Category: Journalism

Blog Nation: what would I like to see discussed

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Sunny ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ Hundal is organising a follow-up to 2008’s successful ‘Blog Nation’ event. Details over at Liberal Conspiracy, but Sunny asks what we’d like to discuss; below the fold, then, are some thoughts.

In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

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Guardian Local – a good thing

Posted on by David Landon Cole

A little while back, I wrote a piece arguing for a ‘Guardian London’ supplement to the Guardian, similar to Guardian America or Comment is Free, both here and at Liberal Conspiracy.

Whether or not the Guardian read, let alone paid any attention to, my thoughts, I am very glad to see this:

Guardian Local planned to launch next year
Starting with Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, guardian.co.uk is planning to launch a local news project in a small number of locations. At the moment guardian.co.uk is looking for bloggers – with journalistic qualifications “desirable” – to help cover community news, and report on local developments. The project will emphasise local political decision-making, and is scheduled to go live next year.

“Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010,” said Emily Bell, the director of digital development at Guardian News & Media.

Read more over at the Guardian. Now, I think there is a difference between the ‘local’ and ‘hyperlocal’ and the coverage I think London – the fifth home nation – needs. However, it takes the same line of wanting to build and support citizen journalism. London also needs better local coverage and, if coverage at the local level in London can be improved, we might be able to do the same for London level coverage.

xD.

The government on Twitter

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Central Office of Information run a rather good website called the News Distribution Service, formerly the Government News Network. Below the fold are the RSS and Twitter feeds in three groups – aggregate, departmental and regional.

Unfortunately, no-one knows about it as the COI doesn’t do much to promote it despite being “the Government’s centre of excellence for marketing and communications”. It consists of news updates for all the big bits of government – departments, agencies and regions – that you could want. It’s a good way of keeping an eye on what they’re all up to an finding the occasional hidden gem of a press release. They’ve had RSS feeds for ages and now they’re on Twitter (thanks to yours truly).

xD.

Continue reading “The government on Twitter” →

George Monbiot gives whinging lefties a bad name

Posted on by David Landon Cole

In an open letter in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot attacks Hazel Blears for being, well, Hazel Blears. I have no objection to whinging lefties. Indeed, I often whinge and (definitional objections notwithstanding) have been called a leftie. Monbiot gives us a bad name. Not only that, he makes what he wants to achieve and what I think I want to achieve less likely.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my “cynical and corrosive commentary”. You asserted your political courage, maintaining that “you don’t get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table”. By contrast, you suggested, I contribute “to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics” that I make my living writing about. You accused me of making claims without supporting evidence and of “wielding great influence without accountability”. “We need more people standing for office and serving their communities,” you wrote, “more people debating, engaging and voting; not more people waving placards on the sidelines.”
Quite so. But being the placard-waving sort, I have a cynical and corrosive tendency to mistrust the claims ministers make about themselves. Like you, I believe opinions should be based on evidence. So I have decided to test your statements against the record.
Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles.

Ah, using a metric with an emotion. Interesting line of attack…

The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted “very strongly for the Iraq war”, “very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war” and “very strongly for replacing Trident” (“very strongly” means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There’s certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Blears’ stance, they would be in support of the Iraq war, concluding British deployment there before having a post mortem, in support of Trident and in support of a particular view of the security situation in the UK. Just because you don’t share the principles doesn’t mean they’re not principles.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords.

Here is the first problem with Monbiot’s argument. People’s opinions can, legitimately, change over time. In 2003 and 2007, Blears also voted to scrap the Lords entirely  and, presumably, was convinced in the intervening period that, if a unicameral system was not an option, a fifty-fifty split was the best option.

You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don’t possess any.

I will be the first to admit that the Labour government has made some grievous errors. However, there are two fundamental problems with the arguments Monbiot puts in those paragraphs. Firstly, although I and Monbiot might disagree, there is no necessary contradiction between minimum wage & temporary agency workers’ rights or between fiscal prudence & financial deregulation1. Monbiot forgets that the government gestalt considered the war on Iraq not only a good idea but a moral imperative. There is hence no contradiction. The situation with the third runway is more tenuous, but not fatally so if you assume that the carbon emissions are maintained.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: “Never rebels against their party in this parliament.” Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

And your article is a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / signifying nothing2‘. Voting against the government means leaving the government in the system we have in place at the moment. It is entirely possible that Blears has opposed particular decisions but has been in agreement with the bulk of them and therefore felt it worthwhile to stay within government. This could be called the Short defence or, if you’re not being cynical, pragmatism. After all, The Guardian runs adverts from travel companies and yet Monbiot takes, albeit indirectly, the thirty pieces of carbon.

Let me remind you just how far your political “guts” have carried you. You are temporarily protected by the fact that the United Kingdom, unlike other states, has not yet incorporated the Nuremberg principles into national law. If a future government does so, you and all those who remained in the cabinet on 20 March 2003 will be at risk of prosecution for what the Nuremberg tribunal called “the supreme international crime”. This is defined as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. Robin Cook, a man of genuine political courage, put his conscience ahead of his career and resigned. What did you do?

Will you be issuing a writ against Clare Short? I would add that the legality of the war is contested, not that presence of legality affects its being a good or bad idea.

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

Actually, I’d have said it was either “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”3 or the cumulative effect of a lack of political education and the mendacity of the tabloids leading to poor decision-making because of the over-importance of certain totemic issues and the lack of appreciation of the complexity of government.

