All The News That's Fit To Print

Nearly one-hundred and twenty years ago, The New York Times adopted the motto, "All the news that's fit to print," on its front page. It was a declaration of the newspaper's intention to report the news impartially. Not being a reader of The New York Times, I cannot speak for how well it has met this goal, but if does, then it probably stands as one of the few publications that can claim to be impartial. Most people probably believe that the media is biased, or at least reports news with a particular slant. Whether this is real or perceived, depends largely on your own viewpoint, prejudices and beliefs, and how much the reporting supports or reinforces your view.

It would be difficult to pick up a British national newspaper and not be able to divine its political leanings, so to criticise the Daily Mail for being right-wing, or The Guardian for being left of centre is akin to criticising water for being wet. Not that The Guardian has always been left-wing: it was a fierce critic of Labour politician Aneurin Bevan and opposed the creation of the National Health Service - but reading it today, one could scarcely confuse it with the Mail or the Express in terms of its political agenda. Then we have the BBC, which, despite its famed commitment to impartiality, frequently attracts criticism from left-wing or right-wing commentators or groups over supposed bias - although I find it both comforting and amusing that it sometimes receives censure from both sides over the same story. The BBC's guidelines on impartiality actually state that, " impartiality is often more than a simple matter of 'balance' between opposing viewpoints.  Equally, it does not require absolute neutrality on every issue " which suggests that although it may be neutral on certain subjects, that does not guarantee that every story on a given topic will be completely balanced or impartial, giving rise to the opportunity for "Angry of Tunbridge Wells" to vent their spleen over a story that does not at least recognise, if not endorse, their world view.

Despite the obvious spin that the media applies to their reporting, one can generally be reassured that most of the stories that one reads have a grain of truth in them - or at least one used to be able to. With the internet increasingly becoming the primary source of news for many people, applying our critical faculties to the stories we consume is becoming increasingly important, especially when Facebook is more and more likely to be that source. Facebook received complaints in the aftermath of Donald Trump's victory in the US Presidential election that fake news stories that had appeared on the social media network had influenced the result, including the false assertion that actor Denzel Washington had praised - and thereby implicitly endorsed - Trump. Once stories like that gain traction they become difficult to stop, and the fact that on the face of it they are plausible enough is sufficient for most people not to question them. The claim that Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, was leader of a paedophile ring was another false story that circulated, but being so outlandish was probably believed by a much smaller number than would have accepted the story about Denzel Washington at face value.

Because of the criticism levelled at Facebook - and with the usual reaction that organisations indulge in by immediately feeling the need to 'do something' regardless of how useful it is - it immediately announced that it would be introducing methods to detect misinformation and display warning labels for fake content, a move which prompted Google to announce that it would take steps to prevent fake news sites from making money through advertising. Google Chrome already has extensions like Fake News Alert that point out the potentially false stories, although it is so basic that all it does it display a warning when visiting certain sites and does not distinguish between the satirical and the supposedly genuine.

Helpfully, the Fake News Alert extension points out that this obviously spoof site may contain information that is false or misleading...

The danger with extensions like Fake News Alert, or with Facebook's initiatives are that not only do they potentially reduce still further the scepticism, or bullshit filter, we should ourselves apply to everything we read, they may also throw the baby out with the bathwater by blocking or otherwise discouraging the genuinely amusing but obviously spoof sites like The Daily Mash, The Onion, Southend News Network or The Suffolk Gazette. I have to confess that on my first encounter with Southend News Network - a story about a restaurant charging corkage to breastfeeding mothers - I was initially unsuspecting enough to accept it at face value...for about five minutes, after which time disbelief crept in and scouting around the rest of the website drew me to the inevitable conclusion that this was a joke. But supposedly greater minds than mine were duped by the story the same site ran that the M25 would closed for several days for an endurance race. This was reported on LBC and BBC Radio, albeit that while Katie Hopkins on LBC fell for it, the BBC were - despite believing it at first - more quickly able to see it for the humorous spoof that it was.

...but not this one, which may be why people were duped by this completely plausible story.

More insidious are the stories that appear - particularly on Facebook and Twitter, but undoubtedly elsewhere too - that come not from media outlets but from "the public." Jeremy Corbyn's rally in Liverpool in August this year was undoubtedly well supported - estimates put the crowd as anywhere from five to ten thousand - but not as well supported as this picture, which was widely shared on Twitter and Facebook and which purports to be from the same rally, suggest.

