Video Killed The Radio Star - Radio Lecture 1

I realise that I have been out of the blogging for a while now but im here to change this! Im slowly getting back into my old routines of blogging small amounts and it’s not good! So here I am, catching up, I have a few posts to do today so enjoy :)

Radio broadcasting is far more immediate, intimate and person than broadcasts you will see on TV; this has always been the case and is why radio is usually preferred to some people. Additionally, radio journalism has many different formats:

Headlines: These, as you probably guessed, summarise the story and precede a bulletin.

Bulletins: Bulletins are usually 2 – 5 minutes, having two-way voices, snippets from interviews and press conferences; it is usually read by a journalist or a news reader.

News Programmes: These programmes have a headline / short story and they explore stories in much greater depth and include more related stories, furthermore they also feature debate and live broadcasts.

Magazine Programmes: These programmes can be narrow / wide ranging, they are less likely to include headlines / bulletins but they will bring up topical or timeless issues, focusing in more of the gossipy stuff in the news.

Documentaries: Documentaries are pretty much extended packages / features that explore a particular subject / issue in much greater depth than any magazine though it will draw on the same conventions and types of content.

Target Audiences: As per usual, this is defined by defined by age or demographic (A, B, C1, C2, D). Age is categorised into groups of 10 or 20 years, 16-24, 25 - 44 for example, the style and format will be dictated by the target audience to which the station aims its output.

That’s all for my brief introduction to Radio, hope it’s been insightful. Oh and you stay classy, Planet Earth.

A Tale of Two Revolutions - HCJ

This is the story all about how England's life got flipped turned upside down now I’d like to take a minute just sit right there and I’ll tell you about how it became the United Kingdom... you get it :)

1707 brought about the first of two Acts of Union with Scotland, though this could have gone either way and we could have been a Scottish Empire. Before this however, The Darien scheme was formulated and this was an unsuccessful attempt by Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called 'New Caledonia' in the 1690s. From its inception the undertaking was rife with poor planning, weak leadership, and lack of demand for trade goods and devastating epidemics of disease and increasing shortage of food; it was finally abandoned after a siege by Spanish forces in April, 1700. As the Darien company was backed by about a quarter of the money circulating in Scotland, its failure left the nobles and landowners pretty much crippled  and this is pretty much what lead to Scotland surrendering to the first Act of Union.

The second Act of Union came about in 1801 and this union was with Ireland, this was achievable because of the state of Ireland at the time, the land was rife with famine and revolution.

Never Waste a Good Crisis: England managed to benefit greatly from the French Revolution - during the Napoleonic War, many expenses had to be paid; this lead to the creation of the Income Tax of 1799 to try and pay for the war. After the war British Naval Power was absolute, so much so that they could control the main ports of France and block off their trade routes entirely. This in turn created a boom for British exports, so much so that the British were even manufacturing the clothes for the French Army - England pretty much decided to take a step back and make the most of all the turmoil and spent it’s time to build and maintain its new empire. The Transatlantic Triangular Trade was established and this regrettably included the Slave Trade, this was during the late 16th Century and transported over a million slaves, 17th Century saw three million and in the 18th Century at least seven million people being transported as slaves in these abhorrent Coffin Ships.

The War Ends: Since the war was now over, this meant that the economic boom was coming to an end, for example all the soldiers returning from the war were left unemployed, mostly because they were farmers and due to the Enclosures Act* many land owners were forced off their land and into the city. The government also introduced the Corn Law in 1815, which placed a huge tariff on imported goods. The Corn Laws were very important because people were importing far too much because all of the farmers were at war so no-one could buy home grown resources - therefore when all the farmers returned from the war the government had to protect British farm industry by placing the Corn Laws in effect.

*Enclosures Act was an act of parliament that forced people off the land and into the cities; this meant overcrowded cities because people who were living off the land were pretty much an extended family acting as a unit of production.

During the 1760's England became the workshop of the world, this was because of the Industrial Revolution and Manchester's population just kept growing and growing, which lead to massive overcrowding of the city and made living standards pretty dire. So Manchester was the centre of the industrial revolution which, though hard to believe, made it one of the most important places ever, this however had its drawbacks, since the introduction of these new factories and new machines brought with them a load of pollution - this in turn lead to illness and people living very short lives.

