The Sun: The Prurient Porn Rag

 Media  No Responses »
Aug 242012
 

So the Sun have decided to print naked photos of Prince Harry claiming that it is about ‘freedom of the press’. Well maybe.

Now I’m hardly an ardent royalist – it is a really daft way of picking a head of state, but it does at least have the advantage of keeping politicians out of the role. And of course helps the tourism industry.

Bear in mind that if a photographer makes images of a person for commercial purposes, then they need to obtain a model release form before publishing the photos. There are of course public interest exceptions (plus artistic and personal use exceptions). But is re-publishing Harry’s naked pics, news?

We all know that Harry was caught at a party by a photographer naked, and that those photos have been published on a web site (or two) in the US. So whatever the Sun was doing couldn’t be called breaking news, where there might be a justification to publish the naked pics just to demonstrate that they do in fact exist. Hence there was no call to publish the photos to tell us that Harry was caught partying naked.

So if this item published by the Sun isn’t news, then what is it ? Well it’s just porn designed to increase the circulation of the Sun “news” paper – or in other words these photos were published for commercial reasons. So they really need the permission of Harry to publish them. I somehow doubt they have that.

Perhaps Harry could sue the Sun for publishing these photos without permission!

And is it really proper news anyway? The fact that he was partying naked might seem shocking to some of us, but let’s be honest – he’s of an age where he’s going to be a bit of an arse from time to time. And most of us were just the same at his age. Royals (at least the males – Kate perhaps needs to redress the balance slightly) have a long history of partying hard, and that is hardly surprising.

I don’t see this story as real news; a proper newspaper might well publish a story about Harry partying naked and add some po-faced opinion about how this is no way for a royal to behave, but there is no reason to publish the photos. Which pretty much demonstrates that the Sun no longer has the right to call itself a newspaper – it is merely a pornographic periodical concentrating on unauthorised photos of celebrities.

Julian Assange and Pussy Riot

 Politics  2 Responses »
Aug 182012
 

Last night I caught someone droning on about the similarities between the case of Pussy Riot and Julian Assange, and that with the right of freedom of speech comes the responsibility for responsible use of that right. I very quickly turned off as any comparison is ridiculous.

Pussy Riot are in prison today as a direct consequence of their attempted use of their right of free speech; whereas Julian Assange at most is facing legal trouble as an indirect consequence of his use of the right of free speech. Certainly on the face of it, Julian Assange’s legal troubles have nothing to do with the Wikileaks website.

It is certainly true that Pussy Riot’s actions inside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was to some extent ill-advised. They could well be guilty of some sort of aggravated trespass crime, but it would seem to me that they are being punished for something else – their imprisonment for 2 years is by far out of proportion to what they have done. And it appears that even the victim (the church) also believes this is excessive as they have asked for leniency.

It is true that insulting someone’s religion in their place of worship is perhaps going too far for a protest, and perhaps should be punishable by a couple of days in prison. But sending them to prison for two years looks to everyone like an excuse to put them away to stop them protesting against Putin‘s autocratic rule. The funny thing is that Putin’s minions could not have done something more effective at demonstrating that his regime is a repressive one.

Julian Assange on the other hand is effectively charged (the UK courts have made it plain that he can be regarded as being charged with the crime even though a peculiarity of the Swedish justice system means he hasn’t as yet been charged) with some sort of sexual misconduct. Which on the face of it has absolutely nothing to do with his Wikileaks activities. Whilst there may be some oddities about the case, the only possible action for an honourable man would be to go to Sweden to answer the charges.

The conspiracy theorists would argue that this is all just a way of the US getting their hands on Julian Assange to rush through their own court system to punish him for “treason”, espionage, or some other crime. It is highly unlikely that Julian could be legally extradited for treason (which is likely to cause a considerable amount of laughter considering that Julian is no a US citizen) or espionage (which is after all at an international level purely a political crime). But it is just about possible that there is some US involvement in the charges he faces in Sweden – perhaps simply as a way of harassing someone whom the US government has a certain amount of anger with.

It is really rather extraordinary that Julian is claiming political asylum with Ecuador in preference to relying on the justice systems in the UK and Sweden; frankly he has better protection in either Sweden or the UK from any US actions than he would do in Ecuador which although has granted him asylum for publicity reasons is far more likely to let the US quietly grab him in exchange for a few billion in foreign aid.

Those Really Annoying TV PIN Codes

 Media  1 Response »
Aug 172012
 

In their infinite wisdom, the government long ago decided to insist that TV programmes recorded after the “watershed” should require a PIN code before viewing. Now I can see the justification for this – it’s to protect the children. But …

There’s no children here, so why can’t I turn it off ?

Plus (and possibly even more irritating), whilst it was probably the best that could be done during the analogue era (at least for a reasonable price), we can almost certainly do better during the digital era. Rather than simply look at when a TV programme is being broadcast at, why not look at the content?

There are plenty of programmes broadcast after the watershed that whilst may not be aimed at children certainly don’t have the kind of content that would be “dangerous” for children to watch. After all many are later repeated during the day!

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