News & Latest Projects

Global Reporting of Climate Change

In the wake of the Copenhagen conference near-fiasco, Paddy Coulter co-organised a small series of specialist workshops and expert panels in Oxford with the Environmental Change Institute and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to examine national variations in media reporting of climate change.

One workshop was devoted entirely to the reporting of the Copenhagen conference. Freelance French science journalist Catherine Ferrieux presented her initial findings of a survey of journalists attending the COP15, concluding that climate science was seriously under-reported during the conference. Click here for a pdf of the slide presentation.

Different perspectives were added by Yue Yenan from Sian Lian Life Weekly, Beijing, Chetan Chauchan of the Hindustan Times, Delhi and Jennifer Igwe of the Nigerian Television Authority who were part of a delegation of visiting senior journalists sponsored by the British Council Global Climate Change Programme. A full account of the events, including of the panel of leading UK environment correspondents, is available on the Reuters Institute website.

Future of Public Interest Journalism

David Levy delivered the keynote speech Beyond Fatalism, new perspectives on the future of public interest journalism at the 2010 C.V. Äkerlund Lectures in Media Management at the University of Tampere in Finland.

The event took place on Monday, 11 January with several speeches on the theme of Journalism and Media Management in the 21st Century.  A copy of David Levy’s slides and talk can be accessed via this link.

Science and the Media Report

David Levy was appointed to the Science and Media Expert Group created by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in September 2009. The group was chaired by Fiona Fox, Director of the Science Media Centre, and brought together a mix of distinguished scientists and media experts and practitioners. Its report, published in January 2010, entitled Science and the Media: Securing the Future outlines a number of actions and recommendations which, taken together, are designed to:

• support the accurate reporting of science through a range of new training initiatives for journalists, press officers and scientists
• foster an environment within which engaging science programmes can be made, and reach the widest possible audience
• begin to address the serious threat to the quality and independence of science reporting posed by the wider crisis in journalism. The group issued a call for all who care about the quality of science reporting to act now safeguard improvements made in recent years
• promote openness and transparency across science, facilitating public engagement with, and debate of, scientific issues

Study of News and the Internet

David Levy has been acting as an adviser to the OECD on their forthcoming study on the Evolution of News and the Internet. The study was discussed at a meeting of the OECD Working Group on the Information Economy in Paris in December 2009 where David Levy commented on a draft.

The forthcoming study will be the first truly comparative study of the impact of the internet on news organisations across OECD countries and beyond. The revised version is due to be published in Spring 2010.

Roundtable with Amartya Sen

Paddy Coulter helped the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) organise a roundtable on ‘Economics and the Idea of Justice’ with the Nobel prize-winning economist Professor Amartya Sen on 19 November.

The event, which attracted some 400 people to the Examination Schools, involved panels of senior academics, politicians and policy-makers in dialogue with Prof Sen in three separate roundtable sessions. The roundtable was chaired by Ngaire Woods, Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme, and former Economist journalist Frances Cairncross, the Rector of Lincoln College.

Sen’s latest thinking on justice provoked considerable debate and some re-thinking. OPHI Director Sabina Alkire. callingfor a new economic framework, said “Economics is poised to change – within the decade it will be different”.  
A report and programme of the roundtable is available on the OPHI website

How to Make Money in News

David Levy participated in this Executive Session at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard entitled “How to make Money in News:New Business Models for the 21st Century”. For an account of the event and transcript click here

Media workshops in China on climate change

Paddy Coulter was invited by the British Council Climate Change Programme to address a Beijing symposium for Chinese editors-in-chief on ‘Climate Change Communication’ held at Renmin University’s International Communication Centre on 11 September, Paddy also helped lead a workshop in Guangzhou for 40 journalists gearing up to cover the Copenhagen conference. He was joined in this by his Chinese media research collaborator Wang Jin, Associate Professor of Sociology at the School of Government, Sun Yat-Sen University who directs the Center for the Public, Science, and Sustainability Studies. Click here for a pdf of the slide presentation Reporting Climate Change: An International Perspective

Reviewing DFID Media Work

DFID Communications published  a major review of  its media work to build support for development in the UK. This review, the first since the inception of the Building Support for Development programme in 1999, was jointly carried out by Paddy Coulter of Oxford Global Media and Amanda Barnes of The Partnership.

