an immedia reaction

It’s not quite as snappy as Voltaire’s original, but this is in essence what this post is trying to say about proposals to outlaw the possession of extreme pornography.

In the same way that players of violent video games do not all go on to become rapists and murderers, not all viewers of extreme pornography do not go on to enact their fantasies a la Graham Coutts. When such things happen, when the video game/porn made them do it, there are always other contributing factors. Daddy was in their head giving them instructions from beyond the grave, they hate the world because their car broke down or by social and medical standards they are mentally unbalanced and don’t function according to the same set of rules as the rest of us. As several commentators point out in various articles I have read on the subject, owning extreme porn will be an offence, but carrying out such things as contained in extreme porn in your own sex life will not be. How’s that going to prevent people from carrying out such murders ever again? Even people who watch porn have the power of imagination. Surely indulging in sado-masochist play is much closer to actually hurting someone than watching videos of it happening??

For some interesting discussion on the legislation, see this article from The Times a year or so ago.

As for my part, I can’t say that extreme porn, or indeed porn of any kind, floats my boat. It’s just something I’ve never been interested in. I’ve also yet to define where I stand on porn in general and the whole “but you’re a feminist! It exploits women!” issue. Can? Check! Worms? Check! Good. But, this whole topic was brought to my attention by Todger Talk, a most insightful and interesting group blog on male sexuality, and it threw up a lot of related thoughts I decided to share anyway.

In this post one of their regular contributors basically says he believes the importance of porn on male perceptions of women cannot be over-emphasised.

True as this may be, I think it’s obvious from the world around us that people viewing this kind of porn don’t all go off and commit murder. And there is obviously a vast selection of porn out there for people to choose from, should this be their primary method of learning about sex and sexuality. And even those who stick primarily to getting their kicks out of watching mock-asphyxiation aren’t all going to go out and put these ideas into practice. I think we’d have noticed the resultant death toll.

Now, I can’t presume to extrapolate, with any certainty, from myself on to the entire global population (it would take a lot more egotism than I currently possess as well), but as someone who was raised in a fairly liberal environment, I’ve always been fairly comfortable talking about sex and sexuality. And have never felt the urge to watch porn. If what their poster says is true, and most men don’t feel comfortable discussing sexuality and turn to porn for answers, clearly we need to bring about a change in the way we talk about sex and sexuality.

Collectively, we need more openness in our society about sex. The emotional side of sex needs to be discussed at school, alongside the practical. Clearly, I’m not holding my breath for this to happen over night. But if porn is unrealistic/degrading/unhealthy and that’s where people are getting their information then clearly we’re doing something wrong.

I believe, in many ways, our society is far too sexually repressed. And this repression always finds an outlet. Where? Porn, among other things. This outlet is not necessarily healthy, and in the case of Graham Coutts, proved fatal for one extremely unfortunate young woman. What does repression do? It makes things taboo and, therefore, attractive. I may be completely wrong (and hey, it’s happened before, at least once), but I believe that if we were more open and honest with each other and discussing sexual thoughts and desires on a regular basis was socially acceptable, the need for stuff like this would melt away. We don’t need more censorship of sexuality, but an embracing of it.

I mean, I don’t know how many, if any, BDSMers out there are reading this blog, but tell me, would the stuff you get up to be half so enjoyable if it wasn’t completely frowned upon, absolutely verboten and never, ever, ever discussed in polite society? I’m guessing no…?

But on the other hand, as I say, maybe I’m wrong and people will always have a divergence of sexual tastes as broad as the Nile delta. But even if that is the case, if such tastes were discussed more regularly in public, at least that might increase the chances of spotting potential Graham Couttses before they managed to made their fantasies a reality.

NB: I apologise if this is disjointed and rambling. It was written over the course of several hours while I tried to do several other things.

Not long ago, I wrote that both PR and journalism are concerned with information management. Until the holiday period kicked in, I didn’t realise how much information management journalism required.

This issue is linked to that in the last post about whether people need to know more about how news is produced. If people sat down and thought about it, they would realise that over the holiday period, a lot of so-called “timeless” copy is written in advance. Some of next week’s paper (the non-news bit) has been in the pipeline for nearly a month (this is advertorial copy but it needs doing sooner rather than later to make our lives easier!). Judging by the requests we get some days to fit things in half an hour before weekly deadline, most people simply never think about the mechanics of newspaper production.

At the moment, it being Christmas and about to be New Year, we are suffering a complete dearth of news, as no one round here is doing much. It’s also continually raining. Yet during both festive weeks, we are expected to produce two papers. They are a lot shorter than usual but they still have pages that want filling.

