This sort of data annoys me

Found here, The Guardian is suggesting Oxbridge is elitist and, worse than that, racist too, as the top unis accepted no black students last year. So because something statistically unlikely happened one year, that makes them racist? I can see why Oxford and Cambridge would have been hesitant to show this data, because it's so easy to label them as racist becouse of it. But they're not. That would be like saying the University of Winchester is sexist because of this year's tiny percentage of women on the Journalism course. It's not, that's just how things have worked out this time around. Wikipedia has estimates from 2007 of 1.45 million black people living in England, and a estimate from 2008 of 51.4 million people across the country. If If remember my GCSE maths correctly that means that black people make up just 2.8% of England's population. So this is already a smaller group of people to draw applicants from than white and Asian Brits.

And are Oxford and Cambridge really elitist? I doubt. The fact is that those posh schools like Eton have a lot of money, and with all that money they can afford the most expensive teachers, and with the most expensive teachers they can successfully groom their pupils towards Oxbridge and other elite universities. Meanwhile in public schools the higher education aims are set lower - depending on where the school is located, much much lower. The students have it harder as they have less resources available, though how much harder varies of course. So it's a given that those lucky, privately educated individuals will have greater success in applying to Oxbridge, but that doesn't mean that Oxbridge is elitist. Why would they turn a prospective, quality student, no matter what their background?

The simple fact is that of the black students who applieds to Oxbridge last year, none of them got in. That just means that those students - and it has nothing to do with the colour of their skin - did not meet the standards the universities asked for. It's just an unfortunate occurence, and the Guardian is making a bigger fuss of it than it really ought to.

Our interview's finally up!

So George, Lou, Josh and I have spent the last few weeks working with Charlotte from the year above on radio interviews for WINOL. We've done two so far, but the first with Martin Tod (Lib Dem candidate for Winch) isn't up yet. The second, however, from last Friday with the lead singer of Good Shoes, is finally up on Youtube:



Credit goes to Josh for setting up the interview, myself for writing the interview and George for conducting the interview.

What the hell.

I've just been reading this, and I'm honestly struggling for words.

The government is preparing to cut the tax it expects to impose on City banks through George Osborne's £2.5bn a year levy, prompting a furious reaction from tax experts and opposition MPs.

After being alerted by leading banks that the proposed levy could raise an unexpectedly high £3.9bn a year, the Treasury is considering cutting the rate of the tax on UK and international banks to ensure the chancellor's £2.5bn target is not breached.

It turns out the levy originally imposed is going to make more money than predicted... so they're going to cut the tax to make sure it doesn't? All this talk and all these figures thrown about about how bankrupt the United Kingdom is and how massive a deficit we've got to work through, and George Osborne is changing things so that his target isn't exceeded? How in the world is breaching the target a bad thing? Why wouldn't we want the additional £1.4bn in the treasury? This is like an unfit man going to the gym to shape up and then choosing not to exceed the limits of their body and improve.

And why should these banks get it so easy, when they're the reason we're in a financial crisis? They should be taxed, and their executives certainly shouldn't be allowed to give themselves the gluttonous bonuses they award themselves. If "we're all in this together", why the hell are the conservatives doing this?

Let's hope today's rally was a big enough sign to Parliament...

Granted, I didn't go. I have three very good reasons why. The first is that I forgot to sign up with the SU (and that's a perfectly legitimate reason). Next time something big comes by, I'll remember to make a note of it - one that's not lost in the middle of a notebook dedicated to shorthand. Second, and I'll be honest for a second, there's no chance in hell that I would've gotten up at 8 AM to get on the coaches when I'm barely making it to 10 AM lectures (if I make them at all). And lastly, because I'm a very shoddy advertiser. Those of you asking "You were advertising something?", you've proven my point entirely. For the record, it's the WINOL radio interview with Martin Tod, the Lib Dem candidate for Winchester, that I should be shouting loudly in everyone's faces about. It's tomorrow! At 4 PM! On WINOL! So do check it out, lest I be murdered in my sleep for doing a poor job (probability of this happening: 10%; I expect I'll be awake at the time).

For those of you who don't know what's been going on today - what rock have you been living under? The coalition government has plans to raise tuition fees up to a maximum of £9000. To put that into perspective, a three year course comes up to £9870 under the current amount we pay. So if Browne's fees would come to effect, students would be paying just under 9 years worth of current fees for the average three year course. "But," some of you will say, "who cares? I'm already in uni, it won't effect me." It's a sentiment I've heard repeated since Browne's review was announced, and that sort of blind, self-centered thinking is really of no help. It's not just about you or me, it's about the future.

Clegg's said on today's Prime Minister's Questions that this will actually benefit students, as those from poor backgrounds will be able to get into uni paying less than they currently do today. This may be well and true, but there is one thing they're not thinking about: what £9000 looks like to the teenager who will likely never had to deal with that much money. It sucks to pay for uni, but £3290 is a swalloable number. £10,000 over three years is a swalloable number. £9000 for a year? That's a mind-blowing figure to the kid who's never had more than a couple hundred pounds in their bank, if even that. It's a very off-putting amount, and that's an initial reaction that in my opinion could be very dangerous to the future. Well before any higher education advisor could reach the student and convince them uni is more affordable than it appears, they will have been mentally defeated by that monstrous amount and be looking at alternative options.

