Eh hem, apologies for my bad journalism. I mean, The Guardian claims the News of the World has been phone hacking. Results of The Guardian investigations have been broadcast on BBC and Channel4 News. Another big story got from phone hacking. Not the one they were hacking for mind.

It’s a big story. The Guardian broke it. It should take credit for it. I’m glad to see it rightly has. Unlike citizen journalism, where footage can be broadcast without any acknowledgement (never mindpayment) to said citizen, it is common courtesy writ in the unwritten rules of journalistic practice. It is also a form of protection but as The Guardian had all the evidence I believe this was more a matter of practice.

Another unwritten rule, however, is not to rat. This is what startles me about this story. Brows are being furrowed at the plunging depths to which journalistic practice is stooping and the duplicitous ways in which some journalists seek their material.

For anyone who has read Flat Earth News (and for those who have not I highly recommend it) will know, the dark arts have been and still are (as we now know) widespread amongst news organisations. And not just the tabloids!

I do not find this revalation the most disturbing. All journalists know that public interest is their best friend (in court) but also their shining beacon from which to find their story. What frightens me about this particular piece of news is that it equates to a newspaper declaring open warfare.

News of the World will no doubt be digging furiously to find some dirt on The Guardian. Now that dirty journalism has been officially declared as newsworthy, how many minions of its dark arts will rear their cunning heads?

The Guardian must have known that this story would kindle a backlash on journalism itself. Impartiality forms the backbone of the best journalism. Even then, it must have been a tough call. How I wish I could have been at that editorial meeting!

I agreed with Nick Davies. And I agree with The Guardian. But that doesn’t mean I’m not frightened. Will the making of news become the news? And will the news makers be too busy exposing each other and too filled with gall to get to the stories the PR folk are likely to bury? I hope not.

Journalists can be artful when getting stories. But they do so when they feel the public interest is at heart. But they can never know for sure until they use the methods to get the evidence. Surely there is a line to be drawn. But where?

“For me, I wouldn’t die for someone like Mousavi. But if there’s greater change at stake, then it’s worth it.”

I worry that greater change is at stake but the Iranian system that came to power after the Revolution thirty years ago and the overthrow of the Shah means no such change can be instituted without much more bloodshed than we have seen in recent days.

For a man like Mousavi to be seen as reformist (maybe hyped by Western interests) begs the question: Can change really come from within? The true dissenters and visionaries have been silenced by the regime. They have succeeded long before Iranians lined up at the ballot box.

I’m speaking of a colleague of mine. Known as ‘The Blog Father”, Hossein Derakshan, has been credited as starting the blogging revolution in Iran. On 1 November 2008 he was arrested at his home in Tehran and has not been heard of since. He had blogged about his trip to Israel which he made using his Canadian passport. He is accused of spying.

I fear the Iranians that can truly inspire a following and hammer home the need for reform are locked away in a cell somewhere, subjected to horrors I fear to even think about.

True revolutions are the birth-child of those not too far from birth themselves. The young, only they can change Iran. They are its future.

There is an ongoing war within Islam. It is an internal war. It is a civil war. It is a war between generations.

Iran is split between young and old. Reform and tradition. It is the young people that have travelled to the West. Enjoyed freedoms and hopefully seen how it too corrupts.

The cradle of civilisation – the Middle East – is amassed with untapped talent of thought and philosophy. Their young can be true visionaries, with a solemn respect for the learned and the gall of repression. It is the generation gap that is their barrier.

I have seen young Iranian women who when faced with police arrests and confiscation write their slogans of female empowerment on their head scarves. Over here, they wear no such head scarf, cut their hair short and debate.

I see the potential that the academic yearns for. But I have seen it caged.

Twitter and Blogs are media. They communicate action but action must be taken in the hearts and minds of those on the ground. I fear they have already been locked, beaten and suppressed.

The West needs to condemn and scrutinise on a micro-level and not focus when action breaks the media threshold but when it breaks the spirit of those who are truly revolutionary.

Free Hoder!

Free the Blog Father

That’s all well and good. A worthy story that deserved world wide attention as well as in-depth reporting. However, a month previous to the reports this article on Reuters caught my eye whilst I was interning at the new CNN show, Connect the World: “Asian malaria strain poses new global threat“. The article is dated Friday 24 April.  So it has taken over a month for this humanitarian and potentially devastating news story to make it into the mainstream media.

And it’s not like it’s a difficult story to cover. There’ll be experts at the WHO prepped to speak to the media. There’ll be children and the elderly strewn on hospital beds ready to have their picture taken. I even set up a folder of file footage (mosquitoes, nets being handed out, interviews with malaria suffers) in the CNN database. I thought it was important.

