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.

I went to Cyprus, which was fine.  Relaxing, reading my pre-University reading list, sun, sea, sand…

I went to see underOATH at The Astoria, but really went for the support band, Envy on the Coast, who I met after the gig.

You know what? I can’t be bothered to do this chronologically.  We’re going for a stream-of-consciousness thing, now.

I’m at university.  Royal Holloway, University of London.  It’s in Egham, really.  Freshers’ Week?  That was dull, considering I expected a debaucherous seven-day festival.  Plus, everyone goes home at the weekend.

Now that was a depressing start to the term, as I learned a few home truths: it’s quicker for me to get to London (and more direct) from Godalming than Egham; everyone goes home at the weekend; our “Special Guest” at the Freshers’ Ball was Razorlike.

No, not Razorlight, but their tribute band.  And that was the most interesting event our Union had to offer.

My flat is great, though.  Only a year old, the block is great – eight flats to a kitchen, spacious, modern, each with en suite.  Granted, it’s not Founder‘s, but unlike their catered, Grade I-listed 19th Century castle (Serbian hostel-esque accommodation), we have internet and our own shower.  You can weigh that one up yourself.  Anyway, everyone here is lovely, and my eight flatmates (six ladies, two men) are equally fun.  Of note, we managed to get almost the whole block in our kitchen for a warming par-tay on the first night.  That’s about thirty-five people.  The second night we went out on a mediocre pub crawl, so we came home early and stole a To Let sign.

If you want to write to me: Tuke Hall, F-3A-05.  That’s block F, on the third floor, on the right next to our kitchen. Just buzz and I’ll let you in, and you can see my room.  It looks a bit like this:

Anyway, after the ‘hysteria’ of Freshers’ Week, this ‘teaching and learning’ part of university began.  I’ve got Wednesdays and Thursdays off, and 5 lectures and 5 seminars around that.  It’s not particularly intensive, either – most notably there was a “student” in my Introduction To Sonnets lecture who learned for the first time that Shakespeare wrote sonnets.  Who knew?

At some point over the first three weeks, I’ve come down with a terrible, incurable case of Freshers’ Fever. As well as the flu, it involves signing up to…everything.  It’s also identified as ‘being a bit of a whore’ and may include ‘spreading oneself too thin’.

So, my first port of call, was reputable and successful independent (i.e. no money from the SU, and therefore allowed to slag off the SU if we want) student newspaper, The Founder.  Inexplicably, surprisingly, ecstatically, I’m News Editor.  And the only Fresher on the Editorial Board.  Wrote my first article and it made it onto (the left hand side of) the front page.  Hear that ma?  I’m a real (student) journalist.  My NUJ press pass is in the post and everything.

Next stop, Insanity Radio, an official Student’s Union media outlet.  After a cock-up with ringing me, I didn’t manage to get a presenter slot (bah!), but hopefully I’ll be on the News Show.  See a developing theme? Mm.  I’m on the music team for Insanity, too, which gets me lots of free CDs I have to review and I’m interviewing Pause.Break.Riot on 23rd October. Exciting.

Okay, so I’m disillusioned with the Union.  What do I do about it? Become Halls Representative for Tuke, Butler and Williamson, Student Representative for the Media/Communications sub-committee and Commercial Services sub-committee, obviously (?!!).  But I did make sure I didn’t nominate myself for First Year Rep.  That’s a bit too much.

I overslept and missed all team trials in my first week (not that I was ever in any team at RGS), but my heart’s really in this journalism lark, which you already knew about me, anyway.  So I dropped out of the Drama Society’s chorus role they gave me, and inexplicably got embroiled in the Media Society, becoming Communications Officer.  I only went to their AGM because my seminar was next door.  I swear, apart from The Founder and Insanity Radio (maybe the SU sub-par publication The Orbital ‘magazine’), I didn’t really want to do anything else.

My sleeping patterns now revolve around going to bed at close to five every morning, which means my Critical Practice essay on Homer for Friday is being done….now.  Pope vs. Fagles, anyone?

Oh, food.  I always forget about that. Having your own kitchen is great, and I do love cooking, but I’ve learned to love the simplicity and efficiency of ready meals.

Remove sleeve. Pierce film.

Fantastic.