All Things Ginger #4: Redhead day hits the mainstream media

It seems that this year's Redhead Day has got a lot more media coverage in the UK than before. I first became aware that it must have made the news when two of my colleagues separately told me about this 'red hair day thing' they'd heard about. I'm not sure whether they believed me when I told them it was my intention to go to the Dutch festival at some point in the future. Today there was a decent length feature on the BBC magazine pages, with some great pictures here. Nice to see 'my people' getting some positive coverage.

I should point out, of course, that Advancing Gingerly was talking about this event last year. About time the press caught up!

Before I sign off, just cos I still find it bloomin' funny, here's Tim Minchin again with what I presume would become the national anthem when the Gingers finally take over:

Overcoming certainty

Given that even the credit crunch has failed to prevent the ordinary folk from having to pay taxes, it's nice to know that not everything is set in stone. According to the BBC, taking a more positive view of life can actually help you to cheat death! The key to eternal happiness has been found!

This discovery was announced the other morning on the BBC News pages as follows:

Quite a claim! While pessimists are busy shuffling off the mortal coil, the probability of the cheerier souls following suit is considerably less. Presumably some of them cheat it entirely, judging by that headline.

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the text subsequently changed to the somewhat more prosaic "Why optimism may be key to a long, healthy life - at least for women". Shame the editor didn't follow through and change the article itself. It still starts as follows:

What they actually mean is that over the years in which the study was conducted, the death rate among optimists was lower than that among the pessimists. This is not the same as having a lower risk of death. Let's be clear about this - the risk of death for every person on the planet is 100%. 10 out of 10. As certain as taxes. Is the Pope a Catholic? Yes. Are you going to die? Yes.

That's not to dismiss the research itself - one's state of mind can have a profound influence on one's health and longevity. Whether life is 'nasty, brutish and short' or otherwise, one might as well find a way of enjoying it, and a sunny disposition may well aid you in receiving a telegram from the Queen. But is it too much to ask that people charged with writing science stories actually proof-read what they've written, and check for logic? No, I suppose not, or else we might have been spared this effort today:
Isn't 'downing a drink' a tad colloquial for a 'quality' news site? Are we dumbing down English as well as science? Mind you, it looks like the proof reader had had a couple.

Sigh.

[In case you are worried I'm plotting to usurp Dr Goldacre from his post as Chief Health Story Inaccuracy Pointer-Outer, I won't. He does it with far more skill than I, and I haven't got the time. But I reserve the right to carry on shouting at the telly when they say stupid things about health. And I may well subject you to a rant about swine flu coverage at some point. Sorry.]

Bad Science

I was delighted to hear Ben Goldacre on The Now Show the other day, not least because I'm currently in the middle of Bad Science, a book that I imagine I will badger everyone I know into reading before the year is out. He says an awful lot of things about the relationship between the media and health research that I would like to communicate, but in my case I end up shouting at the telly and getting too aerated to construct coherent blog posts, whereas Dr Goldacre manages to focus his frustrations into far more concise and persuasive arguments.

If you'd like a taste of his perspective, here's his slot on The Now Show:

Well, quite. My only gripe is that The Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project (surely the best named blog ever) ran for a mere 4 days before ceasing to progress. Perhaps the author spontaneously combusted under the strain of reading all the crap spouted by the Daily Maul. Given the general ignorance about the difference between correlation and causation, I feel confident in stating (on the basis of this scant 'evidence' which I have extrapolated from an observation) that reading the Daily Mail is bad for your health.

Making a pig's breakfast...

Sorry I've been a bit quiet lately. I seem to have misplaced my magic blogging dust somewhere along the line, but I spect it'll turn up behind the sofa.

I did start writing a long ranty post the other week about swine flu, and how it was another example of the media distorting the facts for their own agenda. In my view the approach of the WHO and health authorities here was entirely approriate to the situation. The media, meanwhile, seemed to be gagging for panic on the streets.

But as usual, other people are more adept at putting across a message more succinctly. Here is a recent offering from the wonderful PhD comics. (click to enlarge)

So very true.

News round up

Nowt major, just a couple of things that caught my eye in today's news:
1. The grammar pedants have won, but still might not be happy. Tesco has caved in to pressure from the Lynne Truss brigade to change their express checkout signs from '10 items or less'. But rather than the more grammatically correct, '10 items or fewer' they're going for 'Up to 10 items'.

A spokesman for the Plain English Campaign said:

"Saying up to 10 items is easy to understand and avoids any debate."

Unfortunately, I would beg to differ. '10 items or less', though jarring, is totally comprehensible and unambiguous in everyday speech . 'Up to 10 items' makes me think that perhaps it could mean 9 items or fewer. Did they never learn the difference between the '<' and the '≤' signs in maths? Surely for totally clarity it would have to be 'Up to and including 10 items'. That would make for a very large sign. I think they were better off before.