Perhaps to some extent it's a good thing - it could mean potential students would focus more on courses that would set them up for something in life than ones whose use aren't readily apparent, and perhaps it would also mean alternative options like apprenticeships would become more viable. I know back in my college, we were beaten over the head by our teachers with this rhetoric that if we don't get into uni, we will get absolutely nowhere in life. They'd tell us we'd be forced out into the streets, naked to British rain, begging outside malls. We would ask passerbys not for pennies, no, but for the charitable souls to grant us a cent or a rupee, for so uneducated would we be that we wouldn't even know what currency is used in our own country. They told us, should we not go to university and have our minds educated, we would eventually find ourselves in housing estates living off benefits with ten children - not all of them ours - and we'd be abusive to our wife-and/or-husband. We would drink ourselves into a devil's rage and come home carrying a segment a plywood flooring we viciously ripped out of the local Co-Operative on our way home, which we would then use to beat our weeping spouse in the kitchen with. When not reading the Daily Mail, we would make a hobby out of screaming at them bloody foreigners.

Er, where was I? Oh yes, the potential good of the rising tuition fees. Still, it remains that people, especially of poorer backgrounds, would find it discouraging to go to university, and those lucky enough to have parents that could foot the £27,000 bill would come out at a very significant advantage.

I keep hearing the politicians say they aim to be like the American universities that charge extortionate fees, and I have to ask, why on earth would you want that? Americans come out with over $50,000 (approx £30,000) of debt from their higher education and spend the rest of their lives paying these fees back. Who on Earth would willingly want to live like that? I really don't think the USA, where everything is for profit and social care is actively shunned by a large portion of the voting population, as the loud-mouthed Tea Party has exhibited, is a good model to follow. Surely there's a better model to look to than gun-toting USA, where the people are slaves to debt and mega-corporations (The Corporation and Food, Inc are enlightening documentaries) and the 'American Dream' of prosperity is unattainable for the vast majority of the public. Let's not forget that there is a vehemently anti-intellectual movement that the Tea Party (a driving force behind the Republican victory) characterises. One of their candidates, Christine O'Donnell, isn't even aware that the seperation of church and state is written in the American constitution.

And these are the people we look to? Why isn't the government looking towards Switzerland or the Scandinavian countries, where higher education is free and the gap between the rich and poor is very low?

This issue's really riled me up recently and I just had to let some steam out. It's not the only issue of the spending cuts I've got a problem with, but I've gone on long enough so I'll just link you to Science Is Vital instead, where they can far more eloquently describe why the £1 billion cuts in science funding is an incredibly bad idea of the government's.

Peter Cole's essays on the life of newspapers

The four essays are found here: 1, 2, 3, 4


The first thing that really struck out to me was this quote from Sylvester Bolam, a former editor of the Mirror, defining sensationalism: "Sensationalism doesn't mean the distortion of the truth. It means the vivid and dramatic presentation of events so as to give them a forceful impact on the mind of the reader."


We briefly touched on sensationalism this morning, so this definition tied the loose end from that discussion nicely. I agree with the definition and sensationalism is certainly a large element of the media, however I think Bolam has left out one very crucial fact, which is that this 'forceful impact on the mind of the reader' can most definitely distort the truth. If a news piece is presented with a massive space-eating headline, multiple pictures and a lengthy article, the reader will be led to believe that this is an important matter. There wouldn't have to be anything factually incorrect, but presenting something in such a way that it creates mass-moral panic (e.g., reporting on a paedophilia ring in such a way that it implies paedophilia is a larger problem than it is in reality*) would most certainly distort the truth, by making the problem seem more than it is.


Another quote that sticks out to me:


"That paper too has changed. The "poster", single-issue, front pages have become its trademark, the daily statement that, in the words of its editor, make it a "viewspaper". When it works, as in the paper's consistent opposition to the war in Iraq, it is convincing. When it involves clingfilm-wrapped celeriac it tends to provoke mirth."


I only find this interesting, because one of last week's Independent front pages really made me stop and think, "What the hell are you reporting?" It was Saturday and I walked into WHSmith. The news of the printer bomb was on the front page of ever paper. My eyes glazed over the same-y papers, and then I saw The Independent. Its 'poster' today was of a rare frog in some forest or jungle, and its headline news was about something or other happening in nature preservation. It really made me stop - why would they report about that when the printer bomb is all anyone's interested in at the moment? I opened it to check - the news of the bomb was on Page 4.


So yeah. I don't think my little anecdote has much of a point to it, except to say "Yes, I agree with you there." 


Overall though, I found it very interesting and, as he goes on to say, the Death of Print Press is over exaggerated. Still, it's a pity that the essays are 3 years old and ignore online media. I'd be interested to read what Cole has to say about the new model for The Times Online and News of the World.

