Tag Archives: Guardian

Guardian: in America, not in American

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Launches today. It is in Amer­ica, but not in Amer­ican. Which to me is a missed oppor­tun­ity, given my pre­vi­ous solo cam­paign (actu­ally blog post) to adopt Amer­ican Eng­lish as the online standard.

Although Eng­lish (US) has its ugli­nesses, the Amer­ic­ans care far more about Eng­lish than we do, as Inigo Thomas admits in his defence of the decision to go with Eng­lish (UK). He argues that a stand­ard Guard­ian Eng­lish is desir­able but that Eng­lish (UK)’s vir­tue is its inform­al­ity and refusal to con­form to rules. Seems to me like hav­ing cake and eat­ing it. But, hey…I don’t actu­ally think it will vex many poten­tial readers.

You can see what it looks like below:

And this is the New York Times:

Per­son­ally, I won­der whose side the Guard­ian will be on? Given that its US USP is as a lib­eral par­tisan news­pa­per, it will undoubtedly have to take sides in con­flicts between the national interests of lib­eral demo­cra­cies — espe­cially in the field of for­eign affairs. Won­der how that rather more inter­est­ing battle between Bri­tain and Amer­ica will shake down? The Guard­ian stylebook might not have the answers…

Journalism at the movies

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I finally got round to see­ing the Bourne Ulti­matum at the week­end. (Spoiler ahead) It shoots straight into the top ten for cine­matic journ­al­ist por­tray­als, though it doesn’t do us any favours. Paddy Con­sid­ine plays Simon Ross, fic­tional secur­ity cor­res­pond­ent of the Guard­ian, a reporter so drippy his photo-byline is a tea stain.

Far­ring­don Road fea­tures, and there’s an inter­est­ing cameo by Alan Rus­bridger’s glasses.

Ross, whose note-taking skills make Andrew Gil­ligan look like Mar­cel Proust, is hunted down by a CIA team led by David Strath­airn (the irony — cinema’s Edward R. Mur­row turned journo-slayer).

Ross — a bit of a liab­il­ity — is shot dead on Water­loo sta­tion (appro­pri­ately, by someone called an asset).

He’s hid­ing in a cup­board when he loses his nerve in a scene oddly remin­is­cent of Bambi, where the birds are shel­ter­ing from a hunter in the under­growth. One of them cracks:

He’s almost here.
I can’t stand it any longer. [Bang/feathers flut­ter to ground]

The les­sons?

  • File your story online first.
  • Don’t go and meet assassin-pursued pyscho­pathic contacts.
  • If you do — stay in the cupboard.

Good advice.

Extra-judicial killing and Islam

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Dispatches reporter Phil Rees last night made much of a pur­portedly rather dan­ger­ous sound­ing man in glasses and a scarf, giv­ing his rather dan­ger­ous sound­ing inter­pret­a­tion of the Qu’ran.

Rees’s jus­ti­fic­a­tion?

Journ­al­ists need to present the views of rad­ical Muslims in a way that does not push them toward fur­ther viol­ence. Journ­al­ism has a duty to reflect and not con­demn the views of people such as Abu Muhammed. In deny­ing them a voice, it is con­trib­ut­ing to the rad­ic­al­isa­tion of Brit­ish Muslims.

The Daily Tele­graph begged to dif­fer:

The dir­ector of last night’s opus, Phil Rees, describes this inter­view — which (liv­ing up to its advance pub­li­city) would seem to qual­ify as spe­cific incite­ment to viol­ence — as a much-needed anti­dote to the one-sidedness of media debate about Islam. Does he really believe that a near-unanimous oppos­i­tion to mass murder is a form of narrow-minded prejudice?

I have put rad­ical Islam­ists on TV (and mem­bers of the BNP too), but usu­ally in an inter­view set­ting where their views can be chal­lenged. Journ­al­ism is not a mir­ror, it also stands for some­thing, and whilst those val­ues may be highly con­tested, they don’t usu­ally include advocacy of extra-judicial murder.

Because that is what the debate is about, it’s not about Islam, it’s about the rights of indi­vidu­als to kill one another without due legal process.

If Rees had really wanted to put on a show he should have found someone to advoc­ate the extra-judicial killing of Abu Muhammed (we are at war, after all). And per­haps too, the dan­ger­ous sound­ing Irish­man out­side Pad­ding­ton Green. After all, once you start it’s hard to know where to stop! But then didn’t we used to do some­thing sim­ilar in North­ern Ire­land? Best not to bring that up. Still, IMO journ­al­ism needs to hold people to account — the state and its ser­vants as much as self-justifying sociopaths. Rees let the big mouths off the hook, and didn’t chal­lenge the efforts of mod­er­ates either (apart from show­ing up at a school briefly).

In the mean­time, if you want to explore some of the non-stereotypical range of Muslim opin­ion can I sug­gest the excel­lent Pickled Polit­ics?

Inside the surge

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If you haven’t seen Sean Smith’s film from Bagh­dad then do your­self a favour and check it out. Smith is a Guard­ian pho­to­grapher who’s been shoot­ing video whilst on an embed with a US out­fit.

I don’t urge you to watch it with a view to per­suad­ing you of the sense or oth­er­wise of the US mil­it­ary pres­ence in Iraq, but for style reas­ons. The com­bin­a­tion of inter­views, action and stills pho­to­graphs is simple and effective.

Either he or the Guard­ian doesn’t like his voice, since someone else links his piece.

The film shows moments in a fort­night with a group of exhausted sol­diers. They watch an APV burn with their col­leagues on board. They shoot dead a driver who fails to stop. A ter­ri­fied old lady watches them go through her home one day, and dump a dead body on her door­step the next.

Per­son­ally, I think Amer­ican troops have to stay in Iraq. They broke it, they should fix it. There, I said it — and it’s easy to say.

But would you or your loved ones sign up for a fif­teen month tour with Apache com­pany? Likely not. And would you like to be on the receiv­ing end when they’re tired, nervous and angry and don’t speak the lan­guage? Me neither.

And would you risk your life to record all that, know­ing it will provide ques­tions but no answers?

Post­script: the power of coin­cid­ence — an hour or so before I pos­ted this, Lloyd Shep­herd pos­ted this