The BBC is the world's most famous and powerful cultural institution. Throughout its 75 year existence it has attracted criticism, controversy and political bullying, as well as epitomising globally the heights to which public, non-commercial broadcasting can aspire. It remains the model for public broadcasters around the world. Uncertain Vision is a unique and fascinating portrait of this venerable institution in changing and uncertain times. It is based on the most extensive independent research ever conducted inside the BBC, during which Georgina Born was allowed unprecedented access to employees from all ranks of the organisation and gives an extraordinary portrait of the corporation during the later 1990s, the last years of the regime of the former director general John Birt. Its insight into the workings and problems of the BBC is unparalled and it does not flinch from criticising the destructive policies of the Birt period. It promises to be a stimulating, controversial and definitive portrait of the most fascinating period in the history of the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world.

This is a study of homicide in the UK and its aftermath. The author, a forensic psychologist, argues that murder is 'a negative solution to a personal problem', and that the mandatory life sentence should be not merely a punishment but an opportunity for the whole range of psychiatric and social services to prepare the prisoner for a full and model life after release. Illustrated with case studies, the book examines homicide as a process : the initial problem, its progress to solution (homicide), post trial reaction and the effects of the sentence.

Computer Vision has now reached a level of maturity that allows us not only to perform research on individual methods but also to build fully integrated computer vision systems of a signi cant complexity. This opens up a number of new problems related to architectures, systems integration, validation of - stems using benchmarking techniques, and so on. So far, the majority of vision conferences have focused on component technologies, which has motivated the organization of the First International Conference on Computer Vision Systems (ICVS). It is our hope that the conference will allow us not only to see a number of interesting new vision techniques and systems but hopefully also to de ne the research issues that need to be addressed to pave the way for more wide-scale use of computer vision in a diverse set of real-world applications. ICVS is organized as a single-track conference consisting of high-quality, p- viously unpublished, contributed papers on new and original research on c- puter vision systems. All contributions will be presented orally. A total of 65 papers were submitted for consideration by the conference. All papers were - viewed by three reviewers from the program committee. Thirty-two of the papers were selected for presentation. ICVS’99 is being held at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium and Convention Centre, in Las Palmas, on the lovely Canary Islands, Spain. The setting is spri- like, which seems only appropriate as the basis for a new conference.

Community Development in an Uncertain World is an essential resource for students and professionals in the human services.

During the 1960s the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the notion of a "bourgeois public sphere" in order to describe the symbolic arena of political life and conversation that originated with the cultural institutions of the early eighteenth-century; since then the "public sphere" itself has become perhaps one of the most debated concepts at the very heart of modernity. For Habermas, the tension between the administrative power of the state, with its understanding of sovereignty, and the emerging institutions of the bourgeoisie--coffee houses, periodicals, encyclopedias, literary culture, etc.--was seen as being mediated by the public sphere, making it a symbolic site of public reasoning. This volume examines whether the "public sphere" remains a central explanatory model in the social sciences, political theory, and the humanities.

Based on original and previously unseen written and sound archives and interviews with former and current radio producers and presenters, Public Issue Radio addresses the controversial question of the political leanings of current affairs programmes, and asks if Analysis became an early platform for both Thatcherite and Blairite ideas.

This book explores the impact of new forms of online reporting on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. Informed by the views of over 100 BBC staff at all levels of the corporation, Bennett captures journalists’ shifting attitudes towards blogs and internet sources used to cover wars and other conflicts. He argues that the BBC’s practices and values are fundamentally evolving in response to the challenges of immediate digital publication. Ongoing challenges for journalism in the online media environment are identified: maintaining impartiality in the face of calls for more open personal journalism; ensuring accuracy when the power of the "former audience" allows news to break at speed; and overcoming the limits of the scale of the BBC’s news operation in order to meet the demands to present news as conversation. While the focus of the book is on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism, the conclusions are more widely relevant to the evolving practice of journalism at traditional media organizations as they grapple with a revolution in publication.