2. "Farm Pregnancy 'cuts asthma risk.'" I wish that science news editors would be a little more discerning regarding what is 'good, interesting science' and what is 'good, interesting science that is of relevance to the general public'. The discovery that pre-natal exposure to a farm environment may reduce risk of developing asthma in later life is scientifically interesting. It might give clues to immunologists who are trying to develop a better understanding of the basic biology of asthma. I don't, however, think that it is information of great use to anyone else - it's the kind of story that makes you go, 'So what?' What are we supposed to do with that information? Tell pregnant friends to get themselves along to the nearest pigsty? Congratulate rural friends on the likelihood that their future children will have good respiratory health? What exactly?

What do *you* reckon?

During an innocent conversation about the merits of the various radio stations we listen to at work, a colleague commented that she found the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 rather annoying. "Oh yes!" I agreed. "I hate those programmes where members of the public are allowed to phone in with their opinions".

The reaction was: "That is such a [Ginger] thing to say!" Which has me slightly worried. Surely I don't have a reputation for favouring oppression of free speech, or a disinterest in what Joe Public has to say? I was all set to explain here in detail my defence, comprising points such as (i) such programmes favour polarised opinions and just aren't interested in the calm middle ground (ii) the sort of people/opinions that get aired just conform to the most obvious stereotypes of both ends of any debate and (iii) I get annoyed at such opportunities being presented as though the actual opinions really matter when, in the great scheme of things, they don't change a thing and are just a tokenistic way of filling airtime.

But it seems that others can say it far better than I:

Unequal standards

There have been a few stories in the press recently debating the contrasting media coverage of the respective disappearances of Madeleine McCann and Shannon Matthews. In fact, the differing lengths of their wiki entries probably says it all. There does seem to be compelling evidence for the argument that class has played a part in how eager the press and public have been to respond to these cases.

But there's another element of bias that seems to be going on, highlighted by the murder case of Scarlett Keeling. I can't help but think that if Karen Matthews had left a two year old alone in a flat while she went to have dinner, or a fifteen year old daughter alone in a foreign country (during term time) to be looked after by a male tour guide, she would have been loudly denounced in the media for being a neglectful, unloving mother - her actions being typical of all that is wrong with society.

But, strangely, such comments are rather muted in the press. Do pretty, blonde middle class girls somehow not deserve good parenting? Isn't every missing child of equal value?

Do you *honestly* expect me to believe...

... that the BBC has a correspondent called Jonah Fisher? Who has been sent to cover Greenpeace's protests at Japanese whaling in the Antarctic?

Two questions:
(i) What were Mr and Mrs Fisher thinking?
(ii) How long must the guy have been waiting for this break?

(Mind you, it does sound like he feels he's the butt of someone's joke - scroll to bottom of this).

UK standards fall to a new low

As if everything else the BBC has got up to lately wasn't bad enough, it now seems that they've sunk to to new depths. Not content with depriving various competition entrants of their chance of winning a prize, the latest installment of Blue Petergate reveals that the editorial team fixed a vote for the name of the new cat.

A cat. Who the hell really cares if it's called 'Socks' or Cookie', apart from the young viewers? Why interfere? I can't see how either name could be deemed inappropriate. Unless there's something afoot along the lines of the Papal Hovis contract. Anyone checked the price of shares in Sockshop lately?

Too much information

I'm really not convinced by the notion that in a free society, everything that can be reported should be reported. I'm not suggesting press censorship. More like a little media responsibility. Three recent stories have made me come to this conclusion:

1. MMR

In the UK, the rate of uptake of the immunisation for measles, mumps and rubella has suffered a serious knock in the wake of media hysteria surrounding a small, highly contested study that suggested that the vaccine could trigger autism. Ignoring the fact that the study was questionable for so many reasons, the media managed to instill a sense of paranoia in the majority of parents whose children were approaching immunisation age. If I had been in the parent position at that time, I'd have been pretty worried on the basis of what was being said in the mainstream media.

Fortunately the scaremongering seems largely to have died down, but unfortunately the damage is still tangible. Uptake rates are still lower than they were prior to the scare, with a consequent rise in the number of cases of measles. Just a few days after reporting that, however, the BBC decided it was a good idea to run a story headed "MMR overdose given to 93 pupils". Oh heck, think I, imagining misplaced decimal points resulting in a bunch of 2-year-olds being given 10 times the recommended dose. But then I actually read the story. Turns out that the pupils in question were a pretty robust 14-15 years of age. And the 'overdose' they referred to is not too high a dose, but a third dose when the pupils had already had the requisite two, due to a mix up where parents signed their kids up for another dose by mistake. No harm done. I doubt the kids in question even experienced any side-effects. So why put a story like that under an alarmist headline and stick a link to it on the front page of BBC News? What were they trying to achieve?

2. Northern Rock

So, a UK bank borrows some money from the Bank of England, and all of a sudden there's mayhem with customers clearing out their accounts, making the bank far more likely to go bust than it ever was in the first place. I can't help but wonder whether the initial reporting could have done more to prevent the chaos, or whether the media secretly love a bit of panic from the general public. Admittedly, the message from early on was 'nothing to worry about', but when the story is simultaneously front page news, then it's hard to expect people not to react adversely.

