall the ones rocked by fellow foreign viral legends, the Norwegian curling team . Check out the video below, which puts all those tape deck recordings of “Like a Virgin” that my sister and I made when I was six to utter shame. Oh, and bonus points to anyone who can translate the lyrics for us so that we can sing along. Tags: apple , iphone , music , viral video
Detroit: the last days
Detroit is a city in terminal decline. When film director Julien Temple arrived in town, he was shocked by what he found – but he also uncovered reasons for hope When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent. Leaving behind the gift shops of the ” Big Three ” car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown’s auto-makers, the city’s ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows. Like The Passenger , it’s hard to believe what we’re seeing. The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been. Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature. One in five houses now stand empty. Property prices have fallen 80% or more in Detroit over the last three years. A three-bedroom house on Albany Street is still on the market for $1. Unemployment has reached 30%; 33.8% of Detroit’s population and 48.5% of its children live below the poverty line. Forty-seven per cent of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate; 29 Detroit schools closed in 2009 alone. But statistics tell only one part of the story. The reality of Detroit is far more visceral. My producer, George Hencken, and I drove around recce-ing our film, getting out of the car and photographing extraordinary places to film with mad-dog enthusiasm – everywhere demands to be filmed – but were greeted with appalled concern by Bradley, our friendly manager, on our return to the hotel. “Never get out of the car in that area – people have been car-jacked and shot.” Law and order has completely broken down in the inner city, drugs and prostitution are rampant and unless you actually murder someone the police will leave you alone. This makes it great for filming – park where you like, film what you like – but not so good if you actually live there. The abandoned houses make great crack dens and provide cover for appalling sex crimes and child abduction. The only growth industry is the gangs of armed scrappers, who plunder copper and steel from the ruins. Rabid dogs patrol the streets. All the national supermarket chains have pulled out of the inner city. People have virtually nowhere to buy fresh produce. Starbucks? Forget it. What makes all this so hard to understand is that Detroit was the frontier city of the American Dream – not just the automobile, but pretty much everything we associate with 20th-century western civilisation came from there. Mass production; assembly lines; stop lights; freeways; shopping malls; suburbs and an emerging middle-class workforce: all these things were pioneered in Detroit. But the seeds of the Motor City’s downfall were sown a long time ago. The blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in the city becoming reliant on a single industry. Its destiny fatally entwined with that of the car. The greed-fuelled willingness of the auto barons to siphon up black workers from the American south to man their Metropolis-like assembly lines and then treat them as subhuman citizens, running the city along virtually apartheid lines, created a racial tinderbox. The black riots of 1943 and 1967 gave Detroit the dubious distinction of being the only American city to twice call in the might of the US army to suppress insurrection on its own streets and led directly to the disastrous so-called white flight of the 50s, 60s and 70s. The population of Detroit is now 81.6% African-American and almost two-thirds down on its overall peak in the early 50s. The city has lost its tax base and cannot afford to cut the grass or light its streets, let alone educate or feed its citizens. The rest of the US is in denial about the economic catastrophe that has engulfed Detroit, terrified that this man-made contagion may yet spread to other US cities. But somehow one cannot imagine the same fate befalling a city with a predominantly white population. On many levels Detroit seems to be an insoluble disaster with urgent warnings for the rest of the industrialised world. But as George and I made our film we discovered, to our surprise, an irrepressible positivity in the city. Unable to buy fresh food for their children, people are now growing their own, turning the demolished neighbourhood blocks into urban farms and kick-starting what is now the fastest-growing movement across the US. Although the city is still haemorrhaging population, young people from all over the country are also flooding into Detroit – artists, musicians and social pioneers, all keen to make use of the abandoned urban spaces and create new ways of living together. With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first “post-American” city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer’s map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all. So perhaps Detroit can avoid the fate of the lost cities of the Maya and rise again like the phoenix that sits, appropriately, on its municipal crest. That is why George and I decided to call our film Requiem for Detroit? – with a big question mark at the end. Requiem for Detroit? is on BBC2 on Saturday 13 March at 9pm Documentary Julien Temple United States Detroit guardian.co.uk
Daytrotter Launches New Paid Downloads Option for Bands [EXCLUSIVE]
