Brexit means… today’s Schleswig-Holstein? | Letters

June 14, 2017, 12:07 pm

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≪ Previous: Telegraph chief executive Murdoch MacLennan steps down after 13 years

I am delighted, on my 90th birthday, 14 June, to thank Tom Mahoney (Letters, 13 June) for reminding me of Wordsworth’s words “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven”. This expressed my feelings in 1945 as I listened alone to the radio, throughout the day, to the totally unexpected election results. I had been too young to have voted – the voting age was then 21. Last Friday bore some resemblance in feeling, though somewhat diluted by the failure of Labour to actually win, and obviously by regret that the second part of that quotation no longer applied.
Ailsa Land
Totnes, Devon

• To go back to basics, what does Brexit mean? No one seems to know. Is it today’s version of the 19th-century Schleswig-Holstein question? In the words of Lord Palmerston: “Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business, the Prince Consort, who is dead, a German professor, who has gone mad, and I, who have forgotten all about it.”
David Moore
Chesterfield

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Newspapers around the world react to the Grenfell Tower fire – in pictures

June 15, 2017, 1:45 am

≫ Next: Cosy media means democracy loses out | Letters

≪ Previous: Brexit means… today’s Schleswig-Holstein? | Letters

A roundup of newspaper front pages in response to the horrific blaze at a tower block in west London

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Cosy media means democracy loses out | Letters

June 15, 2017, 11:30 am

≫ Next: Sun journalist 'impersonated Grenfell Tower victim's friend at hospital'

≪ Previous: Newspapers around the world react to the Grenfell Tower fire – in pictures

Brian Cathcart says British journalism is shredding its own future, former NUJ president Jacob Ecclestone sees hope in social media, John Smith says family connections play too much of a role, and Karen Barratt says the rightwing press infects TV and radio

George Monbiot is to be applauded for acknowledging the crisis in British journalism (The biggest losers? Not the Tories but the media, who missed the story, 14 June). At a moment when historic news brands should be doing all they can to foster trust in the face of fakery, they are squandering it. That the most trusted – our broadcasters – have been slavishly accepting the lead and the language of the worst – our corporate press – is simply tragic. British journalism is shredding its own future.

Only journalists can fix this, but there are public policy measures that can help. We can prevent Rupert Murdoch gaining full control of Sky. We can initiate part two of the Leveson inquiry, looking into the role of newspaper managements in criminality. And we can ensure that news publishers – in print and online, and including the Guardian – are properly accountable to a fully independent and effective self-regulator of the kind recommended by the Leveson inquiry. These are urgent matters.
Prof Brian Cathcart
Kingston University, London

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Sun journalist 'impersonated Grenfell Tower victim's friend at hospital'

June 16, 2017, 4:02 am

≫ Next: Mail Online story about alleged cause of Grenfell fire prompts around 1,300 complaints

≪ Previous: Cosy media means democracy loses out | Letters

King’s College hospital launches complaint with watchdog over behaviour of Sun reporter

• Grenfell Tower fire - latest updates

King’s College hospital is to lodge a complaint with the press watchdog over a journalist who allegedly impersonated a friend of a victim of the Grenfell Tower fire in order to get an interview with him.

The hospital is to file a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) about the behaviour of the Sun reporter. It has also written to News UK, the publisher of the Sun, Times and Sunday Times, about the incident.

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Mail Online story about alleged cause of Grenfell fire prompts around 1,300 complaints

June 16, 2017, 7:29 am

≫ Next: Turning tabloid can save money - but you must not skimp on talent

≪ Previous: Sun journalist 'impersonated Grenfell Tower victim's friend at hospital'

Press watchdog will assess complaints about article focusing on man whose faulty fridge allegedly started west London blaze

• Grenfell Tower fire - latest updates
• Long and forensic investigation ahead

A Mail Online article about a man whose faulty fridge allegedly started the Grenfell Tower fire has prompted about 1,300 complaints to the press watchdog.

