Leveson Press Ethics
Today the coalition
government narrowly avoided another “Omnishambles” and put
together something looking vaguely like Press Regulation. Wow.
Now we can stop the
press from invading people's privacy and hacking phones.
Now we can stop the
press printing lies.
Now we can stop corrupt
journalists conspiring with Politicians or Police to distort or
procrastinate on the truth.
Now we can stop the
press objectifying women every day on Page 3.
All good, if they ever
come to pass, but I'm most interested in:
Now we may be able to
stop the press printing adverts as news. That's right, in case you
didn't know, this has been going on for years.
Public Relations. Who'd
have it? Well Michael Marshall (AKA Marsh) of the Merseyside Skeptics Society is a
great guy, and has done sterling work in exposing some of the PR guff
expounded by the tabloids, the Daily Mail in particular (which I
reserve the right to call the Daily Fail or DF, rotten right-wing rag
that it is).
Short version of a
typical example of bad PR: Company wants to sell more products. They
think up a marketing strategy and hire PR company (cue OnePoll) to
run a survey, that will be conducted in an unbalanced way on a
unrepresentative audience, and so generate the required results
(which are usually b**locks): e.g. “A woman's looks are her most
important feature” (say women when asked a series of biased, loaded
questions). Then the PR company gets the results published in a
newspaper with a barely-disguised reference to their sponsors, for
example a spokesperson for cosmetics company may be mentioned saying
“look! You can buy makeup here!” Well, they would say that,
wouldn't they!
The thing about all
this is, it's just completely manufactured. It is, at a basic level,
inventing a “problem” that doesn't exist, “exposing” it in an
advert masquerading as “news”, then directing readers towards the
people selling the “cure”. Pathetic.
More often than not the
results reinforce some norm or stereotype that has the potential to
actually be quite harmful. It is, I think, a wicked and dishonest
business.
See Marsh's excellent
blog here http://bad-pr.tumblr.com/
So in some cases it's
just a matter of there not being enough journalists to write all the
stories to fill up the pages the next day (i.e. papers made on the
cheap, now you know why they cost just a few pence), so they need to
pad it with fillers to make up the content. With the DF though, I
really think it is just as much the hateful bloody mindedness of the
people in charge to print s**t that is as laughable as it is absurd.
I would rather not have a paper at all than have anything other than
the Times, Guardian , I or Independent (and they are far from perfect
as well).
Steubenville rape case
So some degree of
justice was served thank goodness in the terrible US case involving
members of an American high school football team raping a girl, then
bragging about it on their videophones.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/17/steubenville-rape-trial-verdict_n_2895541.html
They rightly got put
away (for a bit, not long enough!), but the outcrying of sympathy
from many observers was truly poisonous. CNN coverage was shockingly
one-sided: “Their lives are ruined!”. Hey, wait a minute, spare a
thought for the poor victim!
Look here, if you must,
for more of the same s**t:
http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/45608534736/the-news-out-of-steubenville-today-is-a-small
It just makes me sick.
I've already discussed this elsewhere on the blog so won't repeat it
all here, but you just have to accept that rape victims can do
nothing to prevent rape! Only the offenders can stop it by not
raping! One of the most common problems is the idea that drunkeness
leads to vulnerabilty and increases chances of the crime happening.
Right. So, by that logic, we should expect to see a positive
correlation between alcohol consumption and number cases of rape in
any country.
Well, I'm afraid that
the statistics just don't back up that little rape-apologists' theory
(sorry if my contempt is showing but it just makes me so MAD). There
is no such correlation. Countries with some of the highest rates of
rape have low levels of drinking, and vice versa. If anything, the
correlation is slightly negative, i.e. low alcohol-consumption
nations have higher rates. Pet theory – this may be because drunk
men are less likely to rape (may be various reasons).
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