Bad Mood Makes us Careful...?

Well, maybe my reign of misery isn’t all bad: It turns out that “low-intensity” negative moods are linked to better writing than happy moods. As shown in the research of University of New South Wales Psychology Professor Joe Forgas, when we’re not walking on clouds or doing a happy dance, we tend to be more careful and mindful of details.

Forgas has worked extensively on the effects of mood, and his most in-depth work with writing was described in the 2006 article “When sad is better than happy: Negative affect can improve the quality and effectiveness of persuasive messages and social influence strategies.” In one experiment, Forgas’s guinea pigs—humans, in this case—watched either a comedy or a film on cancer before being asked to write persuasively. Others wrote emails after a similar “mood induction.” In all cases, the sad folks produced arguments that were more concrete and therefore more persuasive than the happy campers. Just by being in a bad mood, Forgas’s subjects unconsciously followed the advice I constantly give students: “Details matter,” “Give me an example,” “Back up what you’re saying,” and “Be more specific.”

Writing is just the tip of the mood-berg for Forgas, who recently gave a broad overview of his work in an article for Australian Science called “Think Negative! Can a bad mood make us think more clearly?” He found that people in a negative mood have a better bullshit detector when it came to urban legends, false trivia statements, and even the sincerity of facial expressions. They are more reliable eyewitnesses. They even overcome stereotypes better, as Forgas found in a disturbing yet revealing test, which revealed that those in a good mood had “...a significantly greater tendency overall to shoot at Muslims rather than non-Muslims... Conversely, negative mood reduced stereotype-based aggressive responses to Muslims.” Of course, no real shooting was involved, but those results are alarming: Being happy really does seem to make us dumb and dangerous.

One huge disclaimer: A “slightly negative mood” produced sharper thinking than a happy mood, but there’s no evidence to suggest that a really awful mood might do the same. Watching a sad movie with your spouse might do the trick; being left by your spouse probably would not. As Forgas said by email, “...we were basically producing mild negative moods, the kind of feeling state people have after watching 10 minutes of a sad movie, or learning that they did less well than they hoped on a test, or thinking about a sad episode in the past. The moods are mild and temporary, just the kinds of mood fluctuations people experience in everyday life. More intense or enduring negative moods may well have more debilitating effects.”

So why do crappy moods have such un-crappy consequences? Forgas said, “The most likely explanation is based on evolutionary theorising—affective states serve an adaptive purpose, subconsciously alerting us to apply the most useful information processing strategy to the task at hand. A negative mood is like an alarm signal, indicating that the situation is problematic, and requires more attentive, careful and vigilant processing—hence the greater attention to concrete information.”

I asked Forgas if there’s anything people can do when they feel the effects of affect surging through their mood ring. He said, “Direct conscious attempts to change/control moods usually do not work well—otherwise we would presumably be happy all the time, which is clearly not the case... The effects we found occur without people being aware of them, and as you note, instructions to control these effects are not very effective.”

That makes me kind of sad. Well, all the better for this column. As Dennis Baron wrote on his Web of Language site about Forgas’s work: “It isn't surprising to discover that in order to improve, writers first have to become more unhappy. After all, lemons make great lemonade, and the literary canon is full of authors who are depressed.”

When your nerves hurt...

I do not feel nervous breakdown very often. But when I do, I seem lucky enough to just bump into someone who cares and can say something to take the pain away. Rakhima is one of those friends who you would have no problem turning to, for help:)

Bless you, Rakhishka:)

Nothing To Think About

Not content with writing a book about nothingness, Anthony Gottlieb has been teaching a seminar about it to students in New York ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Spring 2009

There is a priceless exchange in the 20th episode of “The Sopranos”—the soap-opera about a New Jersey mobster whose stressful career brings him to the couch of a psychotherapist, Jennifer Melfi. Tony Soprano is annoyed with his teenage son, who has been moaning about the ultimate absurdity of life:

Melfii: Sounds to me like Anthony junior may have stumbled onto existentialism.
Tony: Fuckin’ internet!
Melfi: No, no, no. It’s a European philosophy.

Quite so; one cannot blame the internet for everything. Existentialism has roots in the 19th-century thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but it is most famously linked with restless French students in the 1960s and the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Sure enough, Anthony junior has been assigned Camus’s novel “L’Etranger” in class. It also doesn’t help his precarious state of mind when his grandmother bitterly tells him “in the end, you die in your own arms… It’s all a big Nothing.”

Well, plus ça change. It is not only on television that nihilist strains of existentialism continue to tempt young minds, and no doubt the minds of some grandmothers. Last autumn I taught a seminar about ideas of nothingness at the New School, a university in New York. Most of the students were already keen on Sartre and Camus, and among the many facets of nothingness that we looked at in science, literature, art and philosophy, it was death and the pointlessness of life that most gripped them. They showed a polite interest in the role of vacuum in 17th-century physics and in the development of the concept of zero. But existentialist angst was the real draw.

Existentialism may have flourished in the 1960s, but its themes are the oldest in the world—indeed, one puzzle about existentialism is why it took so long to come into existence. The eponymous hero of the Mesopotamian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, which was written in the second millennium BC, is plunged into gloomy thoughts of his own mortality after his beloved friend Enkidu expires. Gilgamesh belatedly realises that he, too, must die, and this fact makes all of life seem empty to him:

The river rises, flows over its banks
and carries us all away, like mayflies
floating downstream: they stare at the sun,
then all at once there is nothing.

