Blog 37
January 2013
CONTENTS
Feature: Kill the Red Spot! Was Leveson
Barking up the wrong tree?
NewsScan: Walmart’s winning ways
Quote of the Month
Poems of Place: Urbino nocturne
Recommended reading: Instant Messages
by Laura Solomon
The Baslow Letters (continued): Dear Señor
Cervantes
KILL THE RED SPOT!
Was Leveson barking up the wrong tree?
Leveson seems to have forgotten that press freedom was not lightly
won; that it took several centuries of defying censorship and establishment
repression to achieve what we have now; that the word was always at risk of the
blue pencil, or in the case of the 19th century in Britain – the red spot.
Leveson’s suggestion of a kite mark for a legitimised press is of
course couched in the language of moderation, but it rather gives the game
away. What was the red spot? It was the obligatory sign to be printed on
licensed newspapers of the 19th century.
The spot confirmed that a newspaper had paid for permission to
print. It differentiated the ‘respectable’, the establishment press, from the
radicals. Its intention was to outlaw and silence papers edited by William
Cobbett, Richard Carlile, Henry Hetherington, Bronterre O’Brien, Earnest Jones,
George Julian Harney and Feargus O’Connor who demanded reform of parliament,
democracy and a free press.
Invitation to the great and the good
No one would argue today that a kite mark might constitute a tax on
knowledge as the red spot certainly was. It would ‘merely’ be a symbol of a
press that did not abuse celebrities and members of the public, did not lie,
and was accountable for its sins, honouring such journalistic principles as
truth, objectivity and impartiality (assuming society could achieve a consensus
on their definition). What Leveson says the modern press requires, seemingly
with the wholehearted backing of Ed Miliband, J.K.Rowling, Hugh Grant and the Hacked Off movement is a regulatory body
that would be the custodian of such principles.
Alas one person’s objectivity is another’s prejudice and, as with
the task of recruiting all committees, commissions and inquiries, the nature of
that recruitment instantly breeds suspicion: who appoints the judges and
according to what criteria? What is rarely considered in the selection of the
great and the good is you and me; the florist at the corner, the Mum with her
kids waiting for the Number 9 bus or anybody at the Darby and Joan Club autumn
bazaar (much less the readers of the old News of the World).
No, the names to regulate whatever is deemed regulateable will be
selected in the age-old manner – as Judge Leveson was, exercising narrow criteria
not a little to do with being distinguished, part of the establishment – and
‘safe’. It does not take three guesses to envisage the constitution of a body
to regulate the press. A few moments’ deliberation might lead to the conclusion
that as far as regulation is concerned we have been here before, many times in
many different forms, but always with the same intent – control.
Elephants in the newsroom
Writing in the UK edition of the Huffington Post (3 December, 2012),
James Alan Anslow states that ‘in many ways the Leveson Report is an impressive
piece of work; it is a detailed, political and expedient response to’ (here
Anslow suspends his approval) ‘an absurdly amorphous and poorly considered
brief’. He cites what he considers Leveson’s ‘two showstopping misjudgements:
two ignored elephants in the newsroom’.
First, Leveson ‘neglects, almost to the point of dismissing its
significance, the Internet, deeming it a “moral vacuum”. It is almost as if the
power and reach of the Internet did not exist, scarcely impinging on the
present and future of the traditional press’.
Yet in the UK, the US ‘and most other parts of the developed world,’
says Anslow, the Internet ‘is responsible for the irreversibly accelerating
demise of print newspapers’. It is both the elephant in the room and, for mass
communication via print, the enemy at the door.
Anslow considers that Leveson fundamentally misunderstands the
nature of news journalism. He states:
Journalism operates in society's borderlands – it is liminal; that
is to say it can only fulfil its function if it can move between structures,
without being in thrall to any of them (including media moguls). For example,
journalists must find operational space within which to conduct off-the-record
conversations with contacts be they police officers or politicians; good hacks
have always plied their trade by being less than straightforward.
In other words, subversion is both natural to the trade and
inescapable. The publication of news is, says Anslow, ‘always, to one extent or
another, "loaded" and provocative…There will always be times that
journalism tests and even breaks the law: whether to expose corrupt MPs by
buying stolen data or to unveil royal hypocrisy by procuring a transcript of an
adulterous phone conversation’.
‘Quicksand of moral
relativity’
Like many other Leveson-doubters Anslow believes that there are
already in Britain criminal laws in place to deal with press abuse if ‘those
laws are applied with vigour and probity’. Invoking ‘public interest defence or
mitigation invariably plunges the process into the quicksand of moral relativity
so beloved of expensive lawyers’.
