The Cyberamblings of Malcolm Bradbrook: It covers a few topics that I hold dear: communications, sustainability, running and triathlon to name but four.
Death porn is a slang term for the material found on the internet that is intended to gross out its viewers. All pictures/videos of dead bodies, horrible accidents, or blood and guts can all be classified as death porn
It is a phenomenon surfacing on the internet - as most modern phenomenon are. I read Jack of Kent's posting on this subject and had to ask: why are we seeing Death Porn in the mass media?
Take this for example. The front of the Sun's homepage:
Perhaps not a surprise when you consider The Sun's previous form with such classics as 'Gotcha' during the Falklands War. But have I missed something here?
When did it become OK to show death so graphically - and in such a celebratory fashion on the front page of a newspaper?
The Sun was by no means only outlet to use Death Porn on its front page.
This is The Mirror:
Pretty awful. Not quite as crowing as The Sun but clearly a celebration of the death.
It seems to me that the mass media is simply unable to resist. They can see material being published on the net and want 'some of the action'. It is a rationale used to defend the monstering in the coverage of Christopher Jefferies in the Joanne Yeates murder investigation.
But news media is read in a different way to social media such as Twitter, Youtube and Faceboook - there is an impression of authority from a conventional media outlet and that authority gives the words and images power.
Just as Peter Parker was told by his Uncle Ben 'With great power comes great responsibility' - the gratuitous use of these images is not serving any purpose other than to celebrate death. And is that a purpose the mass media in this country should be pursuing?
If we desensitise ourselves to death and violent in such an accepting and mainstream way, where does it lead? I'll leave you with this story that has brought tears to the eyes of this hardened hack.
Court is one of the places where journalists are most restricted in what they can write, photograph, record or film.
That is why I am so staggered that Twitter seems to have been welcomed with open arms by some parts of the judiciary. It's less than a year since journalists were given permission to Tweet live from court.
The live Tweeting from ITV's Rupert Evelyn during the trial of Vincent Tabak is a superb example of why Twitter can be such a compelling tool in the hands of a court reporter.
Rupert kept up an incredible flow of Tweets from the trial and during the moments of Tabak's evidence it was a staggeringly compelling read.
I even almost forgave the lack of capital letters throughout. I still think journalists must maintain high standards of SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) even if it's 'just social media'.
Longer term, I have concerns about the ‘thirst to be first’ and the prospect that promoting immediacy in news reporting may damage the traditional role of contextualising and analysing. But what is clear is that, used well, Twitter can be of huge benefit to a journalist and their readers.
And immediacy can only supplant contextual and analytical news if we let it.
So. All power to Twitter and the journalists taking advantage of a superb platform.
Perhaps it’s time to open the doors more completely – what about recording devices and cameras in court? These times are a changing and courts should be keeping up.
OK so rugby is a passion of mine but bear with me - this post is still about the media.
I have become increasingly frustrated by the coverage of the England team in the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Not the match coverage - that seems accurate and fair: England are poor, limited, shapeless and seemingly clueless about how to change.
What has frustrated me is the pious finger-pointing within the press that seems determined to label the team as alcoholic, arrogant thugs who've let their country and the sport down.
There are key incidents that have been cited as evidence:
You can make up your own mind about how you feel about those incidents when you read about them. Some will find them deeply offensive, some will find them not worth mentioning and some will see somewhere in between.
My point is more to do with the lack of honesty in how the media has covered these incidents.
Take the Guardian's rugby correspondent, Robert Kitson. He wrote a very derogatory piece about the players following the night out in the bar.
Fair enough - he's entitled to his opinion. But then we get to the paragraph about this not happening with New Zealand or Australia - and he specifically cites The All Blacks coach Graham Henry as the kind of manager who would not tolerate this behaviour.
But then what was a this story tucked away a couple of weeks later? New Zealand stars caught drinking heavily and smoking in public.
Right. So the 'Henry The Disciplinarian' that Kitson described will take action for sure? No. Cory Jane played a couple of days later in his usual starting berth.
Then we get repeated articles about Warren Gatland and how his success is down to the tight ship he is running and the fact there are alcohol bans in place.
This is the same Warren Gatland desperate to recall Gavin Henson and willing to recall Andy Powell after their numerous previous incidents?
I highlight these not to demand action against these players but rather to highlight the media hypocrisy. They know what they are printing is not true. Gatland has been so embarrassed he has been forced to make a statement denying the drinking ban and admitting that his players have been socialising in bars until 1.30am.
Even David Campese - the self-confessed king of all England haters - has come out to defend England against the media in a podcast for The Times (no link - that's a paywall for you). So you know you're doing something wrong even Campo won't stick the boot in.