The Mail Online article, which has allegedly been toned down overnight, focuses on the actions and behaviour of Behailu Kebede, whose fourth floor flat is thought to be where the blaze started.

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Turning tabloid can save money - but you must not skimp on talent

June 17, 2017, 4:03 pm

≫ Next: What the sale of the Times to Murdoch can teach us today

≪ Previous: Mail Online story about alleged cause of Grenfell fire prompts around 1,300 complaints

After the Guardian and Observer announce a move to new format, they will need fresh thinking to ensure tabloids are a compelling read

There’s a certain personal irony in the Guardian’s decision to turn tabloid. It’s something I was keen on, as editor, almost three decades ago: and that was one driving force behind the decision to package broadsheet news with tabloid features in the second section we called G2. Alas, time ran out as the Indy and Times took tabloid plunges and the Guardian opted for a bigger, complex Berliner page size, handsome but pretty lonely in a new world of printing contracts and ad sizes.

Of course, the new move – to be printed on Trinity Mirror presses – is reported as necessary cost saving (for the Observer as well). But it can’t be left simply at that. Every different print size carries its own imperatives: in tabloid, for pace, variety and contrast as pages turn. See how the Times mixes short and longer pieces to give a sense of momentum. Fewer big picture spreads; a concentration on the variety of life, mixing courtroom and human interest with politics and diplomacy.

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What the sale of the Times to Murdoch can teach us today

June 17, 2017, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Humble pie on the menu for press after election defies opinion polls

≪ Previous: Turning tabloid can save money - but you must not skimp on talent

The story of how Roy Thomson came to lose the Times is an instructive tale about the formation of the media landscape to this general election

In a curious way, it’s events almost four decades old that have huge relevance now as we snap and snarl over the media lessons of this election. Events recorded in the obit columns rather than on any front page.

Sir Gordon Brunton, dead at 95, was consigliere to Roy Thomson as the genial Canadian bought the Times and Sunday Times. But, as Brunton’s obituaries in the Times and Telegraph recall, bringing those two hitherto separate papers together doubled their problems with labour relations.

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Humble pie on the menu for press after election defies opinion polls

June 17, 2017, 11:00 pm

≫ Next: Rebel Wilson has landed a blow on the relentlessly aggressive media | Van Badham

≪ Previous: What the sale of the Times to Murdoch can teach us today

It’s been a painful week for many media big names after predictions of a wipeout for Jeremy Corbyn failed to come true

Back, one more time, to the 8 June inquest. Here’s the habitually strong and stable Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times. “As I was saying last week, or at least as the headline on this column accurately summed it up: ‘Don’t panic … May is well ahead.’ Wrong, Lawson, and not for the first time in this campaign. It’s no defence that there was scarcely a single so-called expert who anticipated the actual outcome.”

He’s quite right, of course. John Rentoul of the Indy will now “try harder to learn from his mistakes”. Polly Toynbee of the Guardian heard the “munch, munch of humble pie”, a chomping sound washing through Observer corridors too. And why did all Dominic’s “experts” get it so wrong? Because, like TV pundits, like Tory canvassers, like shrugging Labour party wizards on the day before, they all relied on the opinion polls and judged prospects on those results. Because, one more time, the polls were frail, contradictory – and wrong.

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Rebel Wilson has landed a blow on the relentlessly aggressive media | Van Badham

June 18, 2017, 7:36 am

≫ Next: Don’t think twice, it’s only Bob borrowing | Brief letters

≪ Previous: Humble pie on the menu for press after election defies opinion polls

The actor’s defamation win is not a victory against Australia’s tall poppy syndrome, but a turning of the tables on the media culture towering over us

Rebel Wilson walked out of a courthouse in Melbourne last week, raising her fist in the air. The actor-comedian had just won a defamation case against the German media group Bauer – in Australia, which is extraordinary. Wilson had gone to court against the multinational over its claims, published in the Australian magazine Woman’s Day, that Wilson was a “serial liar”. Over three weeks of hearings and six appearances at the supreme court of Victoria, Wilson testified that Bauer’s anonymously sourced accusations that she had fabricated her age, name and life story had cost her a part in no lesser work of cinematic art than Kung Fu Panda Part 3.

