Salut!

Support Associated Press as it stands up to the White House bully

For my latest posting at Substack, I rise in defence of the historic US news agency Associated Press, which has been stripped on President Donald Trump’s orders of White House press access. Its crime? To stick to its style book and continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by that centuries-old name ….

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A person’s common law name, I remember being taught decades ago, is the name by which he or she is known. Billy Fox can accordingly become, legally, Jimmy Knox simply by persuading everyone that’s now what he should be called.

If US law also sees it that way, Donald Trump’s weird executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America may be above formal reproach. If still weird.

 

No matter that for 400 years or more, the world has come to no harm by referring to that body of water as the Gulf of Mexico. Americans, or those who settle for saloon bar brawling in place of statesmanship, naturally welcome the change

 

Alterego's phoyo of the logo on the former AP building in New York

Shamima Begum: the only moral decision is to make her face UK justice

This is not a post that will bring me popularity. It's not meant to. It is the argument I make against the British Government's decision to strip Shamima Begum of citizenship, even though she has no other viable nationality, because as a child she ran off to join the Islamic State.

I do not in any way seek to minimise the horrific nature of that sickening death cult or to excuse Begum for any crime she may have committed. But I strongly believe that there is no moral or intellectual case for what the Government has done. Bring her back, punish her if it is proved that she has broken the law - as civilised neighbouring countries do in comparable cases  - and strive to ensure she is genuinely deradicalised or, if suspicion remains, monitored

My Comment piece for The National (which consents to its reproduction here)...

Photo, issued by the Met police, of the girls as they began their dark adventure in 2015. Shamima Begum is on the right

What have Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby done to deserve a Le Pen link?

A likely cinema hit if the success of its two predecessors is a guide: Qu'est-ce qu'on a Tous Fait au Bon Dieu? What have we done to deserve this? or, to use the weak English translation Serial (Bad) Weddings came out in France a few days before the first round of the presidential elections. It is well acted, especially by Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby as the narrow-minded Verneuils whose disappointment at their daughters' choice of men gives the film its theme.

It has nothing, strictly speaking, to do with the campaign but the script does mock, among other aspects of French society, the sort of attitudes that lead people to vote for xenophobes (as they did in large numbers in my own Mediterranean town). I made the mischievous connection in this comment piece for The National, reproduced with thanks to the editor for her consent ...

In cinemas across France, audiences laugh out loud at the third film in a hugely popular series depicting a bourgeois, provincial French couple's struggles to accept that their four daughters have avoided suitably solid Frenchmen in favour of Maghrebi, African, Jewish and Chinese husbands.

Against the backdrop of a presidential election in which race plays a key role and would be dominant but for the cost-of-living crisis, it feels impossible not to make the connection, however innocent the timing of the release.

Whether or not they all realise it, the filmgoers' amusement is necessarily laughter at precisely the attitudes that have helped propel Marine Le Pen from the marginalised political wilderness of the far right to the brink of presidency.

Reporting the Troubles. As Putin's odious war on Ukraine rages, journalists remember another conflict

 

 

A few minutes ago, I noticed on Facebook that a great French pal of ours, Hervé Amoric, is among the small army of brave journalists covering Putin's horrendous war, in his case from the western city of Lviv (Putin calls his invasion, and slaughter of civilians, a peace-keeping mission and apologists in the West swallow it whole).

Please stay safe, Hervé, and anyone working with you - I am thinking of poor Oleksandra 'Sasha' Kuvshynova, a young Ukrainian 'fixer' killed with a cameraman yesterday.

Hervé is based in London and Belfast. Few journalists know Irish politics and the story of Northern Irish Troubles better. A second volume of Reporting the Troubles has just been published; if a third edition should ever be planned, Hervé should be encouraged to contribute.

 

Meghan and Harry, the wickedness of newspapers and the hypocrisy of broadcasters

 

Back in 2011 and 2012, at the time of the Leveson inquiry and report on press standards, I wrote a lot here about the issues raised. Oprah Winfrey's cosy chat with neighbours in a part of Los Angeles reserved for the super-rich has reopened the debate.

On LBC radio, Sheila Fogarty fulminated on the evils of the tabloids. And who was presented as villain-in-chief? None other than Piers Morgan, somewhat better known as a broadcaster than a newspaperman since his last editorship ended in dismissal in 2004 in the row over allegedly faked photographs showing mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British troops.

His new offence? Saying he did not believe the Duchess of Sussex's responses to the unchallenging questions asked in the interview, including her account of having suffered mental health problems to the point of contemplating suicide.

Since Morgan has no known medical expertise, it was arguably a meaninglessly insulting attack. And it was made on the telly!

I am an old, mainly print journalist who is proud of his trade. But it should be obvious from what I have written at Salut! and elsewhere that I make no defence of tabloid (or broadsheet) wrongdoings.

In fairness to Fogarty, she did squeeze in some praise for the tenacity and good work of newspaper journalists. But she is guilty of the same hypocrisy I have highlighted. It is worth reproducing one of the pieces I wrote here in 2012; most of my points hold good eight years on ...   

