The End Of The (News of the) World

There was less than 24 hours between me writing a blog condemning The News of the World for their utter lack of moral or journalistic standards and said paper being closed down by the Murdoch family. Now I’m not saying the two are necessarily linked, but maybe I need to be careful, perhaps I don’t know the strength of my own journalism.

In all seriousness though I don’t think anyone expected Murdoch to take this step, or at least not so soon. James Murdoch, son of Rupert and the man who currently is chairman of News Corporation said in an official statement that the 168 year old newspaper’s Sunday edition would be it’s last. He said: “The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.” Here is a link to the statement in full.

It’s a surprising but perhaps wise move to attempt to deflect the criticism away from him and his family and draw a clear line under the scandal. However I am of the opinion that that can’t be allowed to happen; shutting the paper down is a meaningless gesture if the higher up staff members who were responsible or at least complicit in the behaviour don’t face the correct criminal charges. By that I mean that making hundreds of journalists, copy editors and picture desk staff redundant is not just hollow but also arguably cruel, if Rebecca Brooks and a number of other key staff members are just shifted into a different high paid job within the Murdoch empire.

The decision was almost certainly influenced by two factors; firstly, one by one advertisers were pulling out from the paper and in the current climate no newspaper can survive without advertising revenue for any length of time, there was no indication that the situation at the paper was going to improve or it become viable again for big companies to be linked to the paper, so they are in one way just cutting their financial losses now rather than trying to play King Cnut and hold back the inevitable. The second factor is that by shutting down the now diseased institution the Murdoch empire hope that they will be seen to have reduced their share of the UK market and acted in the “proper” manner, so as to improve their chances of succeeding in their attempted total takeover of BSkyB, a takeover which looked safe until the latest string of revelations and has looked in serious doubt this week as the government has come under increasing pressure to carry out a full and thorough investigation into the stranglehold on competition the move would give them and simply whether the key board members are morally fit to be gaining such a share of the UK media pie. It perhaps will even allow Murdoch to keep hold of Sky News, something that looked like it would have to be sacrificed previously in order for any deal to go ahead.

It’s also been an interesting example of the power Twitter can have on big corporations, as a number of individuals, including liberal blogger Sunny Hundal, have attempted to organise the campaign to pressure advertisers to pull out of the paper, making sure no company could claim not to know the strength of public opinion. Twitter offers the chance to organise masses of people to make simple, yet telling actions which can have a much grander result than the humble action would suggest.

There’s rumours going around, and could be backed up by something Murdoch mentioned in passing in his statement, that the family have handed the police a paper trail leading right to Andy Coulson’s desk, and that he may be arrested within a day or two, but that is one I’ll have to keep an eye on.

Another element that the closure of the paper cannot be allowed to bury is the police involvement, with allegations of some officers taking up to £30,000 from journalists for stories and information. This is just as serious as the hacking and needs to have an inquiry into both these specific allegations and any questions of how widespread this corruption is.

Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg and every other MP have a responsibility to make sure Cameron is forced to hold judge led inquiry into the scandal. This goes beyond party politics and has to be treated as such, both Labour and the Conservatives have been a little too cosy with Murdoch and his empire for the past three decades and they can’t allow the power of the empire to put them off from making sure they are properly investigated.

The fallout from this afternoon’s decision will be being felt in both British politics and the national media for months if not years, and it will be a long time before anyone can say how big a blow this will be to Murdoch, how big a step it was towards the responsible people being held accountable and the victims being properly compensated.

Though I feel no sorrow for the passing of The News of the World, an institution clearly so corrupt it couldn’t be allowed to survive, I do feel sorry for the huge number of staff at the paper who I am sure played no part in these scandals, who just wanted to work at a newspaper and earn a sufficient wage to support their families.

It is for these innocent people who are losing their jobs, that we have to ensure that the staff higher up the ladder, the board members and even the Murdoch’s themselves face the repercussions for their actions and for the atmosphere they allowed to develop within the newspaper. We as a nation, both as individuals through social media and petitions and our elected officials need to keep the pressure on the Murdochs, on the Government and on the police to do the right thing and see that the responsible parties feel the full force of the law.

For more information and all the latest news and opinion, The Guardian are doing a live blog as I write, so check that out here.

Today's song is off of the most recent Frank Turner album, one which has been stuck in my head all day, so now hopefully it can be stuck in your's too.

