Case Study: PCC regulating online journalism

Complainant Name:

Mr William Hesselmann

Clauses Noted: 1

Publication: Daily Mail

Complaint:

Mr William Hesselmann complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the newspaper had published inaccurate information in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors' Code of Practice. The complainant said that the newspaper had misled readers by suggesting that the BBC accommodated the 65 person crew of Lambing Live in hotel rooms costing £279 per night. The real figure, which was only published at the end of the piece, was £58 per night.

Resolution:

The newspaper said that the article had included the BBC's response, which had not mentioned the actual price of the rooms. It had been informed by the BBC only after the publication of the actual price; it had published the BBC's letter addressing this point. It has amended the online article and published the following footnote:

The BBC asks us to point out that in fact the BBC paid £58 per night, not the £279 quoted. This rate amounted to a discount of around 50% off the standard rate, substantially less than other hotels in the area and within the BBC expenses policy. Having the team stay in one location simplified travel arrangements to and from the farm. They also say that a crew of 65 is typical for a production of this kind. The article was updated after the BBC provided further comment on the price of rooms following publication.

Date Published: 30/05/2014

From: http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=ODk0NA 

How we used Conventions of Real Media Texts in Our A Level Production

Form:

Conforming - Film opening

Challenging - Music Video

-Long in duration shots -Wide Shots -Establishing Setting - Titles  Examples: Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)

Music videos (Vernallis) -didn’t break the rules of continuity editing -didn’t feature ‘foregrounded’ cuts   One Shots -Bright colours -plain backgrounds -Lots of quirky props -Bright/noteworthy costumes  -Mise en scene providing the progression -Narrative within shot -Frames within frames -Artist's movement driving shot movement Examples: Taylor Swift, We are Never Ever Getting back together (Declan Whitebloom, 2012)

Narrative:
Film Opening conformed to Todorov, Levi-Strauss


Music Video also used Todorov, Propp but didn't use music video narratives like Vernallis as much


Genre:


Coming of age genre

• Young protagonist
• Quirky best friend
• Best friend as love interest
• Transitional stage of life
• Seeking independence/self discovery

But

• no high school setting
• no quirky family
• parents as challenging the protagonist's choices

Indie Pop

• retro style
• investigating ideas of traditional femininity

Representation:

Typical coming of age drama protagonists -male -troubled -nerd/popular -awkward/misfit/looking for place to fit in Examples: Charlie in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’, Sutter in ‘The Spectacular Now’	Lila -female -troubled -not defined in those terms, not in high school setting so less focus on those stereotypes and marks of status -awkward, quirky, likeable, relatable
Typical Female Pop Stars -Other indie stars less polished, elements of masculinity in their dress like Gabrielle Aplin’s leather jacket -Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze   Recent Indie stars in the Top 40 are also usually male like Ben Howard, Bastille	Ava -Conforms to retro style but is sophisticated and in control, sauve and chic -More feminine that other indie artists -Ava not sexualised, skirts are mid thigh length

Style:
Indie Style
Film Opening conformed:

1. Birds
2. Sunrise shots/natural lighting
3. Birds
4. Travelling
5. Photography/photos
6. notebooks/writing
7. Handheld camera
8. Gentle/mellow guitar music

Music video was limited in its conformity:

1. Our video is a lot more bright and cheery than most indie music videos but this serves to heighten its satirical nature
   
   
2. Our music video is less gritty and uses less realism than many indie videos, but this can be a convention when producing videos for a track with an ideological message such as Lily Allen's 'The Fear' whichtake place in a doll-house style mansion filled with giant presents and balloons to connote the fakery and greed of celebrity culture
3. Ava's image is far more feminine than many other female British indie artists, conforming more in this respect to American indie artists like She and Him 
4. incorporated a retro feel into their artist identity through their dress sense and iconography such as tea/rockabilly dresses

Propp's Character Theory

1. Hero
2. Donor
3. Helper
4. Princess
5. False Hero
6. Villain 

Free Press Case Study: Britain's Secret Trials

Where:
Old Bailey

When:
2014

What is happening:

