We've been working on What's On for... I lose count of the weeks. But what I should never lose track of is how much media law dogs us; even as student journalists creating our (technically) amateur(ish) work. (See how I attempted to dodge Defamation there? Learnt something) In our Halloween special, Jake Gable and I came across the problem of Fair Dealing. In other words, Copyright. We tried to use trailer clips of a couple of the films we were promoting and ran into the issue of, well, just stealing images really. However after a few tweaks here and there (cutting them down to half their length and putting huge "This belongs to...." on the images, we survived).
Yet copyright is actually a major issue; for instance this debate that I've highlighted down below...
If you find media law a bit, slow-going, shall we say. Here is an article on copyright law, involving monkeys. Basically, a guy went on holiday where a couple of cheeky chimps, took his camera and took photos of themselves. Harmless enough-but now there is a debate going on about who actually owns the images. According to laws, the monkeys do. But don't tell Cater News Agency that...
Defamation If what you write: -Lowers someone in the estimation of others -Causes them to be shunned or avoided -Ruins their profession -Exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt
Defamation via pictures. Careluss use of background shots, for example: -Talking about an issue like fraud with an unrelated company in the background
Defamation Inferences Things that could be read wrongly given the context. An example of an innuendo in a headline being this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/03/us-athletics-diamond-idUSTRE6622I420100703 Although this example being not necessarily harmful, journalists need to assess the whole context before hand. Another thing to take into account is who you are writing about. Are they powerful enough to sue?
Libel Defences -Justification - "It's true and I can prove it in court". Having witnesses or defiant proof for something. E.G. American media ran a story on Lindsay Lohan stealing a $2,500 necklace, on the basis that the store in question stated that they had CCTV footage of the star commiting the crime.
-Fair Comment - An honestly held opinion based upon facts or privileged material such as press conferences. Or if the story is in the public interest. -Balance - If the story explores both sides of a story or accusation fairly -Bane and Antidote - Defamation removed by context (undoing what you've previously said in the same article) - Apologies and Clarifiation - For instance in this case http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3649261.stm
A journalist will have no defence if they have not: -Checked their facts -When they have not "referred up" -When they have not attempted to put themselves in the shoes of those they are writing about -Evidently got carried away by a juicy story -Not bothered to wait for a lawyers opinion
We're back. After a lengthy Summer period which went past in a flash, we have returned to Winchester News Online. Where I now have the promotion from "What's On Girl", to Showbiz Editor. I do exactly the same thing, I just now sound more important when I fire off those oh so important emails begging for an interview.
Last weeks show was trial and error. I now have a producer in the form of Jake Gable, who is my camera man, co-presenter and general help when I start flapping over things like what to say in a link. We struggled initially to come up with a layout for the show, since this time around we wanted the show to be more engaging and more hands on. Anything showing the presenters up is going to be good viewing, and trying the events ourselves means we can have much more fun making the show. Especially when it's myself and Jake Gable who manage to find a pun or cheesy line to fit into any situation.
We narrowed it down to a Salsa Class, which Jake Gable attended alone on account of me being ill. A clip of Matthew LeTissier being interviewed which we borrowed from the guys over at Sports, and an interview we got with Rebecca Vaughan; the star of the show I,Elizabeth which is currently touring the country. Although the show essentially came off without a hitch, we did encounter the usual problems upon the way. So in true fashion and to make my lecturers proud, I will simply list the things we could have done better. Enjoy.
Problem #1: Two cameras were originally just an idea to create a polished looking finishing touch. (Two angles, practically Sky News). Instead it ended up being a necessity, as, despite checking the cameras meticulously before we left, one of them decided to give up on life just as we got into the venue.
Problem #2: Thanks to Problem #1, we captured Rebecca Vaughans answers to my questions, but the moment she left, had to re-record me asking the same questions, in the same tone of voice, to her empty chair. I literally deserved an Oscar for my acting that day. I will thank the dead camera in my acceptance speech.
Problem #3: Dressing rooms have mirrored walls. Which is fantastic. Especially when you don't want to get a reflection of a camera behind the stars head. Lord knows we don't want the camera to be seen! A magician never reveals their secrets.
Problem #4: Props can't be hung on hot lightbulbs. Just saying.