You demanded evidence that consultations and citizens’ juries have been rigged. You’ve got it. In 2007, the high court ruled that the government’s first consultation on nuclear power was “seriously flawed” and “unlawful”. It also ruled that the government must commission an opinion poll. The poll the government launched was reviewed by the Market Research Standards Board. It found that “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer”.
As freedom of information requests made by Greenpeace reveal, the consultation over the third runway at Heathrow used faked noise and pollution figures. It was repeatedly pre-empted by ministers announcing that the runway would be built. Nor did the government leave anything to chance when it wanted to set up giant health centres, or polyclinics, run by GPs. As Dr Tony Stanton of the Londonwide Local Medical Committees has pointed out, “a week before a £1m consultation on polyclinics and hospitals by NHS London closed, London’s 31 primary care trusts were issued with instructions on setting up polyclinic pilots and GP-led health centres”. Consultations elsewhere claimed that there was no need to discuss whether or not new health centres were required, as the principle had already been established through “extensive national level consultation exercises”. But no such exercises had taken place; just a handful of citizens’ juries engaging a total of a thousand selected people and steered by government ministers. Those who weren’t chosen had no say.

So your problem is with citizens’ juries? I can see that, to be honest. Unfortunately, the corrosive effect of the media (tabloids rather than broadsheets) gives people a biased set of facts, making it hard to do surveys; equally, surveys can be rather self-selecting as people with a bone to pick will be represented disproportionately.

Fixes like this might give you some clues about why more people are not taking part in politics. I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don’t engage in politics.

There is a problem with our polity. It’s caused by a mix of factors. Politicians of all sides are riding on the tiger’s back in that attacking the system will end up reducing their ability to change it and, I’m afraid, Paul Flynn is not going to change things by himself. By over-simplifying the problems and making it pretty abundantly clear that whatever people from the government say will be met by unwarranted skepticism, articles like Monbiot’s open letter make reform harder.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

I’ll put you down as a ‘don’t know’, shall I?

Edit 1623: Tom Harris and Hopi Sen weigh in.

xD.

1 – PFI would have been a better line of attack
2 – Hamlet V v
3 – Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

The bully pulpit, or, why I’m Ben Goldacre

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Teddy Roosevelt referred to the Presidency of the USA as a ‘bully pulpit‘. He used the former word in the (Famous Five) sense of ‘bully for you’. In other words, it’s a great platform from which to promote an idea or ideology. Any elected representative can, eventually, be removed from office in a reasonably-functioning democracy. In the USA, the occupancy of the bully pulpit is limited to eight years. However, the Presidency of the United States is not the only bully pulpit; many others have no check or balance from an electorate, reality or vague sense of decency to contain them.

Enter, stage left, Jeni Barnett. Jeni has a radio programme on LBC and used it to suggest that the MMR triple vaccination was unsafe. While my understanding is that the overwhelming consensus is that the MMR jab is not only safe but a very good idea (CDC, IoM, NHS) and that there is, at least, a prima facie conflict of interest in the originator of the research, Barnett has the right to broadcast these opinions, even if they do contribute to declining rates of measles vaccinations. This right is contigent, IMHO, on a sensible provision in copyright law (based, I believe, on earlier Common Law principles) called fair dealing that allows you to criticise and review what people have broadcast (CDPA 1988 s 30 as amended). In other words, the fact that you’re on the radio doesn’t give you immunity from people pointing out your errors.

Enter, stage right, Ben ‘Bad Science‘ Goldacre. Goldacre posted, with some pithy remarks, the relevant bit of Barnett’s remarks; he has since removed the audio because of a legal threat (ish) from LBC. You can read Goldacre’s reactions here; Barnett has thoughts here; interestingly, that particular page no longer appears in her archive or on the front page of her blog.

You can read more about all of this, including some interesting insights on the legal position, over at the Wardman Wire.

Three things come out of this. Firstly, given that Wakefield’s research has been gutted by the peer review process and that the peer review process has consistently supported the safety and efficacy of the MMR jab, I am not minded to give much credence to Barnett’s comments; I just hope that other people do the same.

Secondly, as Goldacre puts it,

without being too Billy Bragg about it all: this is a law that apparently works a bit better for wealthy people.

Thirdly, quite a lot of the denizens of the internet in general and blogosphere in particular get really annoyed when freedom of speech is impinged upon. They’ll have a robust debate with positions they don’t agree with, but if you don’t play by the rules, they kick up a stink that can bring you a lot of negative publicity. The Times has picked it up as did Radio 4’s Start the Week and there’s an EDM in the offing from Paul Flynn MP. It would seem that people need to learn about the Streisand Effect.

You may insert the usual hand-wringing rant about the ‘meedja’ here.

xD.

London papers

Posted on by David Landon Cole

London needs greater media diversity.

I’m going to explain the situation, why it’s bad and then propose a solution.

The Evening Standard has something close to a monopolistic position on London news. It is, as we know, the only paid-for London newspaper. Metro, London Lite and thelondonpaper are meant to be read on the way to or from work and are entertainment – hence the huge amount of celebrity gossip – rather than news. Some local papers – the Camden New Journal, for instance – are pretty good, but some areas don’t have any decent, local paper.

I would also say that the Evening Standard focuses (if I may pinch Ken Livingstone’s phrase) on the area around the wine bars and brothels of Westminster and, now, City Hall; it deals with trivia and minutiae. My objections to the Evening Standard‘s position are not because it is right-wing, obsessed with Ken or a bit tabloid. Rather, it is that they are unchallenged in their position. My objection to the newspaper market in London is that it leaves great swathes of GLA and borough politics untouched.

