Yodelling with laughter

Preamble: I said I was going to rethink this blog. Still haven’t gotten round to it, but couldn’t resist temptation to blog this….

Ah, the good old Daily Mail. Always there when there’s a story to be told on how Muslims are taking over the world and destroying traditional ways of life. Usually quite happy to use the weirdest angles to connect anything German or Austrian to the Nazis or to revel in the gory of the Fritzl story, this time they are sympathetic to an Alpine dweller: it denounces the alleged plight of a 63-year old pensioner in Graz, Austria, as further proof for political correctness gone mad. According to the Mail, Helmut Griese was fined £700 for yodelling during muslim prayer time, thereby upsetting his Muslim neighbours (Istyosty Proxy link). Well, that might be a bit crass if this were actually so, but it is the Daily Mail we’re talking about, so a closer look is necessary.

The DM story refers to the Krone Zeitung, which is an Austrian Rag that is to quality journalism what used toilet paper is to a napkin, and has a similar attitude to foreigners and anything that is different from pickety fency conservatism as the Daily Mail. Its stories thus cannot be taken at face value.

Lo and behold,  when looking around on the web to find some more info, I stumbled across a blog that sought to set the story straight. Kobuk AT states that the fine was the result of a year-long campaign of disturbances by the OAP, and that he would time his Friday yodelling practice with the Muslims call to prayer. Apparently, according to the court papers submitted (although Kobuk is vague on the details), Griese also used other methods of disruption. Basically, it sounds like one man hassling his neighbours because he doesn’t like them and their call to prayers, and instead of talking to them or calling the police, he decides to torment them. Ah, neighbours, gotta love them.

Kobuk goes on to report that the Muslims tried to reason with Griese and stopped broadcasting the call to prayer over loudspeaker. When that didn’t stop Griese, they turned to the police, who, after repeatedly warning off Mr Griese, did not have a choice but to take the matter to court (something to do with Austrian law). The case was settled after Griese agreed to pay the €800 fine (so the court didn’t actually sentence him, but that’s nitpicking).

Unfortunately, I don’t know where to find official court material in Austria to verify the Kobuk statements. It appears from the discussion in the forum on the website that this was obtained by phoning the court and asking for clarification (i.e. good old journalism).
The fact that the Kronen Zeitung has removed the story from its pages lends support to the veracity of Kobuk’s portrayal of the story.

But of course, it would be too much for the Daily Mail to do anything but translating the original article in the Krone Zeitung (bits and pieces of the now offline article were posted in various fora, and the DM article is a close enough translation of these). They’re probably to busy oggling cleavages and checking for dimples in thighs or something. So much more interesting than checking facts…

Stating the bleeding obvious

Hello all three of my readers 🙂
It’s been a bit, and yes, I have failed you. I’ve been away and there’s just too much bad journalism and ridiculous stuff going on to choose from, but there I just found a gem.
It’s in the category of stating the bleeding obvious and really makes me think that I should try my hand at journalism, if this is what it takes nowadays to get on the Grauniad frontpage:

People expected to much of Obama and now don’t like him anymore. Errr, that’s just like stating that popes do it in the woods and bears in the Vatican or whatever the saying is.
And that’s the pinnacle of analysis the Grauniad gets up to nowadays? If this is how the alleged serious press wants to distinguish itself from the gutter press, then groan I must…

Anyway, that’s already it – I’m for a change rather busy this week, and I also feel I need to rethink this blog a bit, so I might be a while…
Cheerio until then and enjoy the golden autumn while it lasts!

Man chatting to North Korean Police hailed a hero

Preamble: being on holiday means that this blog should have been posted a week ago. Well, that’s laziness for you…

It is rather fair to suggest that I do not hold the tabloids (and I include the Daily Mail in this) in high esteem. This does not, in reverse, mean, that I think that the allegedly serious newspapers are doing a superb job in reporting news. They lack a certain scaremongering tactic (although the Torygraph had a fantastic gaffe the other day about the differences in public and private sector pay*), and on the whole are a bit more scientific about their reporting (the emphasis being a bit). But they can be extraordinarily glib and self-indulgent. A prime example of this is last week’s Independent.