I could go on. There was also the issue with the fact that I (unintentionally) gave myself the better camera angle whilst interviewing Rebecca, to the point where I made myself look more important. Given my (apparent) diva attitude and my (slight) tendency to want to hog camera time, I just get raised eyebrows when I say that this was NOT on purpose. Though I'm sure Freud would disagree. Jake also encountered problems when he ventured out alone. Apparently Salsa classes are in the dark these days. Meaning poor old Jake was a mere silhouette upon our Final Cut Pro screen when it came to editing. Thank the powers that be that he did have shots in the light and we salvaged it with a voiceover (and a pun!).
Despite our setbacks, which unfortunately everybody must face, we pulled together a show. And for our first week back it could most definitely have gone worse. Next week we're prepared to face all this, but in London for our Halloween special. It's going to be scarily good, I promise. (Sorry, couldn't resist). But if you can't wait that long, watch last weeks show and play "Spot The Problems" to yourself. There'll be less and less problems each week so enjoy the easy levels why they last.
The American phenomenom which has had everybody talking lately has been the weird spate of high profile presenters suddenly talking unintelligible gibberish on television. Presenters including news anchors and the infamous Judge Judy begin talking normally but descend into words and phrases that don't make any sense.
These are just two cases of a handful of presenters who have experienced this in the past week. People behind the scenes have clarified that there were no auto-cue difficulties and the presenters themselves have claimed they were not in control of what was coming out of their mouths. A few also claimed to have suddenly experienced a searing head pain at the same time. Both the anchor featured at the bottom of the two videos and Judge Judy (Judith Sheindlin) were rushed to nearby hospitals for tests where the anchor above was diagnosed with a severe migraine which could have caused a minor stroke. However there still remains no explanations for the remainder which experienced the same phenomena at similar times.
So: aliens? the military? I'm sure you'll find every available explanation for a few weeks. But as long as it doesn't occur on WINOL, we're good.
After finally coming to the end of our first semester alone on WINOL, it's come to that time again to look back and reflect on everything we ever did wrong and publish it. Like a who's who and a what's what of our past six weeks of stress, frustration and hair tearing.
To be honest, I feel our time on WINOL without the third years could have gone worse. At the end of the day we are producing a bulletin every week complete with news packages, sports and good graphics. We always seem to have people on production which we never did last year and minor hiccups have been taken on board and reprimanded within the day.
The News Team have now got it all down in terms of framing interviewees and general shots of whatever their story is. Voice overs are clear and things are now getting to the point where there is no fear in introducing a cheeky pun (Sam Homewoods package about Marching Mums). There are no things such as white balance issues and overall I think the news team has become very strong and trustworthy with people like Andrew Giddings and Keiran Brannigan who seem to have a natural flair for it.
Sports of course is excelling. SportsWeek has hundreds of loyal followers and fans who never fail to watch or comment. It's the strongest area of WINOL and can stand on its own without the bulletin. I think this is largely down to Will Cooper at the helm as they have promoted and made connections in all the right places. They often get their packages down early which means they can spend time on perfecting areas like the title sequence-adding gloss to an already superb area of WINOL (and for me to say that about sport is unheard of).
The only issue, small though it may be, would be in the gallery itself. Although we have an extremely strong production team, for the first few weeks there were issues with people coughing during VT's which was picked up on microphones which hadn't been muted. For some reason as well this semester there seemed to be an extreme lack of talkback between the gallery and the floor which meant camera people had to cue presenters. Though these are minor hiccups they are the only things which if we got on top of, we would have a near perfect bulletin.
When it came to deadlines, we met them, but at a push. In terms of things like the script, it should be down to one maybe two people to decide whether it is good to go as opposed to other people coming over and making changes. Breaking news and script changes cannot be helped but when the script is due it won't do to have people coming over and putting in their opinion about how headlines should be written/said/typed. When it comes to their turn to write the script, they can then alter it how they see fit, but until that point, the script should be down to whoever is presenting the bulletin that week.
Subbing was of course a nightmare this semester. When the term began there was major confusion over who was in charge of what and why. When this finally got cleared up there was frustration from reporters about how their stories had been altered beyond recognition by subs, and sometimes filled with mistakes. This was finally all sorted out by changing how the site is handled. Editors are now in charge of their teams articles and publishing them as opposed to being handed to a complete different party.
This is a change for the better, and although I can see where reporters were coming from, they made it even more difficult by handing in articles at either midnight or 1am in which case by the time the subs woke up, they had no time to sub-edit it properly and get it up on the site before the deadline. The whole thing was not properly organised and the deadline in itself was unreasonable in regards to lectures we had Thursday morning.