Cotton was a very important resource for the industrial revolution and these raw materials came from the slave plantations in the American south, and if things couldn't get much worse new inventions such as the gaslight allowed for people to work night shifts, this meant longer hours and increased health risks.

Reform Act 1832: The people were growing increasingly restless due to the state of the country and this lead to the public calling for radical Parliamentary Reform – William Cobbett, who was a huge radical, supported such campaigns and ended up in prison because of it. Parliament was getting worried for any more outbreaks of revolution or rebellion so the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832 was introduced – this however was more of a smoothing over than a solution.

The Poor: The new Poor Law Act 1834 - The Poor Law Amendment Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government that reformed the country's poverty relief system - it was a very Benthamite policy based on Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is pretty much happiness overriding pain in aspects of life - it appears to be very idealistic insofar as it makes choices based on how much happiness the choice brings to an individual and how little pain it gives, so it’s like a thought process of when we weigh out whether or not to go to a lecture or a seminar, yes it might on occasion be boring but in the end we're going to get a damn good degree out of it (:

William Cobbett and Charles Dickens: My notes on Cobbett and Dickens are all covered in my Seminar Paper about William Cobbett and Rural Rides - so heres the link if you want to read

William Cobbett and Charles Dickens

WILLIAM COBBETT - RURAL RIDES SEMINAR PAPER

This is going to be my first blog post of this year and of course it had to be a monster of a post - my seminar paper about William Cobbett the cantankerous old devil that thought it would be fun to ride around the country to see the relationship between land owners and the labourers. Hope you enjoy!

Context:

England benefitted greatly from the French revolution, this is because the Napoleonic War was a very costly time and it saw the creation of the “Income Tax” in 1799 to help pay for the war. The Battle of Waterloo was eventually won by the Seventh Coalition (England, Nassau, Prussia, Brunswick, Hanover and United Netherlands), and managed to defeat the leader Napoleon Bonaparte and after this the British Navy had gained total naval power – they now controlled the waterways that gave them the means to block off the French trade routes, allowing the British trade to grow.

Britain now experienced an economic boom thanks to the trans-Atlantic triangular trading of cotton, sugar and slaves (slavery was ultimately abolished in 1833 thanks to William Wilberforce and the Anti-Slavery Society). Furthermore, this time period also saw Scotland and Ireland being joined with England, consolidated by two separate “Acts of Union” one in 1707 for Scotland and the second in 1801 with Ireland, which together formed the United Kingdom. The Industrial Revolution brought about a new  age of technology and this meant that many farm workers were forced off their land and made to move into cities such as Manchester to find work in these new pollution spewing factories. Manchester eventually became the centre of the Industrial Revolution – its population was rapidly increasing and this was because many former farm labourers were looking for work.

This brought about the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were in effect from 1815 – 1846 and the laws were brought in to try and maintain the agricultural industry – it planted a gigantic import tariff on any cheap corn shipped from abroad, which meant that people would want to buy British home grown instead. It was during this period when William Cobbett wrote Rural Rides.

The people were growing increasingly restless due to the state of the country and this lead to the public calling for radical Parliamentary Reform – Cobbett, who was a huge radical, supported such campaigns and ended up in prison. Parliament was getting worried for any more outbreaks of revolution or rebellion so the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832 was introduced – this however was more of a smoothing over than a solution.

Charles Dickens, William Cobbett and Rural Rides:

William Cobbett was born 1763 and grew up in the countryside. Cobbett worked and grew up as a farm labourer until he was 20 years old and then he went off and joined the army for 15 years. While in the army he was branded a bit bad news when he exposed a thief of stealing resources and so he fled to France and taught English refugees. Cobbett pioneered his own newspaper entitled the Political Register, which was distinctly conservative until he moved to a more radical stance as the years progressed and this is what lead to him calling for Parliamentary Reform and landed him in jail because of it. After being in jail, Cobbett’s enthusiasm and resolve was now stronger than ever, so much so that he even began campaigning against newspaper tax (which was essentially a tax on the news) and also bringing attention to freedom of speech.

The News tax had become a problem for all newspapers because the price on them skyrocketed which meant that only the more affluent people that could afford them could read them – which meant they were probably trying to freeze Cobbett out of the news market. From this introduction to Cobbett I think it’s pretty clear to see what motivates him to force reform and even his inspiration for Rural Rides.