The front page  proudly stated that one of their journalists went undercover to North Korea and was detained by the world’s most repressive regime.

Similar to the celebrity magazines that quite frequently boast headlines on their front pages that then turn out to be a vast overstatement of the facts (as regularly exposed by the Private Eye and a blatant case of mis-selling), the Independent mimics their practice by ever so slightly beefing up a story that goes like this: journalist goes for a clandestine wander around town, runs into police, and is confined to hotel for rest of stay by the tour operators.

There was enough space left in the paper to spread this story over 2 pages, and hailing the journalistic heroism by claiming that the man infiltrated an illegal street market.

Somehow, the word ‘infiltrate’ in my mind is an undercover assignment, like say pretending to be a hard-working dedicated super-hip Apple employee when really you’re working for Microsoft – but Apple does not realise this. By that definition, a white man will not be able to infiltrate an illegal North Korean street market as much as Bill Gates could walk the corridors of Apple HQ unrecognised without major facial surgery. He’ll stick out like the proverbial digit.  No wonder the journalist immediately got into trouble  – the average North Korean probably knows that a camera-wielding white man is unlikely to be a representative of the Pyongyang tourist board.

So what about the detention? Technically, he was detained. As he ran away from one policeman, he managed to stumble into another group of policemen who question him about what he’s doing there without the compulsory state-provided guide. He lies, not wanting to say that he’s a journalist (that’s his great undercover work btw – he got himself a tourist visa, as journalists are unlikely to be allowed in the world’s most secretive country.) They accept his fibs of being a hapless tourist, and take him back to the hotel, where he gets a dressing down by the tour operator, who then confines him to the hotel for the rest of the stay. Well, you can call that detention, but it’s not the police who did the detaining , and it also does not conjure up visions of jail hell as the article headline claims.

So, the story really reads like a “what I did on my holiday”-tale rather than an inside scoop on life in North Korea. The ACTUAL interesting news, namely the apparent succession of Kim Il Jung’s son as leader of the state gets about 25 lines in the bottom corner. But who cares about the interesting bits when the rather sedate Indi can suddenly claim to have an investigative journalist on their payroll.

Or is it maybe that the Indi, like other newspapers, seems to think that readers are getting too lazy to read about complicated issues? Is our attention span really so low that we can only take a few lines of politics and rather have a sensationalist trumped-up non-story?

I somewhat doubt that. But the Indi, alas, apparently thinks differently.

*I wanted to blog about that, but forgot. And over a month later, it seems a bit too late. Needless to say that the stats were read in such a way as to suggest that public sector employees get much more dosh than private sector employees, although no such thing is the case. The Sunday Time did a similar thing in January, which Ben Goldacre took apart. Read the piece here and you know what the Torygraph did wrong  they did pretty much exactly the same as the ST.

Continent exists longer than 50 years celebrates 50th anniversary

Another gem from today’s radio listening. A report on BBC R4 will explore “Africa at 50”. Now I like a shorthand as much as anyone, but surely, they could have found a better catch-word for it? The BBC isn’t the only one marking the 50th anniversary of independence for 17 African countries with this ultra-reductionist abbreviation, although that’s not really an excuse.

Surely, given the endless stereotyping that Africa suffers anyway, journos around the world could have come up with a little more nuanced way of describing these events.

For example: Post-colonial Africa at 50. Still geographically very universal, but at least it doesn’t imply that the continent popped into existence 50 years ago and did not have a history prior to that (be that colonial or pre-colonial).

Pretending that this continent only existed for 5 decades is just too lazy, as it denies the long and rich history of Africa (with kingdoms, cultures, arts, trade and what not prior to colonialisation) and the tinsy fact that it really made its mark on the whole planet, being the cradle of life and such.(and I’m NOT referring to magic-breasted Hollywood actresses exploits here).

