There’s an article in The Guardian this morning (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/dec/19/how-tv-news-failed-to-keep-up-in-2016 ) about the way that TV news has become relegated to second place with an awful lot of people under fifty. The article bemoans the fact that if you’re one of the many getting your news from social media like Facebook and Twitter, you’re getting it in little personalized gobbets, unlike TV news, which offers a linear, factual account of things.
Well, the last few days should have disproved that theory in our little north-eastern nest. People may have used Twitter to comment unflatteringly on what they were viewing on TV, but it was TV that was the source. People with no particular interest in politics were transfixed by the sight of a portly Nolan encouraging Jonathan Bell to stick pins in a metaphorical Arlene Foster. It was a real water-cooler piece of TV, and was valued because it saw power being held to account.
But before we decide that The Guardian article has got it all wrong, remember that we in the NE Nest do things rather differently from people in Britain. Can you imagine a British politician telling Jeremy Paxman that God had told him what to do? Or kneeling down in a studio to pray? I’m not saying Nolan went gently with Bell, but he was accepting of the role of God in Bell’s life. You may think that was very silly or very fair, but you wouldn’t have seen it across the water.
There’s also the fact that this is a very conservative society. Everybody agrees that wealth is unevenly divided in this society but that’s not really reflected in the people we elect or the way TV talks about the world. I say that while being aware that the people who elected Donald Trump or voted for Brexit weren’t exactly progressive thinkers either.
Everybody agrees that the news that comes to us via social media is bitty and often warped. But we’d do well to remember that the news that comes through the BBC, that bastion of even-handedness, is framed and shaped by people with particular loyalties also. Take the notion of even-handedness, for example. Do you think the BBC is going to give a representative of ISIS, for example, equal air time with a government Minister? Do you think BBC News (or RTÉ News) doesn’t come framed by the values of the powers-that-be? The BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation – it’s a testament to the success of the framing that we only occasionally remember the British bit. Like the BBC, RTÉ is dependent on the government of the day for a large part of its budget. Do you think they’re going to bite the hand that feeds them? Certainly not – except they can see the owner of a new and more open hand about to replace the present lot.
As I child, I used marvel at the fact that Radio Eireann always had just fifteen minutes of news. Surely some days there must be less news or more news in the world than fifteen minutes’ worth? But no – here’s your fifteen minutes-worth, nothing else to see or hear, move along please.
The social media have provided one great boon: an opportunity for people to think beyond the limits set by the big news organisations. But let’s not kid ourselves. The social media are filtered through minds that have been shaped by the assumptions of the society, and done in a way so we scarcely notice anyone has been fiddling with our thinking.
News is rarely going to be even handed by those who broadcast it, especially when it comes to a society like ours. Just compare the Irish News with The Newsletter and you’ll see what I mean. Most people just want to know the facts about a situation but that’s very difficult to get, especially when there is people who want to hide or distort the truth.
The main thing I like about social media is that everyone has a voice and can give information/opinions to potentially millions of people worldwide. Before social media, the only way to have done that is if you appeared on TV or did a Radio Broadcast but that option was only open to a tiny fraction of people.
Social media is actually a big worry for the media and many Governments, it means their spin on the news isn’t the only one out there…..
your right about governments trying to block and spin stories,merkel is on now saying dont jump to conclusions about the driver of the artic lorry that ploughed through the xmas market in berlin killing 12 innocent men women and children going about their xmas shopping.police have confirmed a refugee let into the country in january is the driver yet their still trying to spin a yarn through the news.
The attack in Berlin was terrible Billy, just like the ones in France earlier this year and last year. Of course atrocities like this are committed on an almost daily basis in the Middle East.
The immigration policies of the West truly are insane. Its not being bigoted, its not being against “progress” (what does that even mean, anyhow?), its simply stating the truth. Merkel is on her way out just as surely as Obama is. Indeed it was the arrogance/ignorance of western governments to the genuine concerns from people in ref to Immigration/multiculturalism that has led to Trump being elected US President and Brexit too.
What next? Well I’d put my last pretty penny on Le Penn getting into power in France. An Anti-EU government in Italy is almost a certainty. The Far Right came close to getting elected in Austria last month. People have had enough.