By Josep Renalias - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

David Graves, exemplary reporter, and now his wonderful widow, Diana. RIP

 

Diana Graves was laid to rest beside her husband, David, at Hanwell cemetery, west London on March 1 after a sad but uplifting funeral at the beautiful St Barnabas church in Ealing. Deeply moving tributes were paid by both sons and Heather Mills, a former colleague of David's (and mine) and close friend of Diana's.

 

Diana Graves was perhaps known to only a few Salut! readers, generally those who knew her late husband, David, a great colleague and friend.

Diana died on Sunday (Jan 31), far too early, after battling pancreatic cancer for several months. She had contracted Covid while in hospital for the tests that unexpectedly revealed her much more serious problem but I am not aware that the virus played any part in her death.

Diana remained philosophical, brave and even optimistic despite knowing the gravity of her condition. She broke the news to me in a hands-free call I took as I drove through glorious vineyards in the south of France. She was eager to talk and full of hope, speaking with great determination about reviving her idea of an evening out we'd planned - Diana, my wife Joelle and our friends Stuart and Jenny Higgins - until different travel arrangements and then lockdowns intervened. She was adamant it would one day go ahead.

When we spoke again, after my return to the UK, Diana was still a bundle of confidence and joy, excited about work to update the family home in Ealing, only a coupe of miles from ours, while she stayed with a sister in Shropshire. To my immense regret, we did not speak again.

Joelle and I are devastated by the news and our daughters, Christelle and Nathalie, share the pain now felt by Diana and David's boys Oliver and Nathan.

This is how, in 2007, I remembered David's tragic death on the fifth anniversary of it happening, and how I had witnessed Diana's magnificently dignified handling of the wretched task of telling the boys.

By all means check the link  and see the kind words left by readers at that time about David. I will not transfer the comments here as this, essentially, is about Diana. RIP two great friends

 

Diana, left, with her sister, Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                               Photo of David courtesy of the Telegraph

Scoop: a reporter's reporter who made his mark unbribed and untwisted

 

 

 

One of the first books about journalism I read was Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, Scoop. And 82 years after it was published, Scoop is back.

This time, the author is not the long-dead Waugh but the much alive Terry Pattinson. Closer to 80 than 70, he not only rattles off a stream of gags and one-liners on Facebook but has found time for a hugely entertaining book charting his rise (or descent?) from the Blaydon Courier to Fleet Street.

From those honourable origins in local paper journalism in the North East of England, he went on to work for the pre-Murdoch Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror.

 

Charlie Hebdo: the gathering tensions in France behind a barbaric new attack

Try as I might, I could not persuade Maitre Lucie Simon, the lawyer for 'Youssef', the hero of the latest attack on Charlie Hebdo, to talk at any length to me, let alone put me in touch with her client.

 

His actions merited a wider world audience. Me Simon put the phone down (later explaining that she had tried three times being doing so to make it clear she did not wish to speak to me). Happy to report we're friends again - 'don't take it personally,' she tells me ... and after a lifetime of having uncommunicative people slam the phone down, I don't.

 

This is likely to be my last piece for The National from France before my big return to quarantine in the UK next week. When I say I cannot wait to be back, I mean back in France in early 2021 if our government of clowns (copyright Joe Biden) hasn't destroyed all foreign travel by then ...

 

A 25-year-old Pakistani immigrant has been charged with the attempted murder of two journalists stabbed outside the former offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in an attack underlining a rising terrorism threat in France.

Prosecutors say Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, who initially claimed to be 18 and to have arrived in France as a minor, admits carrying out the attack after being enraged by the magazine’s republication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

He allegedly made two reconnaissance visits in the days leading up to last Friday's attack in Paris but had no idea Charlie Hebdo had moved premises after the 2015 massacre of 12 people, including journalists, cartoonists and a Muslim police officer.

The slow death of newspapers

Until last week, this had been the scene at la Maison de la Presse since my return to France. The main newspaper distributor went broke and for nearly two months, this - plus a blockade by affected employees - prevented most national French newspapers and magazines, and all international titles, reaching already struggling vendors in a large area of southern France. We are now seeing the French publications back on sale but no sign yet of the usual selection of foreign ones. As if the printed press did not have enough problems on its plate ... 

Mike Amos: the memoirs of a local newspaper legend

 

 

Mike Amos is a great friend, a fellow product of Shildon, Co Durham and the man responsible for the chance in journalism that my deeply unimpressive educational background failed to justify. As my first chief reporter, running the Bishop Auckland district office of the Northern, later Evening Despatch (and later still defunct relic of provincial evening newspapers), he was an invaluable mentor. To boot, he's the godfather of my elder daughter and once accepted my Blonde on Blonde double album by Bob Dylan in settlement of a stubborn debt.

Declarations of interest over, Mike is beyond sane doubt a giant of journalism, a multiple award winner and arguably the giant of journalism's regional newspaper form. A reporter bold or vain enough to publish memoirs finds his or her work of notoriously little interest to those not in the trade or having blood ties to the author; Mike, with his newly published autobiography is one exception (another friend contemplating his own may yet prove another).

My copy is paid for and in the post. Given the state of postal services, I'll be lucky if the book has yet crossed the Channel and Mike's cheque will probably arrive just after Brexit causes the pound to be devalued still further. Here, in a third-person but as-told-to kind of piece intended for the Shildon Town Crier but delayed by that organ's non-appearance during the Covid-19 crisis, is a snapshot of what to expect from the book ...