I’m talking about the importance of context: there are (at least) two sides to every story. When I go to an artgallery, with a beautiful woman, I notice that most pieces need to be looked at from more than one perspective. It’s the same with news. Any newsworthy object will have many significant aspects, some of which are only discernible from certain angles. Some journalists make no effort to see a situation from somebody else’s point-of-view. These people are called ‘tossers’. Other journalists, on the other hand, work hard to make their reportage as free from bias as possible. In this example, see if you can spot the device I use to neutralise my opinion of Gordon Brown:
HAS LITERALLY CUNTED THE COUNTRY’. ‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND POLITICS’, SAID ANOTHER. 3) Be Parochial: That which is newsworthy is that which affects the material and ideological structures and systems in which we live our lives. The closer to us geographically that something happens, or the more similar the circumstances in which it happens are to our own, the more we care about it. To illustrate the point, consider this ‘Number Crunching’ segment from September’s Private Eye:
Gordon Brown is a good Prime Minister. Gordon Brown is a bad Prime 240,000 Population of New Orleans, Minister. whose evacuation ahead of Hurricane Gustav Another way to incorporate multiple has been exhaustively documented in perspectives into your writing is to UK media. employ the opinions of others. Here 1.25 Million People in India and Neare some examples from interviews pal made homeless by floods in past I conducted on the streets of Leeds month, whose plight about local people’s opinions on the has not been exhaustively documented PM. in UK media.
‘GORDON BROWN IS A CUNT’, SAID ONE, ‘HE
Another way to think about the value of a news-story is as a report of an event which defies our expectations and threatens the status-quo
which we depend upon. It is for example far more discomfiting when a white female is murdered than when a black male is murdered. This of course almost goes without saying, doesn’t it? That’s just the way things are. Think about the most newsworthy event of our lifetimes, 9/11. The number of deaths, 2,999, while incontestably tragic, is not such a significant a figure when we consider the many other atrocities and disasters that have occurred throughout the world in the same time-frame. In May of this year, for instance, the Sichuan earthquake killed 80 times the number of 9/11. But we expect earthquakes, we expect hurricanes, we expect genocide, war, disease, famine, drought. As Science-Fiction writer, J.G Ballard put it: ‘A real revolution, as 9-11 was in its way, will always come out of some unexpected corner of the sky. And finally, I think it is fitting to quote another visionary, Heath Ledger’s ‘Joker’: ‘You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!’ V
AND IN MOVING THINK ABOUT ALL STATES, AND ALL PRINCES. THINK ABOUT THE FALL, THE DEATH, YOUR YES,
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