And that is because the picture was taken eleven years ago, and shows Liverpool Football Club supporters welcoming the team home after their Champions League victory against Milan. Similarly, pictures appeared during Donald Trump's election campaign, purporting to show a rally in Portland but which was actually an earlier rally in Cleveland, while a Clinton rally in Florida was also reported with an identical picture as that of an event in New York.[1] Reverse Googling images is always a good way to start if you are sceptical about the veracity of a picture story, although I think we all know that just because an internet search appears to validate a story when it appears on multiple sites, that is no guarantee of its veracity - there's enough plagiarism and lazy reporting out there for that to be the case.

Despite the fact that ultimately it is our own individual responsibility to question some of the potentially dubious stories that we see - especially outside the more responsible news outlets - there is no harm in Facebook or Google pointing us in the right direction, although I'd draw the line at outright censorship. All the news may not be fit to print, but is that a decision that Facebook and Google should be making for us?

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[1] You can see for yourself at https://firstdraftnews.com

Not So Angry Old Man

Everyone gets angry, but as Winston Churchill said, “...anger is a waste of energy. Steam which is used to blow off a safety valve would be better used to drive an engine.” All too often we - and I include myself here - get angry about things that either do not matter, or which we cannot change. As Richard Carlson says in Don't Sweat The Small Stuff, ask yourself the question, "Will this matter a year from now?" Often it won't matter tomorrow, or even in ten minutes time, let alone a year from now, so why waste the energy?

It is on the road that we encounter the most angry people, and it is on the road that we often get angry ourselves. We get angry about the inconsiderate, rude or downright dangerous actions of other road users, be it the driver who cuts us up or overtakes dangerously, or the cyclist who hurtles through a red light, or the pedestrian who crosses the road without care. And after our encounter with this selfish road user, we moan about it to whoever is in the car with us, we complain about it face to face with friends or family, and often we post about it on Facebook, where our friends 'Like' our post and add comments about similar incidents that have enraged them in the past. The anger might now be diluted, but still the incident is on our mind - and continues to be when we comment on other people's posts about similar things that have happened to them. And what good does this do us? None, to be honest, yet we still remember these events months or even years hence.

The flip side of course is that when we are on the road we will inevitably have other drivers sound their horn or gesticulate angrily at us. But why? We did nothing wrong, did we, so why are they angry? Of course we did nothing wrong, we are a safe and considerate driver. Except, who among us can really say we are perfect behind the wheel? Even the best of us may lose concentration or simply not see another motorist and perform some manoeuvre that they think is dangerous, so let's cut the other guy some slack and remember that they may not have done whatever we are aggrieved by deliberately, but simply through not thinking or seeing us. I'll concede that there are some lunatics on the road; inconsiderate, dangerous lunatics at that, but getting angry at them achieves nothing except impairing my concentration, so I'm trying to see them for what they are and ignoring them.

Justifiably, we get angry about poor service. Angry when our train is cancelled...again; angry when our mobile phone provider gets our bill wrong...again; angry when we get to the supermarket checkout to find that our card doesn't work because the payment system has gone down...again. But as angry as we get in these circumstances, and as reasonable as it may seem to vent that anger, it is important to remember that just as we should pick our battles, so should we pick our targets. It is not uncommon to see news reports on television from mainline railway stations, the concourse a sea of frustrated commuters, with irate passengers hurling invective at any unfortunate railway worker who is brave enough to be anywhere other than cowering under a desk. But the ire that is thrown at these men and women is misplaced; they didn't cancel the trains and it is not within their power to reinstate them. Similarly, when Asda's payment system went down a few Sundays ago, there were reports of customers, unable to pay for their trolley loads of shopping, swearing and cursing at the girls - and it was often teenage girls - on the checkouts. The targets of the shoppers' anger were neither responsible for the problem nor the solution and the rabid mob who harangued them may have felt temporarily better having vented their spleen but achieved nothing apart from upsetting someone innocent of any offence.

