#british press

[phatburd]

Original Tweet.

#cad alerted to me this lovely tweet #and now it it screencapped for tumblr posterity #napolenonic era #napoleonic shitpost #British press #the British press in any era #what the fuck is journalism even #history shitpost

[sussex-sweetheart]

#british royal family #brf #meghan markle #duchess of sussex #prince harry #duke of sussex #british press

[monkeyfishgirl]

idk man, tumblr seems pretty into it

#we are the woke police #dr who #british press #british right wing newspapers #david tennant #catherine tate

[feminegra]

Media Dehumanization of Black Victims and the Tragic Case of Daniel Anjorin

The Tragic Loss of a Young Life In a horrifying incident that shocked the British nation, 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin was brutally murdered in Hainault, northeast London. The accused, Marcus Aurelio Arduini Monzo, a dual Spanish-Brazilian national, stands charged with murder and multiple counts of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. On the day of the attack, Monzo allegedly sped his van…

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#Black Lives Matter #British Press #Media Dehumanization #News Bias #Racial Bias in Media #Racist Reporting

[feckcops]

Transphobia in the UK is rapidly escalating – this could lead somewhere horrifying

Listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, as I’m embarrassed to admit I sometimes still do, something in the last segment shocked me to attention. In a segment interviewing a professional chess player, the presenter Justin Webb said: “sex matters in so many areas of life, doesn’t it? And it seems it matters in chess, at least the World Chess Federation [sic] have banned trans women – in other words, males – from contesting in the female categories in chess.”

Not only is this equation of trans women to males deeply offensive, it is also plain wrong. Trans women are by definition women, i.e. female. They are not males. When Webb’s interviewee didn’t take the bait, arguing it's not really for a man like himself to adjudicate on these matters, Webb scoffed and goaded him. This supposedly neutral BBC presenter was audibly frustrated by his interviewee's answer.

I’m not surprised to hear casual unchallenged transphobia on the BBC. I’m certainly not surprised to hear it from Justin Webb, one of the most virulently transphobic presenters on air, who was last year rebuked by the BBC for inaccurately labelling as "false" accusations of transphobia against Kathleen Stock. What is surprising is the nature and extent of this transphobia, which has become far more open and pervasive in the last few years. It does come as a surprise that a leading presenter at the BBC feels emboldened to make such an openly outright transphobic statement as “trans women are males” – after claiming “sex matters, doesn’t it?” in the lead-up to his question.

Not long ago, a BBC presenter would never have made such an incendiary, biased statement. BBC staff were conscious of the acceptable norms of public service broadcasting. On the rare instances things like this did happen, there was always a considerable public backlash. It says a lot that open unabashed transphobia is now an acceptable norm at the BBC. The inevitable silence on this from the entire media and political establishment is indicative of a wider malaise in the public discourse.

Trans people, especially in the US, are talking a lot at the moment about a “trans genocide”. This may seem extreme – but when you consider US conservatives are openly calling for “transgenderism to be eradicated” and armed militants are turning up to drag queen story time events across the US, it’s not hard to see why.

I recently came across a video on research from the UN on the ten stages towards genocide. They usually start off fairly innocuous, with a group being identified, othered and discriminated against, but these stages often lead towards the terrifying final stages of persecution and extermination. According to this framework, the US appears to be at the seventh stage, preparation – just one step away from persecution.

Perhaps the situation in the UK isn’t quite as bad, but it’s headed in the same direction. And if we continue to allow statements like Justin Webb’s to go unchallenged, this incessant escalation of transphobic rhetoric could lead us to something truly horrifying.

#transphobia #trans safety #trans rights #bbc #british media #british press #international chess federation #chess #trans genocide #trans people #transgender #trans #non-binary #lgbt rights #lgbt #queer #genocide #uk #usa #america #my posts

[jackoshadows]

And the Walk of Atonement: it was a punishment directed at women to break their pride - GRRM

The amount of horrors they want to inflict on a woman they consider to be ‘uppity’ and does not follow the rules ...To have her humbled and humiliated, to degrade her and break her pride.

And the fact that an editor actually okayed this for publication in a major paper in the UK tells so much about how this sort of hate now has social acceptance in England.