The People Who Give Journalists A Bad Name

The last fortnight hasn’t been a good one for journalism; first there was the Daily Mail sinking to a new low, then the controversy surrounding Johann Hari’s lies and now there’s more revelations about the News of the World and the utter lack of moral standards that exists within that institution.

I wrote about the Daily Mail story last week here.

As for Johann Hari, he’s a writer for The Independent, one of their lead feature writers, famous for both his interviews and his passionate arguments; he’s a journalist I previously held in high regard because though I may not always have agreed with him 100%, I enjoyed reading his articles for the passionate coverage he offers. However in the past two weeks it has been discovered that he has not always actually upheld the standards expected of him, especially considering that he is a recipient of the Orwell prize for political journalism. It has been revealed that he has substituted quotes in a number of his interviews, choosing to use words previously written by the interviewee for actual quotes collected in the interviews, where the written words are clearer. Now this isn’t exactly plagiarism but it’s also not honest journalism, it’s deceitful and actually a little baffling. It shows an element of ego because if there was a quote from a previous work by the interviewee he could just have included it with a simple, “In his previous work....” rather than trying to claim that they had said the perfect quote during the interview. Hari published an apology of sorts in The Independent last week but it has seriously damaged my respect for him as a journalist because he has proven that the implicit trust that any interviews included have been represented faithfully can’t be there in any of his articles. I don’t think it’s a case of him deliberately aiming to mislead readers for any malicious reason, but a lack of malice doesn’t excuse a display of very poor journalistic standards.

Then there’s The News of the World, the worst of the three in my opinion. Most people, whether or not you’re particularly interested in the news I’m sure will have heard bits and pieces about the phone hacking scandal. An almost painfully simplistic take on it is that the paper, over a period of years, hired private investigators to access celebrities and news figures answer phones so as to get hold of gossip and news that they otherwise wouldn't have. This is highly illegal and extremely duplicitous, there’ve been arrests and there’s been heaps of coverage, but an already worrying story became sickening this week due to two new discoveries about the extent of their illegal action.

First the news came out, thanks to an investigation by The Guardian and The New York Times, as well as a number of other organisations, that when in 2002 teenager Milly Dowler was abducted and murdered, The NOTW hired an investigator to hack her voicemail, who then proceeded to delete some messages in order to allow more to arrive, giving the family reason to believe that Milly might still be alive. It also meant that potentially valuable evidence in the case was denied to the police.

This is such a heinous act, to intrude on and exploit the grief and trauma of a family attempting to cope with such a tragic event, that you really would have believed that we had discovered the worst details about the scandal.

Then it emerges that the police were at the very least suspicious that Milly and her family’s phones were being targeted by the paper, yet didn’t investigate or follow up the suspicions. The new phone hacking investigations have also led to the families of a number of other teens who have been tragically murdered being contacted to let them know that their phones have been targeted by the paper.

But even that isn't the worst thing about the practices of The News of the World, because in the past few days it has also emerged that the paper hacked the voicemails of the families of victims of the 7/7 bombings. To exploit the grieving families after one of the worst terrorist attacks on our nation is just abhorrent, but it appears to be symptomatic of the way The News of the World behaved on a regular basis. Rebecca Brooks, editor of the paper at that point, is under pressure to resign, but like Andy Coulson during the earlier hacking investigation she is claiming she was completely unaware of the hacking, but even with my limited knowledge of how newspapers work, I refuse to believe that the editor wasn’t aware of how these scoops were being made.

Interestingly a number of advertisers are pulling their adverts from The News of the World, but unless they pull them from all News International products then it is unlikely to really hit Murdoch’s pockets all that hard.

I hope there is a full and effective investigation into these latest allegations and the government really consider whether the full takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation, the corporation which includes News International (publishers of the NOTW, the Sun and the Times) can go ahead, when there have to be serious questions asked about whether the people on the News Corporation board qualify as “fit and proper”.

As an aspiring journalist all three of these issues have been particularly depressing for me because at a time when sales are already far too low and the age of the newspaper seems to be moving ever closer to its end, practices like these only serve to discredit papers further, causing people to lose what little trust and interest they had in them in the first place.

I'd not listened to today's song in a while, but it came on while my iPod was on shuffle and i was reminded of just how good an album "The XX's" debut effort was.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Bay, 2011)

‘Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon’ is a perfect example of how the law of diminishing returns can be relevant to the world of film.