What we need in the opinion of journalist Mick Hume is more freedom,
not less. Author of There is No Such Thing As a Free Press…and we need one more
than ever (Societas, 2012), Hume believes that freedom is no exemplar of order
but ‘an unruly mess’. He writes:
We should defend press freedom and freedom of expression as a
bedrock liberty of a civilised society – and defend the right of a free press
to be an unruly mess. That some abuse press freedom, as in the phone-hacking
scandal, is no excuse for others to encroach upon it. Press freedom is not a
gift to be handed down like charity only to those deemed deserving. It is an
indivisible liberty for all or none at all.
Calculated gain
It was to be expected that commitments to such liberty, expressed by
politicians including prime minister David Cameron, would be seen by many as
calculated to curry favour with the press. After all, Leveson and the public
learnt much about the cosying-up between government ministers (and those of the
previous, Labour government) and high-fliers in the Murdoch empire such as
former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks (affectionately referred to as ‘Country
Suppers’). Cameron had actually appointed ex-News of the World Andy Coulson his
press secretary until revelations about phone-hacking forced Coulson’s exit
from Downing Street.
Two QCs, Ben Emmerson and Hugh Tomlinson in a UK Guardian article
‘No threat to freedom’ (4 December 2012) conceded that ‘The politicians who
oppose Leveson will be able to rely on the support of the media in future’,
adding, ‘The whole point of Leveson was to expose this sort of patronage, and
bring it to an end’.
Even so, forgetting for a moment where the comment is coming from,
Cameron’s doubts about regulation are valid. His swiftly-expressed view was
that ‘We should, I believe, be wary of any legislation which has the potential
to infringe free speech and a free press’. He went on:
The danger is that this would create a vehicle for politicians,
whether today or some time in the future, to impose regulation and obligations
on the press, something Lord Justice Leveson himself wishes to avoid.
Cameron’s position would be worthy of support if it were not for the
fact that his government was concurrently launching draconian plans to put
Internet communications under further legal surveillance.
Point missed
That many British newspapers have a dire record of abusing the
responsibilities of a free press is not in doubt as Leveson illustrates in telling
and often distressing detail. Such practices are evident from day to day and
obvious to all, but there seems to be scant analysis of why. Writing in the Guardian
former Times editor Harold Evans, while believing Leveson ‘deserves support’,
points out a serious weakness: ‘The biggest disappointment…is how far he
[Leveson] skates over the crucial issue of ownership’.
Evans refers to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s sidelining of the
law of competition in 1982 in ‘a secret deal’ by which Times Newspapers came
under News International control:
All Leveson’s fine language about the need for future transparency
is justified by the vaguest of references to what made it necessary in the
first place. It surely matters a great deal that the greatest concentration of
the British press was achieved by a backroom deal that gave News International
such sway over British public life.
Culture of the bully
The issue is ‘structure’, the nature of the landscape of newspapers
dominated by the usual suspects, the corporations; News International being
only the most dominant in a pool of corporate sharks. That landscape in recent
years has been characterised by the closure of many good newspapers or the
switch from daily to weekly, especially in the provinces (a situation
dramatically echoed in America).
Competition has always been fierce, but the advent of the Internet
has transformed traditional rivalries into a battleground where all values take
second place to naked profit. The pawns in this battle are journalists, many of
them forced into reportorial conduct that permits them no option: get the
story, do the dirty, tap the phones, or make way for somebody who will. In
short, as the National Union of Journalists emphasise in their journal and
stressed in their evidence to Leveson, it is a culture of bullying.
What meets with sympathy in the Leveson Report is the case made by
the NUJ for a journalist’s ‘conscience clause’. Leveson was struck ‘by the
evidence of journalists who felt they might be put under pressure to do things
that were unethical’.
The solution, ‘a whistle-blowing hotline’ for journalists to report
bullying does, however, sound naïve if not laughable. Until the structural
circumstances – the centralisation of media ownership into fewer and fewer
hands – are acted upon in the name of plurality little will change, except the
inexorable decline of the paper press.
In the wake of Brian
After unparalleled publicity over many months, the Leveson Inquiry
will sink beneath the waves of consciousness and memory; perhaps most
importantly because it set out to ask the wrong question.
What’s regrettable is that the main issue concerning the media – the
nature of ownership and control – remains unaddressed. There is nothing in
practice or in the stars that will in future bar the Murdoch empire from
fulfilling its ambition to own the whole of BSkyB and thus rule the roost of
British broadcasting.