3. Too much information in general

There was a case recently where a British actor was found guilty of downloading and viewing inappropriate material of children on his computer. His sentencing took place last week.

It is fine that this was reported. It was fine that they described the nature of the material as being 'class 5' i.e. the worst type of material in the classification system. What I consider to be of highly dubious merit was for the reporter to then describe the nature of material that falls into all the five classes. I cannot tell you how bad the material in this case was, because I had switched off the TV by the time they were halfway through class 3. Who gains from that kind of reporting?

Who gains from any of the above, in fact?

Media Misunderstandings

I don't think my brain is wired in quite the right way to deal with the printed media. When I saw this the other week:

my immediate thought was, "With who?"

Leaving Footprints in Cyberspace

Our forefathers would probably be rather unsettled by the idea of leaving a record of their presence on every book they picked up in a public library. Even more so if the time, location and duration of their perusal was recorded. Yet in a country with in excess of 4 million CCTV cameras, their ancestors would probably consider this a fairly benign form of monitoring. Probably just as well, given that this is pretty much what happens when you browse the internet. The sites you visit can be detected, leaving a trail of footprints as you go on a cyber-spacewalk. Scary and impressive.

I have a 'Site Meter' tracker on this blog that not only acts as a hit counter, but also tells me when it is visited, for how long, and from what other sites people are referred in order to get here. Don't worry - I don't use it for nefarious means. I'm just a nosey soul. From looking at it I can tell you that I have a few 'regular' readers who I don't think I actually know in any way. This surprises me - I rather assumed that anyone who came here more than once would be someone I actually knew 'in real life' or at the very least had 'encountered' somewhere on the web. Let's face it - this is hardly the most cutting edge of blogs. But there are regulars from areas where I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone at all, which is a pleasant surprise. I hope you enjoy reading, whoever you are.

I can also tell you that my London street guide attracts a number of hits from people who have done searches looking for specific information about London and had the misfortune to come across my ramblings instead. Ah well. I accept no responsibility for any time wasted! I can additionally report that the single most frequent reason for referral to my blog is following a Google search like this, which sends you to this blog entry. Nice to know my carefully chosen words are what pulls the readers in then.

People may feel that this kind of monitoring is a form of spying, and no doubt there are certain organisations who take a very keen interest in the internet usage of some individuals. But sometimes the tables can be turned. This story was an interesting example of that: turns out the CIA have been fiddling around with Wikipedia entries, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. Nor has the Vatican's contributions. You would have thought that the former would know better than to think that their modifications wouldn't be detected. Are these people really key-players in global security?

Semantic Double Standards

Why is it that, if an Indian woman opts to abort a female foetus because of the social stigma and financial difficulties of not having male children, it is referred to as 'foeticide', but if a Western woman chooses to abort a foetus of either sex because she wants to get on with her career, or dissociate herself from the consequences of a casual sexual relationship, it is called a termination?

Both are decisions influenced by desire to conform to certain social constructs, both are decisions that may well be influenced by financial considerations. But one of them attracts greater linguistic condemnation than the other does. Why?

Reflections on Prominent Public Figures

Quite a few high-profile figures in the news in the last couple of days. How they have presented themselves has lead me to conclude the following:

• If you are a new PM having to make your first emergency address to the nation, and your predecessor was known for being media savvy, at the very least you could straighten your suit, stand up straight, and perhaps work on how you talk head-on to camera.
• If you are a member of the royal family, you probably shouldn't clap along to music as you just look daft and your timing is invariably out.
• Goodness knows how many thousands of pounds of private education and military training seem not to have rendered certain individuals capable of public speaking without consulting cue cards every five seconds.

Just my two pence worth, anyway.

Turning a blind eye

A report came out today saying that the BBC was guilty of not being sufficiently impartial for a public broadcaster. I can't say I'd noticed a bias particularly, although that's not surprising given that (a) I'm a bit of a lefty and (b) I'm not that media savvy.

Makes sense that a broadcaster funded with public money should be impartial on political issues etc. Wouldn't want it to be coerced into favouring a particular political position. But there was one part of the report I wasn't so sure about. There was a lot of criticism of the way the Make Poverty History movement was presented. I realise that, according to this enquiry, this did break/bend their rules that say charitites shouldn't be endorsed, but I can't help but wonder if it's that bad a thing that it happened. Surely impartiality can't be that damaged by the highlighting of the fact that a significant proportion of the world lives in obscene poverty.

That's my view anyway. I'd be genuinely interested in hearing from anyone who disagrees and thinks that the right call was made on this particular aspect - I fear I might be being too blinkered on this one, so I'd appreciate alternative perspectives. But I do suspect that I shall remain committed to favouring turning a blind eye to the odd bit of journalistic rule-breaking rather than missing the opportunity to try to get an important message across so powerfully.