I am no fan of any of the Royals - they are a fundamentally racist, sexist, classist, archaic institution based on the idea of bloodline superiority. Meghan and Harry should give up their titles and donate any of their money that comes from looting the resources of the former British colonies. How does one go about discussing wanting to be treated equally when the Monarchy itself as an institution is founded on inequality.  

However, the way Meghan Markle has been treated by the Royal family and the British press should be enough at this point to give pause to the casual fans of the monarchy. And how do even the hardcore fans defend Camilla inviting the likes of Clarkson and Morgan over for tea and crumpets? Simply awful.

And yeah, Clarkson writing that he hates Nicola Sturgeon the same as serial killer Rose West is telling. Probably because he would have to pay more tax in Scotland. Little Englanders getting triggered by Sturgeon is always a thing. This guy is a roaring misogynistic, a bully and should be no where near a newspaper column but the British press thrives on hate. The fact that Clarkson has used the n word and beat up a producer for being late with his food should have been enough to get him kicked out - but no, he keeps getting TV gigs and being invited to private parties by the royal family and  that should tell us everything about white people’s privilege in this country.

#Meghan Markle #Jeremy Clarkson #GRRM #Nicola Sturgeon #British Royal Family #British Press

[wiiildflowerrr]

5 Seconds of Summer are learning how to be happy: ‘There’s parts of our career that I don’t remember’

The Guardian, 20 September 2022

The Australian pop band are all still in their 20s, but have spent a decade touring and recording ‘in an endless loop’. Now they’ve swapped parties for feeling at peace

Eleven years since four Australian schoolboys were spotted covering Bruno Mars and Justin Bieber songs on YouTube, plucked from obscurity and planted on some of the world’s biggest stages, 5 Seconds of Summer are starting fresh. A few months before they are set to perform two sold-out homecoming shows on the Sydney Opera House forecourt, they’re celebrating the release of 5SOS5, their (fittingly titled) fifth studio record – and their first to be released independently. They’re seizing control, in more ways than one.

But first, Luke Hemmings (vocals/guitar), Ashton Irwin (vocals/drums), Michael Clifford (vocals/guitar) and Calum Hood (vocals/bass) are confronting another monumental creative task: an album release show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. It is not just a venue of global significance but also personal significance: they once busked outside the concert hall while on a trip to London in their formative years. This time, they’ll be inside, and accompanied by an orchestra.

“I think when [the shows] come about, I’m gonna be very stressed out and I’m gonna try to enjoy it and not just focus on how stressed I am,” Hemmings says, sitting with Irwin in a studio in Eagle Rock, California. “I want to enjoy it and be able to fully remember it, because there’s parts of our career that I don’t remember, just from sheer volume and not being present.”

To fully comprehend the band’s meteoric rise over the past 11 years would be an incredible feat for anyone, let alone a teenager. Barely a year after 5SOS’s first show in 2011, to a dozen people in Sydney’s Annandale hotel, they embarked on an almost 100-date world tour as the support act for One Direction. By then, they were playing to more than 80,000 people over four nights at Sydney’s Allphones Arena.

In those days, as the popularity of boybands such as One Direction and BTS were rising to a level that threatened the sound barrier, 5SOS were forging a different kind of path. They had a fresh, dynamic quality, drawing as they did on the pop-punk they grew up with. All four were born in the shadow of Green Day’s 1994 breakthrough Dookie (Irwin, now 28, is the oldest member of 5SOS), and they repackaged that chart-topping punk for a new generation. Within a few years, 5SOS became the only band in history to land at No 1 on the Billboard 200 with each of their first three studio albums.

It’s almost like we were coming back to the basics of the band.

They’ve since collected five Aria awards at home, along with plenty of hardware overseas, and outlasted the band that gave them that early leg-up (One Direction has been on hiatus since 2015). Their 2018 song Youngblood became the biggest-selling single in Australia that year, then the country’s 11th bestselling single of all time, ranking 5SOS among AC/DC, Vance Joy and the Kid Laroi. Worldwide, they’ve sold more than 12m albums.

