Category: Communication

A reply!

On By Laura MorganIn Newspapers and magazines1 Comment

I’m pretty sure this is a form letter, but I’m nonetheless cautiously impressed to have received a reply from the Daily Mail today:

Thank you for your correspondence re the Jan Moir article. We welcome feedback-whether positive or negative- about the paper and our writers.
Our Columnist’s views have prompted a widespread response and debate. You may also be interested in the column by Janet Street-Porter in today’s edition.

Thank you for taking the trouble to send us your own  point of view.

Yours sincerely,
Managing Editor’s Office

I read the Janet Street Porter article and they were right, it was interesting. I’d still like to see a genuine apology from Jan Moir, but in the continuing absence of that it’s heartening to see that the paper is willing to publish a different view, and that the PCC is investigating last week’s piece. The Daily Mail will never become my newspaper of choice, and I’ve no doubt that they’ll continue to publish hateful opinions from people I disagree with, but it’s good to know that a  spontaneous response from so many people last week has actually resulted in action being taken. A small victory is still a victory.

“a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with”

On By Laura MorganIn Newspapers and magazines2 Comments

That was Stephen Fry’s description on Twitter of Jan Moir, who has written this extraordinarily hateful piece in the Daily Mail today. I’ve just sent the Mail the following complaint. I’m not expecting a reply, but it’s made me feel better:

Shame on you for publishing today’s poisonous, under-informed, illiterate article on Stephen Gately by Jan Moir.

The circumstances of Gately’s death are still unclear. That being the case, speculation on Fleet Street may well be rife but there’s no excuse for making such unsubstantiated, homophobic and uneducated views public in a way that can only distress further the family and friends of the dead man.

There are many cases every year of sudden death in apparently healthy young people. The causes are myriad and it’s always devastating for those left behind. The only official indication we have of what caused Gately’s death suggests natural causes. But frankly, even if there were drink, drugs or sex involved, how on earth does Moir jump from that to her breathtaking claim that his sexuality or, unbelievably, his civil partnership, is to blame? It’s ungrounded, insulting and stupid.

And why on earth does she feel the need to be rude about Gately as a singer? What wrong has he done her to deserve this rancid poison, other than being a gay man? He had an unremarkable but perfectly good singing voice, so this:

A founder member of Ireland’s first boy band, he was the group’s co-lead singer, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk

is just spiteful and silly. And this:

He was the Posh Spice of Boyzone, a popular but largely decorous addition

demonstrates that Moir has no idea what the word “decorous” means. If you’re going to publish offensive drivel like this, then at least proofread it beforehand.

I was already reading in open-mouthed astonishment when I got to this gem:

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

Actually it is extraordinarily disrespectful. Moir is making assumptions based on her own unreconstructed, stereotyped view of gay men. How dare she? And how dare you publish this rubbish?

I have no idea what goes on in what passes for Moir’s mind, but there’s no place for her seedy little fantasies in a piece published by a national newspaper.

Edit: if you feel the same way, complain to the PCC. The article breaches points 5 and 12 of the code of practice.
There’s also a good blog post on it here.

Quite Inaccurate

On By Laura MorganIn Communication1 Comment

I’m sure that whoever had the idea of giving QI a Twitter feed of its own thought it would be a delightful wheeze, and in principle I suppose it is. Unusual facts are always fun, after all.

The problem, though, is that the Twitter stream is clearly less well-researched than the TV programme, and written by people with poorer general knowledge than Stephen Fry (which, to be fair, is everyone), and as a result it’s quite often just plain wrong. They had to publish a retraction this week after posting the interesting but inaccurate claim that kangaroos are the only animals besides humans who move on two legs, when various of their followers pointed out that birds, among others, are equally bipedal.

You’d think, after that embarrassment, that they’d be paying a bit more attention. But today’s “QI fact of the day” on the BBC homepage, whilst quite possibly true, is frankly baffling:

Container ships carrying pistachio nuts, Brazil nuts, peanuts, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, copra, and sunflower seeds are floating time bombs liable to explode without warning.

Wouldn’t you think that required some sort of explanation? Perhaps a link to a page with a bit more context, so those of us who had no idea what it means could have our curiosity satisfied? My sister works on a ship: should she be busily enquiring whether any of the neighbouring crafts at the various ports she comes to a halt in are likely to “explode without warning” while she’s asleep?

Of course, it barely matters. There’s all sorts of nonsense on the internet: that’s kind of what it’s for. But the whole QI brand is specifically about precise little fact-checking, and poking fun at people when they get it wrong. The TV show is sometimes a smug-fest, but it gets away with it because it makes a point of getting the details right. It’s unforgivable to be smug and wrong.

Edit: since I posted this a couple of hours ago, several people have ended up here after searching for “nuts explode container ships” and similar terms. I’d hazard a guess that those are people who, like me, want to know more. Sorry if you’re one of them; I’m no wiser than you are.