I will make an exception about getting angry about mobile phone companies - or, come to that, anyone else with whom one's contact is via a call centre, although mobile phone companies, internet service providers and other media suppliers seem to be similarly frequent offenders. It is ironic that companies like Vodafone, TalkTalk, Sky, Virgin Media et al, whose business is communication are actually poor communicators, both with their customers and within their organisations. Perhaps the biggest problem that we, the consumers of these company's services face, is getting problems fixed. Once you have got through the interminable phone menu and listened to some execrable piece of music for ten minutes, you explain your problem, are promised that it will be resolved and hang up, with the inevitable sense of foreboding that this is not the end of your problems, but merely the beginning. And so it proves, as the problem - be it loss of service or an incorrect monthly bill - is repeated and having gone through the same rigmarole - the interminable phone menu and the same execrable piece of music - you speak to another customer service adviser, who promises to fix your problem. They don't and very soon you are going through the same process again...and again...and again. In my experience it usually takes as much effort to do something badly as it does to do it well, so why can't these companies get it right? As much as I believe in picking your target, at not haranguing people who genuinely are impotent to help you, I repeat, I will make an exception for being angry at call centres when you've had shoddy service.

Apart from angry stories about experiences with other road users, Facebook is also a vehicle for our spleen venting about other issues that have angered us. Whether it is social injustice, government policy, Brexit, or Donald Trump, people are angry. People are angry about the behaviour of the owners of the football clubs they support, people are angry about people posting pictures of their dinners: people are angry full stop. And often they have a right to be angry, but impotent rage is corrosive, negative and ultimately frustrating. Fortunately, a lot of people who are angry form, or join protest groups and directing anger into a positive force for change - where change can be actioned - is generally a good thing.

Anger is not always a bad thing, as long as the energy it generates is translated into actions that address the cause of the anger . Personally, I'm endeavouring not to be an angry old man - at least, not without good cause and not without doing something about it.

The Day Brexit Got Trumped

2016 is going to go down as the year that turned politics on its head. A year in which we learned, as if we were not already aware, that politicians can and will say just about anything that they think will get the electorate on their side. And that the electorate's capacity for the unexpected should never, ever be underestimated. Naturally, having seen Britain make a spectacularly unexpected - and to many, spectacularly stupid - decision, America seemed to say, "Anything you can do..."

All politicians thrive on  saying what the public want to hear; take Tony Blair for example. Blair tapped into the public consciousness on subjects that the masses were thinking about. On the National Health Service, in the run up to Labour's 1997 General Election win, he said, " We have 14 days to save the NHS." Nearly twenty years later, despite ten years of Blair in Downing Street, the NHS apparently still needs saving. When Princess Diana died, also in 1997, he exploited the zeitgeist when he called her "the people's princess."  And his talent for the soundbite extended even to the moments when, arriving in Belfast for the talks that led to the Good Friday agreement - a not inconsiderable achievement, it has to be admitted - he said, without a trace of irony, "A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. I really do."

Blair understood what the public wanted to hear, and gave it right back to them. This year his legacy has been felt in the run up to Britain's referendum on membership of the European Union, an unedifying campaign aptly described by the author Robert Harris as, "The most depressing, divisive, duplicitous political event of my lifetime." The EU Referendum campaign featured the most egregious falsehoods and obfuscations as both sides sought to exploit the public's fears. Take the claim that leaving the EU would save us £350million a week, all of which could be spent on the NHS. The claim was widely discredited at the time and the 'pledge' to fund the NHS with this sum has been dropped since the referendum result - if indeed anyone in the Leave camp itself ever believed it would actually happen - but enough people were probably swayed by the claim to put their X in the Leave box.

I didn't believe this...

...I'm struggling with this.

Rabble rousing and tub thumping, the Leave campaigners tapped into the public's dissatisfaction with the EU - and let's face it, even among those who voted Remain, I imagine that there are many who would admit that the EU is not without faults, but voted as they did on the basis of remaining being the lesser of two evils - and that is the way politics is for me these days. Far less campaigning on the positives of what the candidates can do, more about how bad it will be if the other lot win. Any positives that a candidate or party claim will accrue from their victory are vague soundbites along the lines of "Taking our country back" or "Making this country great again." Formless phrases, ambiguous claims without substance but which enough people will believe, and which will drive enough people to vote that way.

