Tag Archives: BBC

Brooks et al Trial Coverage

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Rebekah Brooks‘ et al trial coverage in 2014 later blogged here

Brooks Coulson

I’ve been following the Hacking phone trial with considerable interest. It would not be prudent to comment on testimony or my opinion on the evidence submitted so far. After all I may have undue influence on a juror. I don’t but for the avoidance of doubt I have no direct connection with any participant. For any direct comment I strongly recommend the coverage provided by The Drum, which has excellent and thorough trial coverage.

Where though is the coverage in more mainstream media. The trial which produces revelations almost daily has rare coverage on the BBC, ITV or C4. Sky I would expect to be circumspect given the Murdoch connection but they are supposed to cover news and given the 24hr nature of BBC News 24 and Sky News surely they could provide some analysis and reporting rather than another fifteen reporters in Sevastopol plus the John Simpson and Panorama crews, all repeating the same thing.

Anyway back to Hacking. The trial has raised some serious issues (as did The Leveson Inquiry) regarding freedom of speech and the conflict in my own head between the type of coverage required to uncover corruption in public officials (Expenses scandal etc.) and the right to a private life. Why does anyone care who Hugh Grant has sex with or whether he was paying for it.

As only Rebekah Brooks of the defendants has appeared on the witness stand it is of course to early to judge any evidence, but what has become clear at Leveson and this trial is the culture, attitude and approach of a national newspaper and its reporters. The absence or non-enforcement of management controls has also been highlighted. None of the defendants are on trial for being bad managers, but the lack of financial controls at the papers should send most Financial Directors spinning to an early grave. What the jury believes is of course a matter for them and the evidence presented to them. Which stories are and are not printed in newspapers broadcast or otherwise reported is a matter for all of us. Outside of true police states, what we see and hear is decided by a small elite deciding what stories get column inches or broadcast time. The Internet has multiplied the availability and direct access of reporting to unbelievable levels yet so much remains drivel. So much is repetitive and shows no insight. With all the news in the world why is 24hr TV on an almost totally hour by hour repeat. You can click on Sky News anytime of day and see the same clips repeated over and over again regardless of what else has happened. With the advert repeats it is a continuous dose of Deja Vu and none of it is about the Hacking Trial and the behaviour of one or more News International Executives.

Of course I am unusual in that I am concerned about freedom of speech whether it is censorship, snooping, police misbehaviour or the actions of newspaper reporters. What do all these stories have in common? They all reflect the closeness of a political and media elite all feeding like cannibalistic vampires off of each others actions, whilst trampling over the rights, opinions and feelings of their victims, Whether it is the family of Milly Dowler, Stephen Lawrence or one of the victims of misreporting, misbehaviour or misdeeds. Our press and mainstream media, failed to report accurately, failed to check their facts and allowed statements by police and others to be misused or believed regardless of the evidence. The press paid for many of these stories bribing public officials in the process. A picture of a royal at a party more important than the corruption that paying for the story exposed. The same press baying for MP’s blood over expenses whilst casually shipping thousands to their contacts for a snippet of gossip or paying a self confessed phone hacker thousands to keep quiet or a publicist to settle out of court.

Now some of these executives are dependent on the very legal system they have done so much to undermine and ignore. I wonder who the jury will believe.

Reaching Out Overseas – October 2013

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Reaching Out Overseas from October 2013.

A frequent concern of new and existing authors/writers, including me, is how to get readers to read our books preferably having purchased a copy from any retailer. The endless methodologies for marketing have been discussed in lots of blogs and forums. The independent and self-pub writers are just as desperate as mainstream publishing houses but without their advertising budgets. Of course those budgets are limited both in value and access and talking to some properly published authors the ability to access those funds is limited to an elite few.

I have previously commented that publishing houses seem to be little more than glorified marketing companies. Despite the constant streams of abuse about how poorly edited/written self-pub books are mainstream books still suffer from the usual round of problems. David Jason biography in a Bridget Jones novel anyone?

