…or “a huge achievement in the fight against terror”. If, as journalists are encouraged, we sidestep the confetti for a moment and do some observing instead of reacting, the remarkably well-timed death of Osama Bin Laden might not be cause for celebration.

But let’s start by looking a list of positives:

1: We’re now safe from terrorist attac- wait, no we’re not. There will almost certainly be retaliation.

1: We will no longer spend billions on operations in the Middle East. Oh, that’s not right either.

1: Everyone killed in terrorist attacks will come back to life. Huh? Oh this is real life. That won’t happen at all.

1: Obama is popular again. There’s a real one.

Now that we have balance in this article, we can look at some of the fishier stuff. Let’s start by looking at the only positive; increased popularity for Obama. He’s been under a lot of attack lately, both personally and for his handling of the US economy. This boost couldn’t have come at a better time for him. Funny how the sun suddenly comes out at the darkest part of the storm and Americans are proud to be American again. To be fair, they’re not able to do Royal Weddings over there so some other morale boosting device was needed.

But perhaps this was just a happy coincidence. After all, they couldn’t have known where he was, waiting for a convenient moment to strike all along. It’s not like Bin Laden was living in a huge mansion in plain view.

I’m sure it’s all as we’ve been told though. Shot clean in the head, stone dead. We’ve seen a body to prove it. Well, not yet, but we will. What’s that? Buried at sea within 24 hours “out of respect for Muslim tradition”? Oh. Bodies in the sea tend to wash up on shore after a while. I wonder if this one ever will. It probably vaporised.

He also never got to stand trial. That’s unfortunate, because it would have been good to see the 9/11 evidence, the files and footage that the CIA has always refused to release, finally laid out for all to see. I believe the US Government would have liked to bring him to trial.

Or rather, I would believe it if the Navy SEALs weren’t given a specific ‘kill not capture’ order.

The University of Winchester plans to charge £8500 per year from 2012. Click here to go to the university page.

Remember when the press assumed Chris Jeffries killed Jo Yeats a while ago? He was never charged, and yet he was horrifically demonised in the papers and life will never be the same again for him. People are arrested and released without charge all the time. It could easily happen to any of us. I think we can all agree we shouldn’t be attacking people before they even get to court.

But we do. The internet is a funny thing; it grew outside of authoritarian radar, somehow giving users the impression that cyberspace is different to the real world, with different rules. But we need to remember that our online actions still have real-life consequences, especially when we behave badly en masse, as we seem to when there is a high-profile criminal investigation like the current Sian O’Callaghan murder case.

According to reports, a 47-year-old minicab driver named Christopher Halliwell has confessed and even shown police to a body.

Even if someone has killed someone, and even if they confess, they are not legally a murderer until they are convicted in court. If you call someone a murderer on the internet when they’ve not been convicted, that is libel (defamation, identification, publication) and that person could sue you. So why do people feel so comfortable calling for the hanging of “murderers” who have not yet appeared in court? The accused could end up suing everyone on Facebook, Twitter and any other site who branded him a murderer. (Elton John won a libel case against a newspaper for calling him gay before he came out, even though it later turned out to be true). Read the rest of this entry »

Gizmodo is demonstrating the newsgathering capabilities of  a technologically equipped nation by collecting all the videos it can of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Most of these were taken by locals on their digital cameras and phones. Click the quote below to view:

The 8.9 magnitude Earthquake hit Japan today and a zillion-strong army of Japanese digital cameras and cellphones were ready to record its effects. This is it, as seen by the digital eyes of those who have suffered the shock.

Clearly, if the apocalypse ever comes, it will be recorded from two billion different angles. Until that day comes, we will be publishing videos of the Japan earthquake as they come here. - Gizmodo

Richard Peppiatt was, until recently, a reporter for British Tabloid, The Daily Star. He quit his job for reasons which he put more savagely and eloquently that I could manage on this blog; so read his letter for yourself here:

Dear Mr Desmond,

You probably don’t know me, but I know you. For the last two years I’ve been a reporter at the Daily Star, and for two years I’ve felt the weight of your ownership rest heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins.

Wait! I know you’re probably reaching for your phone to have me marched out of the building. But please, save on your bill. I quit.

The decision came inside my local newsstand, whilst picking up the morning papers. As I chatted with Mohammed, the Muslim owner, his blinking eyes settled on my pile of print, and then, slowly, rose to meet my face.
“English Defence League to become a political party” growled out from the countertop.

Squirming, I abandoned the change in my pocket and flung a note in his direction, the clatter of the till a welcome relief from the silence that had engulfed us. I slunk off toward the tube.
If he was hurt that my 25p had funded such hate-mongering, he’d be rightly appalled that I’d sat in the war cabinet itself as this incendiary tale was twisted and bent to fit an agenda seemingly decided before the EDL’s leader Tommy Robinson had even been interviewed.

Asked if his group were to become a political party I was told the ex-BNP goon had replied: “Not for now.”
But further up the newsprint chain it appears a story, too good to allow the mere spectre of reality to restrain, was spotted. It almost never came to this. I nearly walked out last summer when the Daily Star got all flushed about taxpayer-funded Muslim-only loos.
A newsworthy tale were said toilets Muslim-only. Or taxpayer-funded. Undeterred by the nuisance of truth, we omitted a few facts, plucked a couple of quotes, and suddenly anyone would think a Rochdale shopping centre had hired Osama Bin Laden to stand by the taps, handing out paper towels.
I was personally tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our postmodern victory in “blocking” the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil.
Not that my involvement in stirring up a bit of light-hearted Islamaphobia stopped there. Many a morning I’ve hit my speed dial button to Muslim rent-a-rant Anjem Choudary to see if he fancied pulling together a few lines about whipping drunks or stoning homosexuals. Read the rest of this entry »

Most people have heard about the thousands of US Afghan War files which have been published on Wikileaks (the site seems to be down at the time of writing. Probably just conicidence), but in case you haven’t, thousands of US Afghan War files have been published on Wikileaks. You can read about it here at The Guardian, which will no doubt be dining on this story for quite some time.

