I'm working at the foreign desk, here's a list of stories I've covered there:
Monday:
- Swedish Greenpeace activists protest at the Forsmark plant. I phoned up Swedish Greenpeace then was embarrassed because I don't speak Swedish. Still, good story for a first day.
- Staff at a Chinese factory return from strike.
- World in Brief. I did Iran, Nepal, India and Germany.
Tuesday:
- US Military leaves behind dangerous waste in Iraq.
- Canada and Columbia sign a free trade agreement (plus a blob about human rights of trade unionists in Columbia).
- World in Brief. I did all of them this time.
Wednesday:
- Human Rights Watch releases a report on female genital mutilation. This one was quite a challenge, partly because the subject matter is so delicate. I had no problem with writing about numbers of people killed in various situations, but this one was different.
- French government wants to raise the official retirement age. This was a late page lead, and I got to phone up various French trade unions.
Thursday:
- Wikileaks declared they were ready to release another film. I like Wikileaks and it gave me the opportunity to use Twitter as a source.
- Migrant workers in Gibraltar don't have full rights. I doubt this was reported elsewhere.
Friday:
- Sweden approves new nuclear power plants. Directly related to Monday's story.
- United Auto Workers union unhappy about Toyota's new non-union car factory. Proud of this because the point about wages took an lot of trawling through various documents in research.
- World in Brief. I did United States, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan.
I think that's everything, I also did a few World in Briefs on Wednesday and Thursday.
I saw the gatekeeping process in action, every morning myself and the foreign editor picked the day's stories, we rated them in terms of priority, then picked the ones we wanted to cover.
On Thursday another journalist from home news came to cover the foreign editor, he explained the world view of the Star. For example, if people die in floods in Bangladesh it's not covered in the mainstream press, because the mainstream press doesn't see Bangladeshi lives as important, the Star does, to a certain extent.
The Morning Star scorns 'popular celebrity culture' and refuse to cover gossip stories about the personal lives of professional celebrities. Under their 'reference to elite persons' they include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.
They support socialist and anti-imperialist governments. Under their 'reference to elite nations' they include Bolivia and Gaza. Although some could argue that they don't recognise the concept of elite people or elite nations at all.
The Morning Star looks out for dissent, direct action, protest and the voice of the proletariat. This is why strikes and industrial disputes are nearly always reported. Whenever a strike is declared the editorial line always sides with the workers, their demands are published and bosses are demonised. This is how propaganda is applied.
As many stories come from western news agencies they are sometimes checked through state-run news agencies, or verified by trade unions on the ground. I did this for a few stories. It's scary to see how much journalism truly consists of blindly rewriting press releases from a news agency, and how all the papers all have the same four or five news agencies who basically dictate the news agenda. I regularly rail against 'bad journalism' so it was interesting to see how my Tintin-esque romanticised vision shored up against the practicalities of deadlines. John Pilger is all very well and good but news is news after all and needs to be punctual, this constraint means innacuracies can spread like a virus and their source becomes ever more hidden with every word printed. Journalists are supposed to hold authority to account and make heard the 'voices of the voiceless' otherwise they become little more than a tool of the establishment.
The paper is a tabloid, but it keeps a formal writing style, which I had to adapt to. It does not wish to patronise it's readers, but to make the news accessible to all. It avoids distracting readers from events with words they might not understand, which maintains a practical approach to language.
When I finished the foreign editor gave me a book and the staff had threatened to go on strike. Indeed "co-operatives operating in a Capitalist system are forced to exploit themselves".
On my last day I tracked down the Marx Memorial Library to see if they had any archive coverage of the Wapping print worker's strike. They were closed.
I saw the gatekeeping process in action, every morning myself and the foreign editor picked the day's stories, we rated them in terms of priority, then picked the ones we wanted to cover.
On Thursday another journalist from home news came to cover the foreign editor, he explained the world view of the Star. For example, if people die in floods in Bangladesh it's not covered in the mainstream press, because the mainstream press doesn't see Bangladeshi lives as important, the Star does, to a certain extent.
The Morning Star scorns 'popular celebrity culture' and refuse to cover gossip stories about the personal lives of professional celebrities. Under their 'reference to elite persons' they include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.
They support socialist and anti-imperialist governments. Under their 'reference to elite nations' they include Bolivia and Gaza. Although some could argue that they don't recognise the concept of elite people or elite nations at all.
The Morning Star looks out for dissent, direct action, protest and the voice of the proletariat. This is why strikes and industrial disputes are nearly always reported. Whenever a strike is declared the editorial line always sides with the workers, their demands are published and bosses are demonised. This is how propaganda is applied.
As many stories come from western news agencies they are sometimes checked through state-run news agencies, or verified by trade unions on the ground. I did this for a few stories. It's scary to see how much journalism truly consists of blindly rewriting press releases from a news agency, and how all the papers all have the same four or five news agencies who basically dictate the news agenda. I regularly rail against 'bad journalism' so it was interesting to see how my Tintin-esque romanticised vision shored up against the practicalities of deadlines. John Pilger is all very well and good but news is news after all and needs to be punctual, this constraint means innacuracies can spread like a virus and their source becomes ever more hidden with every word printed. Journalists are supposed to hold authority to account and make heard the 'voices of the voiceless' otherwise they become little more than a tool of the establishment.
The paper is a tabloid, but it keeps a formal writing style, which I had to adapt to. It does not wish to patronise it's readers, but to make the news accessible to all. It avoids distracting readers from events with words they might not understand, which maintains a practical approach to language.
When I finished the foreign editor gave me a book and the staff had threatened to go on strike. Indeed "co-operatives operating in a Capitalist system are forced to exploit themselves".
On my last day I tracked down the Marx Memorial Library to see if they had any archive coverage of the Wapping print worker's strike. They were closed.
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