But I digress, this is not a rant about that endless argument over quality, the cost of editing etc, this is supposed to be about one aspect – getting overseas customers.

My books have not been translated into non-English languages, they haven’t even been translated into US English, they are in what we British like to call proper English – no comments please about grammar, typos, dialects, etc – actually comment all you want. There is a very large English (in it’s various forms) speaking/reading population, so how can I access these readers? My various retail outlets, Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu provide the self-published author with lots of sales statistics and each time I look – it’s a habit I should break.

I can see where my books are selling or more frequently not. I now know that Australian and New Zealand sales are included in Amazon.com, Canada has its own site as does India. Regardless of where the sale is registered how can I reach these readers and potential buyers? Is there something in my stories I should include much as the BBC include American actors in its dramas so that they can sell to the USA? How do I generate more readers in these countries? Amazon.com won’t even list reviews from other sites and those other sites only show reviews from Amazon.com after the description. It shows the book as un-reviewed.

Surely, a review is a review! A star rating is a star rating, but on all the other Amazon sites the book appears as unread, un-rated and un-reviewed regardless of it’s sales or reception elsewhere in the world. Amazon are losing out as well, after all a sale for me, is a sale for them.

For the readers out there (ther must be some) do you look for a setting, a scene or a character from your own country that might make the story more appealing? It doesn’t matter to me where a book is set although it might limit the scope of the story. For a character the main concern for me would be dialogue or cultural references, but that can apply in country just as much as overseas. Is there any point to running an advert in those countries. trying to generate sales or should I have to wait for a groundswell of US and UK reviews to attract attention? Yes, social media can spread the word but there are lots of words being spread in a very thin layer.

Do I have an answer? No. I include scenes and settings in locations that fit the story that I want to write. My third book, The Persuasive Man, has multiple international locations and extended scenes in Honk Kong, Dubai, and Caribbean locations along with New York and for non-English France and Shanghai. It’s not a travelogue but a tale of dodgy business. My other books vary, the first, An Agent’s Demise, has several international locations, whereas my second To The Survivors barely has any. Excluding free downloads my second is the best seller worldwide. Why is that, it is very UK focused in its story? Perhaps that is what attracts it to other English speaking parts of the world.

The whole conundrum of what attracts readers continues to baffle me and the tens of thousands of new writers out there. Overseas sales just adds to the bafflement.

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Are All Politicians and Commentators Nuts?

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You would think that given their actions the question ‘Are All Politicians and Commentators Nuts’?’ Is self answering.

Today in the UK there is brewing one of those made up press rows about which the general population stares in disbelief and has to check it’s hearing.  This row concerns the use of the word nuts.  On BBC TV’s Andrew Marr Show The Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, was interviewed and asked about the proposed policy of the Opposition’s Labour Party and it’s leader Ed Milliband to increase Corporation Tax for businesses.  The Prime Minister called the policy ‘nuts’ the interviewer tried to turn this into David Cameron calling Ed Milliband nuts but Mr Cameron managed to avoid that potential trap, however, the row is not about the respective merits of the policy which on BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme was not discussed.  Instead it was about the use of the term nuts and linked to a story last week about Asda, a supermarket chain in the UK, withdrawing from sale Halloween costumes described as Mental Patients because they were potentially offensive to Mental Health Patients or sufferers.  This could have led to a more interesting discussion about the continued Americanisation of events like Halloween and the importing of those traditions into the UK instead it was only about whether the mental health lobby was offended. They better not watch One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest or The Shining then, or read/watch any other horror, thriller, crime, story that feature potentially psychotic behaviour.  Let alone Basil Fawlty hitting his car with a branch because it has broken down, or should we just call him nuts, sorry I’m not supposed to use that word it might offend other car hitters suffering from a mental aberration.

