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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear List-members,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks to those of you who posted kind
words in response to the most recent 'rant', it was nice to see a flurry of
media-watch submissions spilling into the Inbox.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Regarding David Miller's reiteration of the
'purpose' of media-watch, here perhaps is one practical tool which everyone can
use - faxyourmp (forget if it's dot-com or dot-org) is a cracking facility, you
type in your post-code and up comes a big photie of your MP (so beware !),
constituency details etc, and an e-mail form to fill in with your complaint,
suggestion etc, and they make sure it's sent and received, then follow-up to see
if you've had any response etc. It's very easy to use. I'd never ever written to
my MP before but have done so twice (one reply so far) and heartily recommend
it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It may be useful, or encouraging for people who are
unsure of their command of language, or, as David stated, 'put off by the
erudition of some complainants' to remember that the most effective
messages to mass-media are short, get straight to the point and use the simplest
language possible. Consider radio, which relies so heavily on language, no
silence allowed - lengthy, detailed, 'erudite' slabs of knowledge and/or polemic
are virtually never aired if submitted by listeners, no matter how esteemed
or 'expert' they may be. The constant intrusion of news/traffic/weather
updates and regional broadcasting variations mean that (in the case of BBC Radio
Scotland) there is no time for 'real', natural debate about anything and the
desperation of producers to 'give everyone their say' leads, more often than
not, to a 'spoiled broth' where important strands of discussion are left
truncated, unexplored. I've submitted many messages to the Riddoch Show,
and the ones they've used have always been brief, three short(ish) sentences at
most, and if you can manage to work in a bit of humour or a gentle dig at
whoever she's interviewing then that seems to increase the chances of your
contribution being aired.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I apologise if my 'rants' are outwith the scope of
what media-watch was intended to do, but I can't help it - having witnessed the
development of the project, and learned so much from it, it's disheartening when
it slumps, when the voices trail away and then are quiet. Many years ago, when
David Bowie released his 'Scary Monsters' album, the music press went mental,
gigantic detailed reviews of the lyrics etc etc, and one critic, Charles Shaar
Murray, commented - 'This is a time in which intelligent people do well to be
afraid.' Well, a typical dictionary definition of an
'intellectual' is 'someone who uses his/her mind', and using that definition,
most folk would be deeply offended not to be described as 'intellectual'. But we
all know that most of us don't use our minds to anywhere near capacity, that
that potential will never be fully realised, but conversely, we cannot be fooled
all of the time, and it may now be that the success of online projects such as
this is starting to have a real effect on broader, public debate, perhaps
even starting to undermine the monopoly position hitherto enjoyed by mass-media.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The 'point' I'm groping towards is that this
project, like mass-media itself, is based on language, on simple words being
strung together. There are all manner of debates to be had regarding
language-use, whether all language is inherently political, whether 'thought'
itself is prescribed by the available vocabulary (i.e. 'you can't think the
thought if you don't know the word' etc etc). If we choose to take the
words written by others and send them to our friends and colleagues, fair
enough, especially if the writer has tackled some subject which we aren't
'qualified' to comment upon with any authority, or if the writer has managed to
convey a feeling or reaction in a way which we would like to have done, but
haven't the ability to. In such cases, 'posting' other folk's work seems
entirely reasonable, even generous, and in many cases is a genuine compliment to
the original writer. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But, dear list-members, there is no substitute for
your own voice, your own thoughts. Yes, media-watch is not a chat-room, but
we've all been witnessing - especially in this past year -how that bloody
invasion of Iraq has affected our lives in so many ways, and there comes a point
where the sheer frustration caused by seeing such flagrant mass-media
duplicity and utter subservience to the liars in Whitehall and Washington
becomes painful, unbearable. Of course, it's better to talk to 'real' people
face-to-face when it all becomes too much, but many people don't want to talk
about war, pain, death etc etc, and no-one can blame them. In most of the
responses to my rant there was a clear theme, and that was Time - no time, no
space, not enough of it at any rate to devote a chunk to reading this type of
thing and 'penning' responses. Many of us never, ever meet people in 'real' life
with whom we can discuss this material, it's simply not right to do so, and even
when we do, the feeling that we're dong something wrong, something
'conspiratorial' grows stronger with every TERROR ALERT flashing across the
screen.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Consider the obscene Press Conference yesterday,
hosted by the self-confessedly 'institutionally racist' Metropolitan Police -
two of the Yard's finest were brought out to display, for the benefit of
the cameras (</FONT> <FONT face=Arial size=2>those of you who react badly
to strobe-like lighting should look away NOW !!) a big plastic bag. That's what
it was, a gigantic polly-bag. It wasn't the one which they found, the one which
contained a half-ton of ammonium nitrate, but it was a big polly-bag just like
the one they did find, so it was important we should all know exactly what such
bags look like. Further to the farcical Press call, the mainstream broadcasters
then dutifully pursued the unwitting P&R folk representing potential 'ACME
Terrorism Suppliers' such as B&Q, Homebase etc, demanding to know if they
were monitoring purchases of this devilish material.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>So, how does all of this affect us directly ? Well,
Al Qaeda 'probably', 'almost certainly' has cells in Scotland. Yes,
indeed. Last Sunday (March 28th), on the 'Scotland Today' 6.30 news,
up popped a Mr David Capitanchik. 'Who he ?' said moi, dribbling beer all over
my kebab, and, obligingly (almost in a kismet-type manner) the wee banner
flashed onto the screen, and thus did it say, 'Terrorism Expert.'
