Saturday 9 July 2011

Some advice for journalists in the post-News of the World world

Some advice to journalists in the post-News of the World world; To Hack or not to Hack



Dear Journalists,

so, phone-hacking, eh? News of the World, huh? Well, that all blew up in their faces a bit. Or someone's faces anyway, I gather the actual culprits had already left (of course they had, of course). But, look, there are lessons to be learned here – just listen to Ed Miliband bang on about the lessons for everyone to learn when he was on Newsnight on Friday. And if Miliband Jnr's spotted them...

Where journalists went wrong here was in their choice of target (aside from the phone-hacking thing being illegal at the best of times). I mean, we hardly cared about an actor or Deputy Prime Minister getting hacked, but you go for a missing schoolgirl's phone and the nation's up in arms. It may be a cliché, but we do seem to love an underdog in this country. Target the powerful and we'll let you off. Target the vulnerable and we'll bite your hand off...or at least write strongly worded letters to rival newspapers.

Thing is, there are three types of people whose stories sell newspapers (and yep, because newspapers – especially tabloids – are driven by what we'll pay to read, it's kind of the public's fault too, a bit). I turn to our old friend William Shakespeare to explain them.

“Some are born to publicity. Some achieve publicity, and some have publicity thrust upon them.”


To take that one at a time...

“Some are born to publicity”
For example, the Royal Family. It's not their fault (honest) and they can't help it (really); if your mum is the head of state, your every move will be of interest to someone. These people have no choice about the public spotlight, and we can only hope that through a lifetime's exposure to it, they'll learn to handle it (there's still time for Prince Philip, fingers crossed).
These people probably have stories worth telling, so go ahead and get them (legally), but tread carefully; they are influential and know powerful people...not for nothing has that family been 'in charge' for centuries.

“Some achieve publicity”
For example, actors or politicians. It is very much their fault that they're in the limelight; they've sought it. They're either performers (of some kind or another) who've actively pursued public interest for the sake of their careers, or they're politicians who've gone out of their way to get noticed and elected to public office. Once in public office or on stage/screen/radio/print, they are of course interesting to the public.
Reporting stories about those in public may well serve the public good, and those should be encouraged. If you've a story about a celebrity, great, go for it, they'll probably help you out because they think any publicity is good publicity (unless they try to gag you, in which case you know you're into something).

“Some have publicity thrust upon them”
For example, people caught up in national tragedies, disasters or victims of crime. These are people like the families bereaved after the July 7th terror attacks. They've got a story, certainly, but if they don't want to tell it you, tough. They haven't gone looking for publicity, it's come to find them (along with something horrible in their lives), and the last thing they need is some journalist poking around their inboxes.
Stories about these people are fair enough, but don't be insensitive about them.

Thing is, the British public – as journalists can't have failed to notice over the last few years – always need a hate figure, some group of people to target all our latent anger and aggression at. Maybe it's because we're so reserved and/or apathetic most of the time and we need to vent a bit. Not so long ago, it was bankers for screwing up the economy. Before that it was MPs for...well, various things – cash for honours, fiddling their expenses, generally getting things wrong etc etc.

This week, it's your turn. Take it on the chin. Have a look at Shakespeare's contribution above, then go and dig some dirt on people worth doing it over. Or find another hate figure...we'll lap up a good hate figure.

Tour de France 2011 Stage Eight

Friday 8 July 2011

2011 Tour De France Stage Seven

Thursday 7 July 2011

Incendies [film review]

There are two stories running through Denis Villeneuve's award-winning French-Canadian film, Incendies. But, as is pointed out in a slightly strained mathematical analogy, one plus one sometimes equals one.

Based on a earlier play, Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies takes its central characters, twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormaeux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette), from Canada to Lebanon, following a quest set by their mother's Will in 2009. She, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal - also seen in the BBC's Occupation) has insisted her grave remains unmarked until they find the father and brother whose existence they've only just discovered.

Meanwhile – as it were – the young Nawal, in 1970s Lebanon, is living through the upheaval and religious warfare rampant in the Middle East. Her brother kills her lover, before her newborn son is taken away for adoption. Azabal gives us a spirited heroine, contrasting with the shellshocked woman we've already seen her become in contemporary Canada at the shattering moment when those two stories collide. It's a powerful and moving story of ugly actions across a divided nation. Seriously, this is a period of history well worth reading up on in light of Incendies.

The twins uncover more and more of their mother's story, and inevitably discover more about their own origins than they're comfortable with. There's a human drive for knowledge, a curiosity in the face of a conundrum which keeps pushing the twins inexorably onwards. They don't know it, but it's a quest for self-knowledge as much as it is a quest for their father and brother. The tight plotting and human thirst for knowledge in Incendies wouldn't be out of place in a Greek tragedy, and here it lends Incendies a throbbing ache in its heart; humans can be so curious they'll find things they don't want to know.

In fact, there's definitely something Oedipal about that missing brother, taken as he is just after having his ankle tattooed. The tattoo is one marker allowing us to follow his life in snapshots through the same war that his mother survives. It's a war that hardens him, and Incendies doesn't shy away from the acts of brutality committed, though always leaving just enough unseen and unsaid for the blanks to be filled in. That said, the order of events is masterfully handled in a way to make Greek tragedians spin in their graves, but to deliver a full-on shock to the modern audience.

A film that starts as powerfully as Incendies could build to something angry, something bereft of hope. The first five minutes leave the viewer fixed firmly in the gaze of a young boy (with a tattooed ankle) whose hair is being shaved by soldiers conscripting an orphanage. His eyes appeal for outside help even while defiance shines from them – how like his mother, later imprisoned and raped by the militia.


But what finally comes out of Incendies is forgiveness and the unbreakable love of family. Incendies teaches us that humanity can somehow overcome the ugliness it creates. Or at least that a family may do so.