Martha Stewart Refused Entry to Britain
Martha Stewart, America's best known TV lifestyle guru was refused an entry visa to the UK.
Martha Stewart, 66, a self-made TV personality, who made millions selling her brand of "homemaking" to US audiences, was found guilty of conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of agency proceedings - all relating to her sale of stock in biotech company ImClone Systems Inc. in 2001. Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of house arrest.
The Home Office's refusal to grant Martha Stewart a visa may result in some raised eyebrows. Although the Home Office can refuse a visa to anyone at its discretion, it does have fairly comprehensive and detailed guidelines on refusals. The two reasons which could potentially apply to Ms Stewart are on somewhat shaky grounds:
1. Refusal on grounds of criminal conviction - The rules state that an application should normally be refused if that person has been convicted of an offence in any country which, if committed in the UK, would be punishable by imprisonment of 12 months or more.
-> Interestingly, Martha Stewart's sentence was ten months, of which five months we're house arrest. I may be wrong, but I think it unlikely that the Home Office could consider that the sentence would have been longer in the UK, and even if they did, this would be pure speculation.
2. Refusal on grounds that exclusion is conducive to the public good
-> Stewart's trip to the UK was for a speaking engagement at the Royal Academy and some business meetings. How the Home Office or embassy officials thought her visit would be any risk is difficult to explain.
Both of the above are discretionary and depend on the official's assessment of the visa application.
The UK's Independent newspaper speculated that "Lying to government agencies is a federal crime in the United States and could easily be considered a serious enough crime in Britain to warrant exclusion from the country." Another possible reason was that the UK wanted to send out a message that celebrities are subject to the same restrictions as everybody else, although based on its own rules, it could have just as well approved Martha Stewart's application.
Then again, the workings of visa regulations in both the US and Britain are somewhat difficult to predict, and tend to be somewhat arbitrary and often unreasonable. For example, since 1993 the US government has denied visa waiver to people with HIV or AIDS and made the obtaining of any visa very difficult and laden with conditions. This has been subject of quite a lot of campaigning, but to no avail.
The good news for Martha Stewart is that the UK Home Office is in fact much more forgiving than the US when it considers visas for ex-offenders. Whereas in the US your crimes will most likely exclude you forever, in the UK her sentence would be considered as "spent" and therefore no longer relevant after ten years. Even if Stewart is refused an appeal now, it is very likely that she will be granted a visa if she applies in three year's time.
UPDATE (25 June 08, Midnight GMT): And... Boy George was refused an entry visa to the US today, because of "ongoing legal proceedings relating to a charge that he assaulted and falsely imprisoned a male escort who was allegedly chained to the wall of his east London home in April last year, a charge he denies". Of course the two stories are unrelated. But you can't help but put them next to each other. Can you?
Younger generation gets news from community, not from news sites (Prof Dr Jo Groebel)
Speaker: Prof Dr Jo Groebel - Director, The German Media Institute
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
- Research shows that the younger generation doesn't visit news online sites, they collect their news from their online community, and they trust it more.
- We not only show a change in the role of the media, but also in the role of journalists in the community and how they interact.
- We used to think in terms of demography, but many of the old demographic metrics no longer apply. People are more centred on information and situational needs.
- A lot of what we're discussing has been around for 40 years. The Internet has been around in some form since 1969. Most of the ideas that are now in the spotlight have already been discussed. Online community, for example, started in the 90's.
- People are primarily using media for information. We've done studies on what people remember from news items. Within five minutes people forget about 95% of what they read or consume in the news. A lot of information consumption is about the "kick" users get from consuming it.
- The online world increases emotional arousal and information kicks. The more you 'arouse' them, the more likely is your information to be successful. You also need to be aware that if you go beyond a certain level of emotional arousal, you lose the user as well.
- people are now focussing more on visual kicks. Levels of visual intelligence has increased significantly, and levels of verbal intelligence has decreased.
- Lots of media use is about excitement, mood. It is absolutely crucial to target this emotional area.
- Unlike TV, online and newspapers are high-attention media. Whereas TV may be on in the background (and the ratings show that you are watching although your attention may not be there, also for ads).
- Community - even in the world of user content creation, it is still the professionals who produce the quality content and are the catalysts/moderators of what happens in the community. This is not going to change.
- The most crucial change in the online world is that you don't need to care about demography, in quite the same way.
- Convergence has become a reality, a people expect to get everything on all platform, e.g. mobile.
- Immediacy has also become the expectation.
- English has not become as prevalent online as many expected. People still use their local languages mostly online.
* Context and disclaimer: reports from the conference were captured in real-time. If anything is well expressed, it is to the credit of the presenter. If anything is not completely clear or could have been put better, it is probably down to me. I didn't try to capture everything, just some of the key soundbites. Anything that is my comment, will be qualified as such, under "DD:"