I use to be Pro-EU but they are going crazy with the migrant and open borders policies. A European Union of just similar European States (like Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, etc) who share extremely similar values would work. What they’re doing now is going to crash the EU, both economically and socially. It’ll either fall apart completely or, as David McWilliams thinks, the EU will be a smaller Union with debt ridden countries like Greece, Portugal, etc kicked out.
I think we are all instinctively drawn here to material that suits our own mental landscape.It is why you might quote a “Guardian ” article instead of one from the “Daily Mail” ,for example. Years ago somewhere, you maybe became aware that the Guardian was the natural home of George Orwell and a socialist style of writing and you might have been attracted to the type of critical left-wing writing that you associated with that publication. It suited your disposition more when you compared it with something you read in another more conservative newspaper .Later it would not be lost on you as to who ultimately owned which newspaper and therefore whose real voice was speaking through it. You’d become aware of a political slant which you would agree or disagree with. That’s how a personality forms. It’s much the same with music . There’ll be something in the words of the songs of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen that speaks to you and mightn’t speak to someone who enjoys something with more flash but less substance…or something smooth and non-critical such as a bland song sung by Daniel O’Donnell. We tend to drift where our personality leanings take us .
Of course the thing to think about is what that “15 minutes ” of news really means.It means that yesterday we had the Executive Circus ,alone and that was the entire focus “story”. Nothing else obviously happened within those twenty four hours at all. If it did , nobody was reporting that story on our closed airwaves . In fact, somewhere way out on the Norneverland sidelines ….beyond the plexiglass bubble…..the Russian ambassador was murdered in Ankara by a police officer. Big news? Hardly!
It is a fact though ,that the days of the newspaper as printed press is numbered . The Guardian is only too aware of that fact .in some respects they have been caught short by the speed of web technology and never thought that it would be a threat so soon and that a generation would stop buying newpapers.A friend of mine who works as a freelance journalist for the Guardian and the Observer recently told me that part of him regretted remaining freelance and not pushing for a staff job. The Guardian has now recently culled about half of its extensive staff with substantial cash and pension pay-offs(maybe 300 odd of them). Freelancers are basically self-employed journalists who maybe make more in the moment and are free, but have not the same benefits. The Guardian regrets not setting up a subscription readers’service sooner.They were late seeing the changes coming .There’s ageneration now which expects to get its news for free , just as they expect to download films and music on the QT.
Jude I would be in agreement with you about the BBC and the media being slanted towards conformity to the status quo. The internet has opened us up to other viewpoints without this conformist slant but the danger in that is that sources online do not tend to be accountable like the BBC for instance.
A case in point is the events unfolding in Syria and Aleppo. We are given the version which paints some of these subversives as the good guys and that the existing Syrian regime as the tyrannical bad guys when the truth is much more elusive. We are not allowed to know about direct western intervention to destabilise the country we are not allowed to know what the majority of the Syrian population living in Syria think of events.
It was very reassuring and perhaps naïve that the public placed a huge amount of trust in the BBC for news coverage because it has always been the case that the British Security Services always had a direct input at the top of the Corporation to influence media output. Despite this I remember an era of ground breaking investigative journalistic programs which unearthed government connivance in illegal and unethical activities.
I believe many people have become very cynical with news coverage because they have witnessed direct BBC bias in relation to stories such as Israel/Palestine, Scottish Independence referendum, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership smears, Anti- EU and Brexit. They have now also become aware of recently unearthed historical bias in relation to things like the Hillsborough Disaster and the events at Orgreave and the miners’ strike.
It also damages faith in the convention newsmedia when you see the Government use its influence to attack alternative news sources such as Russia Today.
To sum up we are now in a position where we are now dubious of all news where we were not direct witnesses and that is because news organisations like the BBC refused to uphold journalist principals of behaving in an unbiased fashion.
Oh, boy ! – what a storehouse of associations that particular cúpla focal can accommodate, Esteemed Blogmeister.
Fifty years and two days ago, on December 18, 1966 to be pedantic, Tara Browne (21) crashed his fast car in Earls Court on the last day of his brief life. That of course gave rise to the first line of the Beatles song, A Day in the Life. And is also used as the title in a recently published biography of the heir to the Guinness goodness by Paul Howard.
