The tabloid demonisation of Jeremy Forrest

Megan Stammers, the 15-year-old schoolgirl from East Sussex, was today found in the French town of Bordeaux. She was discovered along with Jeremy Forrest, her 30-year-old maths teacher after they left the UK last Thursday.

The story of this couple had sparked an international campaign to find Megan and Jeremy, encompassing both traditional and social media. For traditional media, the newspapers and television, it was a copy gold-mine. They spent the week delving into the background of Forrest, bringing up his career as a amateur musician and analysing messages he wrote on Twitter.

On the whole, the media behaved itself. It is perfectly acceptable in these sorts of stories to look into the background of a man who had become a household name. However, some media outlets took the opportunity to demonise Jeremy Forrest and slant their coverage to paint a rather negative picture of him.

The Daily Mail claimed that Forrest had "groomed" Megan Stammers for months before their disappearance, seemingly unaware that the Home Office's definition of "grooming" is "to lower the child’s inhibitions in preparation for abuse or exploitation." We do not know the details of their relationship but it is believed that Megan was happy to leave with Jeremy Forrest and did not need manipulating.

The Mail continued when a photo of the couple, arm-in-arm, was released. The caption read that Forrest could be seen with his arm "wrapped possessively around Megan's shoulder." Possessive is a bit of a stretch; when celebrity couples walk in the same way that Megan and Jeremy did, the Mail calls it "relaxed" or "affectionate."

The Mail was not alone in all of this. The Sun took the opportunity to call Forrest's tattoo of a female manga character "weird" and noted its "intricate childlike" posing. The Daily Mirror picked at another of Forrest's tattoos, a lyric from a Nirvana song, believing it "to be a tribute to Megan" and branded it as "chilling."

This is not a case of tabloid finger-pointing. If any other newspaper or media outlet had acted like this, I would have pointed them out too (if I have missed any, please feel free to comment). I also have no doubt that what Forrest did was wrong and should quite rightly face criminal charges.

But the demonisation of Jeremy Forrest from some newspapers verged on comical. Tabloids have had a history in reporting crime where they try to paint a picture of creepy villains, e.g. Christopher Jeffries. The circumstances surrounding Jeremy and Megan's relationship are still unknown and will be until the police begin their inquiries. But anyone who read the tabloid coverage might think they knew it all: the possessive, weird, chilling maths teacher who abducted the care-free 15-year-old. Slightly prejudicial? I certainly think so.

A day in the life of Mark Zuckerberg

Today has been a good day for Mark Zuckerberg. But I imagine everyday is a good day for Mark Zuckerberg. Imagine being him, imagine it for a second. Stop reading this and just think. You wake up next to your beautiful girlfriend, eat a bowl of cereal (probably Golden Nuggets) and head off to work. When you get to your HQ in Menlo Park, California, you sit at your desk for a bit, poke a few people then head off for a meeting. You walk into the board room and you notice everyone is looking at you a bit funny, presumably because you are still in your pyjamas. Yet no one stops the meeting, they just carry on and trot some numbers. They just do not care, because "you are the CEO bitch!"

That is a normal day for Zuckerberg. So imagine the bounce in his step today, as Facebook went through its IPO (initial public offering). An IPO is when a private company goes public, creating shares and selling them on the stock market, so anyone can own a bit of Facebook. Today those 421 million shares were valued at $34 to $38 each, giving Facebook a total value of $104 billion dollars. To put that into perspective, Facebook is now the highest valued company at the time of its IPO in U.S. history, beating Google and Amazon. But it could be somewhat of a poisoned chalice for the company, because there are now astronomically high expectations of Facebook to make big returns for its shareholders.  

For Facebook to be a successful public company, it must achieve three things. First of all, it must conquer China. Not by raising an army of similarly under-dressed Zuckerberg clones and marching into Beijing (although looking at its vast audience, it probably could). At the moment, China has nearly 500 million internet users and Facebook has a 0% share of that bulk. Facebook needs China, but it is a notoriously hard market to crack and some experts have said that the longer Facebook takes to enter China, the less successful it will be in terms of revenue.

The second is to increase revenue. The historical valuation of the company is going to put a lot of pressure on them to produce results, especially from its advertisers. Advertising is a main source of income for Facebook, and yet they are not doing that well. This is why: I assume you reading this has a Facebook. If so, be brutally honest and think how many times you click the links at the side of the page, telling you to visit so-and-so. No, I don't either. That is why Facebook makes just $5 a year off of each user and for a website with 900 million users, $5 is feeble. It needs to increase its revenue tenfold if it is to live up to expectations.