Emptiness, void, the abyss: synonyms for nothingness provide the most popular metaphorical images for death. Winston Churchill liked to refer to it as “black velvet”. And just as morbid fears make people think of nothingness, the reverse is also true. In the 17th century, contemplating the empty vastness of the heavens, Pascal recorded in his “Pensées” that “the eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.” It is also terrifying, he wrote, to consider the “new abyss” freshly revealed in the minutest parts of nature. Pascal, it seems, found nothingness everywhere, though he noted that on the whole man is, perhaps fortunately, “incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges.”

How anything can emerge from nothingness is a question which the ancient Greeks answered by saying that it can’t. There must, they reasoned, have always been something. But that seems to raise a further question, which was given its most concise formulation by Leibniz at the end of the 17th century: why is there something rather than nothing? Another German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who died in 1976, argued that this puzzle was the most important question of all, though he never quite got round to answering it. Heidegger was infamous for his bizarre neologisms and contorted language, which were especially evident when he wrestled with nothingness. He even invented a verb to describe what nothingness does: in the English translation, it “noths”. Well, maybe it doth, but this does not get us very far.

One might think that science will eventually be able to explain the matter; certainly many cosmologists have said so. But there is an eternal snag, because any answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing will end up chasing its own tail. Any law of nature or mathematics, any purported set of physical conditions, indeed any fact at all counts as “something”, and is thus itself part of what is supposed to be explained. Every explanation must start somewhere. But there is not, and never could be, anywhere left for this one to start.

Faced with the apparent impossibility of making much headway with nothingness, poets have resorted to cracking jokes about it, many of which are abominable puns. Most of these revolve around the double meaning exemplified in the title of a memoir on death by the novelist Julian Barnes, published last year: “Nothing to be Frightened of”. His readers may find some comfort in the fact that, however broodingly terrified they are by their own mortality, Barnes has an even worse case of the disease.

Shakespeare, too, made much merry play with the word “nothing”, and not only in “Much Ado”. Whether or not something may come of nothing is a recurring theme in “King Lear”, and there is a particularly convoluted verbal joust between Hamlet and Ophelia—some of which escapes contemporary readers unaware that in Elizabethan slang “nothing” can mean “vagina”. One verbally agile philosopher remarked in an encyclopedia entry that it is perhaps not Nothing that has been worrying existentialists, but they who have been worrying it. One wonders what Tony Soprano would have had to say about that.

"I think "Critically", therefore I am"

We all think, but may not think well. Critical thinking, however, is a reflective process that is clear, precise and purposeful.

While critical thinking is often considered an allied asset of the VIA strength Open-mindedness, Socratic logic shows that open-minded thinkers are not necessarily critical thinkers. Consummate critical thinking is a rich and complex strength that is comprised of a constellation of many other strengths, including open-mindedness, curiosity, love of learning, persistence, integrity, and self-regulation. Stanovich claims that one must have knowledge of a person’s overall thinking process in order to qualify an individual’s open-mindedness as general and persistent strength. The following definition of critical thinking comes from The Delphi Report on Critical Thinking, a qualitative research model produced by a panel of forty-six experts from philosophy, education, ocial sciences and physical sciences:

The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances permit. (p.3)

The Foundations of Critical Thinking

Gentleman and Scholar

The intellectual foundations of critical thinking go back to the Greek root word “kritike,” which means the art of judgment. Socrates has been anointed in many circles as the antecedent of critical thinking (i.e. the Socratic Method). Plato and Aristotle emphasized the examination of words and actions of others, along with individual thoughts and actions. Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Thomas Aquinas and Charles Darwin all subscribed to critical thinking as an essential systematic process to navigate the world.

Gender and Critical Thinking

Women’s voices were marginalized in the area of critical thinking until the late 20th century.Carol Gilligan (1993) posited that women may structure their thought processes a bit differently than men do. In her book, In a Different Voice, she claims that men tend to work on a hierarchical ordering of thinking, rather than a relational, connected pathway of thought more commonly attributed to women. Other notable voices include Nel Noddings and Mary Field Belenky. Noddings (2003) focused on a moral approach to critical thinking as a prerequisite to a foundation of “logical consistency.”

Belenky considered four different ways that women tend to think critically in asserting their authority and capabilities: silent knowing, received knowledge, subjective knowledge, procedural knowledge and constructed knowledge. They have enriched the trait of critical thinking from a perspective that has strong implications for men and women alike.

Contemporary theorists such as Richard Paul and Robert Ennis (1982) emphasized two senses of critical thinking. In the weak sense, the critical thinker adequately sees his or her own and as well as others’ positions. The strong sense enhances the capacity of the weak sense with a deeper understanding and more encompassing worldview.

The Criteria for Critical Thinking as a Persistent Strength

Critical Thinking passes muster as it satisfies all ten criteria for a character strength. Some of the criteria are described below:

Criterion 1: It is fulfilling, because it leads to greater and more complex understanding and the respect for differing points of view.

Criterion 2:It is morally valued, in that it systematically examines differing points of view of self, and the consonant and dissonant attitudes of others.

Criterion 4: Non-felicitous opposites include wishful or magical thinking, mistrust of reason, as well as disinterested, indifferent, and uninterested thinking.

Criterion 6: Critical thinking cannot be decomposed into other strengths. However, the strengths of open-mindedness, curiosity, love of learning, persistence, integrity, and self-regulation are all essential ingredients that make up critical thinking.

Criterion 10: From an institutional perspective, the development of critical thinking rubrics in American high schools and colleges is a strong reflection on the importance of critical thinking and the future of education (Facione et al., 1995).

Summary
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I would not give a fