Winol Week one

The first week of winol was an intimidating one. With very little hands on experience in video journalism it was difficult to predict what exactly one was in for. The day started like any other; waking up late, rushing to get dressed and making sure the bf a.k.a Joey c was ok. The first news meeting was rather daunting, however I was prepaired with a story covering Chute house and its possible closure. The angle taken was that the staff there could loose their jobs as re-deployment to the king Alfred campus was not guranteed. The idea was pitched and the editors lapped it up like hungry houndogs fresh on the blood trail!

I started by first speaking to Seb miell getting the straight facts and writing them down, I also set up an interview for the next day. I then sent an e-mail to Lisa Simpkin who I was passed on to by the chute house manager as she would give me permission to speak to Joy Carther Pro vice chancellor. She was as useful as a headache. I now know that press officers are essentially a waste of what very little time I have. Unable to balance the story I tried speaking to the union leader representing the staff that could loose their jobs, who declined to comment as the situation was on going. This meant that the stories angle could effctively not be persued. The story had hit a brick wall, in hindsight I could of researched the story a bit earlier and maybe I would of made a bit more progress with trying to get interviewees. With only Seb Miell able to give his opinion on the matter it meant that I didn't have balance and had to drop the story. Leaving me with only a written peice on the story including the fact that Joy Carter and the union rep failed to reply.

Seb said that I miss quoted him saying that the chute house 'could close' as I could not put up the fact that it will close for legal reasons. I couldn't confirm it as a fact as I needed someone at the university e.g. Joy Carter to cover myself and WINOL legally. The story was spiked not through lack of effort as I worked extremely hard and stressed, and sent at least 10 e-mails to get my story set up. The only thing I could of done better is give myself more time to set up my story as Joy Carter may have spoke to me. The Union rep on the other hand wouldnt of helped me at all!!!

The moral of the story is; Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Tabloid nation

Tabloid nation, what can I say a superbly written peice with a comical twist and interesting look and the birth of todays tabloids. The book fives an in depth look at the history behind popular journalism or 'tabloid' journalism as we now know it today. Wait I am writing as if I am reviewing the book when im just posting my notes, anyway I digres.

Harmsworth Started the publication 'Answers', he was one of the first to start competitions in papers that seemed unatainable for example offering £200 life insurance prize; something you see in papers like the Sun's £10 holidays. Furthermore Northcliffe was very much like William Randolph Hearst and in that he aimed his paper towards people vulnrability with competitions praying on gread, and headlines to do with crime praying on fear. This sort of thing however made people by papers which acheived their objective.

The Daily mirror started off as a neche paper aimed at the womens market, Lord Northcliffe got rid of all the women writers however as they were causing a distraction leaving a lone women editor.

The Mirror was also the first paper to use pictures to boost the sales of its paper, with sales trebled by 71,000 overnight. Hannen Swaffer played a big part in this when he was appointed art editor. These pictures included pictures of the Kind and his family, this could be seen as the equivellent to the modern day celebrity culture. The Mirror and The mail saw the advantage of pictures and battled furiously to secure the exclusive pictures of the dead King, Northcliffe wanted the picture so much that he did not care that he could be in trouble for treason as circulation meant so much to him. The Mirror at one point had a story about a Pony they were trying to rescue making the paper look very sensitive and appeal to the audience. This is something we again seen in todays tabloids such as The Sun who are often running petitions about something such as petitioning to get the latest X-factor wannabe back in, or marching against the latest Big Brother race row. Although sometimes genuine campaigns such as 'backing the heroes' for servicemen in the army.

The Mail in its early days was aimed more towards the everyday reader with a 250 word limit on articles brought in to simplify it for their target market.

Alot of what you see from Northcliffes time you see in todays tabloid media such as the celebrity culture, cheap prizes that seem impossible to win ( and normally are). Northcliffe was a character significant in shaping todays tabloids, along with Hearst he is one in now what is a long line of charasmatic newspaper owners with crazy new ideas that launched todays fantastic tabloid journalism.

