Tamil refugee who was accused of faking his hunger strike

It's worth watching last weeks BBC One program See you in Court on BBC Iplayer here

 

It follows A young Tamil refugee fights for his reputation after the Daily Mail and The Sun claimed he faked his lengthy hunger strike by eating burgers. This led to death threats, he went to court to clear his name.

 

It's just another example of newspaper lies.

 

See the Tamil News for more info http://www.uktamilnews.com/index.php/archives/32005

Newspapers don't always tell the truth

Is it not about time the papers were forced to make clearer apologies for telling lies?

 

Listening to BBC This Weeks discussion on law suits and super injunctions it seems amazing that newspapers get away with so much. For example on the eve of the 1992 election, Neil Kinnock had to spend his evening trying to stop a story on him using private healthcare, when he never did. This story was stopped, but if it was published you could imagine Labour unfairly performing even worse at the polls, even thought the story was untrue.

 

Many people believe what they read on the day, and when papers print an apology it's normally so small and deep within the paper that you won't see it is often less relevant.

 

So is it not about time newspapers had to print apologies in the same place as their original story and in the same size font!

Smears reinforce a false believe

The Guardian on Saturday has an interesting little article on the power of election smears.

This is in light of the smears by papers on their championed political party rivals such as the Daily Mail's Nazis smear on Nick Clegg. The article examines how much damage a smear actually does.

According to studies they found that if a dodgy fact fits with your prejudices then you will believe it and a correction only reinforces your prejudices rather than put them right. So this means that it could persuade people who were moving in a different voting direction back to their original vote.

I also believe as some papers appear to, that if you do enough smearing and find enough buttons to press that newspapers can stop people from voting for the rival party. The danger in this negative tactic of manipulating stories could be to stop a voter from voting for anyone including the party the paper supports.

So it would appear that smears do reinforce a false believe. Good job papers become less influential with time and the growth in information technology.

Todays link is to Sean Haffey a conservative Councillor in Hart District who asks a challenge, if that came about, which three policies would you like to see the new government implement? I will blog mine later this week.

England Pay Per View Attempted Outcry!

Now this is not the normal place for a Blog on this subject but I think this is important to many as football is expensive enough already.

The article here covers the story well including a few extra details not mentioned here.

http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2009/10/england_ukraine_newspapers_pay_per_view.php

So why is this not being reported as a bad thing in the national press? Well is it because many papers are showing the game on there websites and earning money from it? Maybe it’s just too soon, but I’m not sure the average football fan is not happy about the game being internet only. Surely it is wrong to have an important national sport on an internet pay-per-view only site.

I believed that many newspapers considered football to be sacred like many of there readers do. I want to see the newspapers rise to the challenge of reporting just how unfair this is on us, the put upon football fans.

Why are England qualifiers not protected from these crazy deals. I understand that the game would have delayed the showing of X-factor and Strictly Come Dancing if it was on terrestrial TV and also England have qualified so this could be a one off. But is it? Does this not set a precedence? Surely Channel 5 could of had this game.

Not only is this a very bad enough having to watch a pay per view match, but what about the following problems.

1. You have to pay £4.99 offer available until Thursday 8th October. Price increases to £11.99 on match day.

2. The picture will be of a much worse quality.

3. Most will have to use a small PC screen or laptop screen to watch it.

4. Is it not possible that it could crash, hence the reason for a limit of 1 million viewers. But I'm sure this is still possible.

5. The sound is also worse on the internet.

6. There are still plenty of people out there with low quality broadband and still others with no computer or internet.

7. Pubs won’t be showing the game, well ok some pubs could setup a laptop to a screen (and not to all of their pub TV screens I suspect) but how the picture will look even worse on a big pub screen.

8 Would your family crowd around a laptop?


I just wondered where the out cry is, I for one would like to know.

I should point out that these game are being show at Odeon cinemas, perhaps that is the best way to see it, although its still £8 at my local cinema and that’s not even so local (Basingstoke from Bracknell) and there be no beer on.

Odeons web site for the games is here http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/film_info/m12403

And one last point to note, Com On England!!

Is It Democratic‏ for Newspapers to Take Sides?

How unfair it is to have a newspaper lend so much support behind a political party. The Sun as we all know can get very nasty turning people into turnips etc. Now I know the Sun is popular, with over 3million papers sold daily, I like the paper much more than say the Daily Mail, the Mirror or the Daily Express. But I have never liked the total all out go and get them attitude they have to politics when it takes sides.

Sky which is owned by one of Rupert Murdoch's companies seems much fairer in its reporting, so why should a newspaper be so different. Sky, ITV, Channel 4 all appear give a fairer view when compared to the papers and US TV news. So what happens if the Tories from now on do make some news worthy gaff on a policy which the Sun readers would of wanted to know about? Do the party focused press report it? Do they stick a turnip on Cameron's head, I bet they don't. It's just not cricket is it.

Now I know what you the reader may be thinking. Yeah well this guys a Lib Dem and they have no support in the press, so of course he doesn't like it? Well ok yes there is no Lib Dem support or infact support for any other party apart from the big two and yes I don't like it. But I also genuinely think that taking such strong sides in an election is not democratic and does skew the result.

What do you think about our newspapers taking such strong sides in the political arena?