The Guardian was one of three newspapers to receive advance notice of the publication, and newspaper bosses and Wikileaks staff will almost certainly have their values put to the test as the White House applies pressure on them to reveal their source.

This is a lesson for everyone, showing the possibility of earth-shattering leaks via the internet due to the increasing ease with which whistleblowers can cover their tracks.

More specifically, this is a lesson for journalists. You can be the first to break news if you just keep your ear to the ground and are willing to pan for gold on sites like Wikileaks and WhatDoTheyKnow. On this occasion, advance warning was given, but there’s no telling how many stories have slipped through the net in this way, and how many careers could have been boosted just by surfing the net.

So the World Wide Web, although widely blamed for the decline of the newspaper industry, is also helping to keep it alive.

The new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, arrived at his desk to find a letter addressed to him. It was from his Labour predecessor, Liam Byrne. It’s not uncommon people in the political world to leave polite notes for their successors when their time is up in order to offer advice based on the experiences they had while they occupied the office. It’s considered a positive way of passing the torch, to show that there are no hard feelings and to prove that everyone in politics has the interests of the public at heart. Here is Liam Byrne’s letter in full :

“Dear Chief Secretary,

I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”

A complete list of the new Cabinet,  the party to which each member belongs and the constituency each one represents.

Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service
The Rt Hon David Cameron MP (Conservative – Witney)

Deputy Prime Minister, Lord President of the Council (with special responsibility for political and constitutional reform)
The Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP (Liberal Democrats – Sheffield Hallam) Read the rest of this entry »

BREAKING NEWS: David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Conservative and Lib Dem leaders, have comfirmed their coalition with a handshake and are holding a press conference in the garden in Downing Street.

Mr Cameron said it will be an administration united behind three principles: freedom, fairness and responsibility. He said that Liberal Democrats “will be represented at every level of government.”

Mr Clegg said that the country needed a strong government, and that this one will last. He said that liberalism is about allowing people to live the life they wish and “have the opportunities you crave”.

The two leaders agree that power should be handed back to the people and that social mobility should become a reality.

Gray Gibbon from Channel 4 said that everyone thought that this arrangement is a result of a hung parliament, but now the leaders seem to be talking about a long-term coalition. David Cameron didn’t confirm or deny a long-term partnership, instead noting that this will be a five-year partnership and asserting that solidarity and stability in government is vital to the public.

Nick Robinson asked a similar question, asking if they will be declaring wars and meeting Obama together. Cameron answered first again, joking that the BBC correspondent was getting “a bit advanced” and suggesting that they might “share a car to save petrol”. Read the rest of this entry »

Secret tape reveals Tory backing for ban on gays

This headline, currently the top story on Guardian.co.uk, conjures up all sorts of imagery. A man wearing a blue rosette sits with a white-suited figure in a dark, mysterious office overlooking London. The only light in the office comes from the murky sunset, trickling in between the half-closed blinds and casting slashes of yellow light interspersed with black bars across the two mens’ faces. The man in the white suit mutters to the other: “I want to ban the gays. I want them gone.” The man with the blue rosette leans back in his chair and places his fingertips together: “I can make than happen”.

The two men gently clink their crystal whiskey glasses together and sip their pre-war Scotch. The agreement made, they begin to discuss other matters, unaware of the tiny camera and microphone hidden in the smoke detector on the ceiling. A man died to get it there, but his sacrifice was not in vain. Tomorrow, the whole world will know of the Tory backing for ban on gays.

That’s what I had in mind, anyway. Your imagination may have produced something with a few variations but I expect we’re all pretty much on the same page. But, based on the content of the story, here’s what the headline should read:

A Tory has mentioned that he believes that people who run a B&B from their own private home should have the right to turn people away if they don’t want them in their house.

So the picture I painted was a bit wrong. The conversation didn’t take place in a secret but opulent office, it happened at a Centre for Policies meeting. More importantly, it wasn’t really about a “ban on gays”, it was about whether or not running a business from your home should mean you are subject to the same commercial laws as someone running one from dedicated premises. The focus was on the Shadow Home Secretary though, so at least all the shadow stuff I had in my head was sort of right.

He, perhaps unwisely, used the example of a Christian couple being unhappy with the idea of two men sharing a bed in their spare room. He could have just as easily used the example of an elderly couple being nervous about having a group of hard-drinking, noisy football fans in their house. If he’d known a camera was on him, he probably would have.

I am not writing to say whether or not I agree with the effects that opening a Bed & Breakfast may have on the rules that apply to the building. I certainly wouldn’t agree with a “ban on gays”, if that was under discussion. Which it wasn’t. I am writing to say that I feel rather disappointed by the behaviour of The Guardian. Normally I quite like that paper, but my respect for it was somewhat diminished when I saw this. I know that headlines have to be attention-grabbing, and I know that newspapers are businesses and have to sell copies, but I can’t agree with a headline which completely skews the facts and tells a different story. Even The Sunday Sport, if it decided to dip its toe into politics (think of the possibilities) would think twice before twisting something as drastically as this. Is Britain about to find itself with another tabloid?