On a weekly paper, we have more flexibility than a daily and we print different kinds of story. If the paper is full one week and there is stuff left over, it will get used next week. We always try to have the front three to five pages of the South Shropshire Journal and the front of the Ludlow Journal (the free paper) full of genuine news that has not been held over. But, to a certain extent, news is only news because we say it is. After all, if no one else has said anything previously about a story, it becomes new as soon as it is published. And if something doesn’t date and isn’t urgent, it can be held until needed - the old “slow news” day.

And this is what I’m going to have to do next week. There are a couple of things I have been saving up. And there’s no guarantee there’ll be enough. But I’ll be bringing information out of storage. In these circumstances, I present it in ways that don’t imply it’s current, as that verges on dishonesty. But, she says sarcastically, there comes a point when you wonder why we bother with all this ethical justification about safeguarding the public’s freedoms (well… it does give us a reason to get paid), when our lives would be simpler if people were more aware of the processes it takes to produce a paper.

I scored a minor victory in the battle against political correctness this week when I managed to persuade a local sports coach to allow us to use the correct names of children in a photograph submitted to go with a story about a sports club.

The situation this time was slightly different from the primary school who wanted us to just use first names for children. We had been sent the names for the sports club story, but no indication of how they related to the people in the picture, back row, front row etc.. I had been trying, by hook or by crook, to track down this information as, without it, the picture would not go in.

On the morning of deadline, I received a phone call. I checked some other facts and then asked about the names. And then it came out: the lack of placing information had been deliberately left out. Because of child protection.

My argument was not coherent, well-rehearsed or particularly polished. I said it was extremely unlikely a child would be identified from a newspaper. I was told the caller had attended child protection courses and actually, this had happened. I responded that a school in the area had asked us only to publish first names, but paedophiles calling out to children are incredibly unlikely to use first names and surnames when trying to catch a potential victim.

I was asked whether we’d consider using the names without saying which child was called what. I pointed out that when we did this by accident we were accused of incompetence and that, in other situations, misnaming someone could well leave us on the wrong end of a libel action. So we were unlikely to do it deliberately.

I’m not sure how much sway any of these arguments had. I didn’t mention the most obvious one (from my perspective, given this previous entry), that children have statistically far more to fear from adults they know than adults they don’t know, but I then emphasised that we were happy to run the story, but couldn’t use the picture without accurate names.

This seemed to do the trick. Most stories are improved a hundredfold by the addition of a relevant and decent image, and this certainly was one. And a picture speaks a thousand words. We effectively reached a compromise of views, which still resulted in my preferred outcome. I got the names.

I do not wish to malign the individual concerned. They run a sports club at which some very young children train and clearly, they need to be seen to be doing the responsible thing. But, as the coach pointed out, these children are nearly 16 and less likely, one would hope, to do anything stupid like wandering off with a complete stranger. I can’t say that’s entirely my way of thinking, teenagers will be teenagers after all… I made some comment like “After all, we don’t avoid printing pictures of adults in papers in case serial rapists track them down, do we?”

But, when all’s said and done, this was a picture for a story promoting the sale of a charity calendar, in which all members of this sports club appeared. I don’t know whether their names appeared or not… but given the nature of the product they were trying to promote and how they were trying to promote it (the individuals in the picture were named in their press release), it seems very definitely the wrong decision to with-hold the information in the first place.

Journalists are frequently criticised for inaccuracy. I have already attempted to defend us against these charges in other entries on this blog, but two recent experiences at work have propelled me take up the pixel in our defence yet again.

Society in general and PR in particular are hypocritical to accuse of us inaccuracy when they do the following:
1. Suggest mixing up the names of school children in photographs
2. Try to get away with not giving a name to be quoted in reference to a story, respectively.

These are two quite different circumstances, but as I see it, they both hinge on two important things: accountability of and trust in journalism.

The school that suggested we mix up the names of children in our photo captions had as their argument “oooh paedophiles!”. I kid you not. Again, I have ranted against our society’s obsession with the paedophile on the loose here and I have yet to hear of a child kidnapped by a paedophile who identified them from a newspaper photograph. If it happens, maybe I’ll eat my words, but the odds are significantly stacked against it. The school suggested we use just first names, but even if said mythical newspaper-scouring paedophile did hang around outside a school hoping to abduct a child, they are hardly likely to call out: “Hey Jackie Evans! I’ve got some sweets you’ll really like!” First name would be enough, if this were ever to happen.

But I digress. The real problem this entry is meant to deal with is the suggestion that we mix up the names. To be fair, the person suggesting it has not had any training in journalism and may not be aware of the implications, but if we start mis-labelling people, why should readers trust us to be accurate with anything else? Not only is it insulting to the people who we mis-name; in other situations, it could be potentially libellous. Getting names wrong is also sloppy, unprofessional and does your reputation no favours. We’re hardly likely to start doing it on purpose. Just, no.