Forgotten past

70 years have passsed since the evacuation of Dunkirk, marking a formidable push for hitler's Nazi army into Europe. The second world war will be rememberd for all of history... or will it?

The history of the second world war has always been retold in classrooms around the country to remember the heroes that fought and serve as a warning from history never to happen again. However is this still the case? More than 70 years have passed since the war ended in Europe with Hitler's army defeated in the German capital. However it is vitally essential that the story of the second world war is repeated time and time again, youngsters must know of the hardships our forefathers endured in fighting for queen and country against the German war machine. I saw a question on yahoo answers asking; 'why should we study world war two?'. If the youth of today even need to ask that question then clearly the educational system has failed somewhere down the line.

Children should learn about the toils of the second world war, it should be an important part of education as without remembering what happened all those years ago history is sure to repeat itself.

Rags to Riches - Blackpools fairy tale story

In only four years Blackpool have fought their way up from the third tier of English football to the dizzy heights of the Premiership. They continued their glorious assent to the top with a exciting 3-2 win over Cardiff City yesterday at Wembley. A thrilling encounter which saw no less than 5 goals scored in the opening half has lead Blackpool to the big time.

The estimated jackpot of winning this promotion comes to around £90 million pounds; once TV contracts and parachute money is added into the mix. The game of football has very much become about money these days; after all it is a business, even though many top flight teams such as Man United seem to be drowning in debt. Ian Holloway himself has said how much the money will affect the area of Blackpool, a once thriving beach side resort home to many sun seekers looking to escape the cities. However this was a long time ago and with the advances in technology it was inevatale that over seas travel would take over, leading to a slump in the town which did unfortunately devestates local business. Now there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, with presumably increased gate revenue and increased exposure of the once buzzing town Blackpool has a lot to look forward to come September.

This is a fantastic footballing story that once was a distant memory only pulled off by the greats of Brian Clough and Notts Forest, taking a second division team away from relegation and into Europe in a matter of years. Even with the ever growing money in the game, this is a feat that has not happened in years, the likes of Millwall came close making the play-offs about 5 years ago but finally we have the beautiful game back! With a team that only get paid £90 a week in the off season, only pulling in gates of around 8,000 a week it is almost unbelievable that they will be visiting the likes of Old Trafford and Anfield next season.Holloway has proved that by installing beleif with good man management, with very little money, good teams can become great. Starting as relegaton favourites Blackpool have had a steady season always in and around the play off zone. This should be a boost for any team in any league the message is clear - It IS still possible to get somewhere in football with grit, hard work, and determenation. I say with a grin on my face; the beuatiful game is still as beautiful as she ever was.

Revision Notes

Mary Wollstonecraft asserts that the social subjection of women was partly due to nature and partly due to education why?

Mary Wollstonecraft accepted herself that by nature women weaker and by this sense were dominated by males they need protection. However education was something that Mary thought should be a natural right for women, in line with the thinking of Rosseauea who during the romanticism asserted there should be rights for all, although Rosseau himself was against women eduction and in this way they differed. Mary thought that women were to blame for letting themselves be oppressed rather than blaming men for oppressing. Mary thought like Hobbes in the way that people are a blank slate and with education and experience create ideas and become a rounded person. Mary thought that this school of thought applied to women as well, and that they should be able to learn things. This was very much against the views of Aristotle who claimed that women were an inferior species and believed that women were a species that were ‘naturally slaves’. Aristotle’s views were what society accepted for years until this point. Mary is often criticized for her relationships with men even trying to kill herself when rejected by someone who she was having an affair with. In the Vindication of the rights of women she says women accepted the role of women in society, education would set them free. Mary thought in the public space people should be viewed as human being not as separate genders.