Daytrotter is celebrating its fourth anniversary promoting music discovery of emerging bands with a new business model. Now bands who sign on for one of Daytrotter’s unique daily live sessions have an opportunity to sell high-quality digital recordings for a revenue split using a new in-house payment system that additionally gives artists real-time access to sales figures and statistics. “We started thinking about how we could help these bands more and make more things happen for them,” Daytrotter Founder Sean Moeller told us. The site will adopt a freemium model in order to preserve access to the Daytrotter service fans know and love; users will still be able to download 128 Kbps MP3s or stream audio from Daytrotter sessions for free, but high-quality Apple lossless versions of the sessions will be available for purchase. Prices will vary, but are expected to be in the ballpark of about $4 for a typical four- to eight-track session, with a Download Manager application handling fast and easy access to the music you’ve ordered. Nearly 90 bands have already signed on for distribution deals with Daytrotter, and Moeller says talks will be ongoing with the majority of the 1,200-some artists that Daytrotter has worked with in the past. For new bands coming in for a Daytrotter session, the option is open to sell tracks through the site, but isn’t at all mandatory: “It’s a way to give these bands an option. We don’t force bands to sign anything when they come in to do a session; it’s all in good faith,” said Moeller. The new initiative reflects a rapidly changing music industry as business models shift onto the digital landscape. Moeller noted, “The record label model is really old at this point,” and that as more and more people are turning to blogs as sources of music discovery, why not “cut out the middleman”? This model offers a chance for new revenue streams for bands as well as an opportunity to go beyond an advertising-supported model for Daytrotter. While revenue-sharing specifics were not disclosed, Moeller said labels and bands should expect “a fair split.” In addition to selling their Daytrotter sessions, artists are encouraged to use the new platform to sell other studio albums, live recordings, and to generally think of Daytrotter as a new partnership opportunity for direct sales. One way to think about the new business model shift is to imagine replacing “the now-gone neighborhood record store with the cool kid behind the counter whose judgment you could always count on,” Moeller said. For music fans, buying direct through Daytrotter means supporting their favorite bands with a more favorable cut than with services like iTunes, as well as contributing to Daytrotter’s mission of promoting music discovery and giving exposure to up and coming bands. If you’re already a fan of Daytrotter, what do you think of the new business model? If you’re new to the site, would you feel good about kicking in a few bucks to support emerging artists or are you happy with free streams and lower-quality downloads? Tags: business models , daytrotter , digital downloads , music , music industry
YouTube Darlings OK Go Say Bye-Bye to EMI
Welcome to Act III of the OK Go/EMI drama: According to EMI, the pop band has decided to leave the record company and form their own independent label, Paracadute Recordings, under which they will take over control of their third album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky . Here is the full statement from EMI: “OK Go, the band whose inventive internet campaigns and self-directed music videos have set records and won the band a GRAMMY® Award, and EMI Music’s Capitol Records, the band’s label since 2001, have agreed to part ways by mutual agreement. OK Go has formed their own independent label, Paracadute Recordings. They will take on all distribution and promotion functions for their latest album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky , which was released in January. ‘We’d like to thank the people at EMI Music who have worked so hard on our behalf,’ said OK Go singer Damian Kulash. EMI Music said: ‘We’ve really enjoyed our relationship with OK Go. They’ve always pushed creative boundaries and have broken new ground, particularly with their videos. We wish them the greatest success for the future.’” How Did We Get Here? As we have reported in the past, OK Go took arms against the sea of troubles that arose back in January when EMI and YouTube disabled embedding on a video for one of their new singles, “This Too Shall Pass.” The band has built its reputation to some degree on the popularity of its viral videos, and Kulash and the rest believed that the lock-down version of “This Too Shall Pass” was hindering fans’ enjoyment of the video as well as any publicity the band might garner from sharing. Kulash released a public statement on the band’s site and even wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on the issue. An interesting tidbit from the op-ed: “When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.” Blogs, fans and news outlets were buzzing, and it was clear that people were interested in the issue of ownership and the battle between achieving virality and making money. In fact, according to a release from Big Hassle Media, who represent OK Go, Kulash’s blog post about the issue went viral itself, garnering more than 500,000 hits in just two days. The State Farm Factor Therefore, the band had the world’s attention when they released another video for the same song last week, this time featuring a Rube Goldberg machine and fully embeddable, thanks to sponsorship from State Farm Insurance. Just for point of reference: At press