Facebook

On By Laura MorganIn Communication

I wish we’d had Facebook when I was a teenager. I’ve just been reading a series of conversations between my teenage cousin and (I assume) her schoolfriends, and it sounds so much fun! I suppose they’re the same conversations we used to have at school, or on the phone in the evenings (Mum never understood how I could spend the day in lessons with S and then speak to her for an hour on the phone that night), but it’s so much easier and cheaper and more fun now. And anyone who wants to can join in! Even boys!

Newspapers

On By Laura MorganIn Newspapers and magazines, Rants

I’ve found myself ignoring the papers for the last couple of weeks, initially because I found the lurid coverage of Michael Jackson’s death distasteful, and then because I started to realise that I find most newspaper journalism distasteful. In Dublin a couple of months ago I picked up a copy of the Irish version of the Daily Mirror, which was almost identical to the UK edition except that the celebrity gossip pages on the inside were all about people I’d never heard of. But reading them, I noticed that the stories about Brian O’Driscoll and Amy Huberman have a very different slant from the ones we get over here about Jordan and Peter Andre. The Irish celebrities were granted respect and admiration – not quite in the cloying tones of Hello magazine, but with an underlying assumption that they were decent people who deserved their success. It was sweet and refreshing and I enjoyed it.

Contrast that with the snide attitude of the UK tabs, whose bile and bitterness is barely concealed whenever they have the opportunity to publish a story (or, more usually, a non-story) about one of our home grown celebs. Beware the pop star or soap actor who flashes some thigh as she steps out of a car, or goes to a party and – the horror – gets a bit drunk; for she (and it will almost always be she) will face the chastisement of our morally spotless guardians of the press the next day. It sunk to an especial low this week with a camera thrust down the modest cleavage of 19-year-old Hermione Granger Emma Watson as she battled with inclement weather at the Harry Potter premiere in Leicester Square. Really, is that the best we can do? It makes me wish there were a heaven so that the photographer who took that shot could line up with the 3am girls, the showbiz editors and every columnist ever and be asked to account for their actions at the ends of their lives.

St Peter: And what did you do?

Columnist: Well, I…sneered. And called people bad mothers, and drew attention to their weight gains.

St. Peter: Hmm. Anything else?

Columnist: I, I…well, I used my column to transfer small gripes and personal feuds onto the national stage.

<thunder, lightning bolt, columnist is never seen again>

But we all know that the gutter press is hateful. What I find more objectionable is the scarcely-concealed attempts of the “quality” papers to bump up their readership by focusing almost exclusively on sport and scandal. The MPs’ expenses row went on for six weeks longer than was necessary or interesting, and now the Guardian looks to be attempting to emulate the Telegraph’s success by creating a jumped-up nonstory over the News of the World’s attempts to bug the mobile phones of, well, just about anyone who sprung to mind. Now, I bow to no-one in my distaste for the way the NOTW conducts almost all of its affairs and I agree that it’s very much Not OK to bug people’s phones without their knowledge and for no demonstrable reason except to gather dirt. But of all the things which happened in the world this week, is that really the one we need to know about the most?

Of course, everybody gets their news on the internet now, so newspapers have had to start shouting and campaigning and resorting to whatever tricks they can concoct in order to shift copies. But I feel the loss of a time when the newspapers told me the news, and did it without feeling the need to pronounce on the character and motivations of everybody they report upon.

Plus, you know, journalists are the worst people in the world, so it’s hard to read their hectoring with any level of seriousness.

The horror

On By Laura MorganIn Communication, Language, Newspapers and magazines

I would like to propose a moratorium on the use of emotive language in news reporting. I expect it from the tabs, but I don’t need proper news providers talking to me about “the tragic death of Baby P” or “a catastrophic drop in numbers of cuckoos”. Tell me the facts, and let me decide how tragic or catastrophic they are. Tell me about the preventable death of a child, or an unforeseen drop in numbers of  cuckoos, and let me choose where to place them on my own scale of tragedy. Give me the information, and allow me to make the value judgement.

Fiction

On By Laura MorganIn Language

You can do more and more interesting things with creative writing online than you can in any other medium. Check here and here to see why I’m right.

I am still writing a terrifically witty story based on the marriage of Leo Tolstoy, which has been in my head since 1991 and in draft form since 2005. I’ll let you know just as soon as it’s finished.

Links for Easter Sunday

On By Laura MorganIn Newspapers and magazines

These aren’t Easter-related at all, they’re just topical articles which are worth reading. Two stories approaching the same issue from different angles, and an article by David Mitchell which I would like to stand up and applaud:

Why London is no place for a young black man

What is the right way to raise children? (Ignore the clumsy initial attempt to make this a battle between two approaches; as the article eventually acknowledges, there is a place for both)

I’ll tell you what really offends me: political opportunism