Seminar paper - Addison

I think that in many ways, Joseph Addison was a modern man, as several of his ideas and musings put out hold true today. The first to strike me is his essay The Royal Exchange, which describes a budding global market that he describes as 'a kind of additional empire'. Today, past the colonial era and the dissolution of the European empires after the second World War, the empires that now stand are multinational corporate ones.

In On the Essay Form he says that the those who write their works in a volume have the advantage of being able to get away with being dull, saying that even 'the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places'. Addison compares this to the essay, which must delve right into the matter and be immediately interesting, or fail to inspire anyone to read on. He seems to admonish the essay's primary use as a vehicle for 'news-writers' and 'zealots of parties' – that is to say propagandists – when it would be better used to instruct men in 'wisdom' and 'virtue'. He also seems certain that had the ancient philosophers had the printing press and essay available to them, they would have put it to much better use than its current use today. I personally find this to be a somewhat ignorant assumption, as he appears to assume that the more popular 'news-writers' and 'zealots' of today would not have been as prolific in ancient Greece.

I also think he comes across as a bit pompous in this article when he says that there is 'a kind of heaviness and ignorance that hangs upon the minds of ordinary men, which is too thick for knowledge to break through', but perhaps I'm misinterpreting him, as he ends the article with a promise to make an example of 'such voluntary moles'. The word voluntary suggests that he is not condemning ignorance but wilful ignorance, which in my opinion validates his criticism towards these people who actively refuse to be less ignorant. Related to the art of the essay, in another of his articles he says:

“A Writer who makes fame the chief end of his endeavours, and would be more desirous of pleasing than of improving his readers, might find an inexhaustible fund of mirth in politics. Scandal and satire are never-failing gratifications to the public. Detraction and obloquy are received with as much eagerness as wit and humour. Should a writer single out particular persons, or point his rallery at any order of men, who by their profession ought to be exempt from it; should he slander the innocent, or satirize the miserable; or should he, even on the proper subjects of derision, give the full play to his mirth, without regard to decency and good-manners; he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man, if by such a proceeding he could please himself.”

It's an interesting point he makes. Written three hundred years ago, it unfortunately still holds true today, perfectly describing the tabloids. Channel 4's Dispatches brought to light the phone hacking that had been carried out by News of the World to net private information regarding celebrities and public figures.

In his essay “Laughter”, Addison acknowledges that laughter is naturally 'amiable and beautiful' but has a low opinion of how it is inspired in writing, that is 'ridicule'. He says:

“If the talent of ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use to the world; but instead of this, we find that it is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking every thing that is solemn and serious, decent and praiseworthy in human life.”

Perhaps it was true in Addison's time that ridicule was directed at undeserving men, but I think this particular insight is behind us today. The UK is rich with comedians, the majority of whom ridicule not the man of 'virtue and good sense' but the men, culture and institutions of 'vice and folly'. Maybe we should be worried that it's often the comedians who are the most sensible public figures.

The Birth of the Mass Circulation of the Press in the 19th Century

Britain in the 19th century was home to the industrial revolution and, as in all areas, there was significant innovation in the production of newspapers, which had until then remained virtually unchanged from the Gutenberg press. The Times plays a central role in this innovation as the first purchasers of Frederic Koenig and Andrew Bauer's steam-driven printing press in 1814. In the 29^th November 1814 issue of The Times, the first to be printed by the new method, it is described as being “almost organic” and “the greatest invention connected with the printing press since the discovery of the art itself”. Koenig & Bauer's press could print over 1100 pages in an hour.

Another innovation in printing would come later in 1843 when Richard M. Hoe, an American inventor, created the world's first rotary printing press, which allowed for the printing of millions of copies a day. The first rotary press in Britain appears to have been made in the office of The Times by Ambrose Applegarth in 1847. The rotary printing press is still in use today.

With regards to the spread of news, an important development was the new overland route from Britain to India via Egypt, created by Thomas Fletcher Waghorn. The new route cut the journey's length from 16,000 miles (overseas) to 6000 miles (overland). What was a 3-month journey by the best mail steamer in 1825 could be undertaken in just 47 days by 1834. Waghorn's route helped speed the delivery of news from around the world. In turn, newspapers could publish more at a faster pace as world news came in at an unprecedented rate. This was especially important for merchants, to whom information on the fluctuations of market prices across the world was highly valuable.

On top of this, the telegram had begun to be incorporated in the acquisition of news, first by The Times and then by other newspapers, including, of course, The Daily Telegraph, whose name is a testament to its importance in transmitting news. The spread of newspapers was accelerating: on 11^th December 1849, thanks to advancements in both the railway and the telegraph, 150 copies of The Times were delivered at 1:30 PM in Paris on the same day as publication.

The so-called 'tax on knowledge' was a tax imposed by the British government on all newspapers in 1712. By 1815, they were being taxed at 4d (4 pence) a copy. Most people could not afford newspapers, which were priced at 6d or 7d, limiting their readership and growth. This changed in 1855 when the tax was repealed, allowing newspapers to price themselves more competitively and giving rise to many new daily publications, including the The Daily Telegraph, The Morning Star and the Manchester Guardian (which hitherto had been a weekly paper).