Compare the epistemological stance of Keats in ‘ ode on a Grecian Urn’ to that of Kant in ‘critique of pure reason’

Keats ‘ode on a Grecian urn’ is a romantic poetic view on the epistemology of life. Romantic poetry at the time in England focused on the beauty of the Noumenal world. Aesthetics is the study of beauty itself, many people in the early 1800’s viewed life and the way in which the world worked aesthetically. Many believed that and beauty is truth and truth is beauty as asserted in ‘ode on a Grecian Urn’, anything that is beautiful is real e.g. a beautiful plant must be truthful and real due to its beauty. There has been great debate about what that final line of the poem means, it could mean that things exsist if they are beautiful, however this would go against Kant’s stance on the epistemology of life. Kant thought that there were two different worlds; the nomenal and the phenomenal. The nominal being an object itself and the phenomenal being something that is perceived by the world, he would argue that an object not being perceived does therefore not exist. However Keats would say that the feeling received from the vision of something beautiful meant that it was real and did always exist. Kant also argues that there should be a universal law e.g. ‘make all the money and power come to me’ cannot be universal as other people are left out. Berkley was a phliophser who Kant agreed with who said that things only flash in and out of exsistance and agreed with Kant that the mind shapes what we see. He also thought that everyone had a moral law within and was able to distinguish right from wrong.


An essay on human understanding chapter: Mircacles. Why does Hume assert that every observable phenomena is a miracle?

Hume is very sceptical about everything, and believes that nothing can ever be known for certain. He believes that everything is a miracle, Hume would argue that there is no causality in nature. This means that nothing is always certain, there is no law of nature that says this. Hume believes that even though the sun has set there is nothing that means it will rise the next day, once in does rise and becomes a phenomena ( when it’s been viewed) it therefore becomes a miracle as there is no guarantee of it . Hume also doubts what he calls; ‘human testimony’ Hume thinks that humans cannot be believed to have seen something for many reasons including; not many people being a witness, the person being unreliable and humans tendency to wanting to be seen as truthful and not a liar. In other words Hume is saying that people cannot accept something as being true just because they have been told it, only once to you have viewed the phenomena for yourself can you be certain that it is true. Humes essay on human understanding encourages people to find the truth for themselves rather than accepting what they are told.

Hume asserts certain inductive knowledge that we know is for certain.


Axiom- Absolute truth, geometry term – the starting point – ‘all men are mortal’
Apriori – Knowledge without experience, something that cannot be proved. – ‘I think, therefore I am’
Aposteriori - Gaining knowledge through experience, opposite of Apriori
Induction - Adding knowledge to something that you know is true, gaining information to get to a conclusion. Using the method of science.
Deduction – Deriving conclusion from original idea. Deducing the truth from a statement.


Contrast philosophical materialism with idealism reference Hegel and Marx
Materialism epistemological stance is that the world consists of atoms and physical objects.

Idealism is the view that everything you see is a mental phenomena, physical things don’t exist we just see everything that is created by our minds.
Hegel- Idealist that thinks nothing at all is matter and everything is spirit, manifestation of ‘Geist’. His view is teleological - everything happens for a purpose because there are rules. If an adorn falls from a tree its purpose is to become an oak tree – logic.
Marx – Hegelian descendant, a materialist believes the world is made up of atoms and things. Marx himself claimed he was not a materialist in the sense of John Locke, Hume etc. He believed that ideas to have a material effect in the world. Locke (an empiricist would disagree). Marx dismisses empiricist thinkers he sees them as capitalists against communism.’ ‘I’ve stood Hegel on his feet’’

Discuss: Economic, demographic, political, technological and sociological factors influencing papers and Journalism. 1815-1915.

Economic – Free trade, printing things to make money which is new. A lot of taxes are lifted such as the Corn Laws, this allows for money to be made. A more liberal state, mercantilism is dissolving. Individuals can print and now make profit.

Demographic – Cobbett moving around farmers being moved and urbanisation begins with highly dense cities and towns. People migrating from Europe (New York).There is a market of the same people affected by the same thing that can be printed and sold to millions of people in London.

Political – Radical press. Repeal of stamp duty, no censorship and the high taxes are lowered allow for more production. The country is a lot more Liberal allowing freedom of expression etc.