time, this video, which was released on March 1, has nearly seven million views. The first video, featuring the Notre Dame marching band, was released on January 8. As of now, it only has 1,181,070 views. When asked whether he thought the controversy surrounding the first video contributed at all to the success of the second, bassist Tim Nordwind said, “It’s hard to know if Damian’s op-piece has made a huge difference, but for people who pay attention to it, yes, I think that it’s one reason that people are paying attention. Or maybe even possibly rooting for us… I think what people are responding to is that it’s just kind of an awesome video. I think people are reacting to the Herculean effort that it took to make this thing.” According to State Farm Advertising Manager Todd Fischer, the band and the insurance company had been in talks since the fall of 2009 about the possibility of making a sponsored video. “Both of us kind of looked at each other as iconic brands in our own sense — the OK Go guys liked what State Farm has been doing in the music and entertainment space… On the flip side, we obviously — like so many other people — had great respect for what OK Go had done in the social media space and how they had used their videos to connect with young adults and with music fans along the way.” Although the insurance company has done branded integration with movies and TV before, this the first time they’ve been involved in a viral music video, an avenue by which they saw an opportunity to connect with a whole new market. We’ve reported in the past on several viral video campaigns that made use of this growing medium as a way to grab the attention of the Internet-savvy set — the Ray-Bans tattoo commercial and the Chuck Liddell Reebok spot spring to mind. Fischer says that the partnership speaks to the evolving manner by which we consume media. “You see a lot more brands starting to play in the space [of viral videos]… I think it’s changed the way people look at a 30-second television ad spot because they also think of how it will translate to the online space, because of the power and the influence that online has in reaching so many more people these days.” On OK Go’s side, the band was able to create the video that they wanted, while also attracting tons of media attention. “We had this idea to do a Rube Goldberg project and it was a slightly more expensive idea than what we had had in the past and they were willing to sponsor it, but also let us do whatever it was we wanted to do,” Nordwind says. According to Fischer, the company would also be game to partner with the band again, as well as other bands that might have similarly innovative ideas. What Does This Split Mean? This chain events, as well as the most recent chapter in the drama, raises the question that everyone’s been asking as of late: Does OK Go — or any band for that matter — require a relationship with record company in order to survive? According to an representative from EMI, the label was instrumental in setting up the partnership with State Farm. EMI has a unit called Brand Partnerships, Licensing and Synchronization that basically brings bands and brands together — they’re the ones who get songs into commercials (which is becoming a more and more common way for a band to make money). According to a rep from EMI, the label approached State Farm and pitched the idea to the company. “Basically our label sort of worked as a middleman,” Nordwind says, “but it was basically us sort of dealing with State Farm. But to be really honest, the label and State Farm were very hands-off with us. They really just let us do what we wanted to do.” Therefore, the question becomes: Is the band/label situation a kind of Rube Goldberg machine in its own right — an overly elaborate system built up to achieve a simple outcome? Can OK Go achieve the success on their own? It will be interesting to see what results from their breaking away from EMI, and how they continue to use the medium of the Internet to spread their music. We’ve reached out to the band for further comment and will update this post if we hear anything more. Tags: EMI , music , OK Go , State-Farm , youtube
YouTube Darlings OK Go Say Bye-Bye to EMI
Welcome to Act III of the OK Go/EMI drama: According to EMI, the pop band has decided to leave the record company and form their own independent label, Paracadute Recordings, under which they will take over control of their third album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky . Here is the full statement from EMI: “OK Go, the band whose inventive internet campaigns and self-directed music videos have set records and won the band a GRAMMY® Award, and EMI Music’s Capitol Records, the band’s label since 2001, have agreed to part ways by mutual agreement. OK Go has formed their own independent label, Paracadute Recordings. They will take on all distribution and promotion functions for their latest album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky , which was released in January. ‘We’d like to thank the people at EMI Music who have worked so hard on our behalf,’ said OK Go singer Damian Kulash. EMI Music said: ‘We’ve really enjoyed our relationship with OK Go. They’ve always pushed creative boundaries and have broken new ground, particularly with their videos. We wish them the greatest success for the future.’” How Did We Get Here? As we have reported in the past, OK Go took arms against the sea of troubles that arose back in January when EMI and YouTube disabled embedding on a video for one of their new singles, “This Too Shall Pass.” The band has built