Scandal has only delayed the
process. Meanwhile, though the News of the World arguably suffered harshly as a
sacrificial victim, what do we have, as the current cliché has it, going
forward? Why, the Sun on Sunday. Plus ça change and happy country suppers!
NewsScan:
Walmart’s winning ways
By Alison Prince
Walmart, currently facing down a massive strike, is America’s
largest private employer. In 2011 it enjoyed a profit of 16.4 billion dollars,
by the simple wheeze of paying their staff so little that the state has to make
up their wages. It’s not illegal. The US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per
hour. That’s dollars, mind, not pounds. If you work in a restaurant or anywhere
that might provide tips, the federal minimum wage is just $2.13 an hour,
against which the value of meals provided by the employer can be deducted.
A recent study by University College Berkeley found that Walmart’s
low wages are costing the state of California alone $86 million a year to
provide public assistance like food stamps. The state spends nearly $2,000
every single year on each Walmart employee who can’t afford basic essentials
like housing, food, and healthcare. The tax-payer has to fork out more than
$2.6 billion every single year to enable Walmart workers to live. As if that
wasn’t bad enough, Walmart has just adopted a new healthcare policy that will
deny insurance for any employees working fewer than 30 hours a week. And guess
what - hardly any of them are now employed for more than 30 hours a week.
So who exactly are the benefit scroungers? Not the wretched workers
struggling to stay alive, but their wealthy employers (owners of the British
chain, ASDA, by the way) who are clawing money in from the state in order to
foot their own wages bill. Talk about bah, humbug - it makes Scrooge look like
the Angel Gabriel.
First published in the January 2013 edition of the Voice of Arran
newsletter.
Quote of the Month:
If, in fact, torture is a crime (a mortal sin, if you will) - a
signal of a nation's descent into depravity - then it doesn't matter whether it
"works" or not. Zero Dark Thirty condones torture. Not a single
character involved in "The Greatest Manhunt in History" expresses any
regret about the CIA's use of torture. Maya/Chastain gets her man (code named
"Geronimo!") and that's all that counts. The end justifies the
vicious means.
David Clellan, ‘And the Academy Award for the Promotion of Torture
Goes to…’ (truthout, USA, 9 January 2013).
Poems of Place (16)
URBINO: NOCTURNE
If you sleep deeply enough,
You believe in Urbino’s ducal
Silence; if like a prisoner
In the dungeon of San Leo
Another life commands wakefulness:
You hear the baying of frightened dogs.
With the dawn the sorry animals
No longer yelp and bark, comfortless
Across the stillness of their masters’ neglect.
Strangely, too, and unexpectedly
Fears of the night have left
The dawn chorus in shock, unless
The season of killing long ago filled
The skies of Montefeltro
With the quietude of exploded feathers.
Recommended reading…
INSTANT MESSAGES
By Laura Solomon
Proverse, Hong Kong
Joint Winner of the Proverse Prize
Kindle edition (2010)
A teen read full of insight and humour
Fifteen year old Olivia (Livvy) Best has problems. On Christmas Day
her Mum walks out on the family to live with her lesbian lover; her twin sister
Mel, though a talented musician, is thieving, drinking and self-harming; her
Dad is jobless, wrapped up in his first novel, and there is a gang of school
thugs who are determined to make her life a misery.
Is Livvy downhearted; in despair? Is Laura Solomon’s book about to
pitch the reader into a pit full of teenage angst? Mercifully not, for it soon
turns out that Livvy is the only really grown-up person in her household,
honest about her feelings, but in charge of them. Throughout this highly readable,
first-person narrative, Olivia remains cheerful, optimistic, witty and unfazed.
GF (Green Frog)
Okay, she is upset by her Mum’s abandonment of the family and
unimpressed by her then taking up with a teenage lover. Livvy is also deeply
concerned about her sister’s manic behaviour. Yet she opts for tolerance,
understanding and support, with the aid of her soft-toy pal, GF (Green Frog)
who ‘has thoughts and feelings’: ‘Would you,’ she asks the reader, ‘think I was
crazy if I told you we held conversations?’ admitting that she can see how such
interaction ‘between a stuffed animal and adolescent girl might be construed as
insane’.
As GF shows perception and good sense
throughout the novel we accept him rather as an exemplar of sanity; until, that
is, Livvy’s own maturation frees her from such dependency.