And there even appears to be a perversity among people that will drive them to do one thing despite it seeming that the most appropriate course of action is the exact opposite. In the aftermath of the referendum the newspapers, radio and TV featured a perplexing number of members of the public who admitted that they voted Leave despite supporting Britain's continued membership of the EU - a position that appeared to spring from a desire to say that if it all went horribly wrong, they could distance themselves from that decision on the grounds that they voted for Brexit. Perhaps this sort of perversity is the reason why I turned on the television yesterday morning to find that Donald Trump had been elected President of The United States. From coverage of the campaign it became clear that there were enough Democratic Party supporters who would not vote for Hillary Clinton on personal grounds - maybe they would not vote Republican, but they weren't going to vote Clinton - giving the Democrats a major disadvantage with so many of their traditional supporters disillusioned about their choice of candidate.

Terry Pratchett in Thief of Time.

Meanwhile Donald Trump - like Tony Blair and so many other politicians before him - was campaigning on a platform of telling the public exactly what they wanted to hear. The average man (or woman) in the street, whether they are American or British or German or French, wants pretty much the same thing. A job, a decent standard of living and security from  harm or danger. So when Trump said he would "make America great again," when he promised to create 25 million new jobs, when he promised to be tough on Islamic State,  to "just bomb those suckers… there would be nothing left,"  when he dismissed climate change science as "a hoax" he spoke to a great rump of people who had seen their jobs disappear - largely outsourced or offshored - who worry about terrorism and who are sceptical about climate change. And in a country where there are more guns than people (112 guns per 100 people), he did his popularity no harm by speaking against gun control.

He spoke to the people who felt that they had been left behind, ignored and unconsidered, put a metaphorical arm round their shoulders and told them that he would look after them. He flattered them into believing that, unlike Obama, unlike George W, unlike any of his predecessors, he cared about their plight and more importantly, would do something about it. Now, he may even believe that himself, but as the saying goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time, and for many, Trump's ascent to the position sometimes known as Leader of The Free World is going to lead to the same sort of disappointment and disillusion that attends the outcome of any election.

On our side of the pond we have been feeling the effects - real, and opportunistic, of Brexit - ever since 23rd June, and the recent High Court ruling that MPs must vote before Article 50 can be invoked - a Government appeal against which will be heard in the Supreme Court on 5th December - leaves us in a kind of limbo, which at least is not the case in the US, albeit that the outcome of this week's election may have provoked the same kind of disbelief. The key difference is that for those who truly think that Britain made a mistake when it went to the polls in June there remains a possibility - no matter how remote - that the vote may eventually be judged exactly what even Nigel Farage has admitted it was, that is, merely advisory and not binding on Parliament. However, no such get out of jail card exists for those members of the American public currently cringing at the prospect of a Trump Presidency.

"God Bless America," goes the song by Irving Berlin. Today he might have written "God Help US."

The New Romance of The Cup

The father of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, said "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part." Which I have always found somewhat contradictory when set against the Olympic motto - also coined by de Coubertin - "Citius, altius, fortius"   (swifter, higher, stronger), suggesting a quest to be the best.

It has been said that it is only losers who say that winning is less important than taking part and most people would agree that in competitive sport, winning is by definition the object of the exercise. Take the joy we have felt in Britain at the success of our athletes at both the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 and 2016; it is a radical departure from our usual practice, honed over many decades, of celebrating glorious failure.

Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics.

But success in sport has to be measurable objectively, which if you think is stating the obvious, let me explain one of the problems I have with certain sports. A football match is won by the team that scores the most goals, a tennis match by the player who wins the most sets, a golf tournament by the player who shoots the lowest scores - all measurable without ambiguity. I have always had a problem with sports where the outcome is decided by the opinion of one person, or a group. Take diving, or gymnastics. Sometimes, even to the untrained eye, one competitor will clearly be better than another, but with both these sports there are exercises or dives with varying degrees of difficulty, with different tariffs and which are scored by expert judges on the basis of their opinion - an informed opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. Generally, however it seems the system in these sports works fairly well, with little or no debate over the results - the same cannot always be said for others, with boxing the event that is frequently mired in controversy.

In the Rio games this summer, Irish boxer Michael Conlan accused AIBA - that's the organisation that oversees  amateur boxing -  of corruption after losing on points in the bantamweight quarter-finals to the Russian Vladimir Nikitin.  “They’re known for being cheats. Amateur boxing stinks from the core right to the top,” he said. It was by no means the first highly contentious decision in Olympic boxing history and doubtless will not be the last.