Mowbray Morris, a journalist of the era, said that “there is no reason why a daily newspaper should not be published for one penny with a moderate profit,” but that “it is impossible to produce a first-class paper at that price.” The Telegraph and Standard, both one-penny papers, would prove him wrong, becoming respectable newspapers in their own right with quality rivalling the expensive Times. By the 1860s, The Times had a readership of 50,000, and the Telegraph a readership of 30,000.

Sources

• The History of the Times, Vol. II, The Tradition Established
• The March of Journalism: The Story of the British Press from 1622 to the Present Day, Harold Herd (1952)
• http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRknowledge.htm
• http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/196806/mr.waghorn.s.route.to.india.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_printing_press
• Notes on the History of Science and Technology in London, David Singmaster

How Far We've Come

So in yesterday's HCJ lecture we had a brief run over the history of human development, beginning around 8000 BC with the earliest known civilisations and ending with the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. What strikes me most, going over my notes, is seeing half a page's worth of my timeline dating between 8000 BC and 1400 AD, and only two pages detailing the time from 1440 (the Gutenberg press) to 1815. It never ceases to amaze me just how radically we've progressed - I find it difficult to process just how much the world has changed. A thousand years ago, the average man would have been lucky to live past 40; they'd be uneducated, illiterate and knowledge was passed via word of mouth. You would be living a life little different from the life your ancestors led a thousand years ago. Today? Today, a man can anonymously ask the entire world for help whilst trapped in a toilet after crapping himself at work.

...We've come a long way.

Every logged Iraq war death logged on a map

The quote commonly attributed to Stalin goes, "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic," and it's sadly true. The humanity of a tragedy is diminished as it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine and empathise with a massive death count. 

So this map by the Guardian is exceptional. Every dot represents a death - or multiple deaths, where bombs have gone off. Click on a dot and you'll get the details. Not every death can be blamed on US/UK troops, but the vast majority would not have ever occurred had we never invaded. It's casualties like you'd imagine of any war, but graphed as they have been here, every death is humanised, and not some vague statistic. Just some food for thought.

WINOL Bulletin Crit #2

• The clip cuts to the street performer on the high street a couple seconds before the reporter gets to the subject of the high street, while still talking about the charity funding cuts. It's noticeable because the street performer has absolutely no relation to the story until the reporter contextualises it ("In comparison, the redevelopment of Winchester high street...").
• Why is Harry Verney interviewed in front of the vending machine? The background noise from the multimedia centre is also distracting - particularly the Windows log on sound effect. The interview is cut very abruptly, too, while Verney is still speaking (this is true of Michele Price's interview as well).
• "...but at least the streets are clean," probably wasn't meant to come across as sarcastic, but it did, giving the news report a biased slant.
• During Eleanor Bell's interview, she says that "as you know, Winchester's got a one-way system in the middle," at which point we're shown a van turning a corner. The small clip doesn't give any impression of a one-way system. I think the clip should have at least included a one-way sign, or a greater view of one of the one-way roads just by the high street. As it is, it's just a van turning a corner. 
• In Stuart Applebee's piece to the camera, he was standing very close to the camera and at an odd angle.
• I think it was a combination of bad audio, camera angle and lack of any physical acknowledgement of his presence, but Claire's "Thanks very much Tom," at the end of the sports report seemed oddly distant.
• I had a problem with the order of the news. The spending review has dominated the news for the last month and is one of the biggest issues politically, economically and socially. Why was it second in the bulletin after the charity fundings cut? I also think the news could have been ordered better. The bulletin begins with local news, goes to national news with the spending review, cuts to a court report, and then back to the spending review. I think a better order would have been:
1. Spending reviews
2. Rising tax fairs
3. Charity funding cuts
4. Convicted paedophiles
• This would have made more sense, organised by topic and importance/relevancy to viewers.

Overall, it's a big improvement to last week's. I know I haven't praised anything, but you can safely assume that what I haven't fussed about, I enjoyed.

Locke's Empiricism

After the great focus on Descartes and his ideas - the most relevant of them being that our mind is God-given and contains innate knowledge of God - Locke has been a rather large break away from his idealism. Locke had a number of ideas that I'll recap, but the first, still fresh in my mind after the lengthy discussion in our seminar, is tabula rasa: the idea that everyone is born a blank slate - Locke calls us 'white paper' - and that everything we know and believe is given to us through our physical senses. It's clear why he was not welcome during James II's brief, four-year rule, as with this single idea he contradicts the fundamental Christian idea of 'Original Sin' - basically, that all of us are born tainted due to Adam & Eve's crime against God's Will.

Tabula rasa makes a lot of sense to me. Locke, in his writings, challenges the reader to give him one thought that has not been drawn from some experience or another. My own, slightly different take to Locke's challenge would be to ask of someone to create a purely original image. By this I mean an image that is 100% new, taking nothing from anything and having no comparable properties to anything we know. Try to imagine an alien - not just some animal, but a creature with the capacity to think equal to humans. It can't be humanoid. It also can't be some space-cockroach either. And it can't have legs or arms or a head and supports its body in an entirely different way to any creature on earth. Its skin is a colour you've never perceived and its texture has never been felt before. It can't be classified under any label we have created for the animal kingdom. It bears no similarities to mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians, insects, arthropods. It does not adhere to the dichotomy of vertebrate/invertebrate.