The review found that DFID funding had gone to creditable media projects including the development funding of 60 programmes on the developing world which had been screened by UK broadcasters and co-funding support to influential broadcasting research on UK media coverage of developing countries.

However, the review found scope for DFID to gain better value from its funding by developing a more co-ordinated media strategy and by extending its priority media targets to include new media alongside television. The report advocated the setting up of a Media Strategy Panel (to include outside media experts) to steer its activities.

The full report is available on the DFID  website www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/consultations/bsd-media.pdf

World Conference of Science Journalists: Climate Reporting

The 6th World Conference of Science Journalists, which was held in the Central Hall London between 30 June and 2 July 2009, included a session on climate change reporting around the world.  It was chaired by BBC environmental analyst Roger Harrabin and the main speakers were Patrick Luganda, editor-in-chief of the Farmers Voice newspaper, Rod Harbinson, head of Panos environment programme, and Paddy Coulter of Oxford Global Media.

As the session’s aim was to compare the quality of coverage in different settings, Paddy Coulter reported on the recently published comparative study of climate change coverage by leading national newspapers in Ghana, China and Norway. The main finding was that the climate crisis was seen as no more than an important secondary or tertiary priority. Story treatment by most papers left a great deal to be desired – for further details a Powerpoint of this presentation is available, A Comparative Study of  Climate Change in National Media: North and South Perspectives.

The session also reviewed initiatives to enhance journalists’ capacity to cover climate change such as the Greater Horn of Africa  network of climate journalists and the Climate Change Media Partnership training initiative of Internews, IIED and Panos.

Nairobi Launch of Africa Means Business

A new pan-African media initiative to improve financial reporting on the continent, Africa Means Business, got off to a very successful start in Kenya. Its distinctive feature is to train economists in media and communications skills alongside the training of financial and business journalists. The keynote speaker in Nairobi was Professor Paul Collier, director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) at Oxford University and author of the influential “The Bottom Billion”.
CSAE is a core member of the Africa Means Business partnership. Other partners are the Nairobi-based African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the Centre for  Economic Journalism in Africa (CEJA) at Rhodes University, the Financial Times associated  Wincott Foundation and the Thomson Foundation.

Africa Means Business secured the participation of 14 senior-level financial journalists and economists in the Nairobi workshop  after gaining support for the project from the Central Bank of Kenya, Nairobi University, the Kenya Communications Commission,  Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation, the Nation Media Group, the Standard Media Group, Kiss FM Radio and the Nairobi Star.

The course trainers were Sylvia Vollenhoven, Africa co-ordinator for the Thomson Foundation, Reg Rumney and Caroline Southey from CEJA (a former Financial Mail editor , Caroline is the Director of Community Banking, Standard Bank), and from the Wincott Foundation in the UK  ex-FT editor Sir Geoffrey Owen and Paddy Coulter.

For further information see the Africa Means Business brochure

Climate Change in the Media comparative study

The report, Escaping Climate Change: Climate Change in the Media -North & South Perspectives, is published as a contribution to the growing research literature on the media coverage of climate change around the world. Edited by Atle Midttun of the Norwegian School of Management and Paddy Coulter, it is the fruit of a close collaboration between three core research teams from Ghana, Norway and China which in turn are part of the wider international group of scholars and senior researchers, Ceres 21.

The aim of this comparative study was to explore the framing of climate change coverage in national media in three countries representative of the affluent North, the poor South and the rapidly growing East. Three leading newspapers in Ghana, China and Norway were monitored over six months (January – June 2008) with a sample of 100 articles on climate change randomly selected from each paper for closer study.