I have friends in New Zealand who have reported to me that they had a great night in Queenstown drinking with the players of another Six Nations teams. The boys from that team got a bit squiffy and decided to go diving off the pier into the lake. I don't remember seeing that one reported although there were journalists on that night out as well.
So in light of what has been happening within the media this year, it seems relatively unimportant. But for me this kind of stuff is the thin end of the wedge.
The danger with inaccurate reporting is that it becomes cultural knowledge - assumed behaviour because as we all know, 'there is no smoke without fire'. And as we have seen with Theresa May's cat, even politicans fall for that sometimes. And lo and behold here's Fran Cotton slating Mike Tindall for being 'absolutely hammered' - when there appears to be little evidence that was the case.
I met Richard Peppiat recently and he believes that journalists draw a clear distinction between lying and not telling the truth. So not giving the complete picture about rugby players' behaviour isn't lying but we haven't been told the truth and that annoys me.
If the media really is offended by this behaviour then fair enough report it. But report it evenly or not at all.
I have spent a large part of the last four weeks welcoming trainee journalists to both the profession (or should that be trade? One for a another day perhaps) and to the University of Gloucestershire.
In one on my first lectures I always point to the Ethics Handbook for Journalists produced by the Thomson Reuter Foundation and the list of 10 Ethical Absolutes that handbook contains.
1. Always hold accuracy sacrosanct
2. Always correct an error openly
3. Always strive for balance and freedom from bias
4. Always reveal a conflict of interest to a manager/senior editor
5. Always respect privileged information
6. Always protect their sources from the authorities
7. Always guard against putting their opinion in a story or editorialising
8. Never fabricate or plagiarise
9. Never alter a still of moving image beyond the requirements of normal image enhancement
10. Never pay a source for a story and never accept a bribe
Of course, with the Leveson inquiry under way, this is highly topical. So lets throw the question out there: Of these 10 absolutes, how many are adhered to on a daily basis by the mass media in the UK?
Well Twitter is quite a-flutter at the moment with the news that Johann Hari is evil - the epitome of a charlatan journalist destroying a noble profession with his corner-cutting ways.
What was his crime? Well he admitted to swapping quotes from interviews he had carried out for quotes from his interviewee's own writings if they covered the same topic but were 'more coherent'.
Cue huge wailing and gnashing of teeth followed by thousands (possibly even millions now) of tweets under the tag #interviewsbyhari. For a more detailed look at the issue, the whole thing has been Storifiedby the consistently excellent @newsmary.
From my somewhat sarcastic tone thus, far you might think that I am about to spring to his defense.
But no. Alas Johann cannot come to me for support for I am disappointed by this. I am, as ever, frustrated by the way Twitter leaps from moral outrage to moral outrage. And I know that a huge per centage of journos jumping on the Johann-bashing wagon have committed far worse sins, but I am nevertheless disappointed.
You see, Hari has risen to the top of his profession in my eyes. He has carteblanche to interview policy makers, entertainment goliaths, literary legends etal and to do so at his leisure.
I use his articles as examples of exemplary practice when teaching my students. I marvel at his incisive interview technique and the skillful way he weaves the narrative into his work.
But now I know that the narrative and the quoted word are not woven. They are cut out and stuck together.
It reminds me of when I was a teenager and I desperately wanted that Nike sweatshirt but couldn't afford it. So I bought a pair of sweatbands, unpicked the logo and glued it on a sweatshirt from the market. It fooled everyone for a day, maybe even a week but then the glue started to fail and looked a bit naff. Once everyone knew what I had done of course I wasn't the cool kid with the Nike gear or even this kid with the plain sweatshirt. No, I was the sad case deserving of pity.
Hari has fooled us into believing he is an interviewer extraordinaire. But now we know that he has not coaxed those opinions, that explanation or those illustrations. He has just glued them on and now it's starting to peel.
Jon Ronson - he of superb journalism - has come in to defend Hari, saying:
I've no idea what Johann Hari has been accused of. Just that he's been accused of something. In general, he's stunningly brilliant.
And I agree but now the Nike logo has lifted and the glue is flaking down his chest he is in danger of becoming a figure of fun. I'll leave the last word to @alexwalters who wrote the most incisive Tweet about the whole thing:
Hari stared at me, a tired look in his eye. "None of my interviewees have ever said they had been misquoted," he sighed.
The Daily Mail is one of the most successful newspaper in the United Kingdom - that much is beyond doubt.
The ABC figures released this month show that, in terms of circulation alone, it is second only to the The Sun with 2,030,968 copies sold daily in December compared to the Sun's 2,717,013.
The future looks bright too as the Mail's rate of year-on-year sales decline seems less than most other nationals at -3.89% compared to The Sun's -5.10%, The Guardian's 11.89% and The Times's -14.01%.