William Cobbett was constantly angry with Parliament due to the constant flow of decisions being made without any real concern or insight into the rural lives that it was having a profound impact on. Cobbett despised the landowners that had turned their back on the community and environment that he himself grew up in, this can be seen through how he explains the existence of the farm workers as walking skeletons. One of the key themes present throughout Rural Rides is arguably a huge feeling of nostalgia – he talks about the people planting different kinds of trees (pine trees) means that they are “destroying the beauty of the estate”. As mentioned earlier Cobbett wholeheartedly believed that these landlords and landowners had no idea about the rural areas and were slowly destroying the culture that Cobbett found so familiar and safe. This is where we can see hints of nostalgia – like when you go back to a place you used to know and find that it has been altered radically.

When it comes to Cobbett, it’s always beneficial to mention Charles Dickens; though the two had their differences they were both campaigning for pretty much the same thing. That being said, Dickens was far more successful in his campaigning, he managed to make himself more approachable to the middle-classes – Dickens did attack the establishment in his famous novel “Bleak House” as he describes it as a sort of thick fog, which paints a rather macabre picture.

Cobbett and Dickens go hand in hand when it comes to their thoughts about the government being infatuated with industry and profit – here Dickens focuses primarily on the people who are living in urban areas (as opposed to Cobbett who focuses on rural) and how the industrial revolution has lead to many lives being ruined; the machines and factories produce far too much pollution so people would fall ill, places were overcrowded, poverty was rife and the poor were being majorly exploited and this was all going on within the key cities of the time so Manchester and London for example would have borderline un-inhabitable.

Jean Jacques Rousseau and Cobbett

Rousseau was born 28 June 1712 in Geneva. He was a philosopher, writer, and the driving force behind the period known as 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy had a profound impact on the French and he pretty much influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political and educational thought. 

Rousseau and Cobbett had a surprising amount of equal ground when it came to their ideas, insofar as the idea of natural beauty which Rousseau alludes to in his writing primarily when he talks about the statue of man being slowly eroded by change until it is unrecognisable. This is related to how Cobbett feels that things would have been perfectly fine if the industrial revolution never happened and we allowed things to play out according to nature, not to go and make all these abhorrent machines. That being said Cobbett seems like he would be content with his success while a man like Rousseau would have wanted more and more, for example he detest the idea of any kind of land ownership so it makes sense that he would want to ban land ownership.

End of Term!

Literally so excited to go home, especially when I’ve only just realised that it’s like a week to Christmas now! I genuinely can’t wait. Now that we’ve all finished our tests and have no more lectures we can fully appreciate the magic that is Christmas :D

Now that im going home tomorrow im so excited to be back to the quietest town imaginable – good old Kenilworth. Seriously, Winchester is just a busier Kenilworth. The prospect of being able to watch TV again and see the Christmas coke advert, which I still haven’t, is enough to fuel my Christmas cheer – it’ll make me even more excited about Christmas. But yeah I digress, I just wanted to talk about Christmas and I can’t imagine I would post much while im back at Kenilworth!

So now that I successfully budgeted to get me about £10 left for tonight, which is just enough to get drunk at the end of term party! Hey, might as well end the term as I started it – blazing drunk. Cya after Christmas everyone.

Philosophy Revision!

Philosophy Revision – Hobbes’ Leviathan and Machiavelli

The Leviathan argues that to achieve peace and social unity a commonwealth must be established, this would be created through the social contract. This is important because life is, according to Hobbes, ‘nasty, brutish and short’. This can be linked to Machiavelli insofar as he states that men are all wicked and therefore you can see a link with their ideas on human nature – they both have a highly pessimistic view on it.

The Commonwealth is to be lead by a sovereign power (the sovereign power = the Leviathan). The Leviathan is portrayed as a person – the head is the sovereign and the body is the people. This is important because it is needed to ensure a common defence. Machiavelli shows to be similar to Hobbes with his idea of a dictatorial leader; however there is a difference, this is a need for an absolute monarchy which will in turn creates national independence, security and a solid constitution.

Hobbes states that a leader can be challenged if they fail to protect citizens and uphold social unity, whereas on the other hand Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ is far to deterministic, insofar as it assumes there will be no issues with the leadership so it leaves no room for a rebellion. While Hobbes states that the leader has to be noble and act accordingly to maintain peace and social unity, in ‘The Prince’ it states that the leader doesn't have to be noble, as “a ruler will perish if he is always good”. Machiavelli goes on to promote the idea of being an advocate of religion, as a way to share the faith with the people. Hobbes doesn't promote the idea of religion because he believes the sovereign must be the head of the state and not some belief in religion.