In terms of people within the class I think there is a lack of communication and understanding between team members. Everybody's job is just as important as the others and no one is better and/or should be undermined. As well as this people should listen to each other and talk properly as opposed to immediately ranting. At the end of the day this is a course, not a career. Although I myself went through a phase of needing to remind myself that I'm not actually getting paid to work for Winchester News Online.
With a few more weeks practice I have every faith in us that we can achieve Soccer Saturday. It would be an incredible coup for us in terms of future work and practice for live television. It would be difficult and a lot more stressful than our "worry Wednesday" but I think it can be achieved and it's something we need to be passionate and put our all into.
Like James Joyces' Ulysses, The Outsider seemed to be written like a thought process.
The style was disjointed with short snappy sentences. With quotes like "With the 2 o' clock bus...should get there before nightfall" it's like the reader has entered the characters head, with all his reassurances, worries and random thoughts.
The theme of existentialism runs throughout the book with ideologies like time being completely irrelevant to the story. The characters can exist and react in a sort of suspended reality where there is little to no past guilt and no thought of future consequences. The present time is also non-existent. "Mother died today. Or, maybe yesterday".
In terms of the future, Meursault seems to not even have an inkling of it when he is faced with old people. Rather than understanding that they are people and a majority of us will face old age at some point, he regards them with interest as almost being separate entities.
They were "noiseless" and "grouped around the keeper". He can't decide whether "they were greeting me and trying to say something". He exists in the present and therefore old age is something non-existent in his world. Also the fact that he hasn't seen his mother for years implies that he probably didn't witness her aging either.
Later on Meursault agrees to marry Marie just for the sake of it with little care for the actual ceremony and sacrifices of marriage in regards to just answering the simple question of "will you marry me?".
His consistently living in the present means the things that occur to him right then and there he will become consumed with. When a woman cries at his mothers funeral he feels like "she will never stop", this is probably just because Meursault has no comprehension of a few minutes time when she no doubt will. In a restaurant Meursault becomes randomly interested in a woman who he coins "the little robot". She has funny movements and he follows her out of interest until he can no longer see her again at which point she is forgotten about.
In existentialism the past is pure guilt. To live a peaceful existence you need to have no recollection of the past and no thought for the future, which in itself is dread. Meursault epitomizes this after he has killed the Arab. It isn't until he is being interrogated that it suddenly dawns on him that he took a life. Even then it comes across as nothing more than a fleeting thought, a sort of half interested realization of what he has done. If it wasn't for the rules and regulations of society forcing that emotion in him, it wouldn't have phased him. It also can be assumed that as he is shooting the Arab he is not thinking about the impact that would have in the future in his own life.
His detached emotions are summed up right at the beginning of the book when his mothers hearse casually reminds him of nothing more than the pen trays in his office at work. Things are very mundane to him and no object or item is more significant than the other. He also displays emotional detachment when it comes to Salamano abusing his dog and Raymond beating his girlfriend. Although it is noted at one point that when Salamano loses his dog and begins to cry, Meursault thinks of his mother. Though he himself makes no connection. He also comments at one point "one can't help feeling a little guilty I suppose", like emotions are things to be embarrassed about.
According to existentialism; guilt, fear and worry are all things that come from others. "Hell is other people" is a quote that epitomizes the existentialism view. Meursault has a few examples of his own although some of the time, the judgement from others is in his head. When the old people appear at his mothers wake he notes that "they came to sit in judgement of me". When he asks for time off of work he "had an idea that he looked annoyed and I said 'sorry sir'". When he reaches the old people's home he comments about the warden: "I had a feeling he was blaming me for something". Even after his mother's funeral he leaves the grounds to go for a walk and thinks to himself "what an agreeable walk I could have had if it hadn't been for mother". Although the premise is that he is still feeling grief and therefore can't enjoy himself, the phrasing and wording of it sounds accusatory, as if it was selfish of her to die at that point in time when he could have enjoyed a walk.
In the world of the outsider, there is no affection; merely getting "used" to each other. There is nothing remarkable in the world of Meursault. As Edmund Husserl, a phenomonolgist once remarked: when objects are paid attention to is when they become a problem. If you just breeze through life and pay no attention to the world around you, the past, the future, or even the present that much, you will be the perfect manifesto of existentialism.
John Kenneth Galbraith was born on October 15th 1908 in America. He was an economist and a Keynesian.
Keynes (Galbraiths influence), opposed the original ideologies of Laissez-Faire Capitalism which believed that the market would achieve balance by itself. He instead believed the Government should step in to increase spending whenever and wherever the case may be.