But obviously the mainstream media thought it a useful filler for when they could spare their correspondent in the area and when there’s a slow news day (or when they’ve tied up most of their reporters in the MPs expenses scandal and need some foreign news to appear like they have good coverage of world events).

But maybe I have it wrong. Maybe it took over a month for the media to think the story worthy enough to be covered. It doesn’t affect the West. Cambodia has little strategic purposes for the developed world. Sure it’s still trying to pick itself back up after the Khmer Rouge. And that was too closely related to the War in Vietnam to be easily digested by the American media.

In fact, I was quite disconcerted with the scant coverage and backgrounding of the trial of Kaing Guek Eav. It is a major historical point yet the people at the time will barely notice its significance.

What is the reason behind all this? Can someone in the media tell me? Did it take over a month for journalists to be sure of the extent and scientific rigour of the WHO report? Is it because money and resources are tight? Am I being cynical?

If you know, please tell me. I’d like to know.

We have to know before we can ask. Which is what I did last Friday. I spoke to Kent Matthews, Professor of Banking and Finance at Cardiff Business School:

Kent Matthews

Most interviews on the topic were experts explaining whta it is, like that on Radio Wales, or having the economics editor in the studio to explain, which the BBC national news did.

What I found most interesting and informative from my interview was the fact that quantitative easing was an articial way of boosting the economy. It was the artificiality of the sub prime market that got us into this mess in the first place. Not only this, but the government will have to reign quantitative easing in to prevent another cycle of boom and bust. It’s supposed to be an injection but there’s so much pressure to dig the country out of recession that there will be little incentive to stop pumping in artificial cash.

If we depend upon the fickleness of consumer banking and the ebb and flow of the stock market, our economy will never be stable. The government failed to regulate the banks because no one questions when times are prosperous. Quantitative Easing is another tool in the politicians brief case that will paint a pretty picture on a poor canvas.

I covered it before Regional and National. But sadly no one heard. I just hope someone will see that government policy which produces results can still be unsustainable in the long run. If Gordon Brown wants to see the green shoots of recovery blossom into great oaks he should be looking to grass roots industry rather than global finance.

I have so little time to work on all my ideas but I’ll use some of my free time to check up on the the Iraqi asylum seekers sent back to Baghdad. I’ll need the backing of a network to make it happen.

I’m gonna look into health and safety breaches in laboratories to try and find something juicy for More4.

I’ve managed to get to Hoder’s blog. I will need to get an Iranian man to read selections and will be talking to his friends and colleagues in London. More on that later.

I was also wondering about food entering the UK. I wonder how many exotic foods make it past regulation because the regulators just don’t know what on Earth they are.

I’ve put this down as my ideas. I won’t have time to check them all out but I’ll be attending a masterclass in investigative journalism on Saturday. I’ll look back on the ideas I’ve logged and pick the ones I think are worth checking up on.

I want to contact his friends and supporters. Have them speak about him, his words and his disappearance. I also want them to read out some of his blog entries as part of a radio piece to be submitted to UNESCO Press Freedom.

But his blog seems to be down and I’m not sure how to get in contact with all his followers as they’re scattered all over the world. I’ve contacted the Facebook group and have one person I can talk to in London.

It’a a long road ahead. I just hope I can get this done

I will have to stick to one project at a time so after the class I will concentrate on one side project. Right now I have to work on my website and my course. But it’s these ideas that actually keep me going. I would love one day to be able to make my own documentaries. But right now I’d better learn how to get the basics right.

My recent efforts have been towards the seeking asylum difficulties and what you have to do to finally be accepted on paper (in theory the above story covers the issue of acceptance in a society). To narrow things down I think I’d be best to concentrate on Iraqi’s fleeing from the invasion of 2003. I’ll need to look at the law and will go through the cases from the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. I’d contact specialist lawyers Bindmans. Once I have a better idea of what angle I’m going to take I’ll try and get in contact with Iraqi refugees through immigration officers and support groups or even people in the UK with relatives there. At the moment the angle I’d like to take is: do the British have a moral obligation to take in refugees from countries they have helped liberate? I imagine it’d change if it gets to an editor.

A note on the mixed race identity: couples who are of a different race can only adopt a mixed- race child which makes their wait all the longer.

One: PhD student abuse by supervisors. They are regarded as free labour and have very little rights as they need to get a qualification from the work they do. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories. The most they can do is leave their PhD but that makes it much harder to get funding for the next one. I wonder if I can use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how many complaints were made against supervisors and how many actions were taken against them.

Two: Science and Religion. The age old battle. They seem to be opposites but many people in Science are also religious (such as myself). I’d like to hear their views and talk to scientist’s who think it is impossible to be religious and work in Science.