For those who fell
No apologies for my post today – a special Remembrance Sunday because it marks the centenary of the ending of the First Word War – and I wish to begin by paying a small tribute to those who ply their trade in the UK media, both the Fleet Street and radio/television varieties.
The press often receives flak for its reactionary populist dog-whistle stances upon issues of the moment and its widely-suspected role as the plaything/mouthpiece of its supposed capitalist feudal baron-type – often foreign or tax-exiled – owners but there are occasions when, despite the manifold faults it can be accused of by anyone anywhere along the wide spectrum of political belief, it deftly captures and reflects the mood of the nation.
Added to which I’d like to suggest that diligent research, investigation and persistence – together with the pride and passion for their profession that journalists feed off at all stages of their careers – also comes into it somewhere.
By way of illustration of what I’m getting at I can do no better that provide links to three excellent hopefully representative pieces that I have spotted upon the websites of national newspapers:
On WW1 poets – specifically those whose sexuality was ‘beyond the norm’ (an aspect of their lives of which in two cases I have to admit – not being a particular student of poetry – I was previously unaware) – I commend this lengthy piece by Kevin Childs as featured upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
In contrast some might regard The Sun newspaper as a rag unlikely to be capable of featuring anything but tat.
However, I well remember attending a student journalism conference in Salford about forty years ago at which an eminent lecturer from the Cardiff School of Journalism, whose name sadly evades me as I type, shocked and surprised in equal measure his ‘right on’ audience by deriding our collective nomination of The Guardian as a shining example of an organ producing the finest UK journalism.
Not so, was the gist of his response. What The Guardian pushed out was self-indulgent English composition – in his view the best UK journalism appeared in the Daily Mirror. For the sole reason that – given the tiny amount of column-space it had to play with – its pages contained the best easily-digestible overview of whatever was happening in the world.
His thrust – a version of the old line “Apologies for the length of this letter: I was going to write you a short one but didn’t have the time …” – was that anyone could write an essay with no maximum length. The greatest skill that anyone aspiring to go into journalism could acquire was the ability to convey the largest amount of key information in the shortest possible number of words.
Accordingly, here is a link the events happening today, as written by “Sun reporter”, as appears today upon the website of – THE SUN
Tonight on BBC2 television UK viewers will have the opportunity to watch for the first time the documentary They Shall Not Grow Old – either by accident or design a misquotation of the famous “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old” line from the 1914 Laurence Binyon poem For The Fallen).
This has been a six year project lovingly produced by acclaimed Kiwi movie director and WW1 obsessive (Sir) Peter Jackson – perhaps best known perhaps for his Tolkein Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit trilogies – in association with the Imperial War Museum.
Here is a link to a representative preview of what is being hailed as revelatory piece or work via its combination of a series of stunning technological breakthroughs and poignant capacity to ‘bring alive’ images and the lives of soldiers of WW1 that, simply by their nature, for the past century have previously been viewed – although fascinating – as jerky, almost Charlie Chaplin-like, material.
It is written by Dan Jones and appears upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
