littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I didn't say that.
Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail "hacked by News of the World"
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I didn't say that.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
I'm just sounding off, no idea what you and lbj are discussing. I can't stand either of them. Caught some Eastenders yesterday. Rancid bile.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
No, I want an independent body blind-funded by a levy on the media, some hard and fast rules about press behaviour per se, and an independent adjudication, on a case by case basis, of what constitutes the "public interest" in a story, so that a paper might still publish a story that is adjudicated to have no public interest, but would have to declare that adjudication alongside the story.
perhaps I'm too idealistic.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
Cameron is damaged but a long way from being turfed out. However the relatively easy ride he has been getting is very much over.
There are clearly tories who dont like him and want to replace him and they have got more vocal in the past week, but I dont think that is coming from within the cabinet. If the tory polls dip below 30% that may change.
On another note, in a sign of the Murdoch guns being trained on Labour - there was a small article in the Sun today about coke snorting allegations and Millibands press bod Tom Baldwin. A shot accross the boughs?
There are clearly tories who dont like him and want to replace him and they have got more vocal in the past week, but I dont think that is coming from within the cabinet. If the tory polls dip below 30% that may change.
On another note, in a sign of the Murdoch guns being trained on Labour - there was a small article in the Sun today about coke snorting allegations and Millibands press bod Tom Baldwin. A shot accross the boughs?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
You said "To my very first point about how reading the Sun and being politically aware are not two things that readily go hand in hand. Do you disagree?". Taken with the rest of the screed that was contained in (your post, #2912), I believe my paraphrase is fair.
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
lbj: The Paul McMullan of Urban*
*the pack turns
*the pack turns
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The stock answer is "because print media is MUCH more readily and immediately manipulable than broadcast media", but I don't think that tells the whole story.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
What "pack"?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
'Everyone who buys this shit is part of the problem.'
I also said that. And I stand by that. There are some fair old mental gymnastics going on by you and others in the attempt to sidestep it.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I've not "sidestepped" it as much as ignored it, because as a point it's...well, pointless unless "everyone who buys this shit" is an ideologue with views identical to those the paper projects, which they mostly aren't. There really are people who buy The Sun purely for the sports coverage (have a look inside the next bookie you pass. Odds on the most prevalent paper in the fists of the desperate-eyed customers is The Sun). You might just as well say that everyone who pays income tax is part of the problem of coalition spending cuts.
As for my "mental gymnastics", please feel free to elucidate on them.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I've covered that point. There is nothing morally wrong about the taste of coca-cola. Did you understand what I meant by that?
phone hacking aside, which is already covered by legislation, what is the 'shit' and what is the 'problem'
when you say bullshit, you mean stuff that doesnt interest you i suppose
it wasnt the broadcast media who continually exposed the tory sleaze in the 90s, it wasnt the broadcast media who exposed the phone hacking scandal or MPs expenses, in fact its been a long time since the broadcast media broke a major story at all, unless you count rogue traders
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
not at all, by bullshit I mean all the nasty xenophobic, bigoted shit that they pour out every day.
so you think they should be censored for their opinions?
can you not see a problem with that
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
no I think that journalist should face readdress when they tell blatant lies, it's as simple as that. That's clearly not happening at the moment
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
My take. Which may be slightly different.
The shit is crap masquerading as journalism. A mix of celebrity fantasy and misrepresented reality designed to make the reader see a world in which most people are greedy, dishonest, violent, and obsessed by casual sex. Except for the reader and the reader's immediate family of course, who are merely showing an aesthetic interest in the breasts of the teenage girl on page three, and read with approval the editorial comments on the need to castrate anyone accused of paedophilia or the advisibility of hanging anyone claiming disability benefits, solely due to there concern about the welfare of their nearest and dearest and in no way because they enjoy getting violently angry about people they feel safe despising.
The problem is that whilst most readers of the tabloids don't actually believe their newspaper tells them the truth and nothing but the truth, they don't actually have much else in terms of information on politics. They may think they aren't being influenced, but the simple fact is that the constant drip of sensationalised garbage is nonetheless distorting their view of the world. It means that a very small number of newspaper editors and proprietors have a massive and covert influence over British politics.