If we move away from the print media, the situation is not good. ITV London News has nothing of the politics of the capital, but only stories of interest. BBC News is, I feel, slightly better but still pretty woeful. Channel Four News and Sky News don’t cover the capital other than in passing. Moving to the online world, I want to weep. The ES‘s main website is thisislondon.co.uk, an entertainment guide, where showbiz comes above news. Its news site, standard.co.uk or thisislondon.co.uk/standard, is very much a second-string site; do a search for Evening Standard and you’ll see that only thisislondon.co.uk is anywhere to be seen. BBC London News just doesn’t have many stories.
In particular, I wonder how many people could name, say, three members of the Assembly. I wonder how many people know what the GLA does and doesn’t do.

I do want to flag three blogs in particular – Dave Hill’s London: Mayor and More; the Tory Troll; and Boris Watch – for their good coverage. While much of their content is great, it is not enough; I hope my reasons why will become clear later on.

All this together effectively gives the Evening Standard a bully-pulpit. While Teddy Roosevelt meant ‘bully’ in the positive, now-arcane sense, I fear that the Evening Standard does not quite match the idea of “a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda”. (C-Span Congressional Glossary).

There has been at least one attempt at direct competition with the ES in the past; Bob Maxwell’s London Daily News. Suffice to say, it failed. By resurrecting the Evening News and slashing prices to 5p, Associated were able to stop the London Daily News. The situation now is different; for one, the freesheet model has matured. I’d add that with the initials ‘LDN’, a London Daily News might fare better after Lily Allen’s song.

Equally, I don’t think everyone wants all celebrity news, all the time; I do not want a ‘Lite’ newspaper. The World, Stephen Glover’s proposed, new compact picks up on that idea; see the Wikipedia article for more information.

There is room and need for competition for the broader (rather than just middle market tabloid) London news market. Despite its attempts to move upmarket, ES’s news coverage is pretty poor. It doesn’t cover borough politics and only lightly covers the Mayor and GLA.

However, the ES retains several advantages. One is brand recognition; another is its distribution network. As an aside, I wonder what effect all those anti-Ken placards had in the run-up to the election; at any rate, those placards and the orange vans are a lot of advertising around the city. I don’t think it’s too much to say that the ES and its sellers are part of the street-scape of London; I would say, though, that the distinctive yellows and purples of London Lite and thelondonpaper, together with the muted annoyance at being attacked with freesheets at every station in zone one, have become part of the street-scape, too.

This leads me onto an area where I think the ES has singularly failed to capitalise; the online realm.
If I can take the issue of brand recognition first, ES, largely because of its decision to run as thisislondon.co.uk online, doesn’t have the on- or off- line, perceived web presence of some other outlets. Much as I like it, neither does Londonist – which isn’t really a news site – or thelondondailynews.com (no relation, I believe, to Cap’n Bob’s paper of the same name).

The other devolved administrations – Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, with respectively three, one-and-three-quarter and five million inhabitants – have their own competitive newspaper markets and, I am given to understand, the national papers have regional editions for the nations. London (eight million), effectively the fifth home nation and the economic, cultural and political centre of our country, does not have that and suffers as a result.

I believe that better news coverage and debate about London – effectively the fifth home nation – would be a good thing. The question is how.

In keeping with Guardian America and Guardian Weekly as successful sub-sets of the Guardian brand, I’d like to propose Guardian London.

Its primary issues could be City Hall, including the Mayor, Assembly and executive arms; London beyond zones one and two; transport; the boroughs; the City; and informing people about the reality of London today. Over an eight-week cycle, there could be information on the council politics of the different boroughs, grouped as four at a time. To begin with, there could be a guide – one a week – to each of the boroughs. It should also look at what might be called the civil society of each borough.

The arrival of Crossrail is one particular issue that deserves attention that the existing media offer singularly fails to address. To take just one station as an example: Tottenham Court Road. Crossrail allows for the development of a better, larger, more accessible station but the Astoria and Sin will go and the Paolozzi murals on the platforms need to be maintained. I’m sure there are similar issues at just about every station on the Crossrail line and will be in future on the Crossrail 2/Chelney line. All we will get will be a glitzy, CGI, double-page spread when it’s far too late to do anything about the changes as the station is about to open. Instead of the newspapers giving us news and comment to allow us to form opinions, they’re giving us re-cycled press releases.

It would do well to do profiles of the main people in London politics; the Mayor, various deputy Mayors, GLA members, people who run and are on the boards of the MPA, TfL, LDA, LFEPA and any future authorities for waste, recycling, education, skills, the environment and planning.
Initially, it could operate a purely online outfit. Journalists need not be retained but could be remunerated on the same basis as CiF. If successful, it could perhaps grow to a weekly supplement to the print edition in London, and perhaps the south-east, on Saturdays.

If we look at the blogosphere and social media, the combination of individual blogs, group blogs, media blogs like Comment is Free and Coffee House, Facebook and so on, we see a potentially powerful combination for attracting people’s attention and engaging them in the London polis.

The trick would be to attract people to local goings-on – whether campaigns over a particular issue, calls for involvement, bouncing around ideas or just keeping people in the loop – by cross-pollinating from the main Guardian. There are all manner of local campaigns, organised on the internet, that act on different facets of the same issue that should be given greater, public exposure. An example might be the Better 172 Now campaign to improve the 172 bus route; I’m sure there are similar issues that ‘citizen journalists’ could report that would be of interest to people who don’t live on the Brockley-St Paul’s route. At the moment, they are too fragmented.