The report’s analysis of national variations in the reporting of climate change not only provides insights into the nature and quality of journalism in the countries studied but also yields important information about the differing national policy frames adopted. Read the full study here

Media, Globalisation and Fragmentation presentation, Oxford

David Levy gave a presentation on Journalism and Globalisation in a Fragmenting World at a Conference held on Globalisation and Human Welfare at Green Templeton college in May. http://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/academic/lectures-seminars/human-welfare-conf.html The presentation examined the contradictory aspects of the interactions between technological change, globalisation and the media. Click here to see a PDF copy of the slide  presentation

Entertainment in the UK in 2028 - Report for Ofcom

Ofcom commissioned a consortium led by Plum Consulting www.plumconsulting.co.uk to produce a in-depth report examining scenarios for the Entertainment industry in 2028. This was part of the UK regulator’s work to assess likely demand for spectrum in the next two decades. The resulting report - published by Ofcom in February 2009 - offers probably the most exhaustive examination of likely scenarios for the development of the audio visual entertainment industries over the next 20 years. David Levy acted as an independent reviewer and advisor to the project team. The report is available on the Ofcom website

Broadcasting Policymaking in Britain and France – The House Magazine 23rd January 2009

The UK government published the first consultative phase of their Digital Britain report in January 2009. David Levy was asked by The House Magazine -  a publication for Westminster and all those with an interest in politics, policy and Parliament – to draw on his experience of British and French broadcast policymaking to contrast the policy approaches of each country, The resulting article  - A touch of Digital Dirigisme

France TV stops ads in peaktime

As French Public Service TV ceased advertising in peak hours, the French economic Daily, La Tribune ran a feature on this on January 5th and interviewed David Levy - as a former member of the Commission pour une nouvelle télévision publique -  about plans for the direct appointment of the Director-General of FTV by the President of the Republic.  Click here to read the article in French.

David Levy was also interviewed by the Toronto Globe and Mail on the French reforms on January 23rd.

Brazilian newspaper debates European public service broadcasting

David Levy was interviewed by the Folha of São Paulo, Brazil`s largest daily newspaper, on the state of European public broadcasting and particularly the lessons to be drawn from the BBC and French experience. The text of article (in Portugese) can be accessed here. 

Public Broadcasters International (PBI) Meeting in Arles

The annual meeting of the world’s public broadcasters took place in Arles in October and was hosted by France Télévisions. PBI is a meeting place for top management for PSBs from all over the world. It aims to strengthen the role and influence of public broadcasters. Issues discussed at the conference included: PSB positioning and legitimacy, Which framework for greater effectiveness? New habits, new media: the example of younger viewers and Communication and brand strategy. David Levy presented a paper there on differing approaches to questions of governance, efficiency and independence from public broadcasters. A PDF of the presentation can be accessed here.

Mekong River Commission Communications

At the request of the Secretariat of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) Tim Cullen and Paul Fisher carried out a review the organisation's current communications strategies vis-a-vis the media and other stakeholders and trained Secretariat staff on how to deal with the media and  to generate clear and consistent messages.

The MRC, as one of the first river basin organisations in the world, has the potential to be the model to which others look, but to achieve this, the Commission needs to communicate its policies and activities more effectively.  Headquartered in Vientiane in Laos, the MRC is responsible for the management of the Mekong River which passes through China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

In the Mekong, hydropower projects and other dam investments have provoked considerable controversy, with the Nam Theun II dam on the Mekong in Lao PDR attracting much attention in recent years. Cullen was one of the small group at the World Bank and IUCN that initiated the dialogue between "dam-builders" and “dam-busters" which led to the creation of the World Commission on Dams. Cullen and Fisher subsequently advised the Commission and were responsible for the global roll out of "Dams and Development", the Commission's seminal report, and the messaging that accompanied it. The knowledge of dam issues proved to be very valuable during the assignment for the MRC.