While Hobbes disagrees with the religious aspects of this, they both believe that humans are naturally selfish and only care about self-preservation. Hobbes pessimistic view on human natures means that he believes that the one and most important human right is the right to self preservation – and from this people try and find peace which allows the social contract to be formed. Machiavelli agrees with this and this is backed up by his quote on how self-centred humans are “men forget the death of their fathers more easily than the loss of inheritance”. From this we can see that Hobbes’ ideas put forward in the leviathan and Machiavelli’s ideas put forward in The Prince can be related, mostly when it comes to their views on human nature.

Philosophy Revision – John Locke’s theories of Government:

Locke is highly against the monarchy, this is because the people in power could easily abuse their powers and turn it into a dictatorship. Therefore he despised the idea of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ because the King or Queen could hide behind the defence that they were chosen by God and therefore going against them would be to defy God.

Locke has a very optimistic view on human nature; this is reflected through his views on the state of nature. In Locke’s state of nature he believed that people would naturally co-operate and respect each other, so he believes that the monarchy should be naturally selfless - do everything in the interest of the people and do nothing for self gain. He believes that all men are born equal so if this was the case then no-one could be born into the monarchy and so on. This is linked to Locke’s idea that people are born as blank slates – this means that we have no innate knowledge of the outside world, our knowledge has to be shaped by experience and through our senses; therefore, people have to earn the right to be leaders and no-one can be born “higher up” than anyone.

Locke does however believe that a government is necessary; this is mainly to try and solve or avoid any crimes or disputes about property. In Locke’s state of nature he claims that it is acceptable to kill people if they are protecting their property, although he also states that the government should stop such acts from being committed but goes on to say that the government should also advocate sticking to the natural laws wherever possible.

He believes that the government should be one of consent and this is his social contract theory. This is the idea that in order to live peacefully and protected people have to surrender a small amount of their freedom to the state in order for them to intervene in their lives. To ensure that the government doesn't get too powerful it also has limitations placed on it, it is mostly in place to protect people’s property and possessions.

Locke believes that there must be a separation of powers when it comes to government, so that the monarchy, government and the legislature are all kept separate, this creates a balance and stops one power from getting too grand.

Philosophy Revision – Descartes and Plato:

Descartes – He believes that there is very little evidence to suggest that the world as it appears is the world as it actually is. Descartes is highly sceptical in the existence of anything except for one’s own existence in some form. He came up with the Cogito – “I think therefore I am” this explains that by having any kind of thought process must mean you exist, but in what context we can pretty much never be sure, as everything that we are seeing could just be in our minds (yes matrix). Descartes also mentions the idea of a ‘demon’ trying to deceive you from what is reality and what is not.

Plato – Theory of the Cave; mankind are blind to the world while they are trapped inside this cave and the world outside is the real world. The people in the cave watch their lives play out in the form of shadows and outside of the save lays the true forms of what they see. When someone steps out of the cave and into the light they become enlightened and can see the world as it really is. We can experience the material world when we perceive the transcendent realm of the forms; this suggests that the material world is not our real reality.

Philosophy Revision – Hume: Deduction, Induction, Apriori, Aposteriori

Apriori knowledge can be understood without any previous knowledge or experience, for example, you will just know that by definition 'all bachelors are unmarried'.

Aposteriori knowledge, on the other hand, requires some experience or empirical evidence to understand that for example, 'some bachelors are happy'. Aposteriori knowledge alludes to a person’s experience; but the issue concerns how you know the claim in question.

Inductive Reasoning (Empirical knowledge) = reasoning derived from facts to figure out the cause, for example if you hit a white billiard ball, it then hits the yellow ball, the yellow ball will have moved. From this we can see that the yellow ball has moved because you have hit the white ball into it.

Deductive Reasoning = arguments that attempt to show a conclusion necessarily follows from a hypothesis. A deductive argument is valid if the conclusion does follow unavoidably from the hypothesis. For example:

1) All men are mortal

2) Socrates is a man

3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Here all objects classified as "men" have been given the quality "mortal". The second premise states that "Socrates" is classified as a man. Therefore we can conclude that “Socrates" has to be mortal as he gains this attribute due to his classification as a man.