Local papers often suffer from a lack of critical mass; the use of the Guardian’s existing online community and brand could help increase the traffic, as (dare I say it) could its more user-friendly website.

Because people move from one part of the city to another on a regular basis, they are going to be interested in what’s going on away from where they live, whether it’s because they go there for work, socialising or recreation. Equally, many ‘local’ issues become London-wide, in no small part because of the re-institution of strategic, City-wide governance. There is the need and the potential for a new entrant to London news.

xD.

UPDATE: An edited version of this post appeared on Liberal Conspiracy.

Blog Nation part 2: qu’est-que c’est le blog?

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Last night’s Blog Nation gathering at the Guardian’s offices was interesting. Two main things came out of it for me.

1. There’s no such thing as blogging

Or rather, there’s no one thing called blogging. It’s a clever piece of software, coupled with the internet, that allows people to do different things. Just ‘political blogs’ covers sites that explicitly politically campaign and organise, discussion areas for groups and communities, sites for self-promotion, personal musings, ranting, communication with interest groups of all shapes and sizes and more besides. This is exacerbated by Labour being in government, meaning that there is no common enemy on which to focus. Even if, though, the Tories were in power, they would not be the focus of even the majority of blogs.

Until people move away from the idea that there is only one effective model of blogging – the trivia of day-to-day politics – the medium will not achieve its full potential. That conflict was highlighted in a panel discussion with Sadie Smith, Kate Belgrave, Zohra Moosa and Cath Elliott when various people raised the disconnect between feminist political blogs and other political blogs. While I don’t doubt that there is a disconnect, I don’t think it’s unique to feminist blogs; as I pointed out, there are lots of blog communities that focus on an abstract issue that have varying amounts of engagement with the generalist blogs.

In terms of making a political difference, a blog that only reaches twenty people may have as much impact as a blog a thousand times as large if those twenty people happen to be party activists who feel it gives them a connection to their local councillor (or whatever) as it can help to improve responsive campaigning and keeps those twenty motivated to knock on doors and hand out leaflets.

A point made by Mark Hanson of Labour Home was that all this new, social media may herald a return of sorts to the halcyon days of town hall meetings; unlike the television, it allows for responses. I do hope so; it strikes me that we’re not there yet.

All the above feeds into commenting. As we all know, there are a lot of unpleasant and fatuous comments out there. This feeds off and gives rise to the somewhat combative, adversarial feel of contemporary UK blogging. For my part, I feel this to be negative as, although there is a place for strong words, it seems to be drowning out engagement on a lot of blogs. This comes from the preponderance of the aforementioned style of blogging.

The indomitable Dan Hardie made a point that was picked up on by Mr Phil ‘No2ID‘ and others; if online campaigning is the visible tip of the iceberg, the greater part – offline campaigning – is there under the waterline. I agree with them; emails, websites, blogs, YouTube and the rest are the tools, not the objective.

My blog is a generalist blog. I hope that I have not given the impression that there is something inherently wrong with that style of blogging; that is neither my intention nor my belief. However, there is nothing inherently right either.

2. There’s no such thing as the left

There’s no such thing as the right, either. I dislike the use of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ as they are, at best, of low descriptive and predictive value. I would go as far to say that thinking in terms of a single axis is damaging for debate in the country, but that is a theme for another day. What was clear was that at this gathering of the liberal/left/progressive/’various people against nasty things’ caucus, there was not a single, unifying leitmotif. You might have been able to find twenty issues that four-fifths of people would have agreed on fourt-fifths of the time, and you would certainly have found groups with greater correlations than that. There will be particular issues and particular campaigns that bring people together from time to time, but to say that there was harmony and concord would simply be inaccurate. If the progressive (I can’t think of a better word) section of the British polity is going to effectively use the online domain, it must remain diverse and, crucially, campaign effectively offline as well.

I would tend to say that the same is true of bloggers who wouldn’t have fitted in at last night’s gathering. There was talk of the ‘right’ being a monolithic entity on the blogosphere (I think the description of choice was ‘pyramid’). Given the range between UKIP, libertarians, wets, dries, Tories, Young Turks, Englishers and so on, I don’t think that the description will hold (if it even does now) once their common enemy – Labour – is out of government.

My thanks to Liberal Conspiracy and the Guardian for organising it and to everyone there for the pleasant evening I had. There are some write-ups and so on over at LC, and I hope more will be appearing soon.

xD.

Letter to the Guardian

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I am delighted to have had a letter published in today’s Guardian; it’s the second one down on this page. It reads

Your article (It was murder: the Chávez version of liberator’s death, November 17) neglects the importance of Bolívar’s last days to any interpretation of his impact on Latin America. Reviled by the educated classes and with just a few friends who remained loyal, Bolívar was leaving for Europe when he died. He considered himself a failure, believing that “those who have served the cause of the revolution have ploughed the sea”.
David Cole
London

First published letter. The original article is here.

xD.

The decline and fall of The Independent

Posted on by David Landon Cole

If you consider yourself of the leftwing persuasion and want a high-brow newspaper, you’ll take The Guardian; its opposite number, identifying more firmly with the Tories than Guardianistas do with Labour, would be The Daily Telegraph. At the bottom end of the scale (well, just above The Daily Star) would be The Sun for the right and The Daily Mirror for the Left. The middle-brow for the right can choose between The Daily Mail and The Daily Express, which I know is like choosing between syphilis and cholera.

