Posted by sim-o
April 27th, 2011
This post was originally posted by Simon HB at his No Rock and Roll Fun blog and is reproduced here with kind permission.
The death of Isobel Jones-Reilly is a terrible thing, a terribly sad story.
But no story is so heartbreaking that it’s not going to get the Mail moralising and blaming everything in the modern world (istyosty.com link):
Ecstasy death girl, 15, ‘idolised drug-taking musicians and was hooked on the internet’
Right from the first three crappy depersonalising words of the headline on Arthur Martin and Tamara Cohen’s shabby piece sets the tone for a careless, thoughtless long honk as the Mail drags the body of a dead teenager up and down the streets.
Let’s start with that claim she was “hooked on the internet”. You might think that if Isobel really was hooked on the internet, she’d be getting lambasted in a different part of the Mail for sitting in her bedroom looking at a screen. Her very real death was in the very real world, surely?
But how does the Mail know about this being addicted to the web, except for when she had switched the computer off and gone out with friends?
But one of her teachers blamed her downward spiral on an addiction to the internet.
Really?
Jaye Williamson, who was Isobel’s English teacher at Chiswick Community College, in West London, said: ‘She was into the kind of things that teenagers get into, but she got hooked on the worldwide web. She was part of the Myspace generation. She got caught and we are devastated.’
“Part of the MySpace generation” pretty much tells you to what extent Williamson is an expert witness on these matters. To be fair to Williamson, her quote sounds like something somebody who is still upset and confused by the death of a young person they knew might mumble out if being badgered for a quote from a shitty journalist.
Certainly, the Mail offers no other evidence for this “addiction” to the internet, and doesn’t seem to consider for a moment that ‘doing stuff on the internet’ is what people do now. It reports memorial events organised online and scrapes Facebook photos and YouTube videos from tribute sites without seeming to realise that this is the sort of “being sucked in” to the internet that is meant to be the bogeyman in the story.
So what of Martin and Cohen’s second bold claim, that Isobel “idolised drug-taking musicians”?
Did she edit a fanzine called something like ‘Works and Plectrums’? No.
Had she shot a YouTube video in which she cheered while waving round pictures of Pete Doherty? No.
Have Martin and Cohen got details of a tattoo she had reading “Bands who take drugs are cool”? No.
Their claim seems to be based on one single quote:
‘Like many teenagers she idolised musicians who took drugs and it was hard to tell them the pitfalls of copying such behaviour.
‘These bands seem to have it all and the kids just want to copy them. It’s just desperately sad that it’s ended in the death of such a beautiful and lovely girl.’
And who gave this line to the Mail?
Diane Bardon, 50, whose son David was at school with Isobel
So the parent of another child at her school farts out a suggestion that maybe she was “idolising” drug-taking musicians “like many teenagers” – a vague and empty claim that, you’ll note, can’t even stand itself up by suggesting a name or two of whose these musicians might actually be – and suddenly it’s up in the headlines.
There’s a dead child, a mourning family, and all the Mail is interested in doing is kicking the corpse to see if it can somehow blame the internet and rock music. What a triumph for journalism.
Categories: Music |
Tags: children, death, drugs, Internet, Music | 12 Comments
Posted by Merk
April 14th, 2011
Categories: Front Pages |
13 Comments
Posted by Merk
April 14th, 2011
Categories: Express Watch, Front Pages |
8 Comments
Posted by sim-o
April 12th, 2011
Categories: Front Pages |
5 Comments
Posted by sim-o
April 12th, 2011
Categories: Express Watch |
3 Comments
Posted by Merk
April 11th, 2011
Categories: Front Pages |
11 Comments
Posted by Merk
April 11th, 2011
Categories: Express Watch, Front Pages |
4 Comments
Posted by Dave Cross
April 10th, 2011
[This is cross-posted from davblog]
Today, the Daily Mail published the most hysterical pile of anti-internet crap [istyosty link] that I think I’ve ever seen. And that takes some doing as Daily Mail articles usually combine a complete lack of understanding of the internet together with the deep distrust and fear that Mail writers have for most of the modern world.
In this article, writer Alex Brummer turns his attention to Google and the damage that they are doing to the UK’s digital industry. It’s the usual concoction of nonsense and half-truths and it contains a typical Mail conspiracy theory claiming that David Cameron is promoting Google as a good example of a digital success story because his strategy advisor Steve Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, Google’s head of communications. It doesn’t seem to occur to Brummer at all that Cameron is promoting Google as a good example of a digital success story because… well because it’s a bloody good example of a digital success story.
The article then goes seriously off the rails as Brummer explains how Google’s business plan is plunder the copyright of hard-working British artists like Adele and to share their work with everyone for free. It reaches a peak of insanity as he says this:
One only has to switch on the computer, call up the Google search engine and type in the name of a star like Adele to understand why the digital channel is such a threat to the UK’s performers, and for that matter our whole creative industry.
Nine out of the first ten websites which pop up on Google’s search engine are run by pirates who have downloaded Adele’s output and offer it online far more cheaply than official copyrighted sites and High Street retailers.
Claims like this aren’t new, of course and presumably Brummer assumes that everyone who reads those paragraphs will nod in agreement whilst thinking to themselves, “Of course that’s what happens – wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turns up a few pages of porn too”. Brummer relies on his readership being people who have be told so many horror stories about Google search results that they are now scared to even visit the site.
So what happens if you actually bother to try Brummer’s suggestion. Here’s what I got:
- Three links to videos on YouTube. Two of them are from her record label and the other one seems to be from Adele’s own channel.
- Two links to Adele’s official web site.
- Three links to news stories about Adele (including Brummer’s own story).
- A link to Adele’s MySpace page.
- Five images.
- A link to a page about Adele on last.fm.
- A link to a page of Adele lyrics (this doesn’t look official).
- A link to Adele’s Facebook page.
- A link to an Amazon page promoting Adele.
- A link to Adele’s record company’s page about her.
All of which rather seems to disprove Brummer’s theory. From this sample it seems that Google seems very adept at putting Adele’s fans in touch with official sources of information about her. Only the lyrics page seems unofficial or unapproved – and do lyrics really count as piracy?
There’s another option to consider here though. For a couple of years now Google have been providing customised search results. Whenever you search on Google, they take into account the links that you have clicked on from previous search results. I’m not surprised that I get a page of official links as those are the kinds of sites that I usually show most interest in. If Mr Brummer gets a page of pirate links then perhaps he should investigate who has been using his computer.
Categories: Internet |
15 Comments