I can broadly describe this alien creature, but I could never be more specific about it. I can't describe what this creature is, because it's beyond my imagination and most likely, yours too (if you can picture it though, I'd like to see what you come up with). My point is that we can only picture things when they have a basis in the reality we've experienced. Even in the case of this theoretical creature, I could only describe its impossibility by saying what it isn't like - it just isn't possible to have a thought not rooted in the observable world. To use more relatable examples, this is why a privileged person can never fully understand the hardships of those less fortunate, why the capitalist may call the poor lazy if they cannot improve their situation or why, even knowing that people have different tastes, we may still be boggled when someone hates our favourite food. It can be difficult to relate to people when our personal realities are so far apart.

To put it simply, the idea of tabula rasa supports the fact that each of us has a different reality, built of experiences unique to us, and that we cannot perceive something beyond what we have experienced. In that way, tabula rasa forms the basis of empiricism. It would also explain why cultures are so different - surely, if the knowledge of God was innate, then there would only be a single religion the world over? The first men to land in America would have been greeted by Christian brethren, and surely there would be no conflict of interest between Christians, Jews and Muslims, who all believe in the same God? Tabula rasa gives an explanation to such diversity that Descartes's ideology denies.

I think it'd be true to say that if we take the very best of Descartes and Locke - that is, doubting everything and requiring empirical evidence of everything - we end up with the scientific method, which is highly relevant to journalism as it is, at its core, about searching for truth.

Moving on from tabula rasa, Locke's other idea was a new take on the social contract. Hobbes had already laid the foundations down in his Leviathan, explaining that in a theoretical state of nature that existed before government, societies would collectively decide to give up all their rights for a leader and in return for their loyalty, be given safety and prosperity. Hobbes' look is highly cynical and put into practice, gives us dictatorship. Locke finds this irrational, question men would "take care to avoid mischeif of foxes... then are devoured by lions." The lions being, of course, these dictators. He suggests instead that in a state of nature, humans would enjoy their natural freedom and live in harmony with one another, and that government is created for the purpose to govern over the people's right of property.


A third idea of Locke's is that every man has the right to life, liberty and property, an idea that would have gone down well with the founders of America, though communists would be less than thrilled with his idea of property as a right. He states that the government and law should be there to protect, mainly, the one's right to their property. He also states that the public must agree on the taxes levied - which I think also goes against Machiavellian politics, as it suggests that the government must be liked and accepted by the citizens. His final idea is that of the right to revolution should the government cease to respect the law or their three rights, a rather dangerous idea that could only have been acceptable in the light of the Glorious Revolution that removed King James II.


It's easy to see Locke's philosophical influence in today's culture. We consider today that life and freedom are two of our most fundamental rights as human beings and have these ideals protected by the Human Rights Act. We no longer even live in a society with capital punishment - even the vilest crooks have a right to live, if locked away from the outside world. And we wouldn't be where we are now had it not been for the enlightenment and the rise of science, which is thoroughly grounded in empiricism, Locke's most important ideal.

Day at the Court

So last Tuesday we visited the court. It was a fair bit more entertaining than I expected, though perhaps not as exciting as I could have wished. Admittedly, my only previous experience with the court are the Ace Attorney games on the Nintendo DS, where common practice is to interject testimonies and rebuttals with a yell of "OBJECTION!!" , throw steaming hot coffee at the opposition's face, and celebrate a Not Guilty verdict with an explosion of confetti supplied by the police force.

Needless to say, the reality is a bit different.

After a bit of meandering through town, we found the court just off the high street. It was big and imposing from the outside, as these sorts of places tend to be, and on the inside, far too empty. After passing through security and briefly getting lost, we found and seated ourselves in the public gallery of, if I remember correctly, Court Room 4.

It was pretty scarce up there. Besides our party of six, there was a trio of law students (I assume they were law students) who had arrived just before us, and they had taken the good seats. Sitting in the farthest back row, my view was obscured. The others say they could see the defendant and claimant (is that the right term here?) from where they were seated, but from where I sat I could barely see the defence attorney putting his arguments forth without leaning forward and tilting my head to an uncomfortable angle. I'm not sure if there were any court reporters there, either. if they were there, they were out of my sight.

I know we're not supposed to look at the jury, lest our eyes lock and my biased, plebeian views sets prejudice in their minds, but I couldn't help myself. They were as diverse a bunch as I could've expected. There was the Focused One, absorbing all the information and speedily penning it down; the Organised One with her various folders and notepads - no doubt all colour coded - laid out in front of her; the Empty Space, which sat in for someone who couldn't care less about this court business* and, my favourite of all, That One Guy - and there's always one - who just doesn't give a crap what anyone thinks, leaning forwards, hands cupping face, elbows set on the desk before him and leaning into the desk space of his neighbours, unabashedly taking a nap. Every so often he would straighten up, open his eyes as wide as possible, slap a hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle a yawn and concentrate for a few minutes before sleep inevitably overpowered him once more.

