“What a fucking rotter!” Bill Grundy’s interview of the Sex Pistols

My favourite  reading this week demonstrates what can happen when journalists  form opinions pre interview based on snobbery.

The Sex Pistols managed to win the interview on the day. But it was Grundy, the much older host of the program who was treating the interview like a competition.

(You can view it here). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRNOUz7uefA

Grundy sat down with a disdain for the group of youths, egging them on to make them misbehave. They weren’t pretending. They were being themselves. If the interviewer had approached it another way, he may received more considered answers. Sometimes you need to find the similarities between yourself and the interviews subjects instead of focussing on the differences.

There were more points to punk music and culture than fickle  rebellion. As Jon Savage put it in his bookEngland’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond working-class youths, the Pistols didn’t see much hope in a Britain in which, by 1977, 1.6 million people, many under 30, were unemployed.  It was Grundy”s generation that were ruling the country and causing all the trouble. I  can feel his disappointment for creating these people, he was exhibiting it through his tense attitude. The Sex pistols were a product of England and it’s “fascist regime” (to quote the Sex Pistol lyric).

Grundy comes across as being sexist, rude, pompous and well… inebriated. The Pistols got what they wanted without even trying.

NOTORIETY!!

As their manager Malcom Mclaren said  “notoriety is easy if you’re willing to offend”….PS  I met the Sex Pistols in the 90′s  so I guess I have a bias to stick up for them.

The other two interviews were insightful .  I put that down mostly to Mae West and Marlon Brando being fascinating interviewees. Find great talent and your 95 per cent there, right?

If anything I would question Charlotte Chandlers decision to passively allow the star to tell her how she should dress and suggest that if she doesn’t have more jewels then there is something wrong etc. Though her playing along did get the star to open up about her life and her research allowed her to throw in lines from films that West had starred in, playing to her ego which in turn led to West opening up even more. If it was me I would challenge her old fashioned thoughts regarding how to treat men and perhaps encourage her to get few female friends and then see what she had to say.

Capote’s interview borders on the unethical. His photo-graphical memory and not actually disclosing the fact that he was writing a story seems a bit dodgy. Bet then he was Truman Capote so I guess he is excused.

Possible Story Pitches

Story 1

Story 2

Yarra Council have voted to look at  banning of smoking in alfresco dinning including areas such as Brunswick Street Fitzroy.

Interview: Mayor Alison Clark, Cancer Council Director and head of Fitzroy Traders Association.

Week 4. Hard News Writing Exercize

1)

A bus load of children are missing in Townsville after two large tornadoes hit yesterday, destroying much of the town.

Phone, electricity and water supplies are down and over 300 residents evacuated from the far North Queensland town . The Premier is on his way to assess the damage as well as large contingent of police and emergency services personnel.

2)

A 22 year old Moe woman has been sentenced to six years non-parole after stabbing her partner more than 30 times.

Amanda Jane Felsburg,  stabbed Wayen Laffey more than thirty times on the front lawn of her Moe house. Justice Teague said he was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Felsburg, who was suffering postnatal depression at the time had “excellent prospects for rehabilitation”.

“Haunted by details” by Peter Ellingsen, Supermedia: the future as networked journalism” by Charlie Beckett “Poverty in Atlanta” by Paige Williams

Peter Ellingsen seems to be a fair and ethical man, far removed from the Stephen Glasses of the world. He seems to be putting a lot of pressure on himself.  I dont think he should carry the world on his shoulders. One man alone cant describe such a big picture of a massacre. As the reader I will read many different articles and take from them a composite of the events. It is nice to know that journalist like Ellingsen exists, and that they are checking back over their work.

The article in itself could be seen as a continuation of his reporting, 20 years on. Ellingsen is still explaining to us the horror of the event. At the time of the massacre he was a seasoned journalist of 15 years. I wonder who he was working for at the time and what kind of story he was asked to write. I wonder how younger rookies would have been able to handle the situation. Each gives a unique perspective though.

At the time of the massacre the public was after facts and figures as they were trying to understand what was happening. He mentions that ” all of the facts of the night were in dispute”. But at the time we were relying on the journalists to be a  better judge as to for example – were was 20 people killed or 2 000? We were  relying on the journalist as the  fourth estate, to give us some kind of averaging of facts and figures.

I think Ellingsen should   write a novel about his experiences filling the gaps he is claiming to have missed. I would read it.

I found reading the article “Poverty in Atlanta” by Paige Williams a bit difficult to read  at first as I wasn’t sure which way the words were even meant to flow.

I got the hang of it.

The layout worked. I think some people are so zoned out about others and in their little bubble of a world that they need comparisons to understand and relate. The figures help to achieve this. It was an effective way to  present the research to what turned out to be a an article visited by real voices from the community of facts and figures we had just absorbed.

In “Supermedia: the future as networked journalism” the author states that ä healthier local an global news media is a necessary precondition for international development and security”. I agree. Its all linking back to the notion of journalism as the fourth estate. There needs to be ethical people left in the world and these people should head to the field of journalism. The newsroom has to be connected to what’s going on via in the world of internet and all its facets. People are already getting their news from non traditional news sources. News rooms will become extinct if they lag behind.

TO BE CONTINUED

Shattered Glass and Ethics: Sticky Issues in Gumshoe Journalism

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

If journalists are the “fourth estate”, looking over everything, policing, watch dogging, then Stephen Glass should be in prison.

The Shattered Glass article written by Buzz Bissinger made my skin cringe and made me think about my reasons for wanting to be a journalist. I want to expose the truth, bring the hidden to the forefront. Having an Aboriginal mother has given me a good understanding of how many lies are told to the public. For example lies told by the Australian Government regarding the stealing of children in the  Stolen Generations (http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/index.html) …… The fact that the target for my distaste was this time some one who called himself a journalist  was exasperating.

Reading the article I did wonder what motivated Glass to do such a strange thing. He wrote for the New Republic “creating elaborate orchestrations of made up scenes and characters, passing it off as journalism”.Why wouldn’t he simply do the interviews properly?

It was his final editor at The New Republic Charles Lane who uncovered truth behind his trail of waisted words. As an atheist I said ” THANK GOD”. I may have lost all faith in the intelligence of my fellow journalists if it had kept going for any longer.

Reading more and more into the article I felt sick to the stomach that someone could create in such a premeditated manner such lies. Glass hailed from from a middle class American family.   I will never except that the pressures of privilege are valid excuses for lies (and here I am classing privilege to be a stable education, 2 employed parents, and a university degree). Privilege should bring desire to help underprivileged, not to take the who system for a ride.

 

Glass should be denigrated for his actions. This is another example of a deceptive privileged man rorting the system. I am no more interested in this man than I am a pre mediated murderer.

The author mentions “no one in Charles Lanes experience had affected him in the eerie manner of Stephen Glass”. It also left me with a creepy, eerie feeling.

I don’t believe he would make a good fiction writer. The faking of business and phone numbers isn’t very interesting or creative. My fiction writing friends would be in a hurry to distance themselves form Glass and his boring little creations. I don’t want to help profit this man by reading his novel.

Why didn’t people pick up on this earlier? Was it because of  technology and the generational gap? Perhaps older colleagues thought it would be too hard to fake web address emails etc? It’s baffling.

The other article, Ethics: sticky issues in gumshoe journalism is written by Zuckerman and Meht looks at the use of surveillance and new technology in journalism. I would agree with the author that the use of such equipment, if you are an ethical journalist, can only help to enhance journalists creditability”.