This time around it's analysing the use of a photograph in a national newspaper.
The picture in question is from the Irish Daily Star on Sunday from the 1st of February 2009.
It's a front page photograph at the bottom of page 1 (BP1) showing child rapist Michael O'Donnell sneaking out of jail at 6.30am after serving less than 4 years for numerous offences.
The paper claims it is an 'exclusive' picture, and it's certainly a good one, with O'Donnell looking particularly shady as he checks the area to see who's around.
The headline accompanying the picture is concise and conjures up the image of a sexual predator - "Out on the prowl" read the massive letters.
This picture works particularly well because it catches the criminal at a perfect time - sneaking out and afraid of the outside world, just as readers would want to view him, so the readership feels vindicated in their image of this child rapist, and the image also serves to enrage them further as the criminal is almost seen to be escaping from jail.
The paper also uses this story to provide more news on controversy over rape sentencing in Ireland - it is a good use of a picture which very few other papers, if any, could have gotten.
Journal 9: An Objectionable Article
I tried to find an article that I would find objectionable to write about for my journal, and I found one - almost too easily.
The article in question is Kevin Myers' piece in the Irish Independent on Thursday 10th July 2008, with the automatically incendiary title "Africa is giving nothing to anyone - apart from AIDS".
This article is quite clearly out of order, and not just for the obvious reasons, such as his indifference to the pictures of starving children after his conscience has apparently "toured this territory on foot and financially". No, it is also his explicit statement that Africa is an "entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents", having also disregarded in his title that Africa has no culture or input into the world in any fashion other than the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases.
Without tying anything down, this is probably incitement to hatred, it probably breaches several codes of conduct and most likely is horribly, horribly racist.
He attempts to paint Africa with the brush of "idiotic wars" when all over the world this has always been the case - people have been killing each other with almost no need for an reason such as race or religion for millennia. Not only that, the superpowers of the last century provided the weapons for these "Kalashnikov-toting... layabouts" that Myers so wretchedly derides. Apparently nobody is allowed to try and correct their mistakes anymore.
He recognises that there is "every reason not to write a column like this", yet he goes ahead - it is really something to view such lazy journalism from such an accomplished writer. So we shouldn't feed children because they will become sexual infidels and child soldiers? I'd like to see him deny a child in need. Does he fear they will bite the hand that feeds? Emigrate to Ireland? Clearly we shouldn't support the eradication of a disease (malaria) which has killed a sickening number of human beings throughout time and is easily spread in a continent like Africa.
What he could have said was that the politics of African nations need to be organised to help each other through their food, land, disease and war crises that constantly afflict the troubled continent. What he could have said was that Africa has given us a unique and wonderful contribution to world music, cinema, sport and food. I am not an expert but there are many other facets of Africa which delight people the world over... let us not forget that many problems there are due to the colonial powers also - diamond mining is one example.
I find it as easy to pick out objectionable points in this article as Myers must have found it to write the thing in the first place. Even more indignantly, he insults the reader - I don't find myself morally superior, I don't sneer, I do not feel self-righteous... It just so happens that I felt so ridiculously irritated by this article as he does by pictures of wide-eyed children staring at a camera in starving Africa that I had to write about it.
Definitely expect to be panned when you write a story so lacking in scruples. If it's your job to write columns as if you have a license to incense, then by all means... shoot... just expect to have no respect afterwards.
The article in question is Kevin Myers' piece in the Irish Independent on Thursday 10th July 2008, with the automatically incendiary title "Africa is giving nothing to anyone - apart from AIDS".
This article is quite clearly out of order, and not just for the obvious reasons, such as his indifference to the pictures of starving children after his conscience has apparently "toured this territory on foot and financially". No, it is also his explicit statement that Africa is an "entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents", having also disregarded in his title that Africa has no culture or input into the world in any fashion other than the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases.
Without tying anything down, this is probably incitement to hatred, it probably breaches several codes of conduct and most likely is horribly, horribly racist.
He attempts to paint Africa with the brush of "idiotic wars" when all over the world this has always been the case - people have been killing each other with almost no need for an reason such as race or religion for millennia. Not only that, the superpowers of the last century provided the weapons for these "Kalashnikov-toting... layabouts" that Myers so wretchedly derides. Apparently nobody is allowed to try and correct their mistakes anymore.
He recognises that there is "every reason not to write a column like this", yet he goes ahead - it is really something to view such lazy journalism from such an accomplished writer. So we shouldn't feed children because they will become sexual infidels and child soldiers? I'd like to see him deny a child in need. Does he fear they will bite the hand that feeds? Emigrate to Ireland? Clearly we shouldn't support the eradication of a disease (malaria) which has killed a sickening number of human beings throughout time and is easily spread in a continent like Africa.
What he could have said was that the politics of African nations need to be organised to help each other through their food, land, disease and war crises that constantly afflict the troubled continent. What he could have said was that Africa has given us a unique and wonderful contribution to world music, cinema, sport and food. I am not an expert but there are many other facets of Africa which delight people the world over... let us not forget that many problems there are due to the colonial powers also - diamond mining is one example.
I find it as easy to pick out objectionable points in this article as Myers must have found it to write the thing in the first place. Even more indignantly, he insults the reader - I don't find myself morally superior, I don't sneer, I do not feel self-righteous... It just so happens that I felt so ridiculously irritated by this article as he does by pictures of wide-eyed children staring at a camera in starving Africa that I had to write about it.
Definitely expect to be panned when you write a story so lacking in scruples. If it's your job to write columns as if you have a license to incense, then by all means... shoot... just expect to have no respect afterwards.
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