Hammersly is reporting on the run up to Turkey’s general election in July for the BBC, but rather than just filing copy for the web, audio for the World Service and video for News 24, he’s using a raft of web services to augment the more traditional media.

There are Flickr photographs, links on del.icio.us, status updates on Twitter, routes on Google Maps and, of course, a weblog. You can even add Hammersly as a friend on Facebook.

It’s an interesting experiment in newsgathering and alternative modes of broadcasting, but what’s really grabbed me is that Hammersly is not only providing new ways to follow a news story, but also revealing the processes which usually remain hidden from viewers or listeners, the nuts and bolts of producing a news item:

I probably shouldn’t talk about it in any detail yet, but by the looks of things I’ll soon be involved in a new web project that could learn a lot from the Turkish Journey experiment when it comes to arts reporting and reviewing, rather than news. More on that next month.

While certainly small, [Polanski] is slim and agile, and, like many people who lost their childhood in the Holocaust, looks much younger than his real age, which is 72.

Um, what?

Titled 11 paragraphs: A brief exploration of the Liverpool Biennial Press Release, the document - after a nice reference to ‘the new tertiary level of rehashed, reproduced internet wordage’ - considers the press response to the Biennial, noting that 70% of headlines garnered focus on Yoko Ono’s contributions, matching her pole position in the first paragraph of the previous press release, with the remainder of the coverage tackling Jarvis Cocker’s curation, and other projects given second billing first time around.

Then it gets really good:

Clichés aside, are we therefore to conclude from these brief observations that the amount of column space per Biennial strand directly equates to the selected information given in the official Press Release?

…There is also the accusation that the press had pretty much written their reviews before even arriving in Liverpool. This is an area that Press Corps will be investigating more fully over the coming month but it is clear that many of the broadsheets have not only followed the template of the 2004 Press Release, but they have also shadowed each others articles, counteracting or agreeing with certain observations or stereotypes, or even jostling their egos a little as many of them actually suggest that they indeed should be on the next John Moores jury.

…Therefore, on one level it shows the power and directness of the Press Release to get to where it needs to go in order for the issues contained within it to be circulated widely, irrespective of whether those issues are out of context, or of the opinion of the organisation who sends it, rather than the opinion of the artists that it purportedly represents. In some ways, it could be argued that the journalist is the instrument of distribution, the thing that sits in-between the press officer and the public they seek to reach. On another level, it demonstrates that if the press follow the key indicators of the Press Release without subsequent interrogation, they are not necessarily being critical of the work on show but are in effect responding to the propositions and sentiment contained within the text, a complaint that has been aired widely especially by artists and organisers during both the 2002 and the 2004 Biennials.

Wow! I’m not sure if Press Corps, the folk behind the release, are quite, quite mad in sending this out to the very people they take a pop at in the course of their meta-release, or bloody geniuses.

Either way, I’ve long wanted to curate a show featuring a display of press releases (with small works of art sent out to publicise it, naturally) becuase, as Press Corps point out, they’re so often a readymade source of critical appraisal and a lazily adopted route to understanding; and so often have a far greater impact on a show’s reception than - gasp! - the work itself.

If I ever find anyone daft enough to give me space to mount such a show, one thing’s sure: 11 paragraphs: A brief exploration of the Liverpool Biennial Press Release will be the centrepiece, one of a tiny number of these missives that rises to the level of being an interesting text-based work in its own right, which, of course, questions the conceit behind exhibiting press releases in a gallery space in the first place.

I found the piece via Phil Gyford, who pulls out the following exchange:

‘The Muslims just hate us for our love of freedom,’ said a woman from Iowa wearing a cloth elephant on her head. ‘They don’t have any culture and they hate us for having a great one. And they hate the Bible.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘The Iraqis had a culture for thousands of years before Jesus was born.’

‘What you saying?’

‘I’m saying Muslims were building temples when New York was a swamp.’

‘You support the Iraqis?’

‘No.’

‘You support the killing of innocent people going to work? People who have to jump out of windows?’

‘You aren’t listening to me.’

‘No, buddy. You ain’t listening. These people you support are trying to kill our children in their beds. Where you from anyway, the New York Times?’

Of course, this isn’t some American malaise. A friend told me recently about an overheard conversation about the Beslan seige, with one woman saying with utter certainty to another that the unfolding disaster was the fault of ‘terrorist Pakis’ and that the siege was taking place in Bristol.

Call me naive, but it never ceases to amaze me that people will make significant decisions on the basis of, well, bizarre nonsense - what the hell does that convention-goer mean by ‘no culture’? - and the untruths made true by simple, unrelenting repetition in certain quarters of the news media.

Worse still, as O’Hagan found, the thinking traditions of the Left are something of a straightjacket when the opposing side completely eschew argument and discussion, skirt over grey areas, and base their decisions on blind faith. Add to that the fact that the right has, in effect, total control of the popular media in the US and the UK, and the situation looks even more hopeless.

What to do? The ghost of my ten-year-old Revolutionary Communist self probably has a few unpalatable suggestions on how best to proceed, but today I’m afraid I can only quote my infamous uncle and suggest that, well, we’re all fucked.

On that cheery note, I’m off to Zagreb. See you in a week, assuming the sky doesn’t fall on our heads in the interim.

I don’t much like it when people turn the death of a public figure into their own personal trauma, but since Foot has been a part of my political life for as long as I’ve had a political life, I don’t mind saying I had a lump in my throat when I heard the news.

They don’t seem make them like that any more, sadly.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Foot, by Eddie Mair, first broadcast in April, 2000 on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, in which he speaks with typical good humour on the subject of his own mortality: Foot.mp3.

And here are some obituaries and tributes. The Telegraph’s is among the best; a sign that fellow travellers and sworn enemies alike held him in high regard.

• Paul Foot, radical columnist and campaigner, dies at 66 (The Guardian)
• Paul Foot: The finest campaigning journalist of his generation (The Guardian)
• Paul Foot (The Telegraph)
• Paul Foot: Death of a Mirror Campaigner (The Mirror)
• Paul Foot, campaigning journalist and socialist to the end, dies aged 66 (The Independent)