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Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
He says he never even suspected that people like Murdoch were trying to influence government policy or that hacks were paying for information; most of us were well aware (and actually don't think there is anything wrong with it).
But such naivety is understandable; I never in a million years thought police were only interested in convictions and not in finding the truth. Until it happened to me.
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
Brilliant - Jon Snow on Associated Newspapers - and very brave; the Mail is far worse than any News International paper has ever been but also far better (which is why they have gotten away with it).
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
We find it shocking (if not surpising) that well educated middle-class media insiders like Jon & Jonathan lack(ed) streetwise cynicism during the entire bent Brit post-Suez/pro-satire 'Private Eye' era - ongoing.
Did they learn nothing from 'The Eye' (not the Big-Wheel EyeSore)? Plus numerous Brit Film & TV-classics "Two Way Stretch", "The Thin Blue Line"/aka "Fat Black Lie", "Porridge", and not forgetting "Carry On Constable" etc ad nauseum.
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
You've GOT to stop writing like this - asides about "Eye-Sore"s simply render your posts incomprehensible (and therefore deleted).
So I interpret your post to mean you're surprised Jon and I, in different ways, failed to see the encroaching corruption and the answer is - yes, we're surprised too; our only excuse is that we tended to assume entertainment was rightly caricature and solid proof was of specific and limited cases, not indicative of general malaise... until it happened to me.
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
OKAY JAYKAY.
Less sub-PrivatEyeSores & Pythonesque/Ministry Of Silly Thoughts F-U-N contortions.
But surely 'Rigged Charts' & 'Framed Micks'/Brum-6/NotGuiltyford-4 & many more, must have been corruption clues to U & Jon back in the daze ?
As truly innocent 'Mick'/Paddy Hill rightly said in '91 outside the Old BullshitBailey post-his Appeal Court release after 16 1/2 years in G rim B rit-clink: "..'JUSTICE ?' In there they can't even spell the word, let alone dispense it!"
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
Yes but I think any proprietor worth his salt will try to influence government; it's up to politicians to know what not to do.
If I was Murdoch I'd try to persuade government to make it law that everyone must buy the Times. And government should say "in your fucking dreams".
Likewise, if I were a hack I'd try anything legal to squeeze info out of those who know. Who should reply "my lips are sealed".
Leveson should be concentrating not on who paid, but who took the money - or utilised media contacts for corrupt behaviour.
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
Not to 'Labour' a still missing, main and painful point.
In Anglophone fiction alone, are cautionary tales from Waugh/"Scoop", Welles/"Citizen Kane", Schulberg/"A Face In The Crowd", Lehman/"Sweet Smell Of Success", Chayefsky/"Network". Plus well documented damning HARD FACTS on Hurst/Harmsworth/Aitken/Maxwell/Murdoch et al.
It's quite clear that just 4-years in duly elected Govt can't ever democratically compete with continuous decades-ongoing unelected REAL power for populist profit, deploying an undemocratic unstated mantra:" RULE THE MEDIA-RULE THE MINDS ".
If any duly elected, supposed 'Free Speech' Anglophone US/UK/OZ Premier ever had the guts to restrain that unelected raw power (for Mob Rule ratings, profit & prurience NOT in the 'public-interest') then they'd be OUT in short time - also FACTually well documented.
The closest any postwar Brit P.M. came was circa '69 'Darlin' Harold Wilson's press-media amnesty when he rightly stated, "You stop lying about us, and we'll stop telling the truth about you!" Came June 1970 and in came Tory Right Wing sailorman/muso 'wet' Ted Heath ruling the waves for a while, but never the vital unelected Airwaves & Wet Ink.
The significant post-rationing/1955-2014 UK 59 years of right-wing UK media bias is in the stats.
TORY 35yrs/59%; LAB 11yrs/18%, NEW LAB(Old Tory)13 yrs/22%. Right-Wing 'NEW LAB/Old Tory', came after OZ-'95 when Mafiosa Rupe made his puppets Blair & Brown 'an offer they couldn't refuse' "Stay 'Right' and U stay in for a while. Return 'Left' and Ur right out for another 2-decades!" So one COULD say in all 59 yrs/1955-2014 Right Wing/Tory-New Lab 48yrs/81%, TRUE Lab 11 yrs/19%. (For the current ConDem axis of multi-millionaires read 'TORY'.)
The only future modern role-model that might work for us, is to (unlikely) adopt the less-adversarial liberal European inquisitorial systems of Press-Media, Policing and Justice where ALL facts, public figures, elected and unelected powers INCLUDING highly-paid/overpaid devious Press-Media manipulators are open to constant public scrutiny.
Not perfect but less corrupt, whatever the self-serving Europhobe SUN says/lies about Brussels.
Then we plebs, plus archaic, fact-hiding, heirarchical Anglos might democratically grow up, throw up, own up, pay up, and shut-the-fuck-up.
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
Fletch nearly nailed it.
Some badly blurred, very basic clear lines need to be redrawn on the Brit press-media supposed ‘fairplay’ field; if fairplay is what Brits want.
Surely press-media proprietors for fair profit (including prospective prop. JK) in declared, greater-or-lesser 'Democracies' should at least need to state when their product is aspiringly objective well-informed/balanced 'NEWS', or sloppily subjective ill-informed/biased 'VIEWS'. True there’s no absolute definitive version of anything but not to even try is to fail, and brings the emotional slavery of mere opinion with distorting-not-reporting:‘ViewsNight’, ‘Views At Ten’, ‘Views Of The World’, .
Even Mob-Rule Rupe's Fox News(’Fixed NewZac’) dominating U.S. cable-news actually declares "Fair & Balanced" tho the old line occurs, “Tell One, Tell A Biggun”. Current devious press-media U.S. (ever leaders & bleeders) market trends for uneducated Mob Rule Right Wing ratings-and-profit followed a 1987 Reagan repeal of the FCC/Fairness Doctrine, which had required stations to provide air time for responses to controversial views. By the late-1980s stations were airing Oprah, and then Springer Mob Rule Zoo-TV plus editorial opinions without presenting opposing views, and Daniel Henninger wrote in the pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal, "Ronald Reagan tore down this wall ... and Rush Limbaugh was the first to proclaim himself liberated from the ‘East Germany’ of liberal media domination."
Now presenting brazen ‘Point-Of-View Programming’, particularly on (sorry ‘bout this) no-fun-daMENTAL Religious Right Wing Rant Radio the loudest rent-a-gob wins the Mob Rule rant, and the ratings. Limbaugh on radio is among the highest paid in U.S. media, signing a $38Million p.a. 2008 - 2016 contract; guaRANTeed nearly half a billion dollars from manufactured, mass-produced ignorance.
None of this insult-to-intelligence, loud overpaid, overbearing bear-pit/schoolyard confusion exists in educated secular modern European, Murdoch-free, mainstream media. Where school leavers are fluent in two or more languages always including English, if slightly Americanized by ubiquitous TV Dramas and Pop Music.
To close this rant, add to Fletch’s press-media fiction warning-list, the following (also non-exhaustive) for required Brit school-leavers’ and Anglo adults’ education/infotainment reading or viewing. Orwell/”1984”, Bradbury/“Fahrenheit 451”, King-de Souza/“The Running Man”.
Re:Jon Snow on Leveson - extraordinary naivety 13 Years ago
80% of the British press is with 5 or 6 multi billionaires. There isn't a 'free press' in this country and those who say that there is are either naive or just corrupt.
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