Ordinarily, I’d jump to the defense of those who have been wronged by sloppy reporting, but the idea of ‘defamation’ really winds me up.  Okay, Sheryl, so The People, The Mirror and whatever other toilet-roll rag had your face on the front page instead of some actual global issue, but they were only quoting from two regrettably limited perspectives.  Just because they didn’t flash their cash in your face for you to ‘tell your side of the story’ doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t ‘true’.  The report truthfully quoted what Gazza/Gazza’s mum said in an interview.  If they were ill-informed, why don’t you just write to the PCC or get your rightful response.  Hell, pocket some of the red-top’s blood money and do one of their ‘tell-alls’.  But to sue them for defamation, when throughout the programme no-one ever mentions any explicit effects apart from her daughter being caught up in some ‘nasty words at school’ seems a little bit extreme.  She tearfully puts her house on the market to contribute to her ‘fighting fund’, while her lawyer eggs her on!  Am I the only one that thought every single person in this programme stank of self-interest and hypocrisy?

Lembit Opik blames The Sunday Times for him losing the election, his legal adviser/best mate blames the UK legal system for allowing The Sunday Times to have an opinion section, and a completely random ‘local politician’ (who’s clearly not Lembit, because he’s out of a job) starts getting all meta-philosophical about smoke, fires and smokescreens.  The barrister they find to take the case (because his lawyer is apparently all out of ideas) pretty much tells Lembit that you can’t get paid for a spread in Hello! and then expect to remain out of the public eye. Lembit claims he only did the piece in Hello! because The Mirror kept following him (presumably in case he did some impromptu stand-up and we all missed it) and Hello! hasn’t printed anything libellous about him.  Except he’s probably never been featured in Hello! before.  And he probably didn’t see the article before it went to print, so they actually got lucky and managed to escape Lembit’s Super Libel Locator™.  (No-one mentions Sheryl Gascoigne’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity. last year.)

I agree with Sam Wollaston’s review in The Guardian, here: ‘the libel lawyers are given a very easy ride’, but by contrast UK libel law is apparently too soft on the press, especially on hard working UK citizens, of which Lembit is only one of 65 million.  I’ll scoot over the bit where he rides to a consultation meeting on a Segway, continues his battle against unemployment by auditioning to be an after-dinner speaker and constructs two skilfully dull anagrams of his name, making a big deal out of the fact he’s Estonian. (Remember that, it’ll be important in a minute).

The reason libel law is so infuriating is because the burden of proof lies on the defendant to prove that their claims are true.  In a sense, you’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.  If this fact had been made clear at the top of the programme, we’d all be thinking Sheryl and Lembit are on their merry way to victory.  The reason I suspect Disembodied VoiceOver didn’t make this point was because in Sheryl’s case, the claims might not have been true but they were true to what was said in the interview.  As for Lembit, well it was an opinion piece by Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times’ answer to Littlejohn.   Although you can argue he shouldn’t be given a platform in the first place, the views are his own and clearly identified as such, and therefore his views only conform to the warped sense of truth that resides in his head alongside all his favourite ‘miserable, seaweed munching‘ Welsh people who presumably live in the Lost City of Atlantis, just underneath Barry Island.

A parade of various legal-eagles flicks through so many printouts of publications I forget which case is which, who is actually a lawyer, who’s getting paid and who’s fault it might be.  Each defendant seems to want the press shut down, and I nearly started a game where every time I heard the word ‘true’, I’d burn one of the books on reliability and narrative I’ve been glued to for the past few months.  So, The Sunday Times is at fault because they imply Lembit has an active love life, and infers that he spends more time on his love life than on his career. Apparently, identifiying Lembit as Estonian is as bad as calling him a Jew – oh, hold on, aren’t you implying that ‘Jew’ is a derogatory term, and therefore we can infer that this legal advisor is anti-Semitic?  No, sorry, it’s more deplorable that all the publications are playing for time with their evidence submission deadlines and a few even ask for extensions to really piss off The Little Guy.  The irony here, pointed out by our Sheryl, is that these are people whose publications are totally reliant on working to deadline, yet the judge accepts their difficult time restraints in multi-tasking.  Scathing.

The programme switches from a deep and fascinating debate on press ethics (‘I don’t know why they do it’) to some sort of vindictive retaliation where the only suitable retribution and vindication is cold hard cash.  Sheryl brings home the bacon because The Other Side’s witnesses never turn up, to which her sly double-barrelled barrister mentions that one witness was probably Gazza, and he’s not the most reliable sort – of course he manages to say this without any implication or possible inferral, using some sort of legal witchcraft.

Sheryl gets £30k and an apology mumbled in open court, while being promised a tiny printed retraction on the same page that Gazza’s face once beamed out from.  But it’s okay, because it probably cost the other side £50k, which apparently ‘isn’t much, but it must’ve hurt their pocket somewhere’.  I’ll take your word on that, Sheryl.  You’re the expert.  She cracks open the champagne, her house is taken off the market and it’s another victory for the ordinary ex-wife of one of the nation’s most famous former footballers.  But surely the BBC could’ve contracted Lembit for another few episodes of Have I Got News For You and taken far more pot-shots at News International without trying to make us feel sorry for him losing his seat in Parliament and claiming it was all Rupert Murdoch’s fault.  I half-expected Lembit to say that his phone was bugged, too.  Oh well, there’s always the next episode in the series – we’ve got Uri Geller, Danielle Lloyd and George Galloway to get through, yet.