its reputation to some degree on the popularity of its viral videos, and Kulash and the rest believed that the lock-down version of “This Too Shall Pass” was hindering fans’ enjoyment of the video as well as any publicity the band might garner from sharing. Kulash released a public statement on the band’s site and even wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on the issue. An interesting tidbit from the op-ed: “When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.” Blogs, fans and news outlets were buzzing, and it was clear that people were interested in the issue of ownership and the battle between achieving virality and making money. In fact, according to a release from Big Hassle Media, who represent OK Go, Kulash’s blog post about the issue went viral itself, garnering more than 500,000 hits in just two days. The State Farm Factor Therefore, the band had the world’s attention when they released another video for the same song last week, this time featuring a Rube Goldberg machine and fully embeddable, thanks to sponsorship from State Farm Insurance. Just for point of reference: At press time, this video, which was released on March 1, has nearly seven million views. The first video, featuring the Notre Dame marching band, was released on January 8. As of now, it only has 1,181,070 views. When asked whether he thought the controversy surrounding the first video contributed at all to the success of the second, bassist Tim Nordwind said, “It’s hard to know if Damian’s op-piece has made a huge difference, but for people who pay attention to it, yes, I think that it’s one reason that people are paying attention. Or maybe even possibly rooting for us… I think what people are responding to is that it’s just kind of an awesome video. I think people are reacting to the Herculean effort that it took to make this thing.” According to State Farm Advertising Manager Todd Fischer, the band and the insurance company had been in talks since the fall of 2009 about the possibility of making a sponsored video. “Both of us kind of looked at each other as iconic brands in our own sense — the OK Go guys liked what State Farm has been doing in the music and entertainment space… On the flip side, we obviously — like so many other people — had great respect for what OK Go had done in the social media space and how they had used their videos to connect with young adults and with music fans along the way.” Although the insurance company has done branded integration with movies and TV before, this the first time they’ve been involved in a viral music video, an avenue by which they saw an opportunity to connect with a whole new market. We’ve reported in the past on several viral video campaigns that made use of this growing medium as a way to grab the attention of the Internet-savvy set — the Ray-Bans tattoo commercial and the Chuck Liddell Reebok spot spring to mind. Fischer says that the partnership speaks to the evolving manner by which we consume media. “You see a lot more brands starting to play in the space [of viral videos]… I think it’s changed the way people look at a 30-second television ad spot because they also think of how it will translate to the online space, because of the power and the influence that online has in reaching so many more people these days.” On OK Go’s side, the band was able to create the video that they wanted, while also attracting tons of media attention. “We had this idea to do a Rube Goldberg project and it was a slightly more expensive idea than what we had had in the past and they were willing to sponsor it, but also let us do whatever it was we wanted to do,” Nordwind says. According to Fischer, the company would also be game to partner with the band again, as well as other bands that might have similarly innovative ideas. What Does This Split Mean? This chain events, as well as the most recent chapter in the drama, raises the question that everyone’s been asking as of late: Does OK Go — or any band for that matter — require a relationship with record company in order to survive? According to an representative from EMI, the label was instrumental in setting up the partnership with State Farm. EMI has a unit called Brand Partnerships, Licensing and Synchronization that basically brings bands and brands together — they’re the ones who get songs into commercials (which is becoming a more and more common way for a band to make money). According to a rep from EMI, the label approached State Farm and pitched the idea to the company. “Basically our label sort of worked as a middleman,” Nordwind says, “but it was basically us sort of dealing with State Farm. But to be really honest, the label and State Farm were very hands-off with us. They really just let us do what we wanted to do.” Therefore, the question becomes: Is the band/label situation a kind of Rube Goldberg machine in its own right — an overly elaborate system built up to achieve a simple outcome? Can OK Go achieve the success on their own? It will be interesting to see what results from their breaking away from EMI, and how they continue to use the medium of the Internet to spread their music. We’ve reached out to the band for further comment and will update this post if we hear anything more. Tags: EMI , music , OK Go , State-Farm , youtube
Players strum real strings on latest music video game
Players strum real strings on latest music video game
NEW YORK – A new musical video game lets players strum a real six-string electric guitar instead of tapping buttons on a fake instrument. “Power Gig: Rise of the SixString” is a game first and foremost.