The attempt by the PR rep to get me to quote them only as “spokesperson” failed, because they’d given me their name in an earlier phone call. My senior colleague forbade me from doing so and said there was no way we could attribute quotes anonymously. And I think she was right. If we don’t have a name, we could easily have just made up what was said. And if we’ve made up a name, at least if gives people something to investigate, they can see if this person exists.

Anonymous sources can seriously undermine the credibility of journalism. People sheltering behind anonymity can talk all kinds of crap without being accountable and journalists can end up writing inaccurate pieces because of it. Anonymity may occasionally have its place in investigative reporting, but not when getting a quote off a PR. Giving a name shows we’ve put the work in to make the story balanced, we’ve found someone legitimate to comment. If journalism is to be trusted, that’s how it has to be. And the same goes for naming children in photos.

Sadly this poor blog has been languishing a-while, there were many things on which I wanted to comment and make generally witty remarks. Media coverage of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s split. World events of a momentous nature.

However, all this faded into personal insignificance at the prospect of 1. A job interview and 2. A two-week placement at The Birmingham Mail.

After a harrowing round of tests and interviews a week ago today, I was rung up on Wednesday morning to be informed that I have secured a place on a sub-editing traineeship sponsored by The Sun and run by The Press Association. If, at the end of nine months, they like what I’ve accomplished, I may be offered a job.

I’ve e-mailed a tentative acceptance as the offer letter seemed to go missing and hopefully another one will have arrived home by the time I’m back from Birmingham. Then I can consider my options, fully-informed.

Being at The Mail has so far been a lot of fun. It’s been difficult coming into a new place where I don’t really know the area and don’t have that many contacts. But my supervisors have understood this and I haven’t been short of things to do.

I’ve had some lucky breaks. The first story I had published I got as a result of answering someone else’s phone. They were out of the office that morning. I was handed the story from a political press officer, in effect. And while it was a bit of political manouevring on their part it gave me some experience ringing up the relevant people for comments on certain things and I was chuffed that it went in.

My second story was some additional reporting on a warehouse that had burnt down. I got sent out to try and find out the cost of the damage done. I didn’t make too many mistakes and ended up with a joint byline on page 2.

Then on Friday, I ended up covering the sentencing of a paedophile at Birmingham Crown Court, after one of his victims had rung the paper to tell us it was happening. One of the other reporters interviewed him and I ended up with a joint front page.

This week has been a bit slower, partly because I didn’t take the train back down to London in the middle of it for a job interview so I haven’t felt quite so manic. But I’m already sad that I’ve only got another three days there. And it can be frustrating when people don’t fully realise that the function of a newspaper is to publish information. Some stories can be altered to avoid identifying people or placing victims of crime in danger. That’s fine. But I really can’t write a report of a burglary the victim has decided to publicise and not give anyone’s name.

Because then people could easily accuse me of just making it up…

I know I keep banging on about the Radio 4 Listen Again page, but if you didn’t catch Saturday Live yesterday (saturday), please, listen.

Fi Glover interviewed William Sampson, who worked as a management consultant in Saudi Arabia. He was arrested in 2003, tortured and charged with planting a car bomb that he had nothing to do with.

He was beaten and raped as part of his interrogation. While in jail he had a heart attack. He was in prison for almost two years. When he came out of prison, he had to re-learn to use cutlery as he’d been grabbing his food with his hands for the past two years.

I am ashamed to say that although I believe in the stance of organisations like Amnesty International and their “Protect the Human” Campaign, I have done very little beyond say this. I joined their mailing list in my third year at uni but never “had the time” to become properly involved.

I am ashamed that even though I’ve heard reports of this sort of thing before, although admittedly none quite so graphic, it’s taken this story heard in the semi-hungover darkness of a saturday morning in the suddenly obscene comfort of my own bed to shock me into action. As a start, I’ve just joined Amnesty International and I’m going to do my best to shop ethically for Christmas. Unfortunately, I don’t have much money at the moment, so I’m still going to have to buy food at Tesco…

Torture does not work. Sampson said he held out for seven days before admitting to the allegations, and one thing he did was try to ignore what his interrogators were saying - he had no idea what he was supposed to have done and they were trying to feed him the information.

On top of this, there was the disturbing revelation in the recent Newsnight documentary interview with the Al-Qaeda infiltrator. He said the terror camps taught them to resist torture, and to yield up false information, in this case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. See what disaster that led to. And Al-Qaeda have just want they wanted, a failed state where they can attempt to establish a national base.

I had been thinking recently that the career I want is too hard to achieve. Maybe I’ll settle for being a local reporter or move into national politics. But all these things are interlinked. Sampson made the point that if a democratic government is complicit in torture, they tarnish the souls of everyone they claim to represent.

