a bit distracted

Life doesn't have to be a spectator sport

Thursday, October 29, 2009

World press freedom...with hilarious consequences

A return to my soapbox on the topic of press freedom. But hang onto your hats, we're going global.

There's an article in the Economist this week that looks at the World Press Freedom Index, noting that although Western Europe has its issues, they seem to be nothing compared to the new entrants to the EU.

In Slovakia, for example, the parliament passed a law last year that means editors have to guarantee the subject of a story the right to reply, and the reply has to be the same length of original and placed in the same prominence within the publication....even if the original's facts were correct.

This is clearly one of those laws that should end in "....with hilarious consequences!"

Imagine if the Slovaks had the same celebutante obesssion as the Brits. Victoria Beckham would practically own The Sun, Paris Hilton would be hospitalised from the exhaustion of creating more....more....more....more column inches for herself, and we'd never hear the end of the Big Brother contestants.

Having said that, the likelihood of any of these people having the wits and wisdom to fill the column inches to which they become entitled is pretty low.....so I guess it would keep us PRs in a job for a little while longer!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

You want DVD?

Yes folks, the famous fake DVD sales people of Dubai were dealt a shocking blow today as six people were jailed for selling illegal DVDs.

I've never bought any myself. I once borrowed a friend's copy of Lions for Lambs and wasn't overly impressed that the night scenes were so dark I couldn't see any action. Granted it does probably get quite dark in the middle of the Afghan desert at night, but I presume the director thought about that and brought some lighting. I was, however, amazed by Tom Cruise's fluency in the Russian language and the way he effortlessly slipped between that and his native American. Who knew Tom Cruise was a cunning linguist?

Whether it's this experience, or a symptom of being shockingly honest - or maybe the FACT advertising that banged on about how fake DVD's single-handedly support those naughty drugs barrons actually worked on someone - I can hold my hands up and say I have never bought a fake DVD. Even at 10 dirhams a pop.

I mentioned this to my Kuwaiti colleague the other day who was stunned. "But I see it like this" he said, "in buying fake DVD I support my local economy rather than some international film maker". How so? "My neighbour is probably the guy making the DVDs"

A lovely piece of cultural insight!