How the Guardian reported Conlan's defeat in Rio.

In most team sports there are awards for individuals based on their performance in matches, and these, the Man of The Match award, or the prize for the Most Valuable Player or Player of The Year are by their very nature almost entirely subjective. Is the Man of The Match the rugby player who scored the winning try, the cricketer who took the most wickets, or the goalkeeper who saved a penalty? Or, is the Man of The Match the unspectacular player who performs with quiet perfection but without making a game changing impact? You pay your money and take your choice, but it is usually a subjective choice.

Equally subjective are those team awards given for the best performance in a specific month, or in the case of knock-out competitions, a particular round of matches. For instance, the Football Association's 'Club of The Round' award, handed out to the club deemed most meritorious in each round of the FA Cup. Traditionally this award has gone to clubs who have achieved an outstanding - and usually unexpected - result; the good old act of giantkilling. But not this season. This season the award for Club of The Round goes, not to the team who, against all odds, beat a team from a league - or several leagues - above them, but to the club that knows its way round social media better than its rivals.

Hereford United's famed FA Cup triumph over Newcastle United. This is how sport should be enjoyed.

The more common sight at football matches these days. If it isn't on your phone, it doesn't count.

This came to my attention - and I suspect, of a good many other people -for the first time when Altrincham won the award following their 3-1 Fourth Qualifying Round win over Matlock Town, a result as about as unsurprising as say, Premier League West Ham United beating Championship side Barnsley. But there again, they did not win the award on the pitch, but rather, they won it off it for their social media work ahead of the game. This is because this season, the FA's Club of The Round award is judged on non-playing criteria. Here is what the FA's website has to say on the subject:

The Emirates FA Cup Club of the Round has been introduced this season to recognise qualifying-round clubs for their efforts in advertising their games to drive attendance and raise recognition and awareness of non-league football.

From the first round qualifying onwards, clubs are given a suite of ten bespoke marketing assets by The FA to be used across print and social media. The first round qualifying fixtures, played over the weekend of 2-4 September, saw 117 of 232 clubs utilise the assets offered to them to proactively market their respective fixtures.

Clubs are judged on a range of criteria including attendance, number of promotional assets used on social media or in print, best social media coverage and video content, before the winner is selected from a shortlist of entrants by an FA panel.

Now, being the supporter of a non-League club, I am all in favour of initiatives that raise the profile of the game below the English Football League, and in doing so, the clubs who best use the various social media platforms and other types of material to publicise their games are to be congratulated. But I am somewhat uncomfortable about making an award for clubs whose use of Twitter is deemed more important than their efforts on the pitch.

This is how the FA's website described Hanwell Town's performance that won them the prize, which includes "£500 paid social media support" - whatever that entails -: "The club... was the first on record at this level to proactively use the marketing creative on a roadside LED, advertising their Emirates FA Cup fixture against Enfield Town on the A40 for nine days between 4am and 2am. They also used a range of assets provided across their social media account and recorded an attendance of 212 for their fixture against their north London opponents – a 77% increase on their usual average league gate of 120."

Photo from the Football Association website.

This is the new romance of the FA Cup, where terms like, "proactively use the marketing creative, " and "a range of assets provided across their social media account," replace back-page tales of derring-do as a non-League club earns a replay against a Football League team and where a last minute winner that pulls off sensational giantkilling is judged subordinate to one-hundred and forty characters tapped onto a smartphone screen. This convoluted jibber-jabber, much loved by marketing men and business school graduates, speaks of a complete lack of feeling for the sport, but top class football has been becoming increasingly about the commercial aspects and less about the action for years now, why should we be surprised if this is not spreading to all levels of the game?

Enfield Town (yellow), on the attack at Hanwell Town. Photo from the Hanwell Town website.

Sadly, that increased attendance at Hanwell's game has not been matched at any of their home games since, suggesting that the larger gate was possibly more to do with the visit of relatively well supported opponents than it was to do with Twitter activity or motorists on the A40 suddenly developing a longing to see the local football team in action. The report on Hanwell Town's website suggests that the home support was " seriously outnumbered by their North London visitors." But don't tell the Football Association that.

Social media and advertising are important these days, but not more than the sport. After all, where he alive today, I doubt Baron Pierre de Coubertin would be saying, "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but Tweeting about it." At least, I hope not.