The middle-brow gap on the left has been filled, it would seem, by the Independent. I hope it does not try to ape the Express or the Mail; there can be good news coverage without being as dry as the FT. As it happens, I agree with Jeremy Paxman about the Indie – “if any paper chooses not to be part of the pack, it’s the Indie”. Although the Indie is not running with the pack, it can still be headed over an unfortunate cliff. I rather suspect that Mr Blair’s attack on the Indie is because of its rather trenchant attacks on the former PM, particularly as it is a non-Tory newspaper. A point that both Blair and Paxman have made is the need to separate hard news reporting, features and opinion. Unfortunately, the Independent frequently puts Robert Fisk on the front page.

Fisk is a serious journalist and one of the few westerners to have had a media interview with Osama bin Laden (in fact, on three occasions, in 93, 96 and 97, which suggests that he’d cottoned on to the man’s importance before the formation of the Bin Laden Issue Station in 96); his writing is engaging, polemical and usually pretty factual. It is, though, his personal account; Fisk is on record as not believing it possible to be objective, and that therefore you should be subjective as a reporter. While it might be very worthy of the feature section and his opinions perfect for the later pages, it should not be at the front of a newspaper.

The perception is made worse amongst bloggers because of the verb ‘to fisk‘; I don’t think it’s entered mainstream usage, though.

The Guardian has been doing very well out of an imagined community built around Comment is Free and it has influence beyond the number of its readers, as does the Telegraph; the Sun has sheer weight of numbers and both it and the Mirror have the advantage of speaking to the perceived bases of the Labour and Tory parties. It is no surprise that I consider the Mail and the Express to be execrable, but not just for their jingoistic, occasionally factless, rabble-rousing ‘news’, but because their journalists are not – in my opinion – as good as those on the Sun or the Mirror; they are stuck in their mindsets and ways with no appreciation for that situation and no desire to leave it1.

It might be possible for the Independent to have more of a magazine feel about it and still have a purpose as a daily newspaper; however, it seems to be going the way of the Mail and the Express with features such as ‘Personality: What makes you the way you are?‘ which has the ominous line:

What kind of personality are you? Take this test to discover the truth.

The truth about my personality? I thought that was why I had a psychiatrist…

That article featured not in the magazine or review, but in the run-of-paper. My objection – and I’m rather sad about this, because the Independent used to be my newspaper of choice – is that you are not going to get a serious psychological analysis from a daily newspaper that costs seventy pence and that people who look for serious psychological analysis from a seventy pence daily newspaper are not going to give you the weight of the Guardian, particularly when the market is cornered by the Express and the Mail.

xD.

1 – Yes, Melanie Phillips. Having changed once your political position does not mean you will change again. I’ve heard it said that journos for the Sun are the best in the business and grasp stories more quickly than anyone else. That may be so; however, it seems to me (in my admittedly limited experience) that they grasp the story sufficiently for them to be able to write a story on it – the in-depth knowledge is not there and their news reporting is not factual. Equally, a newspaper is not just the factual reporting. Compare the comment and analysis in a tabloid to that in a broadsheet; compare the letters pages.

PS: An interesting link: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060817macdonald/

Is the Independent plagiarising chain emails?

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I received this email from my good friend, Molly Mulready-Jones, over email on the sixth of June. It’s rather long, so it follows below. The same piece appeared in today’s Independent. The by-line on both is Carole Angier. I wonder what’s going on there. Did they commission this from Carole Angier? In which case, how did it end up doing the rounds on email a couple of weeks beforehand? Anyway, I hope you read it and I’m glad of the publicity in the Indie.

Read the rest of this post by clicking here.

Dog

I tell you my story, but I don’t tell you my name. People say ‘a dog’s life’. You can call me Dog.

I come from Africa. I don’t say where. My father leave my mother when I was very young. I don’t remember him, he never take care of me. My mother did her best, she work selling fruit in the market, but we were poor. In Africa no money, no school, so I never go to school. Sometimes my mother gone a long time and leave me with friends. They don’t treat me well, sometimes I don’t have enough to eat. Then I have to beg on the street. Already young I beg – maybe 5, 6 years old. Young.

So my life is rough from the start, maybe God want to prepare me. But he prepare me well, because my mother is a good woman. She love me and teach me good things – work hard, don’t steal, trust in God. All good things I know I learn from her. But one day she don’t come back. I ask and ask her friends, but they don’t tell me for a long time. Finally they say she died. I was maybe 10 years old. I don’t even know where she is buried, or who pay for her grave.

I still stay with the friends, but I have to beg much to survive. One day on the street a man call me to go and buy something for him. He was a black man, but French, not African – a French businessman. When I come back quick he ask me why I am not at school. I tell him my situation. After that he employ me whenever he is in my country. He become almost like a friend.

Maybe two years pass like this. One day he tell me I am a smart kid, I should go to school. He can send me to school, he say, or he can take me to Europe. What do I want to do? I have nothing in my country, so I say: Europe.

I don’t know how he fix documents for me, I never have any of my own. Maybe he say I am his son or so. Anyway we have no problem. We come to France, to Paris.

He take me to a friend, let’s call him Paul. Paul’s place is small, only one bed. I sleep on the floor. I only get to sleep in a bed when Paul is away.

Every now and then the businessman come to visit us. I ask when I can work, when I go to school, but nothing happen. Maybe he have more problem than he thought to get papers for me. In Europe you have to have papers for everything.

