The revelation that the Gay Girl in Damascus is actually a stubbly bloke in Edinburgh has sent shockwaves through the media. That serious journalists fell for MacMaster’s fiction speaks to a profound crisis of objectivity in the modern media, and a preference for simplistic moralism over the tough task of reporting. The trend for transforming other people’s struggles into self-serving morality plays has led to an alarmingly casual attitude … Continue reading
Primo Levi: “Every age has its own fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will. There are many ways of reaching this point, and not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and … Continue reading
OK folks, here we go with a new Open Thread. Enjoy…
Hi folks. I am currently on vacation in Australia but I just couldn’t let this one pass. Here is the considered view of Mark Mardell as regards our website Biased BBC, and as contained in an email shared with yours truly. What a disgusting website ! Talk about lies and bias! Just what irked Mark to abandon his famous impartiality…? Well, it seems that this post caused him to damn … Continue reading
Can anyone explain the difference in treatment that the BBC gave Tom Herndon whom they believe undermines the case for Austerity, here on the Today programme (08:49): Last week Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff paper that showed that growth slows dramatically if a country’s debt goes over 90% of its GDP was found to contain significant errors. Tom Herndon, a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, … Continue reading
Romany Blythe, 45, a drama teacher, urged thousands to join in “demonstrations of disapproval” around the country after creating a Facebook group called The Witch is Dead. “In normal circumstances celebrating someone’s death would be reprehensible. But we are generation X, upset people that left school to find hopelessness and despair.” What she actually found was a council house that she bought and made a whacking great profit on … Continue reading
According to the Associated Press Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has admitted that his attack was motivated by religion: ‘Interrogators questioned him at the hospital, letting him write down his replies, and his answers led them to believe he and his brother were motivated by religious extremism but appeared to have no major terrorist group connections, said U.S. officials’ The Guardian thinks otherwise: ‘Can an act of violence be called ‘terrorism’ if … Continue reading
The government wants nurses to have a year honing their caring skills before starting their training proper. The BBC report that the Royal College of Nursing has ‘ridiculed’ this idea…and called it ‘really stupid’. In fact the BBC seemed so pleased with that phrase, ‘A really stupid idea‘, that they couldn’t repeat it enough times today. It probably is a really stupid idea but that’s by the by….if … Continue reading
The BBC has standards…they might be double standards but it has them. It seems that for the BBC using social media or crowd sourcing news is bad practice leading to inaccuracy and potential dangers…Many are now asking: should “crowd-sourced investigations” be stopped?…unless of course it is done by a responsible news outlet….em…like the BBC perhaps who say about their own use of social media…’it helps us gather more, … Continue reading
What Jeff wants, he gets…a new open thread…..