Technology - Steam driven press allowed for thousands of copies to be printed a night, which lead to massive copies, very profitable.
Railway trains meant there could be massive distribution all over the country which leads to high circulation.
Telegraph, 1860’s meant up to date reports first done in Crimean war.

Sociological – Migration to America class language gender etc. Hearst and yellow journalism appealed to the masses.

Swift and Addison

Adam Smith
· Seen as a pioneer of political economy, Adam Smith studied moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and Oxford University. Starting his professional career as a lecturer he is well known for writing the books ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ and later after travelling across Europe; ‘The wealth of nations.

Smith is against slavery, not morally but because he thinks it does not work economically to have slaves instead of free men working. Smith goes on to make this point by stating that free men who will benefit from a good crop of produce will naturally want to work harder and make profit.

‘Such tenants, being freemen, are capable of acquiring property, and having a certain proportion of the produce of the land, they have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as possible, in order that their own proportion may be so.’

Smith makes the point that being free men they will have a certain proportion of crop and will want the crop, whatever it is, to grow well and thus will put a lot more effort into seeing it succeed. He thinks that they will have the opposite mindset of a slave who will have no motivation.

Jonathon Swift

· Jonathon Swift takes a satirical look at the current goings on at the time of the Irish famine. In his publishing ‘A modest proposal’ he makes a long winded sarcastic suggestion at the predicament that the Irish people find themselves in at the time of the famine. Essentially he has written about eating your own children, even at one point suggesting on how they should be cooked. He of course does not really think people should eat their children, but this is how he sees people like Smith thinking.

Swift takes a very sarcastic and humorous approach to his writing in ‘A modest proposal’. Although the writings of Smith were written many years after, Swift is attacking the sort of thinking of people like Smith who are constantly trying to figure out prices, profit and business. He takes a very sarcastic viewpoint, when saying;
‘Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.’
Here he is talking about the profit of selling a child (for food) and the woman producing another as something similar to growing and selling corn. By taking such a blunt satirical look at empiricist thinking, that Smith will go on to write about, he looks down on people who only think of profit.

Court reporting (2008)

Law Report

On Wednesday 22nd of October at 10:30am Winchester Crown Court heard a case involving a man charged with manslaughter, the case was ongoing from a previous date this is how the case unfolded.

Firstly before the jury arrived the Barrister for the prosecution put forth the idea of using CCTV footage as evidence in the case. The Barrister for the defence did not refute and the judge felt it was necessary for the case. The judge then made it clear to the jury that the fact that the first witness has decided to remain anonymous should have no reflection on him and should not change the authenticity of his evidence.

The first witness, David Imborg, approached the stand behind a curtain to protect his identity and swore on an oath that his evidence was truthful. The prosecution started the questioning, the barrister asked if he lived in a house in Bournemouth to which the witness replied ‘yes’. Then he was asked if on the 23rd of February he went to the Dolphin Pub to which he also replied ‘yes’. The witness then went on to say he went to the pub at 10:00pm that night with his friend Michael and another friend, and went to meet Michael’s friend Liza. After the formalities’ where out of the way the witness went on to describe what went on that night. He began with saying how Michael suffered racial abuse when entering the pub which led to them drinking outside in the smoking area. The witness was asked how much he had had to drink that night to which his reply was ‘two vodka oranges’. The usher then handed the witness photos of the aforementioned smoking area in the Dolphin pub. The Barrister then asked exactly where the witness was situated in the photos. The witness then went on to recall hearing the bell ringing in the pub for last orders at roughly 11:50pm. He goes on to describe seeing three people sitting at a table; a man one side, a lady opposite and a third man who he believed to be standing. The witness said he then heard an argument at which point the woman at the table threw the contents of her pint over the victim, and then flick a cigarette at him. The glass, now empty from the contents being thrown, fell and smashed and the victim looked at his hands as if checking for blood. The witness described the woman as being roughly 5ft 3 to 5ft 5 inches in height. The witness then said that he did not pay attention to the incident after it had happened and carried on. Later the witness says that the woman and third man who had been around the table walked off towards the car park, the witness described the man who had been shouted at by the woman as a bit off balance as he had had possibly too much to drink. The witness went on to describe how he heard an argument between the people in the car park to which he can remember hearing ‘ I’ll see you in Mr Green tonight’ being said by the woman to the victim. The witness said the woman was facing the victim whilst saying this and standing next to the other man and her body language, in his words, was very ‘dynamic’. He then went on to say that the man standing with the women threw a punch at the victim. The witness described the punch as a ‘prepared action’, he said that the man took his arm back and got ready to deliver, what he described as, a ‘knockout punch’. The witness was then prompted to show the punch and he complied. The defence barrister then asked for the prosecution barrister to repeat and he did so. The witness then said the punch hit the victims face who was standing upright with his arms by his side, which he was again prompted to show the action which he complied and did again. The victim was described as hitting the floor ‘like a weight’ after receiving the punch. He went on to say that he could hear the impact of the body hitting the ground and that the victim did not put his hands out to break his fall. The witness then saw the alleged attacker run from the car park, at which point the witness and his friend went to his assistance who he described as not conscious.