• Two men accused of a terror plot will go into the dock at the Old Bailey in weeks.
• For undisclosed reasons of national security their identities, as well as details of their alleged crimes, will not be heard in public
• Prior to yesterday, the media was banned from even reporting that the trial of the two men, known only as AB and CD, was due to take place in conditions of total secrecy.
• AB is accused of ‘engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts’.
• Both men are accused of possessing terrorist documents, including a file named ‘bomb making’ held on a memory stick. CD faces a fourth charge under immigration laws of improperly obtaining a British passport.
• Senior prosecutors claim the trial may not go ahead if it has to be held in public.
• But they have refused to disclose publicly the need for total secrecy.
• The trial would be the first criminal case to be held behind closed doors for hundreds of years
• Unless the appeal succeeds, journalists will be banned from being present in court to report the proceedings on 16 June or the outcome of the trial
• The evidence on which the crown relied to argue for the secret trial could not be presented in open court, he added. Whittam instead presented the evidence in private to the appeal court judges during part of the hearing on Wednesday

Free Press's importance:

• The very existence of the trial can be disclosed today only because media groups fought to have the reporting restrictions lifted
• The casting aside of the centuries-old doctrine of open courts sparked anger last night.
• ‘To hold trials entirely in secret is an outrageous assault on the fundamental principles of British justice,’ said Clare Algare of Reprieve.
• ‘This Government’s dangerous obsession with secret courts seems to know no bounds. Unless it is resisted, we risk ending up with a justice system that will not be worthy of the name.’
• Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said: ‘For a parliamentary democracy with our reputation for a fair legal system, this sets a very dangerous precedent.
• The Court of Appeal was urged by the media groups’ lawyer to restrict the secrecy order because it represented a ‘totally unprecedented departure from the principles of open justice’.
• Justice Secretary Chris Grayling insisted it was a 'matter for the courts' but stressed sitting in secret should be 'very, very rare indeed'.
• Not Transparent
• This appeal raises important issues relating to not only the constitutional principle of open justice, but also the equally important principle of fairness and natural justice
• The Official Secrets Act enables cases to be heard behind closed doors but the legislation is rarely used in this way
• Without press we wouldn't know secret trial was taking place

Shami Chakrabati, director of Liberty, condemned the secrecy, saying "Transparency isn't an optional luxury in the justice system – it's key to ensuring fairness and protecting the rule of law.

Steve Neale's Genre Theory

• Genres are instances of repetition and difference
• Mere repetition would not attract the audience
• genre is a set of expectations
• genres are not systems they are processes-they are dynamic and change over time

How we used in our music video production:

• Followed some conventions: acoustic guitar music, bird iconography
• Broke conventions with our representation: female protagonist, Asian helper
• Number of female protagonists in coming of age genre is increasing - changing over time
• This change however is not specific to our genre but to most
• Audiences expect romance - Coming of Age drama has a strong element of teenage relationships so to exclude this would be to disappoint our audience

Creativity in different stages of our production

Pre Production:

AS Film opening

• Brainstorming
• Script writing
• Preliminary Task
• Photography

A2 music video:

• Brainstorming
• Lyrical analysis
• Choreography
• Preliminary Task

How this progressed:
Our preliminary tasks became more complex and were extended in length, the extent to which we were inspired by feminist ideas, change from creating new script to fit in with genre conventions to interpreting lyrics and applying irony

Production:

AS Film opening

• Some improvisation
• Camera angles
• Recording Song
• Influenced by other films of the genre

A2 music video:

• One shot
• use of props - more integration of reality and playfulness
• Changes in

How This progressed:

Post production:

AS Film opening

• Photo frame at the end
• Grading
• 
  

A2 music video:

Hamlet as a Tragic Hero

• Noble Birth

a great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat:Oedipus, the classic tragic hero.

Aristotle shared his view of what makes a tragic hero in his Poetics:

 Aristotle suggests that a hero of a tragedy must evoke in the audience a sense of pity or fear, saying, “the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity."^[1] 

• Dispossessed prince

He establishes the concept that the emotion of pity stems not from a person becoming better but when a person receives undeserved misfortune and fear comes when the misfortune befalls a man like us. 

• Now a commoner not a king
• universal grief

This is why Aristotle points out the simple fact that, “The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.” According to Aristotle a tragic hero ought to be a man whose misfortune comes to him, not through vice or depravity but by some error of judgment. For example King Oedipus kills his father from impulse and marries his mother out of ignorance.

• Hamlet killing polonious rash

Aristotle contests that the tragic hero has to be a man “who is not eminently good and just, whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” He is not making the hero entirely good in which he can do no wrong but rather has the hero committing an injury or a great wrong leading to his misfortune. Aristotle is not contradicting himself saying that the hero has to be virtuous and yet not eminently good. Being eminently good is a moral specification to the fact that he is virtuous.^[2] He still has to be - to some degree - good. 