Just why Hollywood demands scrupulous personal authenticity from actors playing the parts of talking mammals in an animated martial arts franchise was, alas, unaddressed in the proceedings. But that this is the reality Hollywood inhabits is now a matter of legal record. The six-person, all-female Australian jury found completely in Wilson’s favour.

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Don’t think twice, it’s only Bob borrowing | Brief letters

June 18, 2017, 11:28 am

≫ Next: Guardian tabloid: size matters, but not as much as content | Letters

≪ Previous: Rebel Wilson has landed a blow on the relentlessly aggressive media | Van Badham

Hollie McNish | Helmut Kohl | Guardian letters | Bob Dylan’s Nobel speech

In Alice O’Keefe’s profile of the poet Hollie McNish (‘I always attracted mums and midwives. Now I get poetry lovers,’ 17 June), I note that “She was educated at the local comprehensive, but went on to Cambridge University.” Surely the word should be “and”?
John Murphy
Carshalton, Surrey

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Guardian tabloid: size matters, but not as much as content | Letters

June 18, 2017, 11:30 am

≫ Next: First Turkish journalists go on trial over alleged coup support

≪ Previous: Don’t think twice, it’s only Bob borrowing | Brief letters

Pros and cons of a tabloid Guardian, including Richard Griffiths’s worries about gravitas, John Berry on appealing to a younger demographic, and Albert Beale on subsidising the online edition

I understand your reasons for going tabloid (Guardian journalism goes from strength to strength. It’s just our shape that’s changing, 14 June) but fear that, despite your good intentions, you will, like the Independent and the Times, lose that aura of gravitas and je ne sais quoi – is it dignity? – that goes with being a broadsheet.
Richard Griffiths
King’s Lynn, Norfolk

• I have been buying the Guardian for very many years; despite the ever-increasing amount I’ve had to pay, I’ve done so willingly because I know serious journalism costs money. But for some time you’ve chosen to make available free, on your website, the material I pay you to produce. Do you ever stop to consider how those of us who actually pay for the paper every day feel about your encouragement of large numbers of freeloaders – most of whom are undoubtedly more wealthy than I am?

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First Turkish journalists go on trial over alleged coup support

June 19, 2017, 8:41 am

≫ Next: The semiotics of Sepp Blatter’s beef with white wine | Letters

≪ Previous: Guardian tabloid: size matters, but not as much as content | Letters

Brothers Ahmet and Mehmet Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak accused of using ‘subliminal messaging’ to overthrow government

The first trial of journalists accused of taking part in or supporting last year’s coup attempt in Turkey opened on Monday in a crucial test for freedom of expression in the country.

Ahmet and Mehmet Altan have been held without trial since September, and face possible life sentences, along with fellow journalist Nazlı Ilıcak, for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government and acting on behalf of a terror organisation.

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The semiotics of Sepp Blatter’s beef with white wine | Letters

June 20, 2017, 11:20 am

≫ Next: Worried about climate change? I blame men | Brief letters

≪ Previous: First Turkish journalists go on trial over alleged coup support

Police officers and their pay | James Bond and the former Fifa president | Going tabloid in the 19th century | Borrowings by Robert Louis Stevenson and Bob Dylan | From Trump Street into Russia Row

Your editorial on public sector pay (Nurses teachers and firefighters are long overdue a rise, 20 June) was disappointing for a couple of reasons. First, you exclude police officers from the headline, when they have suffered similar pay freezes and cuts, compounded by pay-scale freezes and the largest raid on pensions. Second, you use the sexist term “policemen” when referring to officers running into danger – are you suggesting policewomen run the other way? The perfectly respectable gender-neutral alternatives “officer” and “constable” have been in satisfactory use for many decades.
DCI Louise Fleckney
Broughton, Northamptonshire

