Web Monitor
11:35 UK time, Thursday, 24 December 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today on Web Monitor: the headmistress legacy, faking it and the one-stop shop for only one question.
• In a look back at the key cultural figures of 2009 on Radio 4's Front Row Mark Lawson asks Joanna Lumley if her camera training had anything to do with her dominating coverage of the campaign for retired Gurkhas. She insists that her interaction with immigration minister Phil Woolas on live TV wasn't a case of getting him in a tough spot on camera:
"In actual fact Mr Woolas and our team had been talking for half an hour in a room and all I was really doing was asking him to maybe take the stage and reiterate what we'd been saying but he seemed reluctant to say it.So all I was doing was gently urging him along to say what we'd agreed. But of course when it was cut together I looked like some frightful headmistress ticking him off."
• In the very unlikely circumstance that you could have bought an archaeological artefact to hand over as a Christmas gift, you may want to look away now. why fakes get made:
"The reasons for perpetrating hoaxes and forgeries range as widely as the kinds of fakes. Common motives for making bogus artefacts include publicity and self-promotion, monetary gain, practical jokes, and revenge, but some fakers have had the goal of supporting their own theories about the human past. Fakes have often been inspired by nationalism, with patriotic perpetrators boosting their country through spurious links to past civilizations."
• Finally, Web Monitor will be waiting with bated breath to see if the site will change its only page from saying in bold letters "no" to "yes" tomorrow. It is the site's day to shine.
Links in full
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