I take care of Paul’s place, like a servant, and he give me food and clothes, but no money. Sometimes I go into cafés and ask people for money, and sometimes they give me. But I’m not so smart now, usually I learn fast, but I can’t learn French well. I don’t know why, maybe I was scared. French people are very proud of their language, if you don’t speak it good they don’t like you.

After a few years the businessman stop coming to see us. Then Paul don’t want to keep me any more. He tell me he is going away and I can’t come with him. I stay in his room alone for a while. But then someone come and ask questions – who am I? Who do I stay with? So I leave the room and never go back. I was 16 years old.

From now on my life is so hard I don’t want to remember it. I suffer much, I tell you. For years I sleep rough on the streets, in Paris and other cities. I beg for money and food, I can’t wash much, I sleep in bus shelters, or in discos, which are free to go in after midnight. But I remember my mother. I never commit crime. I drink alcohol sometimes, already at 16, 17 I need to drink sometimes. But I never touch drugs, because I see what they make people do. I am not that kind of person.

After all this time I know lots of people like me, Africans and others, who sleep on the streets of your cities in Europe. I want to go where I can speak English, it’s my best European language. People tell me: Holland. A friend help me buy a ticket, and I go.

Holland was better than France for me, but Holland was not good either. Yes, people speak English, but not for work. So I learn Dutch, but it take long time to learn enough. I earn money cleaning in bars and clubs, but that is not enough either. I try many cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague – but more years pass and I am still sleeping rough.

I am in my 20s now, maybe half my life is over. I see the way things are going is no good. I don’t want to be on the streets any more, I must have a proper plan for my life. And I decide it must be England. Everybody speak English there. I like the English people I meet, I like the football – the best team in the world is Man United. So I speak to a friend of mine, a Dutchman. He tell me that England is not like the continent: you need documents to get there, but once you are there, there is good work. He help me. He give me a Netherlands ID and a plane ticket. I thank him again now.

The ticket take me to Belfast. In Belfast they say it is not my photograph on the ID card. I say I want to claim asylum but they say no, I cannot claim asylum in the UK. They put me in prison for 4 days and they send me back to Holland.

I tell my friend what happen. He give me a new ID card and new ticket, train this time. And this time, no problem. UK Immigration officers check my ID on the train. They say safe journey, I say thank you. Last time I have a friendly chat with Immigration. Hah!

When the train stop I ask people where we are: London! I’m happy. I don’t ask asylum, because the Belfast man tell me they don’t give it. And I don’t want asylum, I want work. My mission is not to go back on the streets again, to support myself, to survive.

I walk around London all day. And lucky for me, I see a guy I know from Amsterdam. He tell me he live in another city, I should come with him. He take me to a house where I can sleep. It’s full of people and I have to sleep on a chair, but no problem, I’m happy.

The guy tell me to go to an agency and ask for work. And I see it is true – plenty of work in England. I get a job in a warehouse straight away, order pick-up. I work two weeks, they like me, already they want me to work full-time. But this job is not in the city. I go back to the agency and get a job in the city instead. Warehouse again, I not say where.

I’m a good worker, everywhere I work they like me. So after a few weeks this company say I should work full-time too. By now I don’t sleep on the chair any more, I rent my own house and sleep in my own bed. First time in my life, I live on my own. I live on my own, and everything I have is for me. My bed is for me, my chair is for me. That is my plan, and already after 5, 6 weeks in the UK it is coming true. I can’t believe it, I tell you. And now they offer me full-time, and permanent. If I say no, maybe I lose everything. So I take the risk. I give the job centre my ID card and ask for NI number. They say, come back in a week.

I go back in a week, but nothing. For 4 months I keep going back, but always they’re still investigating my card. I work every day, overtime too. I buy good things, quality things, I enjoy my life for the first time. I pay all my bills – rent, utilities, council tax – all I pay. Council tax is big for me, but no problem. I’m glad to pay, I’m proud to pay. I keep all the receipts, I can prove to you. Never I owe a penny to anyone.

When it take so long for the NI number I worry, sometimes I have bad intentions in my mind. But I think – I’m not doing any wrong. Finally I get appointment to collect my number. My friends say I shouldn’t go, maybe they will arrest me for working illegally. I can’t believe this, I don’t know that what I am doing is so wrong. So I don’t run away, I just wait for the appointment day. Then that morning the police come and arrest me. They charge me with deception, and say I commit a crime.

From that day two years ago I am a criminal, everyone treat me like a criminal. But what did I do? I don’t hurt anyone, I don’t cheat anyone, I work hard and pay my way. But they say it is a crime. OK, I obey.

Immigration officers come and interview me. One officer says I can wait at home for my trial, but I mustn’t run away. I live at home 6 weeks not working, lucky for me I pay my landlord a month in advance. When I report to the officer, he’s surprised. ‘You’re a good guy,’ he say. ‘People like you I don’t see. I ask you not to run away and you didn’t run away. You came.’

I go to court and they sentence me: 12 months in prison. This is hard, I tell you. I don’t like prison, prison spoil your record, and I know myself I’m not a criminal. But still I obey. I don’t fight, I don’t get into any trouble. Mornings I go to school, English and computer, afternoons I work – pack instruments and load them in cars. When I finish my sentence I have £300, I work so hard. The officers like me and treat me well. They see I am not a criminal.