As one of the most successful musical acts in Australian history, it would’ve been easy for 5SOS to simply stick with what worked. They had perfected a formula and were enjoying the spoils. But as pop began shifting towards something similarly emo-influenced – the likes of Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly have been credited with “saving” pop-punk – 5SOS stepped back and shifted gears.

What does it look like for this band to have to pause in a way they haven’t in a decade?

“You suddenly stop and you realise … uh, I’m now sick, and I want to move all the time, no matter what,” Irwin says. “And I don’t know how to not move.”

5 Seconds of Summer perform in Dublin, Ireland. Photograph: Ryan Fleming

The pace of life on the road manifested in physical and emotional illness. In June, Irwin was hospitalised for extreme heat exhaustion during a show in Texas. He’s been sober since 2019 and has experienced body dysmorphia – something he wrote about on his song Skinny Skinny, from his debut solo album. Spending a decade under the glare of cameras and fame contribute their own kind of spiritual illness, too.

The pandemic was a “forced stop” for the whole band, and one that created a relieving kind of freedom. They decamped to Joshua Tree to think and write together, without the same cycle of promotion and touring they had come to associate with making music. When a producer’s planned visit to their makeshift studio was derailed by a flat tire, Clifford stepped into the role and drove the sonic direction for 5SOS5, producing much of the record himself.

“We had a bit more time to reflect on everything that had happened to us – as opposed to in years previous, where we just were writing an album, going on tour, writing an album, going on tour,” Irwin says. “It was, in ways, an endless loop.”

They reflected on how their rapid rise had, Irwin says, “affected us personally, mentally, physically and philosophically. So we just dove into that feeling, and rode off into the sunset with it.”

In one of the early singles from the new album, Me, Myself and I, Hemmings sings of being a pit of need; getting what he wants, but still not feeling satisfied. “A lot of [the new album] is about romantic relationships and friendships,” he says. “But it’s more about realising that maybe you don’t have as many emotional tools in the tool belt to figure out why they affect you.”

‘You suddenly stop [touring] and you realise … uh, I’m now sick, and I want to move all the time, no matter what’ … 5 Seconds of Summer. Photograph: Andy DeLuca

Only a few albums into their career, the cheeky upstarts from Sydney had barely hit their 20s when they started to experience the downside of their overnight success. On More, they sang about “a house that’s full of everything we wanted/but it’s an empty home”. “A band is often a trauma bond because you’ve been through so much together,” Irwin told NME in 2020.

Just a few years earlier, a Rolling Stone cover story painted 5SOS out to be debaucherous kids making the most of a good thing: partying hard and burning bright, but destined to be snuffed out. The people in that story couldn’t appear more different to the ones in front of me now. Hemmings seems intent on interrogating the emotional root of his songwriting; like Irwin, he released a solo record last year. And Irwin is pursuing creativity of all kinds, in the open-hearted way countless new arrivals to LA have done before him. They’re still young adults – but adults all the same, confronting what it means to be “on the other side of 24”, seeing scenes change and people fade out of view.

In the press biography for the new album, Irwin speaks of how he and his bandmates have made a conscious and active choice to show up, to be in the band for another day. Nothing about the band, or their new album or where they end up will be by default.

“When we decided to write together [in 2020], we had started to heal ourselves from moving so much and at such a high pace,” Irwin says. “And that, in turn, began to heal our creative relationship together.”

“Healthy” is a word that comes up often during our conversation; Hemmings and Irwin speak of having healthy goals and patterns, ensuring their health is a priority, having their own lives outside the band – “in a healthy way,” Hemmings clarifies. Getting out of each other’s pockets enabled them to find a new way forward, together.

“It’s almost like we were coming back to the basics of the band,” Hemmings says. And after an era defined by feeling heavy and weighed down, he says that these days, “we’re trying to get that light across.” X

#5sos #5sos5 #5 seconds of summer #ashton irwin #luke hemmings #interview #5sos ono #the guardian #british press #5sos5 promo #calum hood #calum 5sos #michael clifford #ashton 5sos #calum #luke 5sos #michael 5sos #2022 #21 september

[ingek73]

Prince Harry Takes a Stand for Us All: ‘If They’re Supposedly Policing Society, Who On Earth is Policing Them?’

