Friday, June 19, 2009

Fetch me a Pitchfork

Been seeing a few things lately that's been making me wonder if it's worth continuing to blog ...

The reason I've kept this blog going is that I find myself with thoughts that are bursting to get out. I need to express them but either have difficulty saying it out loud (confidence issue) or it's a case of not actually knowing who to talk to them about. So I work 'em out here so that they don't keep me up all night. They do that, the subject I'll be thinking about will rattle around in my head until I sort out what it actually is and scribbling it here allows me to settle the chaotic thoughts into some kind of order.

Trouble is though ... and this is where the Pitchforks come in, is the breach of anonymity that could quite easily happen due to the attitudes of the people who actually run this country. I'm not talking about the government there, although you'd expect them to be in charge. They're not though - it's the media that runs this country. Yep, even less elected than our PM (and his adoption of the top job didn't involve a vote ...)

As they showed in the case of the Copper Blogger who they exposed, the argument "in the public interest" can be used to unmask anyone, even someone who is writing from a declared position of anonymity. What's that mean for whistleblowers ? The policeman blogger's position is rather different to mine though as I understand that he often commented on politics and cases he was involved in. Which is the opposite to how I work, I obliquely mention work reasonably often but I'm far more interested in talking (and saying nice things) about the people I work with than I am in talking politics.

Politics tends to be highly depressing, although I get the feeling that not all of what the media says about our politicians is actually true. The media can happily get away with half-truths and blatant inaccuracy with any comeback from public figures being limited to a halfhearted apology on a small fraction of page 10.

I work on a fairly high profile project (1 well hidden blog post here mentions it) and there's usually a mix of emotions that come out when a news story about us does the rounds. On one hand, we're usually pretty chuffed to see nice things written about us and our project's one of the better ones so nice things tends to be what we see. However, that's tempered by all the inaccuracies, falsehoods, blatant lies and utter incompetence that riddles media reporting. Even when there's a definitive statement produced where it would be unbelievable for it to be twisted, the media often find a way of corrupting it to suit the angle they're looking for.

I have a very dim view of incompetence, I don't like to make life any easier for those who I view as Idiots and Morons. However, the ability for a newspaper to use the "In The Public Interest" argument to strip away a person's anonymity is disturbing, especially when they're the ones defining what the "Public Interest" is. Is it something the public genuinely need to know or is it the media hunting for a new Victim.

Either way, highly disturbing. Makes you wonder whether you really want to put something on a website that can be twisted and corrupted by some highly questionable people.

If you'll excuse me, I'll put my Torch and Pitchfork away and get back to watching the England Girls in the cricket. They're fighting hard but are looking incredibly nervous ... Very strange, a side that was so clinical in the longer game is struggling with poor errors. Hope they bat better so they can beat Aussie, cos that means I'll be watching the England Girls again on Sunday morning :-)

PS In case there's any misunderstandings, I'll repeat what I usually put about work. It hasn't changed :-) I work with some amazing people and although some can be pretty hard work (very sharp people can be tough to keep up with) the project is great to work on. And that's shown by the length of time people tend to stay on board, people hang around on our project. Also, even though big projects have their bad times as well as the good, we're really delivering stuff now. We have an awesome product that should do its job for many years to come. And it can't be a bad thing when after a decade or so, you see again what you worked on and feel a sense of pride when thinking "I helped with that", which is what everyone on my project will have in the future.

2 comments:

  1. Keep blogging, lol. Your blog has better content than mine.

    That police thing seems fair enough... As you would expect police to remain confidential about the cases they are working on, and be neutral about politics. They are paid by taxpayers to uphold law, not get involved with politics, or abuse/exploit there position, even under an alias.

    As for the Media, your right in that they are to blame. Its gotten to the point where I accept the fact that almost all news is propaganda and false.

    I get better news from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which is just wrong. (We need a UK version of that show by the way.)

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  2. My trusted news source is the Register :-)

    They like having fun with people, so if they see something in the main media that's just plain wrong, they won't hold back. (Search them for "RN warship ufo" for them giving both barrels to the Telegraph :-)

    Same lesson with the Reg though, it's fun to read but it's not wise to make their job any easier if that comes at your expense ...

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