In prison a lady come from Croydon and tell me to seek asylum. I say, ‘This asylum I’m seeking, you won’t give it to me, so why you waste my time?’ She say, ‘That is the procedure.’ So I obey. I give more interview. Always interview, interview, don’t you know what I tell you already? I swear to God I don’t give any more interviews in my life. I don’t know what you want from me. – OK, sorry. I know you’re not Home Office. Sometimes I think everybody Home Office. Huh.

Already in prison Immigration tell me they can’t get travel document for me. That is September 2005, more than one year and a half ago. One year and a half pass, and still they say it will come. It will never come. I leave at 12, no papers, no school. Should I wait my whole life for a document that will never come? This is my story, they should look in my face and see I don’t lie. They think we all lie, but it’s not true. They should investigate! They should distinguish! They say they treat each case on its merits. That is the lie. Huh!

OK, no problem. No problem. I serve 6 months, good behaviour, my sentence is done. So it come to the day of my release. Any time I remember that day I need to cry. When I reach the gate they say ‘No. Home Office says you go back.’ I say ‘Why?’ They don’t tell me, but later I hear it’s because there’s no room at the detention centre. Whose fault is that, Home Office or me? But who serve the extra month in prison, Home Office or me?

No problem. After a month they send me to detention centre. This is better. You can have phone calls, you can walk outside. Yeah, at first it is better. But I tell you, not for long. They cheat you. You can’t make money here, like in prison, instead they take the money you have. Phone card outside cost £3.50, they take £5, mobile phone outside cost £15, they take £30, sometimes more. And what’s the difference between detention and prison? I tell you – no difference. People are monitoring you, you have CCTV on you everywhere. They decide for you, you cannot decide for yourself. Nothing. They take everything from you – your photograph, your fingerprint, your DNA, your independence. Nothing left.

And some of the officers here worse than in prison. Not all, no – I’m not like Home Office, I distinguish. Some are very good, kind, they treat you well. But we are all foreigners here, and the British don’t like foreigners. Some of the officers, I swear, the way they talk to you – as if you are an animal. As if you are not a human being, because you are illegal. Huh. I don’t want to talk much. If you are illegal you are not a human being in Britain. That is the problem.

I stay in the detention centre 6 months. Every month I get report from Immigration. Wait for document, wait for document, all they change is the date. I get crazy – we all get crazy, I tell you. Worse than prison. In prison you know – 6 months, 2 years, whatever your sentence, you serve it and you go. In detention you don’t know how long, maybe you die there. You feel you’re dying already.

And then come the worst thing. Lawyers.

I have a lawyer the police give me for my criminal case. He visit me in prison and I sign for legal aid. He keep saying he come, but he don’t come. He keep saying he write to Home Office for my case, he write to court for bail, but I don’t hear a thing. Finally I get a date for bail. A week before he come and say: ‘I see from your case you will lose. So legal aid don’t pay, I can’t represent you.’ I say, ‘Why you don’t tell me before, I find someone else!’ He say if I pay, he will represent me. That is his strategy – he tell you so late, you have nowhere else to turn.
He ask for £3000. I say – ‘You know my situation, how can I get £3000?’ I have a friend, maybe she can get £1000. But he say No. Huh! I don’t smoke, but that day I smoke nearly three package cigarettes. I lose hope. In fact, that day I nearly die.

When I go to the court, the lawyer don’t come, and he don’t send my friend’s address either. I speak for myself, and I see the judge want to release me. But without address she can’t release me. Huh! I tell you. So I don’t get bail.

Later I try again. Would you believe what happen this time? On that day I get up early, I shower, I dress well. But they don’t come to pick me. So I go and ask what happen, and they say – the van is gone. The van is gone without me… Then the court write and say I don’t come. What! What do you expect me to do? Should I fly? Am I invisible? Don’t do that! Don’t do that to people!

After that the lawyer ask me for money again, but I finish with him. I find new lawyer – and you know what happen? He’s worse than the old one! He come and take £200 from me fast, then I don’t hear from him for a month. Every time I ring him he say, ‘Hey, hey, Mr Dog, I’m busy man, hang up the phone!’ Once I ask to speak to him, I hear him tell his secretary to say he’s not there. I hear it on the phone. People think if you are from Africa you don’t have sense. They treat you like an idiot, but I am not an idiot. Hah!

Finally I get letter saying we have court, he need £500 for barrister. My friend get me £500. How can I repay her? – but I have no choice. When we get to court, no barrister, if I don’t speak up fast maybe she never come. Then she come, but she don’t know my case well at all. She speak real quick, maybe 7, 8 minutes. That’s all.

Long time I hear nothing, and when I do I wish I didn’t. The judge say my case is nonsense. Nonsense! And he tell lies – Home Office lies, no one answer for me. Like I live in council house – not true! I live private and pay. Like I have three bank accounts. Not true!! They fit you up, they tell lies and don’t let you answer. The law has abused me, how can I trust the law? Legal aid lawyers, private lawyers, all the same. You take £700 from me and represent me like that! I have a friend in detention, his lawyer take £1600 and not represent him at all. You’re in detention, then you’re deported, what can you do? Nothing! They know. That’s what the Home Office should investigate! That’s who the criminals are!

OK, no problem. No problem. Huh.

Now I show you I remember good people too. After my Appeal was dismissed I have no hope left, no money left, nothing. But God is there. When I am on the bottom he send good people to me. I get a volunteer visitor, and I get BID – Bail for Immigration Detainees. They help me. They find a new lawyer for my case, they prepare a new bail application for me. I give thanks for them always, and I pray for them hard. If not for them…. I have no family. My friend, my visitor, BID – I take them as my family now.

