Some stuff I've read recently

• Flat Earth News by Nick Davies

  Another 'Lies, Distortion and Bias in the Global Media' piece. The difference this time is that, instead of being written by disgruntled academics and intellectuals or left-/right- wing media darlings, this is written by a long-standing and award-winning denizen of Fleet Street in a blowing-the-lid type of exposé.

  The first two-fifths of the book are absolutely terrific; Part One ('Flat Earth Stories') serving as an introduction and presentation of the symptoms and Part Two ('The News Factory') dealing with causes and examples in the Press itself.

  Unfortunately, the book flags a bit during Part Three ('Hidden Persuaders'), where he tackles the related issues of public relations and propaganda (business- and government-derived stories). At this point, the book steps slightly outside the area of Davies' expertise (dealing with the press itself) and veers into an area which requires a more general kind of description and research. Seriously: Is there anyone who's not aware of Bernays and his conceptual progeny at this point? The section improves towards the end, though, as he highlights the disparity between what journalists are told directly and indirectly by governments and the truth discernible by basic research.

  Part Four ('Inside Stories') returns to the form of the first part, as he uses specific institutions from within the Press itself as examples to demonstrate his previous arguments. Chapters dedicated to The Times, The Observer and Daily Mail demonstrate that the problems exist across political bias, but are instantiated differently depending on the composition and philosophy of the institution. Another chapter ('The Dark Arts') explores the criminal activities engaged-in by newspapers (frequently those who take an authoritarian stance and most shrilly decry crime) in order to generate content.

  At times, Davies veers towards a more irritating Naomi-Klein-style of rhetoric (coining the word 'churnalism' and hammering it relentlessly; occasionally not examining certain issues in sufficient depth) but there is a great deal to admire about the book. Most of his critics have prefaced their counter-arguments with phrases such as "While I agree with much of it, ...", and this is partly due to a certain atypical level of rigour for books of this type. In part, this is also a problem, as by raising the presentational standard and tone Davies could have produced a forensically academic analysis -- a classic of a kind -- but this is not his intent; he wants it to be a book that the masses will read. This dialectic leads to a certain teeth-grinding simplicity in sections, but it's a compromise that's understandable.

  For the most part, Davies avoids Michael-Moore-esque semantic trickery, and his refusal to place the blame too conveniently at any one door is refreshingly nuanced. By concentrating deliberately on broadsheets-plus-the-Daily-Mail, he manages to avoid the rebuttal of: "Yes. That's true. But it's just the red-tops". The argument is one based on the problem being an emergent phenomenon; any one of the bad practices might themselves be tolerable, but throw them all together and a problem precipitates out of the mix which is greater than the sum of its parts, frequently resulting in a race-to-the-bottom and a shortage of time for both fact-checking and the development of 'proper' stories.

  Davies is (rightly, IMO) highly sceptical of the often-advanced argument that the business owners prejudice the news provided by their outlets to their own ends. He concedes that it happens, but asserts that, overall, it's a fairly minimal impediment towards truth in news and is a dangerously distractive idea in that it avoids the need for discussion of the real issues, which overall tend to be consequences of up-stream working practice, rather than a deliberate attempt to delude on the part of the owners.

  Overall: Very good, recommended and well worth a read, but strangely disappointing in its occasionally-polemic tone. Wait for the paperback. It's essentially a 400-page rant, backed with facts (and, yes, insider gossip) about the state of the British media. It seems that there's much to rant about. As Peter Oborne (no 'Fellow Traveller' of Davies politically) blurbs on the dust jacket, "If even half of the charges levelled by Nick Davies are true, this is a morally bankrupt profession". [Debate with Nick Davies at a PR Forum (YouChoob)]




• The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by one I. Newton esq. You might have heard of this. I was bought this hardback edition of a new translation a couple of years ago but haven't really gotten around to reading it until the past few weeks. I'm not going to comment on its contents (they're fairly common knowledge at this point), but just mention something that struck me when reading.

  It's clear from his writing that, when Newton talks of 'gravitation', he regards it as being non-existent, by which I mean that, to him, 'gravitation' was merely a term denoting all his collected knowledge, observations and techniques about the properties of mass relationships in the observed world. Thus, to Newton, 'gravity' wasn't something like friction, or displacement, or velocity -- an extant thing which could be defined, quantified and discussed like a noun -- but a catch-all "subject term" like physics, or combat, or life. It's a subtle distinction, but it says something about the way that he placed 'gravitation' in the cosmos. From reading his observations, I don't think he'd have been at all surprised that Einstein came along later with another ("better") explanation. Given his ego, he may not have been at all pleased, but that's a different thing.

  It says something about the subtleties of language that 'gravity', to most nowadays, means this thing, this force, this entity, whereas the bloke who clarified 'it' and applied the term didn't really think of it that way at all. It reminded me of Hume's take on morals. It's too easy to make concrete and reify a collective abstraction, I guess.




• The Beautiful Game?: Searching the Soul of Football by David Conn.

  David Conn is The Guardian's [token] investigative reporter on the football desk. The book is another "What the hell is going on with this game?" analysis of the current, strangely amoral, state of the sport in this country. I don't doubt that this will be only of interest to football enthusiasts -- which is a shame as it works at an 'investigation into $x' level from an outside perspective too -- but it makes fairly bleak and depressing reading.

  Those of us who keep an eye on football can't help but notice that not all is well in the state of Denmark. Financially, the game's never been more successful, but the side-effects have been becoming ever more noxious for quite a while. Conn takes us on a tour of the British leagues, from the highest to the lowest, following the chains of ownership, the money, the entryism and the exploitation of the love of the game to unbelievably cynical ends. It has much in common, topically, with Tom Bower's 'Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football', but Bower's book was a fairly clinical (and fascinating) peek into the cess pit from an outsider, whereas Conn, who grew up on the terraces of Maine Road following Manchester City, offers a more heart-felt perspective, while being no less critical nor analytical.