Is our attention span really so diminished that we cannot take the time to read a headline longer than 3 words? Or has journalism really become so uncreative? I fear I know the answer, but I really don’t want to hear it…

Woman has divorce, gets over it

It is sometimes rather hard when you’re between jobs as the euphemism goes, and I don’t necessarily mean the drudgery/frustration of reading yet another job ad that contains so much jargon and bullshit that the bullshitbingobing would be a constant ringing rather than an occasional chime. That doesn’t necessarily make your day a riot, and the weirdness of job ads and recruitment strategies would well warrant an own blog. However, unless I find a surefire way of making it totally anonymous with no chance whatsoever of it being traced back to me, I will choose the cowardly route and refrain from writing it. One day, when my grand plan (yet to be developed) comes off, maybe then. But once I’ve realised the plan, I’ll be probably way too busy sipping cocktails at the pool or something.

Anyway, why doing sweet FA for work is also a bit annoying is that you forget to switch off the radio sometimes and then suddenly find yourself listening to some very strange programmes – for example the Woman’s Hour interview with the author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Synopsis: wealthy woman goes through tedious divorce, goes travelling to Italy, India and Indonesia to get over it, writes book.

I will confess upfront that I haven’t read the book, so this may sound a tad unfair, but it’s the principle that gets me. I’m really glad to hear that the lady learnt some valuable lessons, although they sound to me like a description a guide to coping with lives crises for dummies: be good to yourself (eat), reflect on your life and learn from it (pray) and find someone else or love yourself (love).

Oh man, I wish I would have the dosh to go travelling for 12 months and then write a book about it, wouldn’t that be jolly?*

Most people who get a divorce will not have the money to do what she did, so it’s rather self-indulgent. It is also extraordinarily presumptios to think that writing about yourself will be of sooo much interest to the whole wide world. And the frustrating thing: apparently it is. The book sells millions and of course the film will make it even more popular. Hurray for $$$$$ all around.**

I don’t want to be unnecessarily unfair on the author, after all, we all have to make a living, and no-one is forced to buy the book. But the fawning over it is incredible, and incredibly annoying.*** Writing about your experience does not make you an expert on how to get over a divorce, it makes you an expert maybe on yourself (and how to get a good publisher’s deal). Why are people constantly falling for this type of navel-gazing, self-indulgent writing, even if it’s done with the best intention on helping others? What makes you think that you’re insights are so much more worthy of attention than loads of other people’s? Why?

Any answers, please do let me know.

* hm, I think there might be a master plan in the making… just need to find myself an unpleasant experience and write about it. Was my last year horrible enough? Probably not.
**there is an indication on the web that she got an advance from her publisher to cover the cost of her travel. That may be quite standard for travel books, but if that’s true, then the whole thing sounds even more contrived than it already does…

*** I could equally rant about Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist that some people have praised as being the key to happiness (I might exaggerate a little here), but is basically a rather boring tale on the topic of coincidence and luck.

Thin is the new curvaceous?

In my daily browse through the nation’s major newswebsites, I stumbled across an article on the Telegraph about Victoria Beckham’s new fashion collection.

Now, I could rant about how unimportant fashion is and that it really is absolutely unnecessary to plug Mrs Beckhams new collection, but that’s a bit dull.

However, the article’s subheading made me chuckle:
“Victoria Beckham’s new collection celebrated the womanly physique.”

Right. A woman who is extraordinarily thin jumps on the Mad Men-themed bandwagon that blasts out the slogan “the return of the curves!” and produces a collection for slightly more normal-sized women. The picture in the article is one of the designer herself, admittedly looking not like the stick insect we’re used to seeing, but she’s no Sophia Loren. Despite this, the author of the article reckons that Mrs Beckham “was looking pretty curvaceous herself”. Really??? You call that curvaceous?? Oh my, I think we have a long time to go before normal body shapes (i.e. everything from petite to large) enter the funny world of fashion…

woman in pants to show bad effects of women in pants.

Hardly news, I know, but naive as I am, I still don’t understand the utter sheer stupidity / hypocrisy of editors who do that sort of thing. The Sun reports on a survey conducted by the Girl Guides that shows that girls feel under pressure to look good and illustrates it with a picture of a woman in pants with an appropriately hypocritical caption.

Needless to say, the article touches only briefly on this “looking good angle” before describing some of the other results of this survey. The Sun being the Sun, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that they use every tenuous link they can to have an opportunity to show some flesh. It’s a commonplace. But it’s exactly this kind of commonplace that annoys me, and hence this blog post.