In Galbraiths book The New Industrial State, written in 1967, he talks of a large firm called the Techno-Structure. This Techno-Structure should supposedly be something like a human entity, being fairly self-sufficient. These changes in the industry, from manpower to a technology led market were brought to the forefront after World War II when changes to the economic life were far greater than anything that had come before it. However, Galbraith argues that this modern technology reduces the reliability of the market, since so much more needs to be managed, monitored, and avoided. One tiny fluctuation in the system could bring the Techno-Structure to a grinding halt. Also the whole system is much more inflexible as situations need to be known far in advance and not changed.
Before this technology was introduced, products were far less abundant, but far more necessary. Products such as loaves of bread or medicine were in short supply but there was no question of them being constantly needed as they were everyday objects that maximised the consumer’s satisfaction levels. But with nowadays industry being able to produce products at a high rate, items such as beauty products or games need an element of persuasion if they are to be brought. Although they may maximise one persons satisfaction level, it may not apply to everyone and in order to shift the levels of product the structure has produced, elements like advertising come into play. Since in recent times, people were becoming less and less poverty stricken, those with low levels of literacy were joining the classes of people with excess money to spend. Therefore television and radio advertising were key to reaching these specific individuals.
The regulation of Aggregate Demand became a recognised policy during the 1930’s and was advocated by John Maynard Keynes. It was put into effect by the Roosevelt Administration and was thought to be a move on behalf of the Labour Party, and was immediately opposed. The reasons being that during the 1930’s most industry was led by Entrepreneurial Corporations who did not have a need for it. This was down to the fact that they were using simple technology with little to no planning involved. They could simply lay off workers if demand was to fall and they had a much smaller Techno-Structure. Of course the more Mature Corporations were desperately in need for the regulation as that sort of planning would offer them security and safe planning. They were vulnerable to a fall in earnings which would curtail the whole business and one mistake could “disintegrate the very brain of the enterprise”. Of course the more Mature Corporations won out in the end and technology continued to expand.
Aggregate Demand needs to be regulated as correct production (not going into un-necessary excess) creates large amounts of savings. These savings are then stored and used to fund further production. If these profits and savings are not made then they cannot meet the need of Aggregate Demand, therefore monitoring is imperative as the whole system depends upon one another. This sort of monitoring prevents unpredictable fluctuations in demand, sales and production in which case planning would be impaired, technology would have to be used more cautiously and the whole Techno-Structure would be far less secure.
The Techno-Structure is essentially just one big well oiled machine in theory. Men who work for these large organizations agree to lose all individuality for it and even rival firms within the structure avoid competition because situations like price-cutting would threaten its survival.
“Mutually destructive behaviour is banned”
Whether this infinite structure is actually in control or not is another question. Most people will argue that there is such a thing as Consumer Sovereignty, where the consumer governs the uni-directional flow from purchasing an item from the market, where this information will then reach up to the industry. Meaning the Techno-Structure can monitor what people are buying and respond to the customer’s choices. This is called The Accepted Sequence, and it sustains the idea of industries trying to understand what produces the most customer satisfaction.
However, The Accepted Sequence may be becoming less and less so as the producing firms reach out to control the markets, manage behaviour and shape the social attitude of the consumer. Mainly with aspects like advertising and heavy persuasion as to what is good for them to purchase.
In terms of consumers buying products, not only is it important for them to do so, it is equally as important that they have the money to spend in the first place. Spending is a physical need, even within the techno-structure itself. When it comes to situations like increased incomes or maybe a slight depression; the Techno-Structure uses taxes to keep demand under control. When income increases, so do taxes. This prevents people from spending ridiculous amounts and spiralling demand out of control. Likewise, when incomes decrease, so do taxes. Freeing up more money for people to spend and therefore keeping demand high. Taxes must be large in regards to income to have any sort of effect and Taxes are purely there so as to direct consumer spending.
So apparently- and this is exclusive to the year 2011 - if you add your birthday to the age you are going to be this year it comes to either the number 111, or 2011. Observe:
91 + 20 = 111
1991 + 20 = 2011
Pretty nifty! Almost as nifty as the calculator I found lurking, completely unused on my desktop to figure out this little magic trick. Of course these are just my own personal digits, I welcome you to try it yourself and see if it really does apply universally or just to those born in the year of the sheep (rejoice!).