Defence Barrister cross examines the witness:
The defence Barrister firstly asked the witness to look at the photos of where they were sitting on that night. The barrister said how it sounded like a ‘friendly atmosphere’ at the pub to which the witness agreed. The Witness was then given his own statement he made in March. The Barrister asked if the victim had anything in his hands, and was then asked to look through his statement which implied that the victim may of had something in his hands when approaching the woman and defendant. The barrister asked David where Jason ( the victims) hands were. The witness said at least one arm was by his side. The jury then put a question forward asking if Jason had picked up the glass or anything from the table, to which he witness replied he could have picked something up.

A second witness then approached the bench, without the screen. The Witness goes by the name of Liza, she too swore on the oath before sitting down.

Prosecution:
The witness said she went to the pub to meet Michael, she was handed photos of the hut and showed where she sat at the back. Liza said she knew the victim Jason but referred to him as Tony. Liza was then handed her statement from the night. Her account of the nights incident started with two women sitting on the same table as Jason and a blonde woman saying ‘you’ve been giving me funny looks all night’ to which Jason replied ‘ no I haven’t’. Liza said the women were with two men. The witness said that one man said to the blonde lady ‘come away we’ll deal with it later’. Liza said that as the argument continued and the glass smashed ‘Emma’, a barmaid working that night, told them all to go home. The two women and men left and were followed into the car park by Jason. The blonde lady then shouted at Jason as she stood behind one of the gentlemen. Then the gentlemen pretended to box Jason and then hit him with his right fist, which knocked Jason to the ground. Liza said the man paused briefly then ran away as did the other people with him, at which point Emma and Liza went to his aid. Liza was questioned on whether there was any glass around Jason but she could not see any.


Defence Cross Examination:
The defence questioned Liza on what area of Jason she was concentrating to which she replied the head. The barrister questioned whether it was possible for her to notice any glass as she was trying to keep the head wound from getting any worse. The Barrister was suggesting that Liza did not have the best view of the incident and that maybe the defendant approached the blonde lady berating Jason and asked her to leave and calm down. In her statement she had previously told the P.C. on the scene that she could not give a detailed account of what had happened and instead rung her friend Michael who spoke to the officer over the phone, and Liza could only give a description of the man. In Liza’s statement she had said the man who threw the punch was between 30-40 years old, 5ft 11” – 6ft in height, had a ring on his middle finger, had in Liza’s own words; ‘a skinhead’ and a black jacket. The Barrister said that his client did not have a black jacket on that night, nor did he have a ring, and was implying that Liza’s evidence may not be 100 per cent reliable.

The CCTV footage of that night was watched by the landlord of the Dolphin Pub on Sunday morning and was then given to the Police. The DVD was then played to the jury.