The third and final point is perhaps the most difficult: stay relevant. When I first dipped my toes into the somewhat tepid water of social networking, everyone was using a site called Piczo. Within a few years, everyone had upped sticks and moved to Bebo. Then it was MySpace and now it is Facebook and/or Twitter. This is the 104 billion dollar question: is Facebook a fad? Or will it stay forever? I am not even going to guess. Facebook is trying its hardest to stay fresh and engaging for its users, but it seems like the now cool thing to hate Facebook. Timeline, for example, is universally-panned for being a useless eyesore that reminds me of a "for sale" board in the window of the local newsagents.

Facebook has the potential to be a truly-historical company, a symbol of the Web 2.0 movement and a genuine rags-to-riches story. It must keep its momentum going though and that is perhaps easier said than done.

LOUD MOUTH: a new network of unique student bloggers

I would just like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to a new project, launching on the 1st June 2012.

It is called LOUD MOUTH, a network to combine the most unique student bloggers from university campuses in the UK and America. Oh and me. The subjects covered include politics, technology, business, food, drink, music, clothes and general university life, along with a healthy dosage of art, photography and comedy. It sounds too good to be true, perhaps it is, but we wait with baited breath to see what the Collective (the name us writers are given, sort of like a nerdier Avengers) can produce.

I hope you check it out, because the writers are some of the best around and they deserve a tiny bit of attention. If you do not, they will crawl away into a corner to wither and die. Links are below:

The LOUD MOUTH main site: http://theloudmouths.org/
The biographies of the Collective: http://theloudmouths.org/our-writers/
The Ethos (the Collective's Code): http://theloudmouths.org/the-loud-mouth-ethos/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/THE_LOUDMOUTHS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loudmouthcollective

Will gay marriage cost Barack Obama the presidency?

Politics is a cynical trade. When the President of the United States makes a historic announcement that he is in favour of gay marriage, the first reaction is not one of celebration. Instead it is fear of what the polls will say. On Monday night, a New York Times/CBS poll gave Obama these hard numbers: 67% of those polled thought his endorsement of gay marriage was for "political reasons".

It shows the cynicism in politics when two thirds of the public believe Obama was only doing it for the sake of doing it. Twitter was an interesting place to be in the aftermath, the perfect place to gauge this reaction. All kinds of theories were flying about, ranging from the idea that senior Democrats pushed Obama into accepting gay marriage to the announcement being a vote-winning tactic before the general election. 

I am not naive, I know how politics works. The upcoming election was likely a factor in Obama's decision to make the announcement, in order to try and win back those on the Left who were still feeling "short-Changed". But accepting gay marriage as a vote-winner? In America? Those who believe this should look at the numbers. 57% of those polled feel no different about Obama than they did before his announcement, but 26% said they were now less likely to vote for Obama. If it was intended a vote-winner, they royally screwed that one up, didn't they?

I am inclined to think that the announcement was a genuine change of opinion from Obama - albeit quite sudden and rushed. It was certainly a risky move from him and one that could cost him the presidency. As the polls show, Obama just lost 26% of votes. But to be fair to him, there is no data to suggest who that 26% of people are. They could be Republican voters, who see the announcement as further evidence that he is not their man. However in what is proving to be an already tightly-contested election, it is possible that even the slightest swing away from Obama to Romney could hurt the incumbent's chances. 

The good news for Obama is only 7% of those polled view gay marriage as the most important issue. The majority are still regarding this election as an economic one. Jobs and unemployment levels are what Obama and Romney will be jousting over in the coming months. But it was a bold move for Obama to say what he did. He is playing Russian Roulette with his electoral chances, a game that I personally respect him for.

People who make death threats are fuck-witters

I apologise in advance but this post could edge into rant territory. I try not to rant, but sometimes I do. Forgive me, but a blog is for blogging my insignificant thoughts and I certainly have a lot to get off my chest.

It concerns someone who has attracted quite a bit of interest, both in print and on Twitter: Sara Malm. I will not repeat her story or link to her i piece, because the content of her piece is not relevant. Instead I want to point to the ever-growing trend of death threats. Malm’s piece has proved controversial and spurned abuse, insults, response posts and messages threatening her life. Malm tweeted about the threats, saying:

“I'm done explaining myself. If you didn't understand it on Friday I doubt you will now. Stop sending me death threats, they're pathetic.”

“Although some of the personal ones are quite terrifying. Some douchebag tracked down my baby sis on fb and threatened me through her.”

People who read opinion writing, then disagree with it and then tell the writer they will kill them need to understand something. One, everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how much you disagree with it. Two, threatening to kill someone because of their beliefs is a sad indictment of some members of the human race. Three, going so far as to use the Internet to track down people’s family, just to use them as a way of threatening someone is.. is.. no words. No words can describe the stupidity of some people. Stupidity is not a strong enough word. Completely moronic, fuck-wittery is a bit closer I suppose.

