1984 George Orwell- a perfect brainwash in totalitarian world of lies

Orwell started an era of New Journalism, following the time of French Marxists, writers attempted deconstruction of narrative novels in order to find hidden meaning in all texts, but logically thinking, there is no such thing in some books and trying to see something that is not there would be simply over-reading it. Structuralism fought its way through, within the above idea of hidden symbols and disconnected language from the speech- meaning was separated from the form.

1980s was taken over by Totalitarian regime, fascism and Stalinism, brought times of deconstructing language, looking into atoms of meaning in words, fundamental building blocks of meaning and study of logic. “There is no logical structure in logic”, within philosophy there was nothing to be said.
George was a disillusioned socialist who became bitterly anti-communist, spreading how the idea of communism became corrupted. He was writing after Freud (sexual league). In 1984 pornography was spreading but no one was allowed to have sex. The key was an idea of “speech acts” in promoting linguistic philosophy in English tradition of Bertrand Russell, in the way, the pseudo scientific theories of Sigmund Freud. Winston, main character in the novel works for the party removing articles from the archive which contradict the current line on the party.

The book describes how the main character Winston Smith falls in love in Julia who hands him a note “I LOVE YOU”. They “commit a crime” of having sex. Winston is accused of making love to a spy in a house that he rents from a spy as well as keeping a journal of negative opinions about the Party and Big Brother. When “Inner party leader O’Brien believes that the Brotherhood have communicated with him. O’Brien gives Winston a copy of the latest edition of Newspeak dictionary, which was actually the book “ The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism said to be written by Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood which uncovers the perpetual war and the slogans.”

His actions lead to being caught and questioned in room 101. Philosophy of empiricists reflects in the scene of torture in room 101, thought takes place in purely linguistic terms when the idea of controlling the language forces control over the thought and therefore mind control is possible through the manipulation of the language (3 or 4 fingers dilemma) Being captured my Ministry of Love for interrogation, and Charrington, the shop keeper who rented the room to them comes out to be an officer in the Thought Police. After prolonged beatings and psychologically draining torture by O’Brien, it is explained to Winston that “There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance” of the party’s reality; afterwards Winston is killed.
In USSR experiments with “linguistic reform” awaken thoughts on this utopian idea to ban words for racial difference and abolish racism. It resulted in horrible, ugly distortion into Communism affecting speech, creating controlled jargon, clichés, ritual phrases and slogans leading to invention a language designated to PREVENT THOUGHT. Ministry of Love organises police, Ministry of War is called Ministry of Defence despite politically changed name the role of these departments stayed the same. The project in 1984 was to reduce language vocabulary to few abstract euphemisms. They cut out all the words of passive opposition to the regime. You couldn’t say for example, “I am against the government” because these words have been obligated.

1. ‘Ingsoc’ (English socialism during the civil war with which the Party assumed power)
2. ‘Newspeak’ (all euphemisms)
3. Big Brother is watching you (pushing an effect of being constantly monitored)
4. Language is corrupted (War is peace, freedom is slavery, poverty is plenty, ignorance is strength)

1984 was a novel that described the regime of the party and an oligarchical collectivis society where life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One, world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, public mind control, and avoiding of citizens’ rights.

George always looked with fresh eyes and was not taken in by idea of “double think”.
Orwell worked on his novels in Spain where communism was responded to with resistance, he got shot after being called “objectively fascist”.

Inspiration:
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (movie and book)
Winchester University Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism Part III , weeks 9 and 10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck- the story of The Great Depression in 1930s

John Steinbeck was a journalist of a great style. The adventure with The Grapes of Wrath started of writing 6 articles that inspired John along with famous pictures of Northern Americans struggling in time of Great Depression in 1929. "In reality, farmers had been in a deep economic slump since about 1920, compounded by the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl in 1934 and the social tragedy of the Okies' immigration to California." Cotton fields that were so profitable for the farmers led to exploitation of the fields and there was nothing else left but dust storms and people were without work. Market was overloaded and in 1929 it fell and 16mln shares had to change their chains, and cut on spending. Banks were giving credits in high rates of interest, and having workers without jobs people had to start drastic saving. Even middle class people who were used to looking down on working class people, faced bankruptcy.

Homelessness was spreading and dust storms took over the farms. Having no money ‘Hooverville people’ (from president Hoover) had to give away their lands to the banks. 3000 people went West hoping for the better future which reflected a romantic vision of route 66 leading to California, which was a highway that was built in 1926 especially for the year of the depression. Californian’s benefited from high numbers of workers as they could keep the masses of cheap workers filling the market.

