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Journalism: Reading Beyond The Headlines
The headlines say it all: riots; looting; unrest; attacks against the police; police brutality; masked attackers; violence on the streets. Journalism, the mass media, is designed not just to inform and advise, but also to sell, whether it be advertising space or information, online or printed. Journalism is not there just to give the facts of an event, but also to give opinions and recommendations, depending on the bias of the publication, and what the journalists themselves – and their editors – believe they can get away with. A good headline sells more content, regardless of what the actual content is, because so many no longer read beyond the first…
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Journalism and Censorship: A Full Circle
The ideal of a Free Press, of a system of journalism reporting current events, politics, business, culture and social matters, is an ideal enshrined in modern society. It goes back over several hundred years to the smaller local news agencies, to hastily printed pamphlets, to the idea that the press, the newspapers they produced, the journalists working for them, should be able to report the facts without bias or fear for their lives. An ideal only, of course, as reporting the facts has always been a matter of interpretation, has always been subject to who we hear from and how the message is brought across. The press, regardless of its…
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Winter, Weather, And The Theory Of Chaos
Completely unexpected, as ever at this time of year, winter has hit what used to be part of the frozen north. For the first time in many years there is deep snow on the ground, the air is freezing cold, and winter woollies have regained their rightful place as a fashion statement. The news media have been quick to highlight the impending chaos as transport connections fail, bus, tram and train lines are cancelled, and the streets fall into an eerie silence. Only the chaos is missing. The human – of whatever sub-species we might claim to be – is reasonably adaptable, given the right warnings and personal balance. Most…
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In Whom Do You Place Your Trust?
In the days of my youth – and much of my time now, as an old person, is spent remembering youthful years – people who wanted to have their books published either had to go through the rigours of a publishing house, with or without an agent on their side, or pay a vanity press to publish the work for them. Vanity presses advertised in what we would call the gutter press, the yellow press, the tabloids; those publications with little intellectual depth, plenty of not necessarily serious advertising, and a high readership; something which has, sadly, not disappeared from the world to this day. A few years ago things…
