This thread is inspired by Crazy_Ivan. Well, here goes: Pretend you are a reporter for a major daily newspaper. You have been assigned to write a story about a magazine publisher's pending divorce from his wife--who is also his business partner--and how it will affect his $200 million media "empire" of popular publications. While you are checking into the story, you learn that he is leaving his wife for a man he has been having an affair with for several years. You have discovered this info on your own. The publisher has not inssued any public statements about his sexuality. He has only announced that he has filed for divorce and is seeking full control of the media company, which has public stock holders. Are you going to include this info in your news story and "out" this man? Who should decide whether this man's sexual preference (or anyone else's for that matter) should be made public? Is this information newsworthy? Why?
I'd out him in order to create a media frenzy over absolutely nothing, thus burying my sinister manouvres (placing troops on borders, building new weapons systems, flouting international law etc) to about page 5 of the newspaper, where the stupid populace won't read about them because the article will contain long words...and any way, that guy's like gay...who cares about issues and like stuff...he's ginger beer, more bent than a curly-wurly in a blender, a bum-tickler, a three-legged horse merchant... And all the time the real news is tucked away next to the stocks and shares, slipping slowly out of sight and out of mind. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I am invincible! Soon I will control the world! But he is gay...that guy...
Woman... if you have nothing real to say, then don't say it. Why do you make yourself look like a dolt?
That was a real point - playfully put. Who the hell cares if someone is gay or not? Only "dolts" - there's real news out there getting buried by media frenzies. For example: A fortnight ago, two US Navy aircraft carrier groups and an amphibious assault group, packed with around 17,000 US Marines, took up a position off the coast of Iran. How was this ominous geopolitical development reported? Except for the increasingly supine UK Guardian, who dressed a White House press release up as a news story and splashed it across their front page, it was barely reported at all. How to explain this strangely neglect of such an important story? The truth is, the British media had other things on their mind. In the first week of May, the three year old Madeline McCann, the photogenic daughter of two Catholic doctors, went missing in Portugal. Clearly, intense focus would need to be maintained if the British media establishment was to succeed in its mission to retrieve her from her abductors by thought projection, and thus it is that the (ever diminishing) British newspaper buying public have been reading about little else since the beginning of May. Beyond question, a media story which began as unmoored from reality is now floating out somewhere beyond the crystal spheres. As of last week, more than 70,000 words have been printed in mainstream UK newspapers about the McCann case, compared to perhaps a tenth as many about a clearly belligerent American military action that may one day deliver several hundred thousand dead children. Meanwhile, the highly sophisticated node website set-up to spearhead the global search operation, has so far attracted more than 171m hits, and more than £625,054 in donations through a dedicated PayPal account. Suffice to say, how exactly this money might be productively spent is completely obscure. On the evening of the 5th June, Madeline's parents Kate and Gerry McCann appeared in a BBC Crimewatch special, and held up a small pair of pink and flowery pajamas for viewers to behold, as if the magical production of this fetish object might somehow appease the gods. This, in the wake of a torrent of pious appeals and bizarre offers of help from football stars, rock stars, and even the Pope. The latter of these may at least be considered to have some understanding of the issues involved in the matter, but what cause Elton John is really serving by showing "a heart-rending film of Madeline McCann, the four-year old British girl who was abducted in Portugal" during the intervals of his gigs remains highly mysterious. Meanwhile, A4 posters presenting photographic portraits of Madeline blankly staring out beneath the title "Look into my eyes!" are now available on the internet in every language from Norwegian to Turkish, and continue to proliferate around Central London, as if people who abduct children might be reasonably expected to take them shopping. What is happening here is an order of magical thinking last witnessed during the coverage of the Sago Mine disaster in 2006. In that story, the heady imperatives of a 24 hour news cycle produced a kind of vortex effect that caused the truth to invert as the story drew to climax. Forty-one hours after an explosion trapped 13 men in a West Virginia coal mine, no less a paper than the New York Times (and they were not the only ones) reported that 12 of them had been found alive. In fact, 12 of them were dead, and, via the quivering rabbit ears of the media, a pseudo-world had infiltrated the dream dimensional plane of the earthly sphere. "In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false," wrote Debord; so it was in Virginia, and so it is once again here. Madeline McCann has indeed been abducted, only not really by a human. Rather, her captor at this point is more like a sinuous mediamatic array: cold, vast, and sickly sympathetic. Stretching from sea to shining sea, it draws together presses and satellites into a single, slimy, tentacled organism; a grotesque and scaly body equipped with rudimentary insect wings, but with an octopus-like head whose face is a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind it, endlessly beating back the hurtling storms of progress. In a word, Maddy is with Kapital now. And frankly who knows what progeny should now be predicted? Is it really going too far to suppose that in the future, newspaper editors will begin kidnapping children themselves so as produce the desired sensational headlines and increase in readership? Or that governments will begin to do so, in order to produce a seductive media shield to deflect from their other activities. Indeed, given the scale of the real criminal mysteries surrounding the Madeline McCann case, perhaps they have already begun to do so. After all, to paraphrase Jo Moore, what better way to bury bad news than to bury it beneath the blanket media coverage of a lost little girl?
