Posts Tagged ‘newspapers’

The Truth is the 25th novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. It follows the adventures of William de Worde as he accidentally starts the first newspaper, The Ankh-Morpork Times.

Without a doubt, it has been my favourite novel so far. The pioneering spirit of free enterprise, the passion for reporting the news to the public and the almost-tangible smell of Ankh-Morpock that emanates from the pages makes for a powerful, if odorous, combination.

I do wonder as to what the sitcom element comes into play in making the stories enjoyable. In a sitcom, you get to know the characters and that is what makes the situations so funny (not because the situation itself is inherently hilarious on its own). Similarly, it could be that the earlier novels are just as good as the later ones, and if you read them the other way round, you would enjoy the earlier ones more. Or maybe not. Or maybe it is a combination of both.

Recently, The Sun broke ranks and published naked photos of Price Harry in Las Vegas.

The Sun claimed that the pictures are in the public domain, so they might as well print them. Which, I think most of us can agree, is a really rubbish excuse for breaching someone’s privacy.

Their other defence was to suggest that it was in the public interest to see naked pictures of Prince Harry.

Now, perhaps I am a little out of touch with the old generation, but I utterly fail to see how someone being naked at a party in Las Vegas is in the public interest. He might be third in line to the throne, but first in line to the thrown is Prince Charles – a man who supports homoeopathy and suggested he should be defender of the faiths, even though the title defender of the faith was specifically given to Henry VIII for attacking other religions.

More importantly, though, public interest is an important defence. Sometimes you need to break the rules because it’s important for the media to support something – take the New York Times publishing some of the information Wikileaks released about the US military gunning down innocent civilians for example.

Using it for this kind of nonsense (naked photos of Prince Harry) is a real problem because it weakens the argument when newspapers actually need to publish something that is in the public interest, and hands the government a loaded weapon when it comes to shooting down the need for a public interest defence.

The Sun has been journalistically irresponsible. But what should we expect from the same scumbags that shat all over 168 years of British newspaper history because it turned out they were doing very illegal things.

Last week myself, Norm and Nicola went down to the Yorkshire Evening Post to do an interview as they wanted to do a feature on Leeds Atheist Society. It came out in Thursday’s issue and was good coverage for us – very positive compared to the stuff we normally get (which isn’t saying much as we normally just get attacked in the media but it was geniunely good) and it was a full page piece too.

If you missed the paper edition you can read the article online on the YEP website.

BBC News have an audio clip of Russell Brand’s show the week after the infamous Jonathon Ross show. In it he apologises for what he said to Andrew Sachs but points out that The Daily Mail are a bunch of simple minded racists who supported Hilter and thereby vicariously killed millions of Jews.

Fantastic 😀 . This couldn’t show how silly this whole situation is. I haven’t heard a word of complaint about this but make some amusing phone calls and you’re done for. Have a listen.