television
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the media and culture industries around the world, and analysis and reviews of art, culture and the media.
Jay Leno - scab
Unfunny talk-show host Jay Leno scabbed on the WGA writers strike of 2007-8.
Though the Tonight Show was not allowed to use writers during the ongoing strike, WGA member Jay Leno told monologue jokes he claims to have written himself.
Greek riots eyewitness reports - 16 December 2008
Updates through Tuesday on the situation in Greece, including the occupation of the state television station and a roundup of arrests.
22.20 On the fascist provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpkGxdfoTUM
This was broadcasted about half an hour ago at a big nationwide TV channel here in Greece. This TV show is one of the most popular shows in Greece, the man that you see is a comedian, but he is also serious when needed.
Happy-Go-Lucky, directed by Mike Leigh (2008)
Belying his miserabilist reputation, Mike Leigh’s new film Happy-Go-Lucky celebrates incorrigible optimism – but with the usual twists, finds Tom Jennings
Prozac Attitude.
Immigration: The Inconvenient Truth (Channel 4) and the White season, BBC 2 (2008)
A rash of TV documentaries explain away tense British resident-immigrant relations with typical middle-class prejudice in reproducing forty years of media and state-managed mystifications of the ravages of capitalism, according to Tom Jennings.
Great White Hopeless
Venezuela: The case of RCTV and the fictional democratization of communication
El Libertario's position in the debate on the case of RCTV, where the current government overturns the capitalist private oligopoly of TV to the monopoly of a bureaucratic and authoritarian state.
Since two decades ago, by means of our publications, the Venezuelan anarchists have denounced and been against the vices and slants of the private media corporations as RCTV.
Britz, dir. Peter Kosminsky, Channel 4, 2007. Television review – Tom Jennings
Juggling simplistic stereotypes, Channel 4’s Britz illuminates neither the attitudes of UK Muslims nor the motivations of homegrown jihadists, concludes Tom Jennings.
A Bipolar Exposition by Tom Jennings
Urban riots and their reportage - Tom Jennings, 1992
Tom Jennings’ 1992 essay on current affairs media and their coverage of urban riots
A Hall of Mirrors: Television News and Social Reality by Tom Jennings
Greece: general strike by public service workers
Public service workers in Greece have gone on strike, for the second time in two months, to defend their pensions.
The strikes have virtually paralysed the country as workers nation-wide seek to defend their pensions and protest against a government that has broken its promises.
France: strikes in state television and radio
Strikes by workers in the state media saw many programmes cancelled.
The planned strike at France Télévisions against 'reforms' was successful. At France 3, seems to be targeted for privatisation as it is supposedly too critical of the current government 56% of all employees joined the strike, rising to 60% in regioal centres.
France: television workers to strike again
A one-day strike has been called for February 13th to protest against government plans to 'reform' public television services.
The strike has been called at France Télévisions (France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5 and RFO). Workers at other public media services such as Radio France and TV5 have been called on to join the strike. The strike has brought together all eight of the media unions (CFDT, CFTC, FO, SNJ, SITR, SNJ-CGT, SNRT-CGT and Sud)