Not only do you make yourself look like an idiot, but now you plagarize? Girl, read the question again: Pretend you are a reporter for a major daily newspaper. You have been assigned to write a story about a magazine publisher's pending divorce from his wife--who is also his business partner--and how it will affect his $200 million media "empire" of popular publications. While you are checking into the story, you learn that he is leaving his wife for a man he has been having an affair with for several years.
Are you suggesting that the private life of this mogul outweighs things like an impending war that might leave thousands, if not hundreds of thousands dead? The entire question is about whether or not you should reveal his affair/sexuality. I just don't give t*** about this kind of story which concerns itself with things which are entirely trivial, except for in the way that they are used by politicians to hide unfavorable news. Even in terms of pure capital, how much do you think the war in Iraq has cost? How much would a war in Iran cost America?
Newsworthy carries a couple of disparate connotations. The first, of course, is whether the information is important for readers to know, whether the quality of their lives will be affected by having or lacking the information. The other connotation is does the information help sell the news article to the public. It could be a hook to get readers to read further and learn the more relevant issues, or it can be the principle focus of the article. For the first connotation, his sexual orientation is not newsworthy in the least. The divorce itself is newsworthy because of the partnership struggle that might unfold, and also because the emotional turmoil of divorce interferes with his ability to make solid business decisions. The second connotation of newsworthy is one that cannot be ignored, however. News media live or die by the loyalty of their audience. A news outlet that refuses to mention a major piece of information, particularly one that is sure to be picked up by the competition, may not be around later to disseminate important information. However, sensationalizing it is deplorable. If there is any justice, the newspaper or other media outlet that resorts to such tactics will be scorned. Yet such media outlets thrive. That is a grim commentary on human nature.
1. EFY, please stop being a (koffkoffself-censoredkoff) at Onoria. She is making an extremely relevant post to your topic/theme, carrying out your string: What should be reported, and what shouldn't be? How should it be? What are the priorities? What are the morals? Which reminds me: 2. First, I would go to the man. If he states that he does not want me to print the information, I won't do it. I believe this is called "off the record", or, in humanity, "honor." If he says he's fine with it being known, sure, I'll print it, but I won't make a big deal about it. Of course, I won't shove it totally to the side, either. I'll give it what attention it's due. Come to think of it, I don't see why he would be too worried about having it known, anyway. This is a man who has already gone through a divorce for a man who he loves. And he had to know that would garner a whole mess of news coverage. So finding out he's gay would just be another bucket on the sinking ship. And if he's so devoted to being with this man that he'd break up a previous marriage, why should he hide it? It would be like being ashamed that you're straight, or being racist against yourself if you were black. Which reminds me: 3. How is this "inspired" by me? When you see my name, do you instantly assume that everything in my personality, every action I will ever make, every idea and thought and inspiration I will ever have, is dictated by the fact that I am gay? Do you think this gives you the right to attach my name to a piece of work that sounds like it's trying to make a homophobic? Of course, I don't think you think that. I don't think this is intended to be homophobic. But when you jump to conclusions and don't read things thoroughly so you can insult someone- it's not fun, is it? You didn't enjoy reading what I wrote, did you? So don't attack Onoria like that. ....but seriously, without any fake insults, why was this "inspired" by me?
She wasn't plagerising as she didn't claim that work to be her own. :S And you can't judge someones opinion to a question, you dolt. I wouldn't say anything, but I never plan to be in the media as I wouldn't sell many papers. xD
This will NOT be tolerated here. Onoria Westhrop is a respected member of this forum and no member here Disserves that kind of Insolence or disrespect. Insults will not be tolerated. You've been Warned. *Click* ~Raven