The crisis and corruption in the British press is one of the biggest, ongoing scandals of our time. Byline Times tips its hat to Prince Harry

Hardeep Matharu

6 June 2023

A court sketch of Prince Harry giving evidence in his civil trial against Mirror Group Newspapers. Photo: Elizabeth Cook/PA/Alamy

“Democracy fails when your press fails to scrutinise and hold the government accountable, and instead choose to get into bed with them so they can ensure the status quo… The country and the British public deserve to know… We will be better off for it.”

Today, the Duke of Sussex was the first senior member of the Royal Family in more than 130 years to give evidence to a civil court. He also became one of the British establishment’s very own – a prince of the realm, no less – to expose what he alleges was illegal information gathering by one of this country’s major tabloid newspaper groups.

Will he receive the praise he deserves for speaking the unspeakable? Unlikely. With all his privilege and wealth, Prince Harry is painted as playing the ultimate victim by the press he hopes to hold accountable. In turn, these tabloids can then claim the victimhood they often hide behind when challenged. Who is a prince to tell the free press anything?

But, when someone with the experience, insights and access to the elite circles that Prince Harry has brings a claim such as the one he is in the High Court pursuing against Mirror Group Newspapers we should all take notice.

In many ways, his wealth and privilege insulate him – he has very little to lose, or gain, in any material sense from this case. Rather, it is the point of principle which he seems to be advancing in the public interest. Of all the people to speak of the importance of an accountable press for a healthy democracy, truth and decency, it is frankly remarkable that it is one of the British elite’s own. But his level of knowledge of the workings and culture of the British press is a testament to his commitment to bringing about change.

In his extraordinary statement to the court, Prince Harry said “I fully accept and agree with the fact that journalists and the media own the public square, in as much as, if you are in a position of responsibility and or are funded by the taxpayer, the media should have the power to be able to investigate anyone, anytime, for pretty much anything” but that “over the last 15 to 20 years, there are now incredibly powerful media companies who masquerade as journalists and who have, quite literally, hijacked journalistic privileges for their own personal gain and agenda. It’s an unbelievably dangerous place”.

How often do we ever hear anything about “journalistic privileges”?

The prince went on to say that “whoever you are, if you are of interest to the press at that time, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing – if you’re in private or if you’re in public – you are a target. You become a victim of their system”.

“They claim to hold public figures to account, but refuse to hold themselves accountable,” he said. “If they’re supposedly policing society, who on earth is policing them, when even the government is scared of alienating them because position is power. It is incredibly worrying for the entire UK.”

For the fifth in line to the British throne, this claim is about trying “to save journalism as a profession”. However unusual a turn of events that may seem, this newspaper applauds Prince Harry for daring to confront one of the biggest, under-reported, ongoing, scandals of our times: that we have an entire power bloc in this country, which can impact all of our lives, that receives hardly any scrutiny. Not of its owners, intentions or consequences.

“Journalists need to expose those people in the media that have stolen or hijacked the privileges and powers of the press and have used illegal or unlawful means for their own gain and agendas,” his statement said. “I am bringing this claim, not because I hate the tabloid press or even necessarily a section of it, but in order to properly hold the people who have hijacked those privileges, which come with being a member of the press, to account for their actions.”

In remarks that particularly caught the eye of the Daily Mail et al, the prince put it bluntly: “On a national level as, at the moment, our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government – both of which I believe are at rock bottom.”

That it takes a prince of the British Royal Family to draw such conclusions publicly, rather than our press, says a lot about the current state we are in. Harry is one of the establishment’s own, and this is exactly why the majority of the established press – particularly the right-wing tabloids – are so hostile to him. In conjunction with the political class, they are also part of the elite – and to have one of their own call it out will be a little too close to home.

But the real question is: will anything fundamentally change? While Prince Harry has given his testimony and opened himself up to cross-examination, none of the journalists or editors who he says were behind the alleged unlawful intrusions into his life are giving evidence. Fielding questions about specific journalistic practices in tabloid newsrooms is not for the Duke of Sussex.

So will there ultimately be any answers or accountability from the press itself? Beyond some limited high-profile media coverage of the court case, which inevitably always frames the issue as historic phone-hacking allegations – rather than the distorting culture of some of our biggest newspapers and proprietors and editors that is really at its heart?