*Or so I initially thought, anyway - turns out one of the jurors had to be removed due to personally knowing someone involved.

I suppose I'm in no position to mock the guy, though. I had to strain to make out what the judge said and the prosecution lawyer's words all seemed to mesh together into one - eventually I gave up and began amusing myself by inspecting the wooden walls and ceiling, which I found far more interesting than I ought to have. I did pay attention when the forensics experts came up to discuss the evidence, though. I did find their science to be fascinating, and actually I kind of wish I'd taken notes, since now I can't really remember much about it.

We sat and observed for an hour, then quietly left. Overall it was quite interesting. We got to see how the court works, and it did make me revise over McNae's to make sure nothing I'd written was in contempt of the court, and I think I've deleted anything contentious I'd written, though if I haven't I'm sure Chris or Brian will be quick to slaughter me for it. I think the case is over by now which would remove the problems, but I'm not entirely sure either. Still it was a fun day, and if not for the court, I would not have discovered the magical wonderland that is Pizza Hut. The weekday buffet was spectacular.

Court reporting is a dying art, says Guardian

The article by the Guardian can be found here. I began a trawl of the online newspapers looking for an update on a court case that caught my eye two weeks ago (that of the Saudi prince who had murdered his servant) and found something quite relevant to all of us in this article, especially as the idea that court reporters are the eyes and ears of the public has had a large presence in all our lectures. It's worth having a quick look if for no other reason than because it's by David Banks, who co-wrote McNae's.

The basic gist of the article is that a combination of 'churnalism' keeping journalists tied to their desks and the expected closure of 103 magistrate and 54 county courts is making it increasingly difficult for journalists to report on court proceedings - and what is the point of a verdict if the work of justice cannot be seen to be done? Perhaps this helps to explain why today's Independent had a disappointing total of zero court reports (rather disappointing for me when I was attempting to change my bad habits of reading the papers after lectures, and instead go into the classroom with a couple up-to-date court cases in my mind).

Descartes' Philosophy

The Renaissance was not a revolution of new thoughts, but rather a discovery of old ones. So it is Descartes' complete thrusting aside of old thought, both of medieval and antiquated times that mark the beginning of the modern era. His quote, cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am," helped give birth to individualistic philosophy as, at its heart, it seperates the individual from all other things - society, class and religion in particular - and places this individual at the centre of things.

I think it was confusion that led Descartes to his revelation: neither education nor experience gave him clarity on anything, as philosophies and cultures conflicted so radically from one place to another. "I think, therefore I am," is a universal truth, and the one thing we can be sure about. Descartes doubted everything, discarding everything that could be doubted, until he came to doubt his own existence. Descartes proves his existence with the phrase "I think, therefore I am," which states that if he did not exist, he would not be able to question his own existence, and so therefore, as he thinks to question his existence, he must exist.

Descartes was quite a revolutionary thinker. He broke free from the fixation philosophy up until then had had with the antiquated ideas of Aristotle and Plato and pushed forward this new philosophy which I think is still, to some extent, relevant in today's very individualistic society. That's not to say his philosophy was perfect, because there were certainly some very large holes in them. His proof of God's existence does not really fit in with the individualistic ideology and seems to me more like he was trying to reconcile his newfound ideas with his own beliefs and avoid the Church's wrath, and his ideas on the seperation of mind & body and humans & animals can be easily proved wrong with modern science.

His idea, that our God-given mind will never betray us whilst our body and senses may does not really stand when we cannot even prove that the 'mind' exists - to the best of our knowledge, thoughts are the result of reactions going on in the brain between two or more neurons. Where does body end and mind begin? Not to mention that our perceptions of such things vary between individuals. If I saw a cat from the corner of my eye, then turned to face it and discovered it was a bag instead, I would think that, as what I see is my brain's interpretation of visual data it receives from my eyes, my mind has deceived me, but Descartes would surely say that his eyes deceived him. He claims also that we are seperate from animals due to our minds, whilst they are 'automata' - biological machines and nothing more. But it's been proven that cats dream in their sleep, and observed that orangutans use primitive tools to hunt. Human consciousness and ingenuity isn't unique - just a step ahead of the rest of the animal kingdom.

Descartes had one brilliant idea, which is that "I think, therefore I am," and we can look to him as the very beginning of modern philosophy and outlooks on life, but I don't think he quites fits in modernity - though he doesn't fit in with the Renaissance (antiquated) philosophy either. I think he's somewhere in between the two ways of thought, and it's not until Locke and Newton introduce us into the philosophy of empiricism and the age of science that a relateably modern outlook can be found.

WINOL Bulletin

We watched the latest bulletin in our introduction to Journalism Now and asked to critique what we saw. So...