• James Bond in From Russia with Love, to his enemy Donald “Red” Grant: “Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something.” Sepp Blatter, lunching with David Conn (G2, 19 June), ordered white wine with côte de bœuf. Doesn’t that tell us something?
Clifton Melvin
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire

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Worried about climate change? I blame men | Brief letters

June 21, 2017, 10:35 am

≫ Next: I’m happy to pay to spread the Guardian’s journalism | Letters

≪ Previous: The semiotics of Sepp Blatter’s beef with white wine | Letters

Climate change | Inflammatory language | Plagiarism | The cryptic crossword | North-south divide

Normally I would write to complain about such a gendered phrase as “man-made” (Opinion, 17 June). In the case of “man-made climate change” however, I’m inclined to let it pass. On balance it seems likely that rather more men than women do bear responsibility for the changes which are leading our planet to fry. “Anthropogenic” is a much more elegant word though.
Sylvia Rose
Totnes, Devon

• Virginia Cumming (Letters, 21 June) calls out the Daily Mail for inflammatory language. On page 25, Aditya Chakrabortty declares that “Britain still murders its poor” (Opinion, 21 June) Mote and Beam?
J Moorhead
Gorstage, Cheshire

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I’m happy to pay to spread the Guardian’s journalism | Letters

June 21, 2017, 10:35 am

≫ Next: Daily Mail v Guardian – an open-minded reader’s view | Letter

≪ Previous: Worried about climate change? I blame men | Brief letters

The Guardian helps counter the lies and propaganda widely available in cyberspace, writes Michael Miller

While I sympathise with Albert Beale about “freeloaders”, I do not resent this and indeed believe the Guardian’s open access website is the correct policy (Letters, 19 June). Having free access encourages non-readers to dip in or follow a link to the site and they may well become committed paying readers. But most importantly it gives the Guardian huge international impact – it is one of the most widely read news sites worldwide because people trust it. I for one, as a long-time subscriber, am happy to subsidise this outreach to make dependable, accurate, investigative reportage open to all to help counteract the propaganda, lies and hatred masquerading as news that is widely spread around cyberspace. We must encourage more web-only readers to become supporters if they value the Guardian; indeed I am currently considering becoming a supporter on top of my subscription to foster the spread of factual reporting.
Michael Miller
Sheffield

• Dear Albert Beale, I read the Guardian online for convenience. I live on a council estate and have to carry all rubbish and recycling down four flights of stairs and heave it into large communal bins in the street. I consider a subscription to Guardian Members to be fair payment.
Rita Gallard
Norwich

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Daily Mail v Guardian – an open-minded reader’s view | Letter

June 22, 2017, 11:23 am

≫ Next: ABC comes up short with Catalyst revamp | The Weekly Beast

≪ Previous: I’m happy to pay to spread the Guardian’s journalism | Letters

The Guardian’s snobby metropolitan-left editorials, op-ed articles and letters may offend the many more who read the Daily Mail, says Charles Foster

Virginia Cumming (Letters, 21 June) implies that millions who read the Daily Mail are complicit in hate speech as they consume “rightwing” extremism by making the choice to read the newspaper, and by implication should therefore be in the same dock as the publisher. Small in number we may be, but I am (probably) one of the few Guardian subscribers who occasionally reads the Mail newspaper, for balance, and with an open mind. Martin Rowson’s Sun and Daily Mail white van cartoon really plumbed the depths of leftwing hatred – and blinkered ignorance – towards the “ordinary” people who choose to read the Mail (and other tabloids) and the Mail has quite rightly responded with both barrels.