  I thought this was a wonderful read, and any British football fan with a shred of honesty and a desire to see just how much crap is hidden under the rug ought to read it. Perhaps, never having been the most regular attendant at the club of my youth's choice, and being a supporter of an of-late fairly unspectacular team, I was more inclined to see the dirt dished than some others may be, but it's an incredibly rewarding and eye-opening journey; critical, passionate, strangely poetic and lyrical in places. I'd even recommend it to football-haters who fancy a colourful tour through all the evidence their argument would ever need. There's no antiseptic like daylight. 8.5 / 10.

Talking of which ...

I've been thoroughly enjoying the European Championships in spite (or perhaps because) of England's absence. I'm not sure I'd want to go through a major championships without England's participation particularly frequently but -- damn -- at the risk of sounding treasonous, it doesn't half make a refreshing change when it happens.

Tangentially; this one-day crap is getting out-of-hand. More tests required.

A

Massive props to all the people who responded to the Q&A I posted a couple of days ago. A number were fairly large-scoped issues with the potential for answers to be quite personal, rather than a trivial invitation to tap-dance for the crowd's amusement, and there were a lot of superb answers, plus komet's.

For the sake of "Quid pro quo, Clarice"-ness, here are what would be a rough attempt at mine:

1.) What do you consider to be the greatest feat of human endeavour since the turn of the twentieth century (i.e. the last hundred and eight years)?

I agreed with all the answers given. I'd probably also throw in the advancement of medical science.

2.) What's the greatest act of kindness / altruistic bravery you've seen or heard-of since you turned twenty-one?

I don't know. Maybe number 5. Or the time when a whole bus stop full of people decided enough was enough and jumped-in to stop someone getting beaten-up by a gang. There was also a time when a middle-aged couple, heading east, took a eighty-mile detour in the opposite direction to give myself and a friend a lift home in a storm (the train station ten miles away would have been fine). These last two were personal observations. There are probably thousands.

3.) Which was / is the greatest sports team ever? Why? Any sport. Any era. Fancy Dan answers like 'The Romans' don't count. Try not to pick a team you support; choose one you hate if need be, but can't help respect. As I've said, there are no correct answers [Actually, for this one, there is, but we can argue about that later].

The West Indian cricket team from 1974 to somewhere between 1987 and 1995 (exact point debatable). They were so good that they changed the game itself.

4.) What's the greatest musical experience you've had?

Listening to a dusty old tape, in a ferocious thunderstorm, driving across a remote moor, on my own, caned.

5.) In the last year, what is the one second-hand story which completely broke your heart? It can have been read or heard, fiction or fact, but it can't be personal. It must have happened to someone with whom you have little connection beyond humanity.

I agreed with most of the observations that bleeding-heart stories have become a stock-in-trade for a cynical media and that on a planet of at least six billion people, there are millions of personal tragedies unfolding daily. I usually have the capacity to be fairly cold and dispassionate on top of that but, nevertheless, this passage from the aforementioned 'Flat Earth News' got all the way through the carapace:

This pattern of distortion [by the Daily Mail newspaper] also includes rejecting stories which do not fit the template. In September 2005, an Angolan refugee, Manuel Bravo, was denied asylum even though his parents had been killed and his sisters raped and murdered. He and his thirteen-year-old son, Antonio, were taken to Yarl's Wood detention centre to await deportation. There, while his son slept in the same cell, Manuel Bravo hanged himself. He knew that if his son was an orphan, he would be saved from being sent back to violence in Angola. He left a note: 'Antonio. I'm really sorry. I don't [want] you to come [to] Angola to suffer'. That came down the supply line from the coroner's court to the news factory. Some papers ran it. Not the Daily Mail.

I looked into this story to check whether this account itself was distorted in any way. A number of outlets used different language to describe the incident, but the basic facts are true. The Manuel Bravo Project was set up in Leeds (where Bravo lived temporarily) to advise asylum seekers about the legal system.

6.) When have you been most afraid?

It's a weird thing but, like Brian Close and bruises, I don't scare easily. It's not that I'm tough (I'm not); more that I'm fairly fatalistic. I remember being in a nasty car crash in my teens and seeing a wall heading towards me at 80mph. 'Ah; This is going to hurt, and I might even die' is the only thing I recall thinking. Merekat noted a difference between cold, intellectual fear and adrenaline-fuelled fear. I'd also add gibbering terror and extreme social unease.

I don't recall being gibberingly terrified since having nightmares as a small child. My social unease probably peaked either just before I compered a comedy gig in front of a brayingly raucous crowd, or the first time I asked a girl out in front of her friends. There are too many things to have cold, intellectual fear about; I'd run out of time -- although that doesn't stop me having occasional "That's not good." pangs.

Which leaves adrenaline-fuelled fear which is probably a tie between: a very-nearly-fatal non-car-crash in the Brecon Beacons (we didn't go over the edge -- just); being mugged at large-knife-point by a badly-fiending crack-addict who was certain that I was bullshitting when I told him that the £1.27 I'd just given him was all I had on me (I wasn't); facing a county-level fast bowling attack without a helmet (they didn't fit) or a box (forgotten) at the age of 14. I've done a lot more dangerous stuff than that last one, but wasn't as scared by it.

7.) What is the greatest cause for optimism?

Pessimism gets tiresome in overly long stretches.

And finally ...

This just-in, from the "I read it in The Sun; it must be true" department:

Cops chase a UFO over Cardiff