One major problem that Hume had was the problem of Induction, stating that all science is a logical fallacy - The Induction Fallacy: just because something happened in the past doesn't mean that it will happen again, it doesn't matter how often it seems to happen. You can’t say that all apples are green because when someone shows you a red apple your whole argument is destroyed.

Hume is highly sceptical of all things; he took Locke’s idea of Empiricism and took it to the very extreme. This scepticism is over Apriori and aposteriori; this is because Apriori can be understood by logic without any observed facts and are therefore logical truths. Hume states that they are discoverable by the mere operation of thought and their denials are inconceivable. Hume then goes on to describe aposteriori as matters of fact; these are the opposite of ideas and some facts that are already in place.

Hume was so sceptical of induction he went as far as saying that we could never be sure that we even exist or we could never be sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. Logically the sun may not rise, but we know that it is a fact that can’t really be proven.

News Writing

As we say goodbye to the "Journalism Now" module, we are greeted warmly with a new module which is "News Writing", which is pretty much learning how to write for a news paper. I'm just going to go over the basics of the lectures, so it'll be a brief one people.

Firstly we need to know "what is news?"

• News could be many things - such as new stuff that happens
• People doing things
• You probably get the idea of that part...

When writing an article you need to have what is known as a 'news peg'. This is pretty much an angle that you're going to take with your article, for example you hear about a dog biting a child and this will be your news peg - it will lead to many stories about dogs attacking children springing up.

The difference between hard and soft news:

• Hard news is all about no holds barred, you must tell the story in all its brutality (if that is the case) for example start with people being hurt, just dive right in with "23 people dead in car crash"
• A soft news story tries instead to entertain or advise the reader, news such as celebrities or advice columns

When thinking about the story you want to report on you must think about the audience, for example if you're a journalist working for the Daily Star then you will be reporting on things such as Big Brother, whereas if you were working for the Telegraph then you would completely ignore any news such as that.

Quite possibly the most important things to consider when writing a news story is making sure you answer 5 key questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

You have to make sure you mention at least the first four of those in your top par - this is the most important par and it could make or break any potential article. The first par must be short and sharp, at least 20-30 words have the latest and most interesting information and it has to be fantastic. Then from this you can link in your second par with other important information that is necessary, also this would be a good place to put quotes in.

I've been told this before but now its official im afraid; no-one cares about your opinion... Sad times. We must be objective we can’t go round describing news as good or bad and let our values seep in through the writing process of the article. We're not trying to form people's ideas for them; if something is horrific let them figure it out.

Well I think that this will suffice for now, I’ll be sure to keep my blog updated and not slip behind, and ratings are everything after all!

Bye and stuff x

The Magical Month of December

Ever since going home last weekend im decidedly more Christmassy than usual and seeing as its now December I can talk about Christmas as much as I like without fear of people telling me it’s far too early for Christmas talk. So, to kick start this month off I feel I need to have a Christmas related post, enjoy!

It’s no secret to the people that know me that I love Christmas time and that I’ve been looking forward to it since August (more like April) I constantly talk about how much I’m in love with Christmas and going on about the joys that are Christmas songs and so on.

Christmas for me has always been a time of wonder and let’s be honest, magic. I mean, come on what’s not to love about it? Seeing people out in town wearing coats all wrapped up keeping warm, decorating Christmas trees, the phenomenal experience that is the turning on of Christmas lights, the ever popular Christmas Coke advert and best of all, Christmas films; you can’t say you don’t love watching them, just think about Elf!

Yes it is that magical time of year again, the Christmas coke is flowing and there’s that feeling of Christmas spirit charming its way into our hearts. Despite the obvious joy that Christmas brings, people still tend to dislike Christmas time and this is just an affront to Santa (who is totally real by the way), so don’t listen to them. Seriously, how can you not love the idea of a roly-poly red man breaking into your house and chugging can after can of Christmas coke as he goes?

I hope you all realise that this is going to be my first of many Christmas related posts, so you better get used to them! Seriously, so much excitement for Christmas I genuinely can’t wait. Sure it’ll be sad to leave Winchester when we break up for Christmas but I feel that Kenilworth has been neglected for far too long and I can’t wait to get back home. Hope you enjoyed this random Christmas rant and so on!

Bye and stuff x