You release a film full of impressive CGI, dramatic and frenetic action scenes and very little plot and it can still be considered a good summer blockbuster, aware of its audience and seeking only to entertain through action and spectacle. Release a sequel with more of the first two and less of the third and you stand a chance of producing an ok film, where audiences will still show up just for the spectacle. But release a third film of the exact same formula and it’s always going to be pretty poor; the action can be just as visceral and fast paced, the CGI just as sharp, but the novelty of watching incredibly realised robots smash into each other without any coherent plot or strong scripting has worn off, showing the film to be the limited product it really always was.

The film is not really any better or worse than the two preceding films, it’s just that what Bay is doing is no longer in any way new; I found myself bored by the fight scenes despite them probably objectively being both more dramatic and better executed than in the first two. I’ve reached saturation point I guess when it comes to robot destruction.

I liked the first two efforts because though they were in no way clever or challenging, they were entertaining action adventure films, with the fact that several of the key protagonists are giant robots meaning that there was something at least slightly different to the on screen carnage, even if it came wrapped in all the typical Michael Bay bows. ‘Transformers 1’ was the best of the 3, ‘Revenge of the Fallen’ was still entertaining if already showing signs of flagging, but ‘Dark of the Moon’ just never got me excited, because the concept was no longer novel in itself, the action was nearly identical to the first two film’s scenes and the script was if anything worse than previous efforts, alternating between clunking and cheesy with only fleeting moments of skill or humour.

I did almost expect to feel this way before I watched the film, and perhaps that has coloured how I viewed it, but overall I just don’t think you can make what is to all intents and purposes the same film three times and keep it entertaining. Not that this will in any way stop the film raking in so much money that a fourth one becomes inevitable.

2/5

Today's song is 'Avenue of Hope' by 'I am Kloot', a song I only know due to a much better sci-fi film, the Danny Boyle directed 'Sunshine'.

Source Code (Jones, 2011)

A particularly bizarre kind of time travel. A confusing plot involving the protagonist having the potential to save lots of lives. Questions of how much of what is happening is actually impacting on real life and how much is purely in his head. And Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role.

I could quite easily be talking about two different films, separated by a decade and the emergence of a new great sci-fi director.

In 2001 ‘Donnie Darko’ brought Gyllenhaal to filmgoers attention as a boy who has conversations with a creepy giant rabbit, has to deal with wormholes and loops in time and space and who gets distracted along the way by a pretty girl. It failed to break even at the cinemas, but DVD has allowed the film to be recognised for what it is, a piece of fantastic thinking sci-fi.

10 years down the line he is one of the biggest actors in the world, starring in big budget blockbusters and more low key character pieces. His face is instantly recognisable but what is impressive is that he’s managed to forge a career for himself involving exactly the kind of mixture of fun and serious roles that you imagine most actors would love to achieve; there’s a world of difference between his performances in ‘Prince of Persia’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’, or between ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and ‘Love and Other Drugs’.

This year he starred in ‘Source Code’, a sci-fi thriller set in the modern day, where he plays a US army soldier called Colter Stevens, who is tasked with reliving the last 8 minutes of a man’s life, to try and work out who planted a bomb on a train which exploded earlier in the day. It’s a great concept, like a cross between ‘24’ and ‘Groundhog Day’, which let’s face it, could only ever be both awesome and confusing.

Gyllenhaal is fantastic as a man thrown into another’s body, without any of the fun hijinks of a ‘Freaky Friday’-esque movie. Torn between doing his job and becoming attached to the people in the world of the source code he captures that confusion with all the skill and subtlety we’ve come to expect from one of this generation’s great actors.

Crucial to his performance is the quality of his two supporting ladies; Vera Farmiga is superb as Colter’s contact in the outside world, the woman who gives him his instructions and tries her hardest to allow him to understand what can and cannot be changed in the world, but it is Michelle Monaghan who pulls off the better performance. She’s tasked as playing a woman, who is already dead, but has to be so loveable that a trained military man would fall in love with her within only a couple of 8 minute time slots, fall for her so completely that years of obeying orders and following military codes would begin to seem insignificant; quite a challenge really. But it’s one that she pulls off, managing to become more and more attractive as the film goes on, to the point that you are willing him to succeed as much for her sake as his. I’ve never seen her in a lead role before but I am definitely impressed. She manages to convey an impressive range of character with only a fairly limited, and at times inherently repetitive, script to work with, creating a genuine chemistry with Gyllenhaal’s character, despite there being some ambiguity over who it is she actually fancies, Colter or the man whose body he has inhabited.

