Blogilicious: September 2011

I'm getting a little nervous about journalism. Don't get me wrong, I love newspapers and magazines, I love the fact we're not censored and we have the right to free (if slightly over politically correct) speech. No, what currently concerns me is the, apparently necessary, speedy nature of journalism. The fact that bagging a major news scoop equals big sales, a front page and journalistic glory is not an unknown fact, and therefore it's totally understandable that there is always competition to be the first to break a new story. Until recently this meant hitting the earliest deadline possible to get your story into the paper before anyone else did. Nowadays, thanks to the internet, stories can appear online on news websites or on twitter just minutes after they occur.

I complained a couple of months ago about Amy Winehouse's death being reported online allegedly before her father had been notified. The article on the Daily Mail website had been re-edited by the time I went back to take a quote from it an hour or so later, but this displays the completely unacceptable things that can be posted around the world when the need for speed outweighs proper editing and censorship.

The most recent example of this was that of the American singer Kelis tweeting about her experiences when a British man in an airport queue called her 'Kunte Kinta' and demanded she call him Sir. Without a full transcript of the conversation it's impossible to know the exact vein of the conversation but I imagine there is very little likelihood that any extra information about the incident will redeem this man's behaviour. It seems he was indeed an ignorant, nasty and, above all, racist individual and it's correct, in my eyes, that he is held up as an example of how not to behave towards others. I highly condemn racism of any kind and am saddened to hear that this sort of attitude still exists in any society regardless of whether it's the one I happen to belong to.

Kelis has 163,792 followers on twitter. She knows that anything she says a) will be read by a large number of avid fans and b) potentially utilised by the press. I see no issue with her using twitter to express her distress and raise the profile of an issue she feels passionately needs some attention, but the fact that she not only took this experience with one man and linked it to an attack on the state of British society, but also wrote this at a time she was still feeling furious and upset without waiting to calm down and reflect before editing and publishing this on the world wide web was, I feel, quite a bad move.

The story was, predictably, immediately picked up by the British press and headlines such as 'Kelis Reveals the face of casual British racism'(The Observer), 'Kelis: Racism in the UK is 'disgusting''(The Sun), 'Kelis: I was racially abused at London airport'(The Telegraph) and many more began to appear. Again, this isn't just the fault of Kelis, frankly I don't know why newspapers aren't checking their facts before copying and pasting from twitter but regardless it was the singer's posts that began this tirade of anger focused towards Britain. The reason this is totally unfair or, at the very least, pointless in the circumstances is that Kelis later had to go back and point out that the confrontation actually occurred at a Spanish airport and not a UK one. She says in the later post, 'I didn't think to make that clear at the time because I was shaken and furious. Now you know.' Although I applaud her for taking the time to make the clarification, the damage had already been done. The passport control officer who 'shook his head in agreement I guess' now appears to be Spanish and therefore quite likely had no comprehension of the exchange that had just taken place. This alters the tone of the story fairly considerably.

I'm not trying to claim that Britain is not racist. As a white person writing this blog I do, of course, have no real comprehension of what Kelis and other black people may experience during their travels around the UK. However, at the beginning of this blog I pointed out how free we are in this country to talk about the issues that affect us. Although we do have racist people and problems in our society, I feel that Kelis' suggestion that 'the racial issues in the uk are disgusting. Its racially decades behind progression because everything is swept under the rug. People don't talk about it. People don't fight about it.' is totally unsupported. We have a large number of arts groups funded by the government that are dedicated to giving a voice to people of all different colours, races and cultures, we have anti-racism groups such as Runnymede, frequent special reports in the major newspapers on the state of racism, million pound police enquiries into racially motivated attacks (e.g. the Stephen Lawrence enquiry) and many television documentaries or specials such as Racism in Multicultural Britain on Panorama.

I appreciate that Kelis was treated very badly and that social media has long been a mode in which people feel they can vent whilst simultaneously garnering sympathy and/or spreading important information. I mentioned earlier that Kelis has a huge number of followers who most likely take her pronouncements very seriously. Perhaps this was exactly what she was counting on. Perhaps she believes she was making a worthy and important point. Perhaps she was. My overiding feeling about this whole affair however is a slightly sour sensation that a combination of internet access, competitive journalism and celebrity has culminated in a single, idiotic, disgusting man being held up as the apparent blueprint for British society. And that's neither fair nor helpful.

Blogilicious

Monday, September 19, 2011

Kelis and other questionable news items

Friday, September 2, 2011

Whatsonstage.com Final Blog Post

Whatsonstage.com Blog number Ten & Elevn