An English PEN commentary on the idea that social media could be temporarily shut down in response to the #UKriots. We wrote lots of tweets on the issue, collected here.
Tag: Diary (Page 5 of 30)
‘Son of Murdoch’ by ssoosay on Flickr
The phone hacking scandal is becoming increasingly confusing. During the debate on the issue today, I confess I became utterly lost by Ed Miliband’s long explanation of the relationships and personalities involved. David Cameron was able to use phrases like “conspiracy theory” and “tissue of intruige” which brand the scandal as a Westminster fabrication. John Rentoul is right to say that Cameron’s critics need much simpler language to explain the problem with the Prime Minister’s judgement and relationships.
Labour’s tactic is to doggedly pursue the ‘smoking gun’ of lore: the archived e-mail or the scribbled note that proves that Cameron knew more, and knew it earlier. At yesterday’s select committee hearings, the questions were pitched to discover similar key facts that could skewer Murdochs R and J.
This is risky in both cases, because such evidence may never emerge. It is also counter-productive, because on the meantime, both the politicians and media barons get to punt the difficult questions with “let’s wait until the inquiry” or “I don’t want to jeapordise the criminal investigation”.
A narrow fixation on evidence that could further damage the Prime Minister, or ruin Rebakah Brooks, means that the wider issue – polical, police and corporate corruption – is left to fallow. Rupert Murdoch presided over the expansion of a corporate culture in which the phone-hacking of murder victims and other obscenities were the inevitable end result. Whatever he knew and whenever he was told, he is at fault, he is to blame. Meanwhile, David Cameron’s first act as Prime Minister was to employ someone who he knew had come straight from that morally barren Hades. There may not be a smoking gun, but you can almost see the steam coming off this scandal.
Jalena Lecic, whos photos were stolen and posted on the ‘Gay Girl In Damascus’ site
Angela Philips of Goldsmiths College, at last Friday’s POLIS conference:
A Major skill for journalists is to learn how to authenticate sources
Or, words to that effect! I made the note on twitter and therefore may have paraphrased. To fully authenticate the quote readers will have to watch the video of the session when it becomes available.
This quote stuck out, because twice in two weeks, I’ve been quick to share information online which has then been questioned and discredited.
The first was the damning testimony of an “executive of Sony Music UK” who described how Simon Cowell grooms and sexualises young performers, in his quest to find a British Justin Beiber.
Ronan was privately auditioned by SYCO scouts on two more occasions and, as is usual practice on BGT, he was “invited” to audition for the show as a “preferred” contestant. At the same time, Ronan and his parents were “required” to enter into a contract with SYCO. Like all SYCO contracts, it is heavily weighted in favour of the label and are notoriously bad, even in the cut-throat world of the music industry. Simon effectively signed Ronan for life and he’s got little or no chance of ever getting out of it…unless Simon decides to terminate.
Now the improbable perfection of little Ronan Parke has always made me feel uneasy, so I was quick to share the story on my Facebook page. However, the original post quickly disappeared from the website where it was posted and Simon Cowell issued such a strong denial over matters of fact that I felt it rendered the accusatory, anonymous post unreliable. The following day, James Ward posted an excellent analysis of how the attack was propagated by a twitter account @ukLegion, which has also now disappeared from Twitter. I shared James’ link on Facebook too.
Follow @ukLegion
@ukLegion
#include damage.h
@ukLegion#include damage.h
An industry insider at #BGT spills his guts on how this year has been totally stiched up for Ronan Parke to win http://justpaste.it/c8g
Earlier this week, reports emerged of the abduction of a Syrian blogger in Damascus. I duly tweeted out the links on the @englishpen feed, because that is precisely the sort of information we are supposed to share. However, by Thursday it emerged that no-one can be found who has actually physically met the blogger, Amina Abdallah Arraf. It appears the photos posted on her site are fake, but it is not clear whether the entire thing is an elaborate hoax, or whether she has cleverly covered her tracks by ensuring that if no-one has met her, no-one can unwittingly betray her. I was reminded of the Ali Abduleman disappearance in Bahrain in March – I am still not clear whether he was abducted by security personnel, or has simply gone into hiding.
I have several things to say about this. The first is that linking to hoax information is clearly embarrassing, no two ways about it. Here’s my worst example, although to be fair it was reminiscent of a real story. As the Literally Unbelievable blog shows with its comments on The Onion articles, other people are much more gullible than I.
The second thing is to say that, nevertheless, the internet can work as a sort of fact-check engine. The act of sharing a link does not and should not imply complete endorsement. In the case of the SyCo smear I, at least, was quick to share the original article and the rebuttals. In this example, one could say that the act of posting/sharing is also an act of verification. When you publicise some text, does it stand up to scrutiny? If not, you have learned a fact about the world, which you also publish. This method is something that bloggers understand innately. However, in formal journalistic and legal circles such a practice would still be lumped in with ‘publish and be damned’ as irresponsible journalism. But it is more akin to open-source fact-checking.
I will also say that internet publishing has the huge advantage over print in that it allows corrections to the original article. In the case of Amina Abdallah Arraf, the three highly reputable news organisations I linked to (Al Jazeera, the New York Times and the Washington Post) were all able to correct the original article. This, I think, lessens the possibility of misinformation spreading.
Finally, this issue puts me in the mind of Ste Curran’s Monica, a play about a fantastic and witty online friend who turns out not to be real.
Both my regular readers will remember I sometimes post short pieces of creative writing on the site. The last two have featured a blogging sleuth, Ebeneezer. I have another Ebeneezer story in the works, based on the Infininte Monkey theorem and this cartoon from XKCD.
The story begins by talking about earthquakes and has a sizeable portion of it devoted to a bombing in Jerusalem. So, given events in Japan and Israel, one might think that now is either the most appropriate, or least appropriate time to post it.
This is an academic question, however, as the story isn’t finished, and has not been ever since I started typing it about five years ago. This horrible thought in turn makes me realise just how many creative and personal projects I have started but failed to finish. They include:
- A foray into print-on-demand publishing
- A set of short diary pieces about a particularly torrid 2010
- An experimental detective story in the style of Geoff Ryman’s 253
- A website to shill my low-cost design services to strapped-for-cash charities
- And a masterful Blurb project of my 2008 holiday to Morocco, done in the style of a French coffee-table photo-book.
And none of these take into account the work-centred To Do lists I have set up on Vo02Do, Remember the Milk and Wunderlist.
All this makes me acutely aware of the fact that Dr Belbin would call me a Plant or Resource Investigator, not a Completer Finisher. Let’s hope that this post motivates me to finish some of the things I’ve started.