Just as with Jake’s breakout performance in ‘Donnie Darko’ where he relied on the guidance and vision of Richard Kelly, he owes a great deal of the quality of this performance to the work of director Duncan Jones, the man who brought us the best science fiction film of 2009, if not the noughties as a whole, ‘Moon’. Jones is really beginning to step out of the Ziggy shaped shadow his father has cast and if he can keep producing films of this standard, I think people will look back at his work with a lot of respect years from now. He has a clear understanding that the best science fiction can’t just rely on a strong concept, but has to be well scripted and really make the audience think. His films are exciting and intelligent; a combination all too rarely on display in Hollywood films these days and one which I hope he continues to employ throughout his career, because I genuinely believe he could come to be listed amongst the great directors of all time.

In the end though this is Jake Gyllenhaal’s movie; it is his intensity that keeps the audience hooked, his charisma that makes the character believable and his name which guaranteed audience turnout. He’s come a long way from talking to a really weird rabbit about the end of the world.

Today's song was one I stumbled across during my fairly regular sessions trying to find new music on Youtube and listening to random covers. The girl singing is called Kate McGill and i reckon she deserves to be big, check out her Youtube channel and give her original songs a listen first, but also check out the sheer range of artists she's not just covered, but done damn good justice to. Anyone who knows me will know i'm really quite fond of Mumford and Sons, so to post a cover of one of their songs, perhaps my favourite one, should suggest i think quite a lot of this singer.

Going The Distance (Burstein, 2010)

‘Going the Distance’ as you can probably guess is a film about the inherent difficulties involved in trying to make a long distance relationship work; it’s a problem that is very relevant for me and my age group. Being a student has plenty of perks but the reality that any relationship you want to enter into is likely to be long distance for at least part of the year and let’s not pretend otherwise, that’s never ideal.

The film focuses on aspiring journalist Erin, played by Drew Barrymore, who while on an internship at a New York newspaper meets and begins to fall for record label staffer Garrett, ‘Dodgeball’ and ‘Die Hard’s’ Justin Long. The problem is that she’s only in New York for 6 weeks, before she has to head back to San Fransisco and the fledgling couple have to decide whether to try and keep the relationship going despite the new found distance or to accept that they’d had a good time but that neither could face a long distance relationship.

Obviously they choose the former, because it would have been a very short film otherwise, but the plot looks at all the problems that come from only being able to see the person you love for a couple of days a month. Admittedly English students don’t have to deal with the additional obstacle of the time difference, but other than that the majority of the troubles faced by the pair are ones that will be familiar in some form to any student who’s been in a long distance relationship.

The two leads are excellent, with a really easy and believable chemistry, but often the funniest lines are given to the four key supporting characters. Garrett’s best friends Dan and Box, played respectively by the excellent Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, both of whom are starring in the very funny looking ‘Horrible Bosses’ which comes out this summer, get arguably the majority of the laugh out loud moments throughout, especially Dan’s attempts to DJ Erin and Garrett’s relationship. Erin’s sister and her husband also offer contrast to the young and in love couple, by showing a married couple and the very different challenges involved when you persevere with a relationship.

The film also boasts a really strong soundtrack, heavily featuring one of my favourite bands at the moment, ‘The Boxer Rebellion’, there’s even a couple of live performances worked into the plot, and also including tracks from ‘The Cure’, ‘The Replacements’ and ‘Muddy Waters’ amongst others.

The combination of being very funny, having a great soundtrack, some really strong performances and having more than a slight relevance to the lives of me and my friends means that I really enjoyed ‘Going the Distance’. Sure it's a little cheesy at times, like any rom-com, but it knows how to offset that with just enough stupidity that the balance remains right.

4/5

1 Month To Go

We’re now at the point in the summer where we’re closer to the new football season than the old and so the speculation about who’s going to challenge for the title and who’s likely to struggle. One of the main things that people base those predictions on is the signings made and the staff appointed by any team.