Online the Mail is leading the way (despite its shockingly late entry into the fray in 2004) and now gathers about 35% of the online UK newspaper traffic - an incredible stat when you think of the plurality within the field.
Of course, the Daily Mail has long had its detractors. It is frequently reactionary, displays homophobic and xenophobic tendencies both in the written word and news values and frequently scare-mongers to an extent that would make Freddie Krueger proud.
Websites are set up to oppose the views taken by the Mail, it is constantly mocked on Twitter and one of the best songs of 2010 was written 'in its honour' by Dan and Dan and has had almost 1,000,000 views in 9 months (below).
But let's put that to one side. It's in a box marked 'Reasons why I don't buy the Daily Mail'.
In the interests of transparency at this juncture, I must point out that I worked at the Daily Mail in the 90s. I was going to add 'for my sins' or 'to my shame' to that sentence but that would be the easy option and an unfair reflection on the professional relationship I had with the paper.
So lets open a new box called 'Why did I choose the Mail?'
First out of the box: It was the first national to have me. Other work followed but at that time the Mail was taking all the hard-working and enthusiastic reporters from the regions it could get its hands on.
My first choice would have been the Guardian but I didn't have a public school or Oxbridge education so didn't even get a courtesy letter in response (there's still time to atone for this error Mr Rusbridger).
That sounds bitter but it isn't really - or at least it's not meant to. It was just a fact at the time that the left-leaning papers seemed to recruit in this way (and pay peanuts). At the Daily Mail, I worked with mainly left-leaning journos eager to both make a splash in the industry and pay the electricity bill.
Anyway, I was pleased to be going to the Mail and the main reason was that it was respected within the industry. Its reporters were hard working and versatile - that middle-ground target audience meant you could be doorstepping celebs one day and uncovering the NHS postcode lottery the next.
Stories were stood up, copper-bottomed, topped and tailed and all the other euphemisms for thoroughly researched you can think of. I remember once being given a photograph of a restaurant in the Caribbean which had a poster outside proclaiming that critic Michael Winner was banned for lewd behaviour.
I did everything I could to stand up the story but couldn't get confirmation from the man himself. So the news editor (Tony Gallagher - now editor of the Daily Telegraph) told me to spike it.
A fortnight later one of the Mail's restaurant critics discovered that it had been a hoax and the restaurant was just seeking a bit of publicity. Great call from Tony and I have no doubt that it will be a surprise to many to hear that we didn't just 'publish and be damned'.
So, while I have shame that I worked for a paper with such a record of right wing views (I later volunteered for Asylum Welcome in Oxford in a futile attempt to shed my guilt), professionally it was the right decision.
That is why I am so surprised by what I see as falling standards at the Mail.
Charlotte Metcalf penned this piece and it covered what she called the 'Nouveau Pauvre'. Initially I thought it was something to do with pepper, but discovered that it was a first-person feature explaining that the author was poverty stricken.
She explained that she was lucky if she earned £500 per week and was no longer able to shop for Christmas presents at Harrods. One of her friends, sob, was struggling to find the £400 to buy an iPad for her 15-year-old daughter.
She seemed completely unaware that a minimum of £500 per week (that's £26,000 per year) actually represents a salary that many people would be pleased with. Yes it is a climb down from the £1,200 per week (62,400 per year) she previously earned but still not a salary one can use to claim destitution.
The feature alienated a lot of people. Working class people were angry that such a self-centred article could be published, while middle class guilt meant that she won few sympathisers from her own section of society.
One of, if not the, main strength of the Mail in increasing its market share in the past 25 years, has been successfully targetting its core demographic: middle class, middle-aged, aspirational and intelligent women.
Yet in one foul swoop this article undermined that - it is a rare mistake for the Mail to make. Even worse when we realise it is a follow-up to a previous Nouveau Pauvre article by Ms Metcalf which elicited a hugely negative response.
The second article then has a feel of a wind up - the kind of feature written purely to get a response using the principle that no publicity is bad publicity. That is true if you publish an article your core readership can attack without guilt but hold up a mirror to them and you alienate them.
This was published yesterday and was written by Liz Jones - a controversial journalist who has annoyed people a lot in the past for what they see as a patronising and superficial style in article such as 'how to live on benefits'.
If you look at the comments at the bottom of the story you can see that the word patronising prominently. But that is not my issue with this work - it is just that it is such poor journalism.
Poorly researched, badly written and full of cliches from intro to contrived and all-too-probably made up pay-off.
I am not the best writer - my journalistic strengths lay more in news gathering and news sense - so criticising other writers does not come naturally to me. But if one of my level one students wrote that feature they would scrape a pass with a very low third and a kick up the backside.
