2100 Hrs GMT
London Friday
04 September 2009
KHOODEELAAR! Publishing contextual commentary by Muhammad Haque on the morality-free behaviour by UK media.,...
This CONTEXT is the role of Boris Johnson who has been in occupation of that post in the Onion in the name of the people of London since about the first week of May 2008:
ALSO published on an associated blog site:
http://eastlondonbrief.blogspot.com
Briefly from East London
Friday 4 September 2009
Jade Goody’s memories are still fresh in the mind. As, it seems, are the antics of her widow. What kind of widow does that!
Then there is the admission by C4 TV bosses themselves: they can’t justify making money by flaunting Big Brother any more.
Question is: why had they ever thought that they were justified?
With Wapping, East London-based £multi-Billion making machine the Murdoch Corporation making it plain that they too are about to concede defeat, it is high time that the assumptions by media owners about media morality were challenged.
How much better would society have been had there been a moral requirement upon the media?
How many ills in society today could and ought to have been avoided by there being a morally alert and honourable media?
And how is it that with so much proliferation in multi-media accessibility there is almost no evidence of any morality in the ownership, control and use of the media.
Why would anyone pay any attention to any ethical statement from these media when people know full well that the media do not place morality at the centre of their agenda?
In fact the more disclosures are made under say the Freedom of Information Act, as has happened in the past 48 hours with the BBC London reporting the attempted abuse of the MPs’ expenses by Boris Johnson when he had been an MP from Michael Heseltine’s former constituency of Henley, the clearer it becomes that the media owners do not tell the truth. Or at least it shows that the media owners do not behave morally consistently.
We are here pointing the finger at the owners of the Daily Telegraph. They are reported to be paying Boris Johnson a quarter million quid. A sum that Boris Johnson has likened to chicken feed. In fact Boris Johnson has acted in a scathing way in his public statement in defence of that payment from the owners of the Daily Telegraph. He has gestured and uttered to the effect that the said payment was an almost unsolicited offering by the owners of the Daily Telegraph. In that packaged performance, Boris Johnson has exposed his own stance Vis a Vis morality. It is apparent from that performance that to him, morality is an optional surplus which he has damn well chucked in the bin, and rightly so!
Quite how Mr Johnson would have assumed any of that whilst still believing that he was within the requirements of morality is not clear. To any morally aware person, Mr Johnson has shown that he is not bothered about morality there.
Nor, it seems, are the owners of the Daily Telegraph who have for some unstated reason allowed him to be paid the chicken feed amount.
How strange that the Daily Telegraph has been celebrating an almost uncontested publishing coup over its reporting of the unredacted receipts of MPs expenses and assorted other claims and yet has been unable to bring itself to look in Mr Boris Johnson’s cupboard thoroughly enough!
That Mr Johnson is engaged with the Daily Telegraph albeit on a mere chicken feed of £250,000.00 for agreeing to put his signature to 50 odd pieces per year, has of course nothing at all to do with that oversight…