From the category archives:

Media

The ‘infallible’ sniffer dogs….

August 30, 2010

Cadaver dogs perform a grim but essential task – locating the presence of human remains, even minute particles of human remains. In America, the cadaver dogs first achieved national recognition in the aftermath of 9/11, helping to locate partial remains and thus confirm the death of missing people. These dogs have gained a considerable fan-club, [...]

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In Praise of Real Men.

August 5, 2010

PC David Rathband has been in danger of losing the media fight for column inches. That will be redressed at 7.30 tonight on the ITV1 programme ‘In the Line of Fire’. PC Rathband had the misfortune to be on traffic duty one day, ensuring that the media were not held up in their dash to [...]

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Lobby Jobbies…

August 4, 2010

The Fourth Estate, with its continuum line from radical Grub Street through investigatory Fleet Street to compliant Canary Wharf, has no formal constitutional role, but is popularly supposed to hold Parliament and the government to account. Journalists would tell you that they ‘speak truth unto power’. The Lobby pack, the 170 journalists who hold parliamentary [...]

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Chav Media.

July 12, 2010

Admittedly the media in general are having a hard time. The Grauniad’s traditional source of income, all those lovely public sector job adverts, is grinding to a halt. Regional newspapers are in hot competition with local council propaganda puffs as the liner of choice for the budgerigar cage. The Times et al have decided to [...]

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The Press – A Cautionary Tale

July 12, 2010

I read both the Sunday Mail and the Sunday Times of a Sunday morning. The Abbot says I should not do this, because it causes my blood pressure to become even higher than normal, and a form of Tourettes syndrome has on occasions broken out, thus disturbing Vespers. But I can’t help it. After reading [...]

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Blogger v Journalist VI

July 7, 2010

Alan Rusbridger, editor of London’s Guardian, said at a 2007 meeting of the Organization of News Ombudsmen at Harvard: “Since a free press first evolved, we have derived our authority from a feeling – a sense, a pretence – that journalism is, if not infallible, something close to it. We speak of ourselves as being [...]

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On-line Identity and Free Speech.

July 1, 2010

One of the patients I used to visit long ago was a lady of around 40 who had long retired from contact with the human race. She was diagnosed as Autistic, a highly intelligent woman. A previous visitor had arranged for her to have a computer in an effort to keep her in contact with [...]

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