• Hamlet good?

Aristotle adds another qualification to that of being virtuous but not entirely good when he says, “He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.” 

a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy

A tragic hero is a person of noble birth with heroic or potentially heroic qualities.

This person is fated by the Gods or by some supernatural force to doom and destruction or at least to great suffering.

• 'o cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right'

But the hero struggles mightly against this fate and this cosmic conflict wins our admiration.

This tragic drama involves choices (free will) and results in a paradox --- Is it Fate or Free Will which is primarily responsible for the suffering in the hero's life (and in our lives in light of our own personal tragedies)? Though fated the hero makes choices which bring about his destruction.

In addition, tragic drama usually reveals the hero's true identity. Oedipus --- instead of being the proud savior of Thebes --- discovers that he is the cause of the city's plague, the killer of his father and the husband of his mother.

The hero's suffering, however, is not gratuitous because through great suffering the hero is enlightened. Such heroes learn about themselves and their place in the universe. Pride is chastened. Though destroyed the hero is at peace intellectually.

Tragic doom is both public (the State) and private (a family tragedy as well) and usually sexual transgressions are involved in some way.

Reason in Paradise Lost

• it is their law
• can be tricked - flaw in the law?
• or is it because their minds can be tricked
• after fall they don't mention reason
• reason as defining humans
• even reason is fallible - only thing that remains constant is God's command
• beasts as devoid of it
• Human life based in reason - passion overswaying it
• mental reason vs physical 'appetite'
• Reason as happiness - as their law in prelapsarian world keeping them from straying
• God giving them power of judgement for selves
• Reason not necessarily connected to speech
• Ruler
• Satan as utilizing and reason as not limited to good things
• Ability to think and decide essential to free will
• Their minds governing them - God give them reason so that they can choose
• 
  

Quotes:

tasting of a certain Tree in the Garden he attain'd both to Speech and Reason

Of Growth, Sense, Reason, all summ'd up in Man.

smiles from Reason flow

He made us, and delight to Reason joyn'd

for what obeyes Reason, is free, and Reason he made right

Since Reason not impossibly may meet Some specious object by the Foe subornd, And fall into deception unaware

With thy permission then, and thus forewarned Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words Touched onely, that our trial, when least sought, May find us both perhaps far less prepared

To Beasts, whom God on thir Creation-Day
Created mute to all articulate sound;
The latter I demurre, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions oft appears

ere long I might perceave
Strange alteration in me, to degree
Of Reason in my inward Powers, and Speech

we live
Law to our selves, our Reason is our Law

Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregn'd
With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth;\

How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat'n and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discern

... Endu'd with human voice and human sense,

Reasoning to admiration

To sensual Appetite, who from beneath
Usurping over sovereign Reason claimed [ 1130 ]
Superior sway

Violence in Hamlet

• even during duel at the end death takes place by poison rather than a fair fight
• Fortinbras uses deception in his war campaign by seeming like he's attacking polish
• nothing the same - feudalism and renaissance mixed
• blood behind curtain
• violence accidental
• starts with soldiers and preparations for war
• 'speak daggers but use none' unlike Vindice and Hippolito who actually threaten their mother
• Claudius as monarch condoning Laertes' private revenge
• Bente Videbaek 'Hamlet can not be allowed to survive the fifth act'
• Violence destroying Denmark's system of government
• survey hamlet before he's violent then send him away - waiting for it?
• poison harder to detect - adding to hiddeness and secrecy
• poison as machiavellian method not letting people know it was you who killed
• killing not for glory but for power
• being good warrior not making kings anymore
• warrior triumphing at the end but no glorious victory
• Men and women dying in same way - poison indiscriminate
• Eye for an eye the theory behind revenge
• Hamlet's promises of violence are immeadiately followed by delay - his antic disposition and going to speak to his mum

Song by Edmund Waller

Song

Go lovely rose,
 Tell her that wastes her time and me,
 That now she knows,
 When I resemble her to thee
 How sweet and faire she seems to be.

 Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her Graces spied,
 That hadst thou sprung
 In Deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

 Small is the worth
 Of Beauty from the light retired:
 Bid her come forth,
 Suffer herself to be desired,
 And not blush so to be admired.

 Then die, that she
 The common fate of all things rare
 May read in thee,
 How small a part of time they share,
 That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

 Edmund Waller