Read more on Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
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My rage at this BBC calumny
Rageh Omaar’s defence of the discredited BBC report on Band Aid beggars belief. He ignores the total collapse of standards at the World Service Rageh Omaar’s piece ” Even Band Aid is not above criticism ” is ridiculous. It is of course not about me, or Band Aid, but rather a defence of journalistic exceptionalism, and the now thoroughly discredited BBC World Service programme that “sexed up” a claim that nigh-on the entire humanitarian relief effort by all aid agencies was diverted to arms in Tigray province in 1985. He allies himself with the programme’s dubious technique of using a “star” name to attract attention to an otherwise unexceptional or dubious point of view in the hope that it will gather attention. So let me first say that far from being above criticism, should Rageh or the World Service colleague he seeks to protect have done the basic journalistic gig of doing a teensy bit of research before they write their stories by, say, doing something basic like maybe Googling my name, he would immediately be overwhelmed by a 35-year torrent of vituperation and condemnation of everything about me – from my suspiciously foreign-sounding name to my shaving and bathing habits, hairstyle (fair enough!), my partners, children, domestic life, temperament, driving habits, political views, attitudes, clothing, style, music, driving and on and on. No, Rageh, rest assured, I am definitely not above criticism – but again, please, for the sake of veracity, and again, I extend this to the wretched Martin Plaut , your fellow journalist, stop venturing palpably untrue statements dressed up as fact. And how arrogant you are, how self-important, that you should deign to lecture on the implied assumption that you, and by extension all journalists – and specifically in this case the BBC World Service – are above the criticism that you are so busily wagging your finger at me for, and which I (clearly getting above my station) have last weekend meted out to your incompetent mate and his associates at the Beeb. Get it straight, pal – you are not. Either as individuals or organisations. It’s about time a little humility was allowed into your closed self-regarding little media world. But like the bankers and the MPs these days, you lot just don’t get it, do you? As for Band Aid, well, as a trustee said to me, sickened upon seeing the shameful Times cartoon which accepted the BBC story as gospel (of course) without asking any questions: “We’ve taken it on the chin for 25 years and never said anything. Not this time.” Definitely not this time. The Band Aid Trust is reporting BBC World Service to Ofcom and the BBC board of directors, and we have requested transcripts of all interviews from the show in question from the deputy chairman of the BBC. We will also take a view on what legal action we may take both against the journalist in question and World Service in general. Criticism, no problem, Rageh. Calumny, no. Band Aid, too, Mr Omaar, has been a constant target over the years, had you but had the decency to bother checking before uttering your pathetic interpretation of press freedom as allowing any clown carte blanche to interpret reporting as an excuse for half-truth, distortion, and innuendo and unsubstantiated claims. The journalism of “making it up”. As you probably know anyway, but it just doesn’t fit into your pompous guff this time, Band Aid has been under the most intensive scrutiny since and most particularly during the mid-80s. Quite rightly, too. We have an obligation to all those who entrusted us with their money and more particularly to those in whose name it was given. That is what I and my fellow trustees have been doing for the last 26 years. Same guys, same trust. And we ain’t stopping now. Pretty weird, however, that not one, not a single one of the dozens of journalists of record and others who have travelled with me or covered Band Aid “discovered” Martin Plaut’s “story” (and story is indeed what it is). Some feel the press has a right to lie. Rageh, no such right exists. The real story of this sorry saga is the intense systemic failure of the World Service, that cherry on the cake of the BBC’s reputation. It’s a rotten old cherry these days. And I am as bereft as a jilted lover. Of all the taxes I pay, I pay only one gladly – my licence fee. I am Mr World Service. I have done ads promoting the BBC, I have written and spoken in its defence, it is indeed the BBC who started me and others on this African journey; I believe it must, at all costs, be retained very