So, me staggered upstairs, 'googled' Mr Capitanchik, and very
interesting reading it is too. I recommend you do the same if you want to find
out who the 'experts' on Terrorism are in Scotland i.e. the 'experts' who are
called upon by Scottish Media to give their informed opinion on the threat we
currently face. Mr Capitanchik was not holding up a gigantic polly-bag (to be
fair, one man, however learned or expert, can never hope to be a match for two
of the Yard's finest and expertly-trained polly-bag-elevators) but one was left
with the distinct impression that, had Mr C been willing to do so,
some other 'expert' would have been drafted in to assist him in the task -
'They're coming for us, and they're going to use big gigantic polly-bags, just
like this one !!'</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Al Qaeda in Scotland. They must be the guys who
drew the short straws, the ones who weren't assigned a hot-bed of
fundamentalist/sectarian hatred to draw succour and public support from.
(Doh !!) But worry not, the authorities are on to them, and soon we'll all be
asking 'Is that your bag ?', 'Is that your dog ?', 'Are you reading that paper
you're sitting on ?' </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Orwell could never have made this stuff up. His
work has been mis-read and abused. '1984' wasn't a dystopian fiction, as it's so
often patly (yes, I mean 'patly', not 'aptly') described. It was the publisher
who changed Orwell's original title, '1948'. Orwell wasn't trying to be
prophetic, visionary etc etc. He was describing the bombed-out London he knew,
the city of rations and misery, and behind the 'stiff upper lip' which had been
drummed into him he knew, thanks to his propaganda work with the Beeb, that all
was language and language was all as far as the 'masses' were concerned.
Me's no Orwell-scholar, nor pretending to be so, but my humble take is
that '1984' was never intended as a prophecy, it was, like Animal Farm, a
dark cartoon, a 'fairy-story'. His preoccupation was <U>language</U> first
and foremost, honesty next, because he knew that the latter could never ever
happen unless the former was capable of accomodating it. And so, right now, we
on this wee list, we send each other bits and pieces, we perhaps attach
short comments on our own 'take' on things, but any hope we may have
that something like 'truth' will ever be a priority for media, despite our
complaints and lobbying, is pure delusion. <U>'War on Terror'</U> is, de
facto, a nonsense, a non-sequiter. (I wish I knew more Latin, French or
some other language to illustrate how mad and sad and bad it is, but I
don't.) Both are abstract nouns, and so the 'war' is abstract, it is not,
in its essentials, 'real'. That fundamental fact has now been
glossed-over, has been allowed to disappear from the debate. CH4 is perhaps the
last terrestrial broadcaster which still refers to the 'so-called' War on Terror
- for all other outlets it has now become a fact that there is a 'War'
and it is on 'Terror'. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The mass-media will have to accomodate the
net-writers, the 'posters', eventually, and occasionally does, and in time the
'rules' of journalism will change, they will have to. But that depends on the
efforts of 'real' writers i.e. not salaried journalists, to push hard, to
develop an entirely new form of journalism which is, in it's essentials, is
human and hearfelt, not corporate-funded and edited-to-death.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And that means you. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Regardless of what you feel may be your limitations
writing-wise, punctuation, paragraphs, grammar, whatever, <U>it does not
matter</U>. What matters is that people speak, tell their truth, speak back to
those who disagree, and keep doing it, even if it's just for ten minutes a night
- most humans happily spend much longer than that sitting on the toilet pan. So,
every time you're on the pan and enjoying it, think about cutting it short (so
to speak) and getting online, sounding off, if not via this site, then the
others which are out there, write to that councillor, that MP, whoever, just do
a wee tiny thing, it'll make you feel better, and who knows, you might end up
getting to know people, even if it is 'virtually' - we all know, by now,
relationships, families which have been changed because of people sitting alone
at night, tapping in words, just wee words, just language...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But, until that happens, the job of 'discussing'
what's really going on is paid for, by all of us. We pay the government to
fund that thing called the BBC, and theirs is the task of revealing,
exploring and detailing the often unpleasant facts about the world, the facts we
are in no position for find out for ourselves, the facts many of us would much
rather ignore. Today, on BBC News 24, I noticed that they've started running
their self-congratulatory 'ads' every half-hour or so, those ones where
tasteful, 'arty' shots of well-kent correspondents are jazzily spliced along to
some rousing, urgent music while the narrator sounds-off about the Beeb having
200 correspondents in 150 countries. Thankfully, they didn't feature a graphic
of a rotating Earth with a United Kingdom the same size as Africa, but they
didn't have to - the immovable gravitas of the voice did that perfectly. Is
'Corporate Masturbation' an established term ? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(Well, it is now !)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm not sending any more 'rants' unless other
people start sending them as well.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>So there !</FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Goodnight !</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Best Regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Ian Brotherhood</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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