• I found the bar that rolls in with the interviewee's name and details to disappear too fast. I drifted away for one moment and completely missed the information - it was barely there for two seconds.
• The audio quality really deteriorated at the end of the piece on the international student ID problems at the part with the computer on the NUS site.
• The camera/audio cuts off one interviewed student ("I wouldn't know where to get the money from, I really wouldn't") mid-speech.
• This might sound very nit-picky but when the quote by Steve Brine came on-screen with the reporter reading it over. I can read the text in my head faster than she can read it out loud, and once I'd finished reading my attention wavered while I waited for the reporter to complete it. Perhaps it would've been better if you'd shown half the quote at a time, fading out the first half and bring in the second as the reporter reads it. It could keep our visual attention.
• I felt like the piece about the Queen was slightly out of place. I think it could been made more interesting had there been more information. Is there anything special or unique about the ship, besides being named after the Queen?
• The sports reporters didn't sound very enthusiastic about the matches they covered.
• It's 'Eastleigh' and 'Christchurch'.
• For some reason, and I don't know nearly enough about cameras and editing to be able to explain why, I found the cuts during the presenters' segments to be extremely jarring.

That's not to say I didn't find anything good or enjoy watching the bulletin - I thought the presenters had great voices and the news was relevant to me (except perhaps the one about the Queen) - but a critique's all about fixing what's wrong, so there you go.

Court Reporting

One of the most important elements with regards to court cases is the presumption of the accused's innocence until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. This concerns journalists a great deal, as to in any way broadcast a suggestion, whether on purpose or by an accident of bad phrasing, that one may not be innocent can lead to fines and libel cases. To even create the opportunity of implanting the jury with prejudice is in contempt of the court. This extends to even the smallest detail, and just because the layman listening to the news won't realise the world of difference between the terms 'accused' and 'defendant' does not mean journalists can be sloppy with the jargon; if that sloppiness reaches the public, the journalist may well incur a fine of up to £5000 - and probably damage their career too, I'd imagine.


Prejudice in a legal sense means to pass judgement before the accused has had a chance to prove their innocence in court. Reading McNae's, and from the lecture, I got a very strong sense of how terrible it would be for the jury to be prejudiced. After all - and correct me if I'm wrong to use the term here - the defendant's freedom rests in the decision of the jury. The jury themselves are just twelve regular adults of a working age picked at random from a list, and so it is doubly important that no prejudice is implanted into their heads. The average person is far more influenced by the things they hear than they might realise, and even the smallest gesture could implant some form of prejudice within their minds.


Since prejudice is such a big offence, a news report on court proceedings must have a purely factual basis - of course this is true for all news reports, but you certainly won't find any opinion columns in the paper on an ongoing court case. One example in recent news that stuck out to me, of an article that does its very best to maintain its impartiality, is Wednesday's Guardian article, "Saudi prince 'battered servant to death', court told". The article stresses the apparent homosexual relationship between the prince and his servant, and nearer to the end justifies the stress on their relationship by telling us that 'Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, told the jury that while a defendant's sexuality would normally be of "absolutely no relevance to a criminal trial", it was crucial in this case because there was a "sexual element to his mistreatment of Bandar."' Without this quote, the article could have appeared to imply that there was, as fact, a homosexual element, which the defendant denies and which has not been proven in court. In that case, it could have created prejudice within the jury, should they read the article and have the idea that the unproven sexual element is a fact implanted in their mind. It also could have been interpreted as malice by the defendant and his lawyers, had they not justified why the homosexual element is relevant.


Like prejudice, malice also has a definition in law, which in the case of journalism is deliberately telling a lie and broadcasting known falsities. This of course can result in a case of libel against the journalist or publisher of the particular article, which then can result in a large fine or prison time - not to mention hurt ones credibilities and lose a journalist their qualified privilege. The Daily Mirror was my tabloid of the day on Friday, and its article 'Beast raped victim twice in 3 months' exhibited to me how the press can perhaps be safely malicious. I don't mean to defend the rapist, but to call him a 'beast' in the headline and 'pervert' in text could most certainly be malicious. However, the article does not mention either the names of those involved or where it takes place  (under the law, rape victims and I think also accused rapists are granted full anonymity), and is so vague that were the accused to read it, they couldn't take the newspaper to court for libel (correct me if I've phrased that wrongly).


There's definitely more to be said on court reporting - the topics of public interest, presumption of innocence and recklessness all have big circles around them in my notes telling me I need to address them, but I feel like if I don't push at least this out now, I won't get around to the others topics later.


The blogging continues.

On the Renaissance and Machiavelli

It's hard to overstate the historical importance of the Renaissance. With the History of Western Philosophy and today's lecture being my first plunge into the era, I find myself becoming quickly aware of just how greatly it has defined our culture to this day. Even at the earliest age, we are taught history not from the time of Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror, but from the reign of the Tudors whose rule over England was contemporary to the Renaissance. Shakespeare and Marlowe wrote their plays not in the 15th century under the watchful eye of the Church but in the late 16th and early 17th century, when the theatre became enshrined in English culture. And it is not the gorgeous Bibles painted and penned over the course of lifetimes by the monks of medieval times we remember but the burgeoning humanism within the art of Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci and their contemporaries, as they throw out the highly stylised art that once declared the fear of God and sins of Man for a realistic approach that celebrates the wonder of human life. The most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, was painted in Florence in the early 1500s, at the very heart of the Italian Renaissance.


