FAO: Journalism Students

Yes it's a piss take of creating news packages, but if it's good enough for mainstream news then it's good enough for WINOL!

God Is Dead. Funeral's at 12:30...

So today we studied the mad, bad and dangerous to know Friederich Nietzsche. Nietzsche is someone who you probably wouldn't want to have a drink with. He strikes me as someone who'd be perennially miserable no matter what you did (unless it was take part in an orgy in the basement of Cinderella's Castle).

Nietzsche seems to, rather unfairly, have this reputation as a completely insane Nazi. While, in fairness, he did eventually go bonkers (most likely due to syphilis), his beliefs themselves weren't all that mad. He was also no Nazi. He had his beliefs twisted and bastardised by the Nazi's, but Nietzsche was opposed to anti-semitism, nationalism and racism, which was pretty much everything the Nazi party stood for.

Nietzsche had some good ideas in his syphilis addled brain.I don't entirely disgaree with his views on morality, for example. For Nietzsche, morality was created by mankind and there was no such thing as moral absolutes. Everything was relative to everything else. If someone grew up in a society where it was okay to beat women then they wouldn't see it as wrong, even though we'd find it abhorrent.

I also concur with his attitudes towards religion. By breaking with the idea of a God, one loses the right to an exclusively set range of Christian morals. This is a stark contrast to the philosophical beliefs of Immanel Kant, someone whose beliefs were based very heavily in the Christian mindset.

This being said, I do disagree with Nietzsche's opinions on equality. Personally I feel that people are born equal. Yes people are elevated to positions of power, but that's just their title. As people, they're no different on a fundamental level to anyone else. Additionally, I don't agree with his dislike of democracy. Yes, if the world were left in charge of wise, infallible people who always made the right decision for everyone that'd be super. However, people make mistakes no matter how enlightened they are. To place the power of society in the hands of a few individuals is the road to corruption.

Orwell and Newspeak

This is a video I had to do for my Journalism course at University. In it, I talk about Orwellian language that we have today and examples of it.

It was going to be longer and more in-depth, but because of YouTube's video time limit I had to severely cut it down.

Kid torturers aren't a sign of Cameron's "Broken Britain", just a sign that people aren't saints.

The locking up of two children responsible for the torture of two other children has caused outrage amongst the public and has been seized by the Tories as being a clear sign that Britain is "Broken". In my humble opinion this is sheer nonsense.

The attack by these two children is horrific for sure, but to say it's symptomatic of a wider problem is the sort of politicking that's become expected of the Conservatives and of David Cameron. To seize upon one incident and use it to your own ends is sick and twisted.Of course these things should be talked about and action should be taken to try and prevent them from happening again, but they've always happened and unfortunately always will.

It's not a sign that Britain has degenerated to some Mad Max style free for all, just that the media like to stoke up shock stories like this. It's the current news bogeyman; the terror on Britain streets, with hoodies and feral pre-teens fed on a diet of drugs, Grand Theft Auto and blue Smarties.

The death of Jamie Bulger was almost a twenty years ago. Is society any worse now than then? No, of course not. It's much the same as it was and as it has been for decades previously. And if Cameron hasn't forgotten, who was in charge when Jamie Bulger was killed? Oh yeah, the Tories.

It's no failing of any political party or of society as a whole. It's just an unwelcome reminder we live in a nasty, violent, horrible world.

We shouldn't forsake our humanity just to make the most of a story.

The Haitian earthquake has been dominating the headlines recently, with hope and misery and life and death all taking up column inches of the paper as bodies and survivors are pulled from the rubble. With most of the worlds media focused on the small Caribbean island, many journalists have flown over to report on the disaster.

CNN's Anderson Cooper is one of these. While there, he saved the life of a small boy who'd been hit on the head with a cinder block. This has raised the question over journalistic interference in Haiti by providing help to locals.

Now, this to me is a simple question to answer. As someone who's training to be a journalist and as someone who's first aid trained, if I saw someone in need of help I'd provide that help, journalism be damned! Yes journalists have a duty to be impartial, but this is a natural disaster and one of the worst on record. It's not like it's a general election where we can be accused of being partial to one party or another, it's a disaster where thousands of people have died. Do we all want to end up like Kevin Carter, visiting places and exploiting them for the news values and doing nothing to help?

I see that video of Anderson Cooper and I feel proud that there are people in my chosen profession who are willing to forsake and rules they may have been taught in order to go and do what's right. It's important to remember that beyond our duties as journalists, we have duties as human beings.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

So that's me done with Uni 2009. It's been a good semester, but I'm glad that it's the holidays now. Ended the year with an exam/test type thing on the stuff we've studied in History and Context of Journalism. I think I managed to do okay. I had a lot more that I wanted to write though. For the first question on modernism I wanted to talk about other modernist writers more and how their work differed from James Joyce's, but didn't get the time. In fact I barely finished on time in the first place, so I'm glad I didn't decide to expand on what I wanted to say!

I'm quite intrigued by this assignment we've been set to do on Newspeak inreal life. I'm not quite sure if it has to be present day or recent history, or if we can go back a bit further like in Soviet Russia and those sorts of places. Regardless, I think it can be a fun task to do. May incorporate Horrie's Random Bullshit Generator as well, who know!

Don't think I'm going to do anything just yet though. May wait until the New Year to do any of my assignments. It'd be nice to actually experience my holiday!

This is the end, beautiful friend.

It's hard to think that WINOL is almost over for the year. We've a special bulletin tomorrow, showcasing the best of our work but after that it'll be a new decade before we're on air again!

It's a shame it has to end so soon, especially as we've really settled in our roles and got comfortable with what we're doing. It's been a really useful exercise, I certainly know now what I want to do in journalism, which is become a sports photographer. Oringally I wanted to work on features but since working on WINOL I've realised that's not really for me. Hopefully I'll be able to sort that out after Christmas as I'd like to join the sports desk and get some first hand experience.

I think we've made the most of the opportunity and have come up with some cracking stories such as our most recent gem, which was the Lib Dem poll rigging on our site. Without the third years after Christmas the pressure's on us to maintain such a high quality of work. Personally I like to think we can do it. We know how this works now and while there may be less of us, I think we know enough to keep the WINOL machine ticking over.