While the Conservative Government shelved the second part of the landmark Leveson Inquiry into press ethics and practices, which followed the exposure of the phone-hacking scandal, there is no guarantee that a change of government will help. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party swims in the same toxified waters as the current crop of politicians in charge does – will media reform be high on its list after more than a decade out of power? We will have to wait and see.

But it should be. Because, as Prince Harry has said, if newspapers “can truly believe they are above the law… it’s the general public that suffer. It’s really that simple”.

It is difficult to see how Britain would be in the position it is in now – weakened politically and economically both at home and on the world stage – if a truly independent and accountable press had provided the necessary checks on power all healthy democracies need.

I have never understood how being a journalist isn’t seen as anything but an immense privilege and responsibility. Excavating what is happening around us and why, getting close to the people and events that matter, and having the tools to expose wrongdoing is one of the most fulfilling and important jobs there is. But the truth is, it’s all too often not seen like this at all.

Too much of established British journalism remains an elite, closed club. Close to power and influencing it; while claiming to have none but playing victim when it is scrutinised in the slightest. That it continues to get away with its ability to distort our politics and society is one of the biggest stories, and scandals, of our time. Prince Harry is taking a stand for us all.

WRITTEN BY

Hardeep Matharu

Hardeep Matharu is the Editor of Byline Times

#prince harry #duke of sussex #byline times #uk tabloids #uk press #british press

[cynicalclassicist]

Reminder that the Telegraph, or as people in my demographic call it the Torygraph, is a fucking morally bankrupt paper. The fact that they are blaming the Democrats sowing division for Trump rather then blaming the people who actually were sowing division, promoting hatred across racial, sexual and gender lines, shows that they don't really care who is to blame. They want to present the Left as the divisive people.

But the Telegraph is one of the big British papers for pushing the same sorts of hatred that gave rise to Trump to the US. So if the reporters there want to find the people responsible for Trump they should look around their offices.

#fuck the telegraph #the torygraph #the telegraph #british press #us politics

[20th-century-scrapbook]

#British Press

[jasmine-corner]

Chile, they’re already calling the child, ‘the family clown.’ 🥴

#British press

[clatterbane]

With or without context--but, especially without? This really is one of the worst headlines I have ever seen in my life.

(And I have gotten pretty used to the rather bizarre British phrasing conventions.)

"Stab murder teen"??? Context-free "Knife Angel"? 😬

#headlines #british press #jfc #respect #death mention

[sussex-sweetheart]

This is fucking disgusting. I knew the British press blackmailed gay people because Hugh Grant had spoken about their history with threatening to out people in the past, but the fact that this is happening today with the Australian media is abhorrent. The total lack of respect for anyone, let alone gay people is insane. No one should ever be forced to out themselves, and then to arrack her because she ruined your story? What the fuck is happening to our country? I've really started to feel a lot of shame being Australian these past few years. I thought we were better than this.

#british press #rebel wilson #australian press

[wezg]

Review: Defending the Realm - MI5 and the Shayler Affair - by Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding

This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it…

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#Afghanistan #Beijing #Belmarsh #betrayal #Birtish Empire #Britiain #British Press #Capitalism #Chiona #CIA #City of London #cold war #Colonel Gadaffi #Commonwealth #communism #commusit #computers #crime #criminal #Daily Mail #Dame Stella Rimington #David Shayler #death penalty #Donald Trump #DPRK #enemy of the state #espionage #execution #france #gchq

[politikwatch]

#Harry writes a book, attacks the #British #press, and the British press interprets it according to their style, with as much #hate & #despicableness as you know it from the British press, that was so clear ❗😡

#British press #Harry

[wiiildflowerrr]

5 Seconds of Summer: ‘Not cool enough … I mean, what is that about?’

'They sell out stadiums around the world but Sydney four-piece 5SOS, as they’re known by millions of fans, struggle to win over the more grizzly music writers...'

The Guardian, 15 October 2015

#5 seconds of summer #5sos #calum hood #ashton irwin #luke hemmings #michael clifford #2015 #15 october #the guardian #interview #british press #uk press #music critics #music industry