Of course, the rapidly growing independence from the church exhibited by the literature, theatre and art to come from and after the Renaissance could not have been achieved without a change in the way in which people thought. Machiavelli and his doctrine, which removes itself from any pretense of morality, is the perfect example of what was achieved in - and what could only have been achieved during - the Renaissance. It is the hostile political environment of the Renaissance, rich as it was in its immorality even within the highest ranks of the Church, that gave birth to his books, The Prince and Discourses. In them is a harsh ruthlessness with which he advises should be practised by those who are and those who wish to be in power. Machiavelli's frank doctrine does not bother to deal with the ideas of morality, the subjective nature of which not even the authority of the Church, powerful as it was in 1500, could hold complete control over. He looks instead at the truth of the matter: that the cunning and powerful prevail whilst the weak acquire nothing. Though the phrase 'survival of the fittest' would not enter the vocabulary of the public for several more centuries, Machiavelli's teachings are just that, though placed in a political context.


Today's politics are far less ruthless than in the days of Machiavelli, but his doctrine can still be seen applied to recent and current events. In today's lecture I was introduced to Machiavelli's quote "[Kill, but do not take their land], for men forget the death of their father more easily than the loss of inheritance." In 2009 we had the expenses scandal, which lost the public's respect for many MPs as we discovered how our tax money was being abused, and did nothing for Gordon Brown's regime. More recently, there has been controversy over Lord Ashcroft's tax evasion and the Queen's request for a poverty grant to help heat her palace. While the latter examples are not entirely relevant to the above quote, they bring to light the world in which the very rich live, a world so far detached from reality that the Queen should think herself qualified for a poverty grant. It is a world completely removed from our own, and when news such as this is reported, we are reminded of the gap between the middle class and the highest echelon of society, which relates directly to what Machiavelli's previous quote deals with: the idea that rulers should not be hated, though they should be feared. It is an unfortunately true fact, as rulers feared such as Stalin and Hitler flourished and, in some parts of Africa and the Middle East, continue to flourish, whilst those hated - unduly or not - should fail.


I find two of Machiavelli's ideas, that a leader should a) be feared but not hated and b) should not be loved, (as "fear is constant while love is fickle") are particularly relevant to the current political environment of America. In the run up to the election, Obama and his slogan of 'Change' inspired the public - not just American but all over of the world - that the reign of Bush was at an end, that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would draw to a close and that the depression we found ourselves in would be over in one swift moment. Obama was not just a presidential candidate, he was an idol. And just as Machiavelli warns that "love is fickle", Obama has lost a lot of favour since the momentum of his election died down and the public, disgruntled with reality, are reminded that he too is just a man. Since his coming into power, he has been under constant attack: Fox News, a Murdoch-powered propaganda machine, has done everything in its power to besmirch Obama's name. Almost two years on, still there appear people who attack his politics and personal life, and whilst sometimes this is an honest difference in views, other times it is nothing but thinly veiled racism. As the leader of America, the most powerful country today and one of the largest exporters of culture, Obama has a difficult job, and whether or not one thinks he's doing it well, the opposition and its mindless hate machine are so loud compared to his supporters that it seems increasingly unlikely that he will be re-elected in 2012. In this case, it is Obama and his party's weakness to reach out to the public that could well be their undoing.


Descartes is the other name to take centre stage in today's lecture, but I think I'll leave that for another day.

The Most Important Invention

Today we had our first taste of what lectures will be like in the coming week, and we seem to have broadly covered most of European history in those two hours and, to my slight disappointment, only very briefly touched on the golden age of the Islamic empire (as an Arab, and like all Arabs, I try to hide the mess of today behind wistful memories of our greatest heights).

The one thing that particularly interested me was the invention of the printing press. I imagine its introduction into society was as revolutionary in the 16th century as the Internet has been in the 21st. It's almost surreal to think of the utter stagnation Europe was in for some one thousand years when innovation is as fast as it is today, but I think it's also to the credit of civilisation that we've come as far as we have in the last five hundred years. We certainly would not be here today, tapping away in front of computers as much as we do, had the printing press not brought with it the want and need to be literate to those outside of monasteries and nobility.

We also touched on the philosophies of influential Renaissance thinkers, early journalists and scientists, all of which I've yet to make any permanent opinions on, and if 'History of Western Philosophy' is as difficult to take in as I've heard, I imagine it'll be quite a while before I have any opinion worth speaking of. Then again, this is only the very beginning.

Testing, testing, 1 2 3

Introducing...

Ali. I've just started out here at Winchester (like us all). Not much to say yet. I'm from Camberley, Surrey, like to read, write, watch movies, play videogames, procrastinate and work up a sweat tapping these words into my blog.

For now, I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say, but I'm sure I'll have something worth saying in the coming weeks. If I don't, I'll be in a bit of trouble...