The controversial plot and anti-capitalist character of the novel caused numerous protests and even prohibiting of distribution of the book in some schools and libraries in the United States. In research for the book Steinbeck went to California with the workers and lived amongst them to get the feeling of what was it like to be ‘Okies’ and be forced to live in such minimalistic conditions as the migrants did. There was a lot of criticism also because Steinbeck made his wealth on the book and was accused of using the workers to become rich. On the other hand his book was seen as an effective propaganda written in a journalistic style, fact reporting piece. He was a journalist who was trying to make a difference and turned himself into a creative and empathetic author and therefore, he could have an angle and engage people’s feelings or even work readers’ reaction to make them act on what they read. And so he was fully entitled to be pro-migration, anti-fascist left wing propagandist.
In chapter 3 author uses prophetic allegory, when the journey of the family has descriptions in between events trying to say it’s not only one family’s problem but it’s an issue touching the whole society. Also, on the example of Wilsons, in the book as well as in the movie Steinbeck shows that there will be always help from poor people and that family is the key and that mothers keep them together.

The novel describes an incredibly visual and realistic story of an American family, sharecroppers, that was forced to leave Oklahoma because of the Great Depression that caused an incredibly difficult economic situation in the country. The action goes on in America and shows the problems of people living in Southern part of the United States that led to a mass migration towards California.
The novel focuses on the community and shows struggles of Northern American farmers who were brutally exploited in 1920 and 1930. Steinbeck made the book as visual and rich in descriptions as possible to be able to share his visual experiences with his readers. He waned to show his journalistic vision on problem of migration. He aimed to cause a reaction, awake anger, rise awareness and bring empathy to his reader hoping that after reading it something will be done about it. He tried to engage the reader with people’s loss, in America loosing a land is like loosing dignity. The author believed that there was a bond between the land and people (17 century philosopher, Locke had an idea that everyone has natural rights).

American’s constitution followed Locke’s idea and created a right to own a property and right to fight for that property, and these two were the key to the American dream. Grapes of Wrath describes how people tried to refuse to have their properties taken away as that was like a part of American’s DNA to owe the land. The book is made of three parts, and has a direct reference to a biblical journey of Egyptians to their promised land (Revelations) ‘we are the people of the promised land’, symbolically, Jim Casy a former preacher who lost his faith after committing fornication with willing members of his church, is identified with Jesus Christ(also his initials JC), and from his perception that religion has no solace or answer for the difficulties the people are experiencing (‘They don’t know what you are doing’said by Jesus Christ after being crucified).

The book won a Pulitzer prise in 1940s and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, and also a movie was created based on the novel.


Inspiration:
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback (book and film)
Winchester University Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism Part III, Lecture from week 7 and 8
http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/trevey/representing-america/represent.html

Winchester News Online week 6- Hero Student rescues pensioner from fire

Student risks life to save pensioner from blaze - made air and front page story for the website! FOURTH LIVE EDITION of WINOL

Story 6, Semester week 11 (7th December)



This week was not only my personal big success but also the best so far edition of WINOL. I brought quite a few ideas to the newsroom this Monday. I chased papers over the weekend and I found that at Southampton University there was a sex offender, University’s stalker, I searched into it and I received an email confirming that he has stalked one person in Southampton University’s area and is of no danger for Winchester University for now, the investigation only just started and I was advised that it would not be resolved as of this week yet. Another story that I researched was a Winchester Community’s Choir concert that was going to take place on Tuesday evening. I got permission for filming, behind the stage entrance and arranged interviews with producer and was allowed to interview singers. I thought of it as a good 'and finally story'.

Our editor suggested I investigated the outcomes of The Silent students Happy Homes campaign. I researched it and interviewed the SU president Jimmy who took part in the campaign and tried arranging video interview with Tommy Geddes, deputy v-ce councillor of the University of Winchester but he was not available for interview in the next few days. I also tried reaching PC Emma Port, who is part of the Safer Neighbourhood Team, which was also involved in the campaign to reach opinion from police side and was awaiting the reply from her. I decided to film “backs of the heads, out of focus images of drunk students going back from clubbing at 2am. I was determined to stay up and film it for my cut-a-ways and fillers for the story.

While I was waiting for 2am to come I received a phone call around 11pm from one of my colleagues that there was a fire in Stanmore next to his house. I took my camera and managed to get to the place and filmed a burnt house and found out that our university student helped in saving life of his neighbour pensioner. I spoke to a police officer on the place and he said that the cause of fire was still under investigation and no one from the fire brigade wanted to give me video interview so I managed to get visual footage and name of our hero student. I still filmed the images of drunk students just in case my footage of the burnt house didn’t come out well. Next morning one of the fellow reporters, Kaileigh managed to arrange an interview with our hero Edward Herbert from year 3, heritage management course. My footage was fairly good I was missing and active shots, opening shots of our hero as I only had time to film his interview.