Panorama: Smoking and the Bandits
Date: March 7, 2011
Length: 29:00
First broadcast on BBC One, then made available online through BBC iPlayer.

This investigation focusses on the financial aspect of illegal smoking imports, identifying tax evasion and highlighting the national deficit directly affecting ‘you’ (the viewer).  Sam Poling emphatically notes what ‘we’ will pay in rising NHS costs and to HMRC in order to keep both smokers and non-smokers interested.  The variety of cinematic techniques serves to make the broadcast dramatic – jump-cuts, split-screen and atmospheric music are all intermittently employed.

To convey honesty in an interview with an independent expert there are shots which show lighting and camera equipment – breaking down the fourth wall (of the fourth estate!).  The top of the programme accompanies a raid on a tenement flat, however we are never told the consequences or sentencing of those arrested.

The episode tracks counterfeit imported cigarettes, with a subsequent investigation into the toxicity of the goods, using ‘exclusive secret footage’.  The stock footage is of variable quality and therefore of indeterminable age – the reliability of the report becomes less important than the action of the narrative. Poling admits ‘I did not know the importance of these papers then’ – giving rise to a notion of selective revelation by the narrator for a heightened sense of drama.

From Our Own Correspondent (FOOC)
Date: March 10, 2011
Length: 28:18
First broadcast on Radio 4, then made available as a podcast.

One of Radio 4’s oldest flagship broadcasts, the entire premise of the programme feels like a relic from the World Service’s war-time stereotype.  The received pronunciation and slow, scripted speech does little to endorse its mission to ‘bring a personal perspective to world news’.  Instead, these professional journalists and correspondents present an anecdotal view of ‘my friend Bernard’ in the Ivory Coast and the café preferences of the driver of the press vehicle in Libya.

Yet without these snapshots, we would be unable to understand the instantaneous fact-driven news which chooses only headline developments.  The benefit is of an explorative journalist who is able to not just chase expert sources to back up his lead but also provide a context into sometimes the seemingly insignificant, the unexpected and the mundane.

These tales are treated with equal weight – Kate Adie at the top of the programme does not discriminate between life in a civil warzone and a band ‘playing their way out of Poverty’ in the Congo, resisting temptations to state ‘and finally…’ in that derogatory offbeat newsreader cliché.  FOOC points to its wider relevance as a microcosmic tale of the area which that correspondent is charged with covering.

Well, I’m sitting in an empty flat.  In my dressing gown. All seven other residents have gone home for the weekend, and I’m trying to work out whether I should be going home or finding something more exciting to do.  It’s tempting to go for a bit of a Risky Business-esque montage right now.

This is university, after all.  I didn’t expect it to be a place where people watch lots of TV and go home once a week.  Then again, cooking a ready meal and watching EastEnders on BBC iPlayer appears to be the highlight of my Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Oh, for all my complaining, I did go home last week, as I was quite ill with a horrible fever/flu combination akin to meningitis minus the rashes.  Cue delirium, co-codamol and lots of TLC for a week. I’m much better now, my faithful readership should be pleased to know.

Someone please tell me what I should be writing?

Except, of course: my essays [earlier than 12 hours before the deadlines]; The Founder articles; the plan for the InsanityRadio News Show [nice: discretely embedded hyperlink plugging.].

Hooray for Obama; Goodness me, what were Brand and Ross thinking?; Credit crunch/Recession.  I’ve suitably sated my Google rankings for another month.

The easiest way by far to keep up with my life is apparently following me on Twitter – my updates are numerous, self-involved and ego-centric.  Narcissistically, precisely like this blog.

As the Freshers’ hysteria period has worn off, it’s now only permitted for a small minority of well-connected people who are publicising something or have a form of mild amnesia to wander up to other students and ask who they are while giving a brief synopsis of their own life.  As for seminars: it appears you keep your mouth shut if you’ve got a good idea, ’cause otherwise it’ll be poached by that one in the corner who doesn’t speak.  Do I abide by this rule?  Of course not.  Conversely: if you love the sound of your own voice or want to piss people off to make the hour go faster, you blag your heart out aloud.  You wouldn’t want it to get dull, would you?  If I’ve learnt anything so far, it’s that any BBC adaptations are suitable alternatives to reading any texts.  Except they’re a bit difficult to cite in essays.

Two more (assessed – panic!) essays left and that’s the Autumn Term done.  Does anyone else miss “Michaelmas”, “Trinity” and “Lent”?  Nope, just me. Just me, in this flat.  And EastEnders isn’t on.  Back to the Facebook Live Feed, with this blaring at full volume.  Productivity, eh?