Activities Cullen and Fisher implemented while they were in the Lao capital included a comprehensive review of the MRC’s existing communications strategy, the facilitation of working groups on messaging, and training of all Secretariat staff on presentation techniques and dealing with the media.

The work was completed with the drafting of a messaging handbook and a series of recommendations on the MRC’s future communications strategy. An 800 Op Ed article was also drafted on hydropower, one of the most important issues facing the Mekong, on behalf of the MRC Chief Executive Office, Jeremy Bird. The article was published in The Nation, one of Asia leading newspapers a few days before the MRC hosted a major conference on hydropower.

Future of Journalism in Africa

Robustly independent journalism is needed to hold African governments to account. This was the blunt message of leading African media figures addressing a conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the Reuters Foundation Fellowship Programme at Oxford University.

Specially invited speakers included managing editor of the influential Sunday Monitor newspaper in Uganda Bernard Tabaire, the staunchly independent editor of the Cape Times in the apartheid era, Tony Heard, now senior advisor on media policy to the ANC, and the head of the World Bank’s Communication for Governance & Accountability Program (CommGAP), the former Nigerian journalist Sina Odugbemi.

The conference also heard from the distinguished Zimbabwean newsman Geoffrey Nyarota who edited his country’s most popular independent paper, the Daily News, until forced to flee for his safety. In a special message read to the conference, Nyarota argued “It is because they realise the role that the free flow of information can play in strengthening democracy and democratic institutions that Africa’s authoritarian rulers have enacted laws or put in place measures that effectively suppress the free flow of information among their oppressed people”.

The session, produced by Paddy Coulter, was chaired by the South African historian and Warden of Green College Dr Colin Bundy, in the lecture theatre of St Antony’s College on Saturday 26 September.
For a report on the conference see this entry on the Reuters website

Reforming the Aid System

“Could do a lot better”! That was the main message to emerge from the deliberations of more than 1,000 Ministers and senior representatives of developed and developing countries and civil society organizations at the High Level Forum in Accra at the beginning of September.

The Forum objective: to assess progress on an international aid effectiveness agenda based on the reforming principles of the Paris Declaration which had been endorsed by over 100 countries back in 2005. Then developing countries undertook to set out their own development strategies, reform their institutions and tackle corruption; aid donors promised to align behind these objectives, streamline their own procedures and cut down on duplication.

Yet In 2007, 49 developing countries were still being obliged to receive a stream of over 14,000 aid missions – virtually one a day! Even the official communiqué, recommitting countries to the “Paris principles” of country ownership, donor alignment and harmonisation, mutual accountability and management for results, admitted that progress since 2005 had been slow.

After some behind-the-scenes shenanigans Ministers agreed a strongly worded Accra Agenda for Action www.accrahlf.net But arguably the most encouraging work in Accra went on outside the Ministerial negotiations – at Round Tables purposefully designed to maximize the exchange of good practice examples and the shared identification of aid bottlenecks. The Round Table on Aid Harmonisation, moderated by Paddy Coulter, was jointly planned by the Ugandan Finance Ministry and the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation to get the maximum participation from its eager audience. As a result this Round Table was able to move the agenda on in very practical terms - see Conclusions

The issue of gender inequality came out of this and other Accra events very strongly – the Paris Declaration goal of reducing poverty was seen as only being realised through working to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment. At a special side-event on gender hosted by the Government of Ghana, Paddy Coulter chaired a heavyweight panel comprising Ghanaian Minister for Finance Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu*, Liberian Minister for Development Vabah Gaynor, Danish Minister for Development Cooperation Ulla Tornas, UNIFEM Executive Director Ines Alberdi and former Irish President Mary Robinson who congratulated her Ghanaian hosts on holding the event: “This sends a strong signal about your commitment to ensuring that the outcomes of the Forum will have lasting impacts on the lives of poor women and men. It places women firmly at the centre of our discussions and debates...”