After I had filmed the interview with Edward I went to film Maddeline’s story with her. We attended a memorial for our international student who died in a car accident just a week earlier. It was one of the worst experiences I have ever had. An hour of filming a chaplaincy full of grieving people after a young and talented Chinese students. Her parents came over all the way from China to pick up her body. As my family does not live in this country it was even worse imagining that if something like that happened to me my parents wouldn’t even be here but could only pick up my body. Mixture of strong emotions was going through our minds and while our eyes were full of tears we were still trying to remember that we were there to fulfil a duty as reporters. It was incredibly hard for me to focus on filming, thinking about angles, colours and framing while tears were flooding my eyes, sadness and pain of reality of being foreign and not being able to see my family. And empathy with the parents of the dead girl… all that was going through my mind but then a cold reserved determination came, desire to achieve goals in my life and realise how far I have gone, made me stay there and deliver a story that was in fact very personal and brought up my biggest weaknesses and thoughts of dying in foreign country and not being able to say the last words to my beloved … or not being there for them when they die…

I knew what I was going for when applying for journalism and experiences like that will be a big part of the profession; I will have to learn how to build an emotional barrier when death or cruelty is involved in the story. Keeping cold blood and not letting emotions to take over, despite how personal or emotional things will get- I will need to remember that it is my job and I am fulfilling my duty as journalist no matter how hard it will get. I would like to do it with passion and perfection to fulfil my ambition.

After the memorial I decided to cancel filming of the concert, James allowed for dropping that idea and told me to focus on my hero-fire story, also as I have not heard from the police officer so even though I had a footage of drunk students I stopped working on that one too.

My student story became a hit and made a front page of the Winol website. Memorial story was olso in the package, with which Maddline did an excellent job with editing and received a fantastic feedback.

I have not felt so rewarded and proud of myself during the course. Our team given ourselves plenty rounds of applause and it surely deserved it. We had top stories, we tried our best and gave 100% as always and that’s what made us proud and happy.

The bulletin was lead by equally great story and was by far the best we have done. We received 300 unique user sessions overnight (WINOL 459) so we were once again almost certainly the single most read media source on the campus. Rob Kirk of Sky was genuinely impressed and I announced that that we were in the 'Premier League' of BJTC journalism courses is sincere considering that that the majority of BJTC courses he deals with are at the MA level. We can be proud of our bulletin and development of features also thanks to Catherine's 'behind the scenes' short film.

Winchester News Online Week 5, Southampton Chaplains story

Chaplains facing axe from two of the Southampton Universities because of the budget cuts due to recession. LIVE BULLETIN III

Story 5, Semester week 10 (30th November)

My ideas for this week were not so strong but I still managed to bring fresh mind to the newsroom this week. There was a Crafted Contemporary exhibition and Merry Exhibition by local artists and craftspeople at the Winchester Discovery Centre which I was planning to film as an informative “and finally” artistic stories but I didn’t get a go ahead with it as they were too weak. And also reopening of a Portchester Library on Tuesday 1st December, which was still within Hampshire area but as we looked it up it was a little bit too far and so it felt not so relevant for our WINOL. I also kept chasing one of my ideas from beginning of November when I found out from one of the press releases that there was a proposal on reduction in Mileage Allowance for Council Workers in Hampshire and I wanted to take an angle on it researching on how would it influence performance of council workers especially in delivering important frontline services and looking after needs of the county’s residents. Unfortunately, the proposal has still not progresses.
I kept in contact with the press officer Suzie Southgate, Media Communications Manager for Cabinet (Policy and Resources and Environment) who issued the release, and she kept me updated, so I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make a story of that issue this week.

Having no strong ideas for story for this week James, our news editior, suggested I investigated the case of University chaplains facing axe from two of the Southampton Universities because of the budget cuts due to recession. I had to find out if our chaplain was likely to loose his position and how was it decided that those particular Universities were chosen. I video- interviewed Winchester Universities chaplain and went to Southampton University with Colin. Colin, our deputy News Editor knew the chaplain whose post was cut and on the place we found out that the students from Southampton University were leading a campaign against the decision of cutting the chaplain’s post.
While doing the research trying to get to the right people to talk to I managed to get in touch with the Bishop of Winchester, Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, chairman of Bishop’s Council and Standing Committee, responsible for making the decision about cutting the two posts, who wrote me an email confirming the decision and informing that the Winchester University’s chaplain is employed by University not but Church if England and that was why his post is not involved in the Diocese’s decisions.

Because of technical difficulties with editing I was worried that I wouldn’t make a deadline and also on the day of our bulletin going live we found out that our studio guest that was connected with the story I was covering could not come and so we had to call our university’s chaplain to come and replace our guest what meant that I had to cut his interview out of my package and re-edit it all. With Colin’s help we managed to construct new package with Southampton’s chaplain and couple of vox-pops that we filmed at Southampton University. We made the deadline and our University’s chaplain could be our studio guest for this week’s bulletin. The story made the TOP STORY OF THE BULLETIN.

From the technical side, we managed to organise a new front page and new way of displaying features. Our next push was concentrated on the visual side of the magazine and features working in which Catherine took a big part in having a great talent in photography.

This week’s Guest Editor was Chris Ship, ITV Political Correspondent who is also covering Westminster, and presents the main ITV News. He was generally impressed by the interaction between the internet and TV bulletin we are putting out and that we are actually tracking who was logging on to our website and what stories we were doing. He also liked the way we focused on the stories and the way we have worked out our targeted audience. He said that having to practice week in week out is invaluable.

In overall, WINOL's circulation has now overtaken both the Hampshire Chronicle and the Basingstoke Gazette which means that we continue to improve.