That's the shit and that's the problem. The responsibility lies in accepting the shit and thus being part of the problem.
I'm not getting at Sun readers here. My view is that the entirety of the British press has gone downhill since the days of Harold Evans and co. There is no national newspaper that over the past decade hasn't had journalists faking stories, that hasn't had journalists acting beyond the law and well beyone morality to get the story they want, that doesn't routinely misrepresent people's views in order to create controversy that isn't really there, that doesn't routinely invade the privacy of perfectly ordinary people who just happen to be on the verges of a big news story. Even the Guardian, the Independent, and the Telegraph are part of this.
We shouldn't accept it. If journalists won't operate ethically and at least vaguely honestly then we shouldn't buy the garbage they produce. Any of it.
What happened was that the Mail and the Express headed towards the gutter in the seventies. Their circulation didn't drop. The Sun and the Mirror then dived below the gutter. Their circulation didn't drop. So when Murdoch bought the Times he lowered standards their, without a disastrous drop in circulation. So now none of the papers believes their readers give a toss about old fashioned obsolete ideas such as fact checking or right of reply.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I don't really think it's a good idea to go rubber stamping everything as being in the public interest or not tbh. That's too much power for anybody to have, independant or not. And nothing's really independant anyway. Everyone has their pressure points. I'd just like to see someone making sure that what gets printed has some basis in objective reality, upholding the right of reply and that sort of thing.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
This ^
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
look at this twat:
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Good thing it only applies to the tabloids or where would we be, eh.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
I want to see a body that I can go to if I'm traduced in the press and get some sort of response even if I'm not a celebrity or a billionaire. Currently journalists get to completely screw ordinary people's lives up with absolutely no possibility of recompense. The simple fact is that a newspaper can print anything it bloody well likes about you and unless you can afford to fund an expensive libel action there is nothing at all you can do about it. If you are lucky with an extreme incident you might get the PCC to force a newspaper to print a tiny apology at the bottom of an inside page that almost nobody reads.
I'll give you an example of how toothless the regulations have been over the last thirty years.
In the late 80s one of the Lambeth Tory councillors sent out a press release to all the national newspapers stating that two Labour councillors were claiming more than twice the expenses of any other councillor. He gave their names, addresses and phone numbers. Within a few hours both were pretty much under siege at home with reporters and photographers camped outside their flats demanding interviews and photographs. We (the local Labour Party) had to smuggle them both out to "safe houses" when one journalist starting poking chocolate bars through the letter box of one flat and asking the councillors children to say something for some sweets. For two days there was a shitstorm of stories about these two "freeloading" councillors. At no point was it mentioned that in fact the reason they claimed more in expenses was that one was blind and the other was a disabled divorcee with three kids, and that both attended pretty much every meeting they were able to get to.
We tried to get some balance in the press coverage. No newspaper was even vaguely prepared to discuss it. Two hard working disabled councillors is not a story. No action was taken by the the PCC despite some heavy duty representations to them. No apologies were ever recieved and no correction ever printed. No action for libel was possible as what the papers had printed as fact was genuinely true, but misleading without all the facts.
That shouldn't be the case. Journalists shouldn't be able to deliberately distort the truth in order to make a more interesting story without at least having to fear some sort of sanction. Journalists should not be allowed to behave like bullying thugs without facing the same sort of action from the police that the rest of us would get if we bahaved that way.
I want a free press, but only to the extent that the rest of us are free. I don't believe that a free press necessarily involves having journalists who show no responsibility at all and who allow no moral scruples to prevent them messing up other people's lives in order to sell a few more papers.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
We would probably have some sort of nightmare Tory and Lib Dem coalition government screwing up our lives in order to fill their own pockets and those of their financial backers...
Oh fuck!
hang on, don't get too hung up on the idea of a free press. Just like the free market - the free bit only applies to those who benefit most from it ie the very rich and the very privileged.
If you see newspapers simply as big business products owned by bigger corporate interests the opinions of their leader writer (or indeed the opinion columnist) means absolute shit. As does the threat of being censored.
As with those who defend the concept of a free market, those who defend the concept of free press ususally have the most to profit from it.
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