Tragically the widely respected Finance Minister Baah-Wiredu died unexpectedly after a brief illness during a visit to South Africa immediately following the conference.

French Licence Fee Lessons

David Levy proposed in an 18th August article in the Media Guardian that the UK debate over the future of Public Service Broadcasting should learn from French experience about how to maximise the return on the licence fee. When France merged licence fee collection with local taxes major cost savings were achieved. If similar savings could be achieved in the UK it could provide a new source of funding for additional PSB provision, without any impact either on the nature of the licence fee or on current BBC funding levels.
Read the article here

Broadcasting Britishness?

Britishness has emerged as a key political issue of the moment but there has been little focused debate on the role of the broadcast media and the press in promoting a sense of national identity - if they do and indeed if they should.

A one day conference, Broadcasting Britishness? Identity, Diversity and the Role of the National Media, was convened at Oxford’s Said Business School on 17 June 2008 by David Levy and Cathy Baldwin of St Anthony’s College with assistance from Paddy Coulter and the founder of Culture Wise, Mukti Jain Campion. Speakers included the distinguished historian, Linda Colley of Princeton University and Margaret Hodge, Minister for Culture at DCMS.

A series of panel-led discussions brought together media industry, academic and political perspectives to explore the strategies employed to appeal to a more diverse Britain and to examine the audience research evidence on how accurately modern British society has been portrayed. Expert panellists included Samir Shah, Chief Executive of Juniper Productions, James Thickett, Ofcom Director of Market Research, Claire Grimmond. Channel 4’s Controller of Research and Alison Hastings, BBC Trustee for England.

A conference report together with conference presentations is available on
The Oxford Said Business School Website See also www.opendemocracy.net

Commission pour la Nouvelle Television Publique

The Commission pour la Nouvelle Télévision Publique has reported in June on the future of the French public service broadcaster, France Télévision, on which David Levy has been sitting as the sole foreign commission member www.matelepublique.fr

The Commission has brought together over 30 people, parliamentarians, industry experts and civil servants, to examine the future funding, role, governance and programming of the French public service broadcaster. It was created by President Sarkozy, following his decision that France Télévisions should stop taking advertising.

Chaired by Jean- Francois Copé, the leader of Sarkozy’s group in Parliament, the Commission started on a cross-party basis. But President Sarkozy’s interventions have had a major impact, firstly in leading the left to leave the Commission after he ruled out any increase in the licence fee before the Commission had reported. Then, on receipt of the Report, Sarkozy has announced that he wants the government to have power to nominate the Director General G of France TV.  David Levy has written a dissenting annexe to the Report. 

For David’s article on French public service broadcasting and Sarkozy see www.guardian.co.uk

See also his article published in le Monde newspaper www.lemonde.fr

The Price of Plurality: Choice, Diversity and Broadcasting Institutions in the Digital Age

The Price of Plurality: Choice, diversity and Broadcasting Institutions in the Digital Age was jointly edited by David Levy and Tim Gardam for publication by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in May.

Plurality has been at the heart of the UK’s public service broadcasting ecology. Exceptionally high levels of innovation and investment have been delivered by a wide range of different public service broadcasters. But to what extent will that still be sustainable in a fully digital and on demand world?

As the regulator Ofcom undertakes its Review of Public Service Broadcasting and the next Communications Act approaches, policy-makers must decide how to recast and update the UK’s broadcasting system and how much priority to give to sustaining plurality of public service provision.  The Price of Plurality  brings together a wide variety of perspectives on this critical issue, from producers and broadcasters, academic experts, politicians and policy-makers. The contributors include David Elstein, Anthony Lilley, James Curran, Richard Tait, Jean Seaton, Roger Laughton, David Puttnam and Patricia Hodgson.

The book can be downloaded from The Reuters Institute website