similar to what it is now, albeit cutting away the deadwood and slack. But basically: “I Want My BBC!” But this BBC story was neither about me nor Band Aid. By disingenuously posturing as “serious” reporting, it pretended the total failure and negligence of all the great humanitarian workers and their organisations in the worst famine in modern times, and how miraculously not one of them spotted that no one was getting food despite everyone supplying it! It beggars belief that anyone would take that seriously. Where were all the dead people then? If no one was getting food, why was nobody dying? That would have been one of the first questions I’d have asked. But they weren’t dying because they were getting help, and massive amounts of it. But of course no one did ask where the bodies were at the World Service. That and many, many, other unasked questions. No, this story here is of the total collapse of standards and systems at the World Service, which has a special and particular duty of care to the truth. Why? Because in hundreds – perhaps thousands – of small rooms in the many dark spots of our planet people huddle secretly and in great danger to hear the reality and the truth behind their situation. Because in deserts and jungles, I have listened to the world tell its story to me through this miraculous brave station. And to tabloid all that away of an instant? Tragic beyond measure. Where were the producers and editors and seniors? Why was Plaut allowed to go mad on his pre- and post- media interview circus around the world with bonkers wild accusations? Just to get an audience? Did he and the World Service for one second comprehend the enormous damage and danger he immediately put every humanitarian worker in? Particularly the huge, brave and brilliant Red Cross? Did he not consider, for one microsecond, the consequences of accusing them, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that they had handed over 95% of their cash to purchase arms? It literally beggars belief at the enormity of the consequence had his lie not been nailed immediately and with as much vehemence as could be mustered. How appalling the utter and total disregard or incomprehension of the result of his actions. What if the Red Cross, now compromised in their neutrality, were ordered away from war zones, or forbidden access to the deepest dungeons, or concentration camps? What then, Rageh Omaar and Martin Plaut? What then of your smug certitudes and thin pieties? Then you could report on the blood on your own hands rather than falsely smear it over the hands of others. How dare you, Rageh Omaar, attempt to defend the awful indefensible. Just for that alone, Plaut should be fired. You people, you self-important mediators of “news”, should wise up and accept a little humility rather than attack the aid agencies and their workers for being above criticism and ask yourself, as I do, who the hell are you to lecture? Just as the Ross-Brand affair exposed the systemic weaknesses of the BBC in the area of entertainment, so this now does in the news sector of the World Service – albeit with far more drastic consequences. Where were the editors, subs and producers? As the Independent rightly asked, “Did the bells not go off” early on in this sorry tale? Where were the checks, balances, neutrality, even-handedness? They all failed at the World Service. Worse, they inconsistently and continuously contradicted themselves in their ludicrously pompous Rorke’s Drift-type face-saving insistence on “sticking by their story”. Well, they were right in the use of the word “story”. Despite the on-the record refutation of everything in Plaut’s report by very senior White House advisers, high-level UN delegates, senior British ex-ambassadors and diplomats, all the aid agencies, the leader of rest the Tigrayan relief group at the time, the prime minister of Ethiopia and rebel leader at the time, and me, and without a single shred of evidence, not one iota of evidence, they cannot bear to acknowledge the grim reality, the actual truth – that they were wrong. The BBC World Service is so far off the rails it quite literally cannot recognise or acknowledge truth when it encounters it. Martin Plaut, Andrew Whitehead and Peter Horrocks should be fired. There should be an immediate investigation into what went wrong; steps should be taken to rectify the identified faults; and the World Service must work very, very hard to re-establish its glorious trust and hard-won reputation as the world broadcaster of excellence. BBC World Service BBC Ethiopia Public service broadcasting Bob Geldof guardian.co.uk
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