Bevan: no picture book
Set in London in quite clearly a period earlier than the current
recession, Instant Images throughout
portrays a life that brings its problems but at the same time never shrinks
from opportunities. It’s also a tale about how people shift over time and
through experience from antipathy to tolerance, to affection. Livvy’s fellow
pupil Bevan is initially in the story unwashed, uncared for and violently
bullied by his brother. Worse, he smells. He’s impossible.
Gradually, an appealing human emerges from the stereotype and Livvy
is instrumental in bringing about that change; a change that culminates in
love. Such a story could have submerged itself in dark shadows. Instead it is
funny and optimistic, a reminder to the young reader that parents rarely make
convincing role-models and occasionally let their own interests and passions
come in the way of their responsibilities.
That, Livvy Best would argue, is not a reason for rejecting or
disowning them. Laura Solomon has produced here a lively, funny, touching and
engrossing novel about a time not so long ago when the life of a teenager
probably held more promise than it does today.
CORRESPONDENCE
Continuing the Baslow Letters
Plans for the production of DON QUIXOTE: THE MUSICAL are, we are
delighted to learn, well under way. Here Ned Baslow has information to cheer up
the author.
Dear Señor Cervantes
Good news! It looks as though we’ve found a decent composer/arranger
to put our script of your masterpiece Don Quixote to music and delight the good
people of Wickerstaff and beyond. It has been to our advantage that Herr Mozart
(Wolfie to his friends and sponsors) and his family have fallen on hard times
along with the rest of the Euro population, it seems. He is not only prepared
to compose a number of areas for Lord Gilbert who plays the loony knight and a
couple of duets to be sung by Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panzer, but he
has ideas for lively pieces of Spanish fandango for the intervals.
I’m afraid we still haven’t resolved our differences over
sponsorship. Spexsavers have been very generous in the past supporting our
light operas and pantos, but there’s no such thing as a free meal and their PR
people have made it clear to us that they’ll want a bit of a return for their
money – meaning, in our case, putting it out, in publicity and to the audience,
that Don Quixote’s bizarre behaviour in attacking windmills thinking they’re
giants, is down to his poor eyesight, a factor that is to be remedied, in the
opera’s grand finale, with his discovery of contact lenses.
We do understand your concerns with regard to rewriting the script
of Don Quixote, but it’s important to understand that we are producing your
work, without fee, in the 21st century when anything written prior to the
Internet is considered old-hat by audiences.
Never fear, Lord Gilbert will do the melancholy knight proud,
especially as we are hoping to engage a local author from Bakewell – Lord G’s second cousin – to gee up the text
with a few well-placed jokes. Rest assured that the current political and
economic problems of your country will not be mentioned.
Further, you’ll be delighted to know that the committee has
approached the famous British artist, illustrator and visionary poet Billy
Blake (Jerusalem etc.) to design the sets. He owes us as we put him right
concerning his famous portrait of a horrible hairy creature on his hands and
knees, wrongly identifying him as Nebuchadnezzar instead of the true varlet and
worshipper of false gods, Nabonidos.
Yours in good spirit and happy anticipation.
Ned Baslow
Secretary and Treasurer, Wickerstaff Panto and Light Opera Society
In association with the
Wickerstaff Indoor Bowls Club
In association with Gilbert
Stokoe Enterprises
Local Sponsor: Cradle to the
Grave Fish and Chip Restaurant.
Programmes of the Festival will be available shortly. Tickets to all
events will go on sale at the beginning of April. Londoners and those resident
below a line between Luton and Watford, are advised to make early phone
bookings with any of the following institutions: The National Theatre, The Old
Vic, the Royal Opera House and the London Zoo.
Thanks for reading Blog 37. Submissions, factual or fictional are
welcome at Watsonworks@hotmail.co. Next:
mid-February 2013.
e-reading
James Watson books.
Five originally paper-print novels are available
from Amazon Kindle:
THE FREEDOM TREE (£1.03), set during the Spanish
Civil War, reaching its climax with the bombing of Guernica.
TALKING IN WHISPERS (£2.01). Chile during the tyrannical
rule of the generals.
TICKET TO PRAGUE (£1.63). Tale of a friendship between Amy,
a teenage rebel, and Josef, an elderly Czech poet who had lost
the will to write; until she reads him The Good Soldier Sveck.
JUSTICE OF THE DAGGER (£2.03). Earthmovers, the Yellow Giants,
advance on the rainforest of East Timor. The people have only
arrows and courage to resist them.
FAIR GAME: THE STEPS OF ODESSA (£5.15). Uneven playing fields
in Ukraine: with the ball at her feet Natasha shows talent,
resolution and the will to win. Her quest is to discover whether
these qualities translate into life.
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