What is worrying me is that after a less than impressive managerial appointment in Steve McClaren, the prospects for next year haven’t really improved from that low point. McClaren has come out with lots of nice soundbites, about his ‘vision’ for the team, his hopes to bring players through from the youth squads into the first team and the importance of signing a few experienced players to compliment the talented youngsters we have at our disposal.

We’ve only made one signing and it’s one that’s left me fairly undecided; resigning Andy Reid is an interesting choice, I like him as a player and still remember him offering some real moments of magic during his first spell at Forest, but there are some serious issues with his fitness both in terms of stamina and being injury prone. If McClaren can get him fit then I’m all for the signing I guess, Reid has a brilliantly cultured left foot, capable of passes, shots and crosses that are Premiership quality. Like with the new manager, I think the jury is going to have to remain out for the time being until we can see whether Forest are going to see the Andy Reid that justified being half of an £8m transfer earlier in his career, or the one who has gone from team to team in the past couple of years without really making an impression.

We’ve let McKenna and Adebola go to Hull and I agree with both decisions, they are two players who have been good servants to Forest for the past two seasons but who are definitely past their best; McKenna especially looked poor in the second half of this season, short on fitness and ideas.

McClaren seems keen to convince Earnshaw and Moussi to stay, wanting to offer them both new contracts. I definitely want to keep hold of Moussi because despite being injury prone, whenever he was given an extended run in the team he started to look like a real high quality player. Earnshaw I’d keep but only if he takes a pay cut; as I understand it he’s one of the highest earners at the club and frankly last season’s performances don’t justify that, he seems to have lost that clinical poacher quality to his play, being far more wasteful than usual, making watching him a frustrating experience and relying on him as our main goal scorer a risky proposition.

We, like every other promotion chasing team in the Championship, are being linked with plenty of players and it’s always hard to tell which ones have any degree of truth to them, but I hope we really are going all out in an effort to sign Maynard. If we get him, Reid, a decent left back and an experienced centre back than I’d consider that a good summer’s work and put us in a strong position as we approach the new season.

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I've been listening to these guys a lot today, they feature quite heavily in a film i watched last night, 'Going the Distance', which i'll probably review tomorrow.

A Tragedy Exploited

There are times when I wonder whether I am too prejudiced against the Daily Mail, whether my intense dislike for the paper is justified or dictated by my political standings. Sure it’s at times abhorrently right wing, full of the kind of stories that fit into every stereotype or right wing prejudice and bigotry, but perhaps they are just aware of who their audience is and so are no worse than the 2 million or so people who buy the paper every day.

Then they post a story like this one and I realise that, at an editorial level as well as in terms of individual journalists, they are exactly as disgusting as I think they are. The fact that the Mail are against the public sector strikes that took place yesterday is perfectly understandable, the unions and the right wing press are always going to be in opposition to each other, but to use the tragic death of Sophie, a 13 year old girl to try and aid their political agenda is just sickening.

Several times in the article the author make reference to the fact that the girl wouldn’t have been in the park if it wasn’t for the strike; probably true but also not really relevant, the girl could have been anywhere for any number of reasons and died through a similar tragic accident. The fact is that horrible things happen for no discernible reason to innocent people and to try and twist such an event to suit a particular political attack shows a lack of journalistic awareness and, more worryingly, a lack of basic human decency.

Anyone at The Daily Mail with a working brain should have been able to see that running this story would make them seem callous, petty and thoughtless, and according to the posts I’ve read on twitter a number of the journalists attached to the paper have come out as being opposed to the piece, but it is clear as an institution that the Mail thinks it’s acceptable to exploit a human tragedy like this for their latest political hate campaign.

It feels almost like there are times where the Mail is so focussed on launching vitriolic and hate filled attacks on the people, institutions and occupations that they don’t approve of that they don’t actually take the time to consider whether it’s contextually appropriate or emotionally decent.

Worryingly the Telegraph ran the story under a similar title with the same obnoxious choice of angle, but didn’t make quite as many references to the strike, though their choice of which tribute to lift off of a Facebook page set up to remember the young girl is telling.

I feel sorry for anyone whose brain works in the way whichever of the Mail’s journalists and editors who were involved in this story must work, because it must be a dark, miserable and angry life they lead, but mostly I feel sorry for the parents of Sophie, who while in the grips of a frankly unimaginable tragedy, have seen their daughter’s death used for political point scoring.

As so often before, The Daily Mail should be ashamed of themselves.

I don't really feel posting a song on this blog would be appropriate.