In fact, I would put money on any one of my level one students coming with something considerably better than that rambling load of vomit-inducing, eyeball-piercing piffle.
That's not intended to prove just how bad this is. Quite the contrary, my level one students are proving themselves to be a very strong bunch of journalists.
But the Mail has long been known for employing good writers. We might hate what Jan Moir writes (remember her homophobic rant following the death of Stephen Gately?) but her columns are well structured and she is capable of creating images in your mind and encouraging you to read on.
A large proportion of Daily Mail readers buy the paper simply because of its columnists - but how long will that continue if they are forced to read third-rate material?
A tragic but strong news story. Quite lazily put together using few facts but plenty of Facebook tributes but ultimately I am not criticising them for this as when working under deadlines we have to make the best of poor material at times.
Not it was a last par that grabbed my attention last night. It has now been removed and I didn't get a screenshot but from memory it said:
"A friend of Leah's sister said that Leah had recently had a flu jab."
And that was it. Nothing else just that - draw your own conclusions: 'Did the flu jab cause the heart attack? It must have done otherwise why would the reporter bring it up? Oh my God - my nan had a flu jab' etc etc and so it goes.
As I mentioned before, the Mail is well known for its scare-mongering - a point well picked up but Dan and Dan towards the end of their song.
But usually there will be something. Some grain of 'truth' among the fear: a piece of peer-reviewed scientific research or out-of-date Government figures - not 'just a friend of a sister said'. This third blatant example of poor journalism made a little blog come out and that little blog grew like the Blob that chased Steve McQueen to almost unmanageable size and now I have rambled enough.
I will end now but only after after saying that it is hard to see the Mail's success continuing if they don't return to stronger journalistic standards.
* UPDATE: 17.01.12: The most shocking yet. Today the Daily Mail has posted a story about an alleged rape on Big Brother in Brazil. For your pleasure you can also view a seven minute video of the alleged rape taking place. Words cannot describe how immoral and unethical this is - truly a new low for the Daily Mail.
After reading the excellent blog post "David Cameron is Voldemort. No seriously" by Mary Hamilton the other day, I mused in her comments section that Nick Clegg may in fact be Anakin Skywalker.
She had cast him as Professor Quirrell or Professor Snape but I wasn't quite convinced so leapt from one successful franchise to another.
Having thought long and hard about it, I am convinced I am right - particularly in the light of last night's vote.
You see, Snape was always a baddie - until it became very obvious at the bitter end he was a goodie. And Quirrell? Well Quirrell was just Quirrell until it was revealed that in fact he was a Quirrell/Voldemort hybrid hellbent on facilitating the murder of an 11-year-old orphan.
I never had great hope that Quirrell was one thing or another - I simply didn't care - whereas Clegg was full of Golden Boy potential in April. The mainstream media was full of the fact that the Lib Dem leader was changing the election dynamic who was taking support away from the Tories by the fistful.
A sneaky peaky into his background shows that he certainly had the potential to be the chosen one.
Yes he comes from a privileged background, yet his family has suffered at the hands of persecution. Everything he does, he does extremely well, which hints to me at a very high midi-chlorian count and he spent a brief period getting his hands dirty (although to be fair, working for the Financial Times, doesn't quite equate to being Watto's slave on Tattoine) before being tipped for greatness and apprenticed by a Master in the form of Paddy Ashdown who must, therefore, be Qui-Gon Jinn.
But of course, his political training went astray following the demise of Master Paddy, and the tutelage of the well-meaning but inexperienced Charles Kennedy was not enough to guide this volatile character away from the Dark Side just as Obi Wan Kenobi could not prevent Anakin's conversion to the Sith.
Just as it seemed that padawan Clegg would fulfill his destiny he was dealt a bitter blow and actually saw the Lib Dems lose ground in the May elections, which parallels The Jedi Council's refusal to grant Anakin Jedi Master status and so he wreaked a terrible revenge.
Such is the despicable nature of this deceit and treachery, I can only draw a parallel with Anakin's willingness to murder the Jedi younglings (below).
Clegg is now firmly ensconced in the Dark Side alongside Cameron (didn't Palpatine seem sincere and thoroughly decent during his rise to power?)
Of course, if my Anakin analogy is correct, we are likely to suffer decades more injustice at the hands of this tyrant until eventually he repents having saved the next chosen one, before dying on a distant planet covered in Ewoks; furry, tree-loving and largely peaceful creatures who could certainly be members of the Green Party.
Of course, I could be attaching too much significance to Clegg. In the grand scheme of Star Wars he may actually be Jar Jar Binks - a chirping, ineffectual, grating twat who'll gradually fade into the background under a torrent of negative publicity.
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