I have no idea where I’ll go with this job, how long it’ll take me to get there, or what I’ll do along the way. But I believe in a global perspective and a global awareness of big issues and right now I want to do my damnedest to make sure they’re reported.

If you like The Who (and of course, every right-thinking person loves The Who…), if you do nothing else this weekend, go to the Radio 4 Listen Again page and listen to today’s (Oct 27th) edition of Front Row, presented by John Wilson. It’s half an hour of two separate interviews, one with Roger Daltrey and one with Pete Townshend.

We’re told that Daltrey was interviewed first, but the way the programme is spliced together, you hear alternate snippets from both of them. I’m going to try not to disappear up my own arse while praising this show, but it’s fantastic. It’s like aural erotica, like beautiful soft-focus photography for the ears.

It’s stimulating, sad, funny and leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

And I know I’m just an ecstatic fan-girl but Daltrey and Townshend are just amazing. They speak lucidly and emotionally about their relationship, the deaths of their fellow band members, the new album they’ve just released, about Pete’s arrest and about their music. It’s very rare that I listen to a radio programme and don’t wander around doing other things at the same time. Tonight at 7:15 I was transfixed for the duration.

That’s enough praise for now. I hope I die before you throw up. But seriously. Listen to the show.

On Friday, we had a visit from Peter Preston, former editor of The Grauniad to discuss the future of newspapers. He simultaneously re-assured me that my chosen profession has a future and also wholeheartedly rubbished the Free Sheet Wars occurring in London at the moment.

As a Londoner, I absolutely detest the free papers. Except The Metro. That has an easily identifiable market and purpose. To me, London Lite and thelondonpaper are superfluous and badly produced, I’ve read both. The Metro has the provision of short, efficient news delivery down to a fine art. In contrast, I don’t want to read in either of  the new sheets that so-and-so prefers this paper to its rival because it’s ‘hip, shiny and generally awesome!’ (not an actual quote, but you get idea…)

They also generate huge amounts of waste and I hate the fact that they undermine The Evening Standard which I have a lot of love for as a well-produced local London paper.

Preston believes the free sheet situation is unsustainable. Both papers depend on advertising and if they don’t manage to shift copies, advertisers won’t use them. Preston and I are intellectual snobs and don’t think the news available in such papers is particularly good quality.

My hope is that when people realise this, the whole situation will implode. Preston’s argument, that people used to getting this type of news for free will be willing to pay for quality, specialist information, is welcome. Newspapers, he believes, will evolve into newsbureaux, like Reuters or the BBC.

The only flaw I can see in this reasoning is that, to a greater or lesser extent, websites are also dependent on advertising. Amanda Powell said that the online market is incredibly competitive. If the august publications we know and love manage the transition, they’re going to have their work cut out against organisations that have been at this a lot longer than them.

You have to love Jeremy Paxman’s lack of enthusiam for Newsnight’s attempts to firmly establish itself online. The contempt in his voice as he utters the phrase  “fantastic website” or similar and his exhortation to “download a podcast if you’re desperate” leaves you with the feeling that he would rather be slicing his eyeballs with razorblades than recommending this “modern technology.” Maybe it’s just his style.

And he’s certainly lost none of that. Although I missed the news report in question, owing to shorthand practice over-running (it was something about a preliminary research report done by the Defence Academy to find out soldiers’ views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Suprisingly, they seemed to think the wars had been a bad idea and had radicalised Muslims at home and abroad. I bet that came as a shock to the politicians….), I managed to catch the latter half of the interview with Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely who runs the DA (Dumbledore’s Army! heh).

It was amazing television. Kiszely was obviously absolutely furious with the BBC and you could be forgiven for thinking that Paxman was about to crack and lose his nerve.  To be fair, he still asked thoughtful and probing questions, he just didn’t sound as strident as usual. Kiszely looked as though he was about to explode with rage and the way the tension ebbed and flowed out of his body, depending on what questions Paxman was asking, really added to the excitement.

 He basically gave a politician’s set of answers, refusing to be pinned down and avoiding making comment by hiding behind precise definitions of certain words. I can’t make up my mind whether he was furious that the BBC had actually mispresented the report or that the BBC had actually got hold of sensitive information that was potentially damaging to the Government and the MOD: namely, that British servicemen (and women!) thought both wars were a mistake and had no idea what they were supposed to be doing out there. He was so angry with Paxman, I’m almost convinced by the former idea.

And finally…. although I had never heard of her, have never read or seen any of her reports and still have very little clue about her life in general… R.I.P. Anna Politkovskaya. I only hope your life, work and death inspire others to take up the baton. If it comes to it, I certainly hope I have your bravery and guts to do what is right.

Hah. I’ve got a long way to go.