And, ar ndóigh, to the title of your blog today , EB.
Less well known is the tribute composed by Sean O Riada.
John Lennon, had one of his idols, Buddy Holly, on his subconscious, when he penned that first line:
-I read the news today, oh, boy.
Buddy Holly recorded this song (by Sonny West) with the Crickets (which name spawned the Beatles) in the Norman Petty Record Studio in Clovis, New Mexico. Some years ago , after making the trek from that storied studio to Music City, USA by Greyhound Bus one made ones’ logical way up to Oh, Boy record company in Music Square, Nashville, Tn.
This is the record company founded by the preternatural poet , John Prine,. Alas, the lad wasn’t in. Married to a girl from Donegal that genuine genius also has a house in Kinvara, County Galway. In 2004 John Prine recorded ‘Oh, boy’ with the Crickets.
Tara Browne’s older bro, Garech de Brúin founded, in tandem with John Montague, (also in the wrong kind of news of late, oh, boy) and that might well explain the genesis of the Sean O Riada composition. The most traditional group on the Claddagh books, of course, purloined their title from a John Montague collection of short stories:
-Death of a Chieftain.
Another artist on the Claddagh roster was Tommy Potts, the Paganini of Na Daoine Traidisúnta. Seán Keane, the Tradivarius of the Chieftains, was born on Errigal Road, Drimnagh just a long bow / short walk away from Chez Potts on Balfe Road, Walkinstown, Dublin 12..
Thought the same road is called after the great musician, whose name must be near the very top of the alphabet of Irish composers, Michael William Balfe, the marble halls with vassals and serfs, are difficult to see on Balfe Road.
There is a story (revealing but nonetheless true) told of the afternoon Garech de Bruin phoned Tommy Potts at home.
-Tommy, a chara, I’ve got two fiddle players up here in Luggala dying to hear you play in person.
-You know where to find me.
-But I’ll send down a taxi to ferry you here and back.
-If they want to hear me, they know where to get me.
Sadly, Yehudi Menuhin and Stefan Grapelli (for it was they !) never did get to hear Tommy P play in the flesh, as it were.
All of which brings us sorta round to the topic du jour: the Pain in the Neck Main Stream Media and the largely anti-social Social Media.
Tara Browne, at the time of his abrupt death, was in the process of a custody proceedings over his two sons with his estranged wife. His departure to Luggala in the Wicklow Mountains with his sons for a holiday earlier that year had brought domestic matters to a judicial head.
Curiously, the great songster John Prine once penned a song called ‘Dual Custody’, another of his complex musical jobs which simply throbs with genius..
That’s my toaster over there.
It was mine before we married
I bought it fair and square
And that’s my purple Persian oriental
Polyester continental rug on the floor
Pots and pans and ugly dishes
One old dog and 2 gold fishes,
Broken dreams and shattered wishes,
A lucky horseshoe hanging above the door
What was that for?
Sweet memories you and me
Dual custody
Dual custody
The dissemination of the news, oh boy, at this moment in time, going forward, is in the, erm, Dual Custody of the Main Stream Media (see above, under Pain in the Neck) and the anti-social Social Media. (see also above).
A measure of just how necessary Social Media has to be can be gauged by just how good the Main Stream Media have become at badmouthing it.
They must be stewing something right.
what can I say oh Mighty Perk….you’ve joined every available dot…”It’s the little things you say and do etc”……as the bard once emoted….
We musn’t oughter continue to throw bouquets at each other, Protean PK,,or to please our EB too much.
Tongues will only begin to wag and folk might even begin to – stalk.
Better be discreet, a chara, like, f’rinstance, sending each other checks in the post.
Now, one has always fancied a pair of those check pants first popularised by B. Bunter but later commandeered by overweight and underhand, i.e., overhandicapped golf bandits in the Country Club golf course on the southern outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa.
Lemme know your pref.
Nollaig sona !
The virtual checks are in the post, Mighty Perk .I’ve always had a hankering for a hand-made fedora with a slightly rolled brim …get to it tootsweet or tout de suite as they say down Mexico way…… and very many seasonal greetings to you and yours!!!
Spot on Jude, this is most certainly not a post-media era.