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ABC comes up short with Catalyst revamp | The Weekly Beast

June 22, 2017, 7:05 pm

≫ Next: Hospital withdraws complaint alleging Sun reporter impersonated friend of Grenfell victim

≪ Previous: Daily Mail v Guardian – an open-minded reader’s view | Letter

Corporation’s promise of 17 one-hour science specials in the new format in 2017 won’t be delivered. Plus: the ad that tells you an iconic TV station could be yours

The ABC’s promise to replace its weekly science magazine show Catalyst with 17 one-hour science documentaries in 2017 has been broken. We are past the halfway point of the year and the ABC has not screened a single episode. The director of television who made the promise, Richard Finlayson, has gone and Brendan Dahill, the executive who wrote the report which recommended the axing of the weekly program, had moved on before the decision was made.

well hello there... pic.twitter.com/oEIiyaeAaN

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Hospital withdraws complaint alleging Sun reporter impersonated friend of Grenfell victim

June 23, 2017, 7:07 am

≫ Next: Bertie Carvel: 'His speciality is making monsters and demons understood'

≪ Previous: ABC comes up short with Catalyst revamp | The Weekly Beast

Sun apologises for not following media protocol and King’s College accepts journalist did not impersonate friend

King’s College hospital has withdrawn a complaint against the Sun that alleged a reporter from the newspaper impersonated a friend of an injured victim of the Grenfell Tower fire in order to get an interview with him.

The hospital said last week it had formally written to News UK, the owner of the Sun, and the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) about the incident. The Sun denied its reporter attempted to impersonate a friend or relative of the victim.

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Bertie Carvel: 'His speciality is making monsters and demons understood'

June 23, 2017, 7:19 am

≫ Next: Daily Mail and ‘alt-right’ put lefties in firing line | Letters:

≪ Previous: Hospital withdraws complaint alleging Sun reporter impersonated friend of Grenfell victim

The actor’s former creations include a psychopathic teacher and an adulterous husband. Now the son of a former Guardian journalist is to play Rupert Murdoch in a new play, Ink

As the son, grandson and great-grandson of admired British newspaper reporters, Bertie Carvel was at high risk of ending up in journalism. He ran from the family tree by going to drama school, but blood has a way of coming out and Carvel will next week continue his rise to the heights of his profession by playing one of the most significant figures in the business he escaped: Rupert Murdoch in Ink, a new stage play by James Graham that dramatises the Australian tycoon’s launch of the Sun in 1969.

For Carvel, it is the latest in a string of characters that the audience may feel tempted to find unsympathetic. Previous creations include Miss Trunchbull, the psychopathic schoolmistress in the musical version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, which made Carvel’s name in London and on Broadway, and Simon Foster, the corrupt and adulterous husband of the GP title character in Doctor Foster, a five-part BBC1 psychological thriller that returns for a second series later this year.

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Daily Mail and ‘alt-right’ put lefties in firing line | Letters:

June 23, 2017, 10:48 am

≫ Next: Some cross words about cryptic clues | Letters

≪ Previous: Bertie Carvel: 'His speciality is making monsters and demons understood'

Unlike those on the right, people on the left don’t express hatred, writes Virginia Cumming– they use satirical cartoons and mild rebukes

So the Mail responded “with both barrels” (Letters, June 23). That trigger-happy metaphor says it all. Lefties don’t reach for their guns or express “hatred” against others – including Daily Mail readers – they use satirical cartoons and mild rebukes. The increasing numbers of death threats in our society virtually all come from “alt-right” extremists, as even Charles Foster might agree. It is not the readers who lead the alt-right charge at the Mail, but the unbalanced editors, who go far beyond simply having “opinions”. Has this mild letter put me in the firing line?
Virginia Cumming
London

• As Charles Foster suggests, it isn’t always possible to divine the political stance of people from the newspapers they read. A late and much-missed colleague used to buy the Daily Mail every day, which astonished me because I knew where he stood politically. I tackled him one day about it. “You’re about as leftwing as it’s possible to be without disappearing over the horizon. Why do you buy the Mail,” I asked. To which he replied: “It’s the only paper that gives Tony Blair the kicking he deserves.”
Nigel Stapley
Wrexham

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