What has this to do with writing you might ask?  Censorship, is my answer and in particular self-censorship.  Something that public pressure in the form of media frenzy seems determined to inflict on all of us that write.  Now irrespective of the benefits or otherwise of the political policy why shouldn’t Cameron be allowed to call the policy nuts if that is what he thinks it is.  I’m sure Mr Miliband thinks several of Mr Cameron’s policies are nuts as well and if he does why should he not use that term which is defined in this context in many thesaureses as

Nuts – adjective
(slang)=  insane, mad, crazy (informal), bananas (slang), barking (slang), eccentric, batty (slang), psycho (slang), irrational, loony (slang), demented, nutty (slang), deranged, loopy (informal), out to lunch (informal), out there (slang), barking mad (slang), gonzo (slang), doolally (slang), off your trolley (slang), up the pole (informal), as daft as a brush (informal, mainly, British), not the full shilling (informal), wacko or whacko (informal), a sausage short of a fry-up (slang), psychopathic, off the air (Australian, slang) • Either he’s joking or else he’s nuts. • A number of the players went nuts, completely out of control.

Now some of these uses do imply behaviour that is abnormal and have been linked with slang terms to describe mental illness, but should that stop us using a perfectly good description for a policy – I don’t think so.  There is a worrying habit where perfectly good terms are no longer used by writers and commentators because of fear of offending someone.  Language changes – just look at the term gay for an example, I know what it used to mean, happy, joyful, now it can’t be used in any other context apart from to describe homosexual behaviour.  Will I soon have to stop using nuts to describe some of my favourite food for fear of alienating the mental health lobby that really will be nuts.

Meanwhile I continue to know very little about why Mr Cameron thinks Mr Milliband’s policy is nuts nor do I know what the policy link in the USA is between the latest budget crisis and the existing Health Care policy.  Again the story there was described as a row against President Obama and the Republican Party with neither policy being debated just personal invective fired in all directions.  Whatever happened to reasoned debate.  Again on Radio 4 this was linked to a Republican Congressman reading extracts from a Dr Zeuss book, why was not clear and what that had to do with budget debate was not clear.  This was linked to a doorstop canvasser in Virginia knocking on someone’s door.  Meanwhile the fact that Asian stock markets were down several percent because of the impending budget issue wasn’t mentioned.

Now in a debate on Education or literacy, reading Dr Zeuss may be relevant but the whole article struck me as being nuts and if that offends some mental health experts so be it.  Also nuts was the fact that the BBC like many media outlets instead of calling it that actually gave more air time to that Congressman reading extract from a Children’s book.  As to the actual policies being proposed by Democrats and Republicans we heard nothing.  The story was then linked to the next Presidential Election not even a year since the last one – please! Are you all nuts?

I’ve used the BBC’s reporting twice here simply because I was listening as I often do to BBC’s Radio Four Today programme.  I used to think the programme provided a cultured insight into the day’s headlines but now seems to be little more than thirty second sound bites interrupted by the presenters trying to get their take on the story.  Of course the politicians don’t answer questions, except Mr Cameron did bluntly, albeit on a TV interview,  then tried not to because he was scared of the language he used.  Now that was nuts.  The fact that he may have joked about the Mental Health lobby was also discussed.  Is it just possible that we could have a debate about the tax policy of the parties rather than a debate about the language used to describe the policy.  How about some facts or am I being nuts?

So what as a would be writer should I do?  Should I add to my earlier rants about controversial subjects by using as many examples of allegedly controversial words as possible?  I’ll self censor here, I don’t want to offend anyone in a blog  so no N, (black) C (female sexual organ), used but I have mentioned them, should I not.  If I was writing 1950’s dialogue in the American South shouldn’t the N word be used.   If I quoted D H Lawrence should I use the C word?  I’m feeling happy should I call myself gay or avoid the words as toxic, use euphemisms in order not to upset people.  Do I have to add loony, nuts, mad and countless others to my proscribed list for fear of upsetting someone.  That would be nuts.  Apparently there are over 1 million different words in the English language with many having multiple meanings depending on context although the  Oxford English Dictionary

“contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as sub-entries”

Does this rising tide of words we should not use, mean that the number of words will reduce, do we as a population not just writers want our vocabulary reduced?

Now that really would be nuts!