And it’s not only about that. The article is also a prime example of the lack of time/ability of journalists to read surveys properly.  The Sun article says that

” 75 per cent of those questioned also said they went on strict diets to look good for others, rather than for health reasons.”

From this, you might assume that the questions the girls were asked were “Have you ever been on a diet?” “If yes, why did you diet?”, with either open-ended answers (i.e. the participant would write down or tell the interviewer what the answer is) or prompted answers (i.e. respondents can choose from a list of answers) and that 75% would have said ‘yes’ to the first AND second question.

But of course, that wasn’t the case. The question and results are published by the Girl Guides, and it goes as follows:

“Last year, half of all girls aged 11 to 21 said that they had been on a very strict diet –  why do you think they do this?”

75% of the 2010 respondents said in answer to this question:

“To be more attractive to other people”.

To spell it out clearly: 75% of girls in 2010 thought that the main reason for dieting is to look good. NOT that 75% of girls in 2010 were on a strict diet in order to look more attractive. Half of the 2009 respondents were on a strict diet. But we don’t know why (there was no question on this as far as I can tell in 2009 questionnaire and survey report).  *

The Girl Guide even states this in their news release, so the Sun reporter was either lazy or sensationalist. Take your pick.

So basically what we have is a catchy headline giving the Sun an excuse to print a picture of Kelly Brook in her undies, combined with some sensationalist statement about society’s pressure on girls to look thin that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no doubt in my mind that girls are strongly influenced by airbrushed pictures and I wholeheartedly support the Girl Guides’ campaign to label airbrushed pictures, and that many diet to look closer to what they think is an ideal body, and that many more have a negative body image. But we cannot glean from this survey how many are actually affected, although that would be very important to know, and the Sun is once more just after a gratuitous headline that does nothing to help the cause. Well done.

* there are a number of issues with the questions in the Girl Guides survey  – e.g. what is defined as a strict diet?, but I’m not here to look at that, but at the way it’s reported. Before you ask – I don’t have enough info and time to go over the Girl Guides survey in detail, and social science surveys are always a balance between keeping the questionnaire short and using clearly defined terms. By the openness with which they treat the data (you can have the raw data on request, they give you both weighted and unweighted results, etc) it looks like they thought about these issues and know the limitations.

Productifying procrastination – or an excuse to blog.

Hello readers,

it was always inevitable that I start blogging at some point (other than my previous efforts of spamming people’s inboxes with travel tales, really).

This blog will be a relatively random one, procrastination being its main motivator and driver. Currently not really doing very much other than the occasional freelance gig and job hunting, I have a LOT of time reading the papers and surfing the internet, and as a consequence quite a lot of random thoughts which I will put to, err… paper. Screen. Electronic ink. Or something.

As for the name: Bromides, as I found to my delight is a synonym for commonplaces, i.e. rather dull and commonly held opinions, I extend that definition to include common facts of life, e.g. the daily hypocrisy of  tabloids, or stupid reporting by the allegedly more high-brow media outlets. For example,  illustrating outrage over upskirt shots while using them as well is rather common place.

I’m rather bored by these and wish there were better commonplaces, i.e. less bile and more fact. But halt there reader,  before you hastily move to look at more lolcaz because you think I’ll pontificate about how I’d like society/media to be – that’s not the plan of this blog. It’s only to highlight these commonplaces, and have fun with them. The addition of the ‘original’ is a pointer that I hope to occasionally highlight a commonplace that you might not have thought as being a commonplace. If that makes sense.

The blog is thus in a similar vein to badscience.net (there will probably be extensive rants about surveys and what they purport to demonstrate on this, looking in-depth at social science methodology abuse) and Tabloid Watch, although I’ll probably be less formal and/or in-depth about it. Initially.

Oh, and of course, there may be many a postings that haven’t got anything to do with the title of this blog – after all, I chose it after the title because I’m a smartass, and I have the sneaky feeling that not many people know that bromide isn’t just a chemical used to treat epilepsy and allegedly to keeping things down in the army.

So, be kind, hit on that RSS feed button or subscribe by any other means you’d like to, and of course, leave me a comment if you want!