But now I have to tell you bad again. Immigration are wicked, they try to frustrate you, they try to paralyse your life. As soon as you have bail hearing they give you removal date. I’m nervous, I can’t stand any more. I go to Immigration manager and say it’s 6 months, they should release me. She say – Go to Colnbrook and get tag. I say no, she should give me a tag from here. But she not agree. That day I am really annoyed, I am really worried. Some people are on hunger strike, and I join them. It’s only one day. But I say I’m not going to eat, and I don’t eat. And bang – they send me to Colnbrook. Not for tag – that’s a lie. Because I join the hunger strike, and they want to break us up.

Now I have to tell you worse. There are things, if I remember them I need to drink. I need to buy alcohol and drink.

They page me, and when I come they say they transfer me. I say, let me go and pack my bags, but they say no. They say if I don’t co-operate they will force me. Is that a way to talk? If you talk to me, talk nicely!

They take me to the van by force. Not because I resist – I don’t have the chance. I bet the manager say ‘Take that boy by force.’ And one officer – I never forget him. He hold my neck, he pull my leg – ****. He treat me worse than a criminal. I don’t forget.

OK, no problem. No problem. Huh.

I get to Colnbrook. I don’t talk much about that. They put me in a wing you’re only supposed to stay 72 hours max and they send you, but they can’t send me. That room, if I say it I need to cry. You can’t go out, only maybe 15 minutes. Security watch you all the time, you only allowed 10 minutes phone calls…. It’s a punishment. What did I do?

They move me, but still it’s bad. Not the officers, they’re good there. But Colnbrook is prison – no air, nothing. Everybody frustrated, everybody get crazy. You remember what happen at Harmondsworth? Why you think they burn that prison? Because of frustration. You think if someone is in good condition, they do that? If you put a person in a cage you spoil his mind. Huh!

I stay in Colnbrook six weeks. Then come the day I never believe will arrive: I go to court with two sureties, my friend and my visitor, my lawyer send me good barrister, and I get released. Yeah, I remember that barrister too, I thank her too. The guards give me my stuff in a big plastic bag. It’s heavy, and it’s made for criminals – you can see inside, no bomb. But I don’t care. I’m free.

That day was more than 8 months ago. For 8 months I try to keep up my spirits, to count my blessings. My lawyer work hard to get my case reviewed. I live with my friend in nice house, I sleep in a soft bed, not on the street. She help me a lot, and I help her, with her house, with her children. I try to remember that this is good. I do remember, in fact I take my life now as paradise, compared to before. But sometimes, I tell you – I can’t help it, it’s hard. I live in someone’s house again, like houseboy. I am not that type of person, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t work, I can’t pay her back, I can’t pay anything. I am dependent. Just for a bus ticket, a pint of Guinness – I have to ask her every time. And she don’t have much money either, sometimes she get upset with me. Sometimes we fight, and she say bad things to me. Then I feel she’s like everybody else, she betray me too. Sometimes, I swear, I don’t trust anyone in Britain any more – not my new lawyer, not you either – why do you want to know all this from me? Maybe you’ll put me in problem too.

I go to school, I learn English and maths, my teacher say I’m doing very good. But that is once a week, one hour or two. The rest of the time I am in the house. I sleep a lot. And always I think about my case, about how to survive, not to be in this mess-up. Always I think, think, think, round and round. I am not in prison any more, but this is prison too.

I say to Home Office: After 8 months more, what are you still looking for? Still you are deporting me, still you don’t want me – what have I done? What about the things you did to me? You lie about me in a court of law, you treat me like a criminal – worse than a criminal. You treat me like a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist. I’m a foreigner, that’s all. Because I am a foreigner, you can do what you like to me. Hah!

What about the immigration lawyers that cheat me, what about the British company that cheat me too? My last salary they owe me – £1200, £1300. But when I was arrested they say that is not my name, and they take the money back. Who do the work, me or my name?

I say this to Home Office, and to anyone who read my story: I was an orphan in Africa, and a street boy in France and Holland, and the worst things in my life happen here. You come to my country first and take money away, I want to work and leave my money here. You can kill me without knife, without gun. Sometimes I feel like you already succeed.

I say to Home Office: I didn’t come here for benefit, I didn’t come here for council house or bank loan. My mission is to sweat and work and survive. If that is a crime, I serve my time for it, and more. Now I am out, but still you punish me. First I have to sign at police station, every time I go I feel shame. Then you send me to sign 40 miles away, how can I get there when I don’t work? Huh! Let me work! No benefit, just work. Even if you give me one year, I’m happy. It give me a chance. I pay back my friend, I’m independent, I hold up my head again.

That is the important thing I want to say. Let people work. If don’t want criminals, let them work. You stop them working, you make them criminals. What choice have they got? If you don’t treat people like human beings, maybe they can’t behave like human beings any more.

If you don’t listen, I swear I don’t know what I do. I am an honest person, but the way you treat people, you spoil their mind. If you provoke me much, you make me do what I don’t want to do…. I pray hard not to do it. I pray hard to keep my conditions, not to betray anyone who trust me, not to run away. No. I know in my mind what I will do. I’m prepared to die for my case, I swear. If they detain me again, I won’t cooperate any more. Never in my life will I eat. Never in my life will I call anyone – no lawyers, no friends, no one. Let them kill me! Maybe my life will end like this. It is always in my mind.

xD.