Category; Media
A former UKIP Councillor
News is about narratives. You pick your starting point and take it from there. That starting point is both literal and metaphorical; the opening sentence in any decent news report is worth as much as the rest of the report, and the viewpoint of the author, or outlet, moulds facts.
It’s how Fox News and The Guardian manage to shape the same facts in such different ways.
Category; Law, Media, Politics
© Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty
A terrible industrial disaster in Bangladesh, a building full of workshops collapses leaving more than a thousand dead (click here), and our first reaction in developed economies is to question our responsibilities as consumers and whether we should boycott the western companies who have clothing made there (click here).
It’s an example of the fact we seem to have forgotten what the state is for.
Category; Finance, Law, Media, Politics
Schiuma
It’s easy to get worked into a schiuma by the revelation that Starbucks hasn’t managed to pay any corporation tax in the UK since 2009 – click here for report. Big turnover is, apparently, eaten away by expensive licensing royalties to an overseas subsidiary (Holland) of the Starbucks parent company, expensive beans bought from another overseas subsidiary (Switzerland) and then roasted by yet another overseas subsidiary (Holland).
Politicians and journalists are gleefully calling for a boycott of the company that doesn’t ‘pay it’s share’ – see here and here. But it’s very simple. Read the rest of this entry »
British newspapers are crowing that they refrained from publishing photographs of a topless Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, while a French magazine, (to use tabloid terminology) splashed them. And that despite France having criminal laws protecting privacy! (click here for article)
The British papers are doing all that refraining, and all that pointing out of the pointlessness of a privacy law, because we are in the eye of the tornado that is the Leveson enquiry.
Sir Brian is writing up his report at the moment; preparing the proposals that will frame the future of media regulation. Like a child in the run-up to Christmas, the British press wants the present-giver (or denier) to see what good boys and girls they are, unlike the boys and girls across the street.
Lord Justice Leveson asked me my views on this when I visited his enquiry; alright, strictly speaking he asked some other people who were witnesses to the enquiry while I was just in the public gallery, but it was the same room…
In any event, here’s my suggestion for press regulation in relation to privacy; make the punishment fit the offence. Read the rest of this entry »
Same guy, different set of photos
In allowing himself to be photographed, naked, or as they’d say in Nevada, butt naked, in the high-roller suite of a Las Vegas casino, with an equally naked young woman, or as they’d say in Nevada, a hottie, whose acquaintance could be measured more in minutes than hours, Prince Harry, or as they’d say in Windsor, His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales, has proven himself the heir to his great great great grandfather Edward VII (click here), and a bit of an idiot.
But should the newspapers be publishing those photos? The short answer is; yeah, why not?
Of course, that’s not to say they needed to be published, it’s just seriously; why not? Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Politics
An off-hand remark by a Prime Minister and the state of a nation is revealed. Who’s the Prime Minister, and what did he say?
Tony Blair, ever, you know, quotable, told a cabinet colleague (click here) that he wanted his children to go to an elite school because he didn’t want them ending up like Harold Wilson’s children.
“I want them to do better than that.”
Thanks to the Daily Mail’s seeming obsession with Prime Ministers’ children we can see what happened to both Prime Ministers’ children. Read the rest of this entry »