Now to me, this does seem a little weird, I was left mildly disconcerted at this being proven correct, but does it spell disaster? Of course we are all apparently fated to meet our doom next year. The ill fated 2012 which has spurred a Hollywood movie, curiosity and even panic on some peoples behalf. We as humans have been fascinated by our demise and how it's all going to end almost as much as we are fascinated by how it all begun in the first place. So to hush any speculation worthy of Perez Hilton, let's be boring for two seconds and look at the facts:
Why are we all going to face doomsday next year?
Well: First of all there is the infamous Mayan Calendar. The Mayan's were an extremely clever civilization for centuries old folks, and they based all of their theories upon the stars. Apparently their calendar accurately predicted centuries later occurrences such as the World Wars, the black hole in our galaxy, and the solar eclipse of 1999. All of which were dated to the exact year that they happened. Turns out they even predicted their own demise when they correctly jotted down the year that their civilization was over run by Spanish foreigners and destroyed. Their calendar took note of every future event, every detail: right up until 2012 when their calendar ends. This of course to people in the know means that the last prediction is that there is no life after 2012. To people like me and every other student out there who are in a different kind of know how, it means they probably just got lazy.
Second of all there is the wonderful Nostradamus. A soothsayer of his time he actually had a string of creepily correct predictions. Again down to the date that they would occur. In a nutshell he predicted the Great Fire of London with these wise words"the blood of the just will be demanded of London, burnt by the fire in the year 66".
He continued his soothsaying with this next statement: "From the enslaved people songs chants and demands. The princes and lords are held captive in prisons, in the future by such headless idiots"
Which of course correlates with the "off with their heads!" happy French Revolution. Later predictions even involved the death of Princess Diana in which he actually mentions her by name, Hurricane Katrina, and the 9/11 attacks on New York City. For 2011 he has predicted that a war will occur between that of the Christian world and the Arab world which will destroy many countries and of course 2012? A comet will hit the Earth, destroying everything that lives here. Here's to hoping he also just got lazy and bored of soothsaying.
Lastly we come to our own 21st Century theories which are based upon nothing quite so magical as a stone age calendar or a 16th century magician. Turns out that a couple hundred years back, the sun shot out some solar flares, which are scheduled to happen again in 2012. These solar flares fire so far and are so electrically charged that it would severely damage everything we depend upon, like air traffic control, emergency services (like hospital equipment), electricity, it would all be damaged beyond repair. When these flares happened centuries ago it didn't have an effect since the world hadn't invented the lightbulb yet, let alone the ipad, but if it was to happen today? It would throw us into a complete third world state as even our water supply is run by computers and electricity. Even if the world isn't blown to pieces by a comet, the theory goes that we would be forced to start from scratch again. Resorting back to a complete state of nature (yes Rousseau), with illness, famine-you get the gist.
So whether it's a religious war, a comet, a lack of electricity and whether it all adds up in your head or not. I most certainly am not taking any chances. I am celebrating Christmas as early as possible in 2012, just in case. And despite it all, at least we can be thankful of one thing definitely not happening...
Giant snake eating the Earth? Lets see you predict that Nostradamus.
Colour Blocking. The word du'jour of the fashion world for s/s11 as Raf Simons for Jil Sander did a show drenched in neon and the magazines loved it. Colour Blocking is when an outfit would, for example, have bright green trousers and a yellow shirt. Eliminate shades, patterns or anything else that would deviate from your traffic stopping image. Despite this blast of colour, still expect to see neutrals dotted around during the summer months as last season still prevails.
For a quick lowdown and what the designers picked for their s/s collections, here are the stand out looks:
Dolce and Gabbana went for the romantic side of summer. Floaty dresses, petticoats and light looks were on the menu as they conjured up images of Taylor Swift's music video for Love Story; in my head anyway.
Burberry Prorsum rode the other end of the spectrum with their biker chick chic. Leather, aviators, boots. She is the girl in the magazines with the bedhead hair, pulling her jacket and biting her lip. She is riding off the back of Balmains shoulder pad Balmania and she is a powerhouse.
Despite the battle with the 60's, the 70's have won out in the end with the likes of Marc Jacobs characterizing this image and having mountains of retro fun with it.
Other little trends like the oriental look, clashing patterns, (bad taste is now the taste) are also floating about on the s/s breeze. My personal favorite for this season is Burberry's hard hitting biker chick. She is fabulous, does what she wants and doesn't seem to take that long with hair care.
I'm a 21 year old student from Winchester University who is currently studying a journalism course. I love writing since the only piece of equipment I trust not to delete my work after I finish it is a pen. I also love drawing and consequently art. I would love to work for a magazine one day or go into presenting and broadcasting.