Here is a simple life lesson that these fuck-witters should read, digest and adapt: people should be allowed to have an opinion without you wanting to kill them for it. Call me a revolutionary, hey, call me crazy, but that is my opinion. No doubt someone read that and disagreed. In which case, I will be sleeping tonight with an eye open and a nail gun underneath my pillow. 

      

I have used Malm as an example because it is a recent example. But the sad thing is there seems to be a growing number of people, who receive death threats. Some journalists in volatile areas receive threats from gangsters, corrupt police officers and military chiefs for revealing their wrongdoings. Some are Sara Malm or Samantha Brick. I am not lumping the two together, but they both had an opinion and both had their lives threatened. Is it me or should people be allowed to have a view without that fear? And this is not just a journalistic thing. Look at Rebecca Black, Alan Davies, One Direction from America, the Top Gear team, Alexandra Burke, Anton Ferdinand. Each has had death threats because of one reason or another and they happen so often now that it is hard to list all of them. I cannot believe I just wrote that sentence. It is difficult to comprehend but death threats are now the norm. That is the reality and it does not matter if it is genuine threats or Internet trolls. That is still a person, being told they are going to be killed.

Welcome to the human race, where we kill those we disagree with. R.I.P, sanity.

The keyboard warriors' last stand: A SOPA story

"You are talking about the destruction of new media as we know it." - TotalHalibut, a popular YouTube user.

'TotalHalibut', a.k.a, John Bain, is one of many Youtubers who have voiced fierce opposition to the U.S. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) bills, that are currently raising hell across the Internet. It was the reason why today, Wikipedia, underwent a blackout, joined by a number of other sites. The reason for the blackout was simple: to make a statement against SOPA and PIPA. If these bills become law, access to free information will be restricted or denied.

This is because the bills allow companies and corporations to seek court orders to remove content from websites that is deemed to be an "infringement of copyright." As a concept this does not seem too unfair. Copyright infringement and piracy in the entertainment industries, such as films, music and video games, cost the U.S. economy $58 million in 2010. But the bills are so poorly constructed that it will not combat piracy. Instead, it allows companies the power to shut down sites that host copyrighted information or content, through a method called DNS blocking - even if the sites are not aware or responsible for this.

A real life example of this came on November 29th, when content-sharing site, Megaupload, was taken down, as per a request from Universal Music Group under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act.) Universal argued that the site contained pirated content that harmed their business. In response to this shut down, a number of musicians, such as Kanye West, Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg posted a video on YouTube, 'the Mega Song', in support of Megaupload. Then the Mega Song was removed.

Why? It is not yet known. Universal have stated that they are "contractually authorized to use pursuant to its written agreement with YouTube." What agreement? It is not yet known. This is the scary thing about SOPA and PIPA. It furthers the powers that the DMCA already has. If a user posts a video to YouTube which is in violation of copyright, SOPA and PIPA would facilitate the shut down of YouTube. Not the video, not the user, an entire website itself. This does not end with YouTube. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, even beloved Piczo (if it still exists) are all at risk. That may sound like nut-job conspiracy theorist guff, but if Megaupload, with 81 million visitors and a four percent audience reach, can be shut down, if a video from YouTube can be removed with no reason given, because of a 'written agreement', then it is squeaky-bum time for the Internet.

Furthermore, the long-term effects of SOPA and PIPA seem to be understated in the mainstream media. If a SOPA-world, websites will be working under the strict legislation that the bill lays out. With the threat of complete closure if the sites step out of line, they will be initiating a form of self censorship. Less risks will be taken, less revenue will be made through advertising and less investment will hurt the innovators on the cusp of the next technological phenomenon. Do you think that Jack Dorsey, the man behind the development of Twitter, would have made the steps needed to turn his "daydream" into reality? A reality that would act as a tool for strengthening democracy and free speech across the globe? The likelyhood is no. Innovation and genius will be beaten by legal clout and the next Twitter, or the next YouTube, could never see the light of day.

Piracy is a genuine concern for the entertainment industries and something that could be combated. It is these industries who are sponsoring SOPA and PIPA. Companies such as EA, News Corporation, Sony and CBS are among the 358 who want to see SOPA and PIPA enshrined as law. Their views should be recognised. To them, they are seeking a way of recovering lost revenue through copyright infringement and piracy, which has in turn cost jobs in the industry. This is a valid argument. But SOPA and PIPA will not beat piracy. It merely acts as a way of allowing companies to break down and remove websites that might harm their image or challenge their power, whether the site intended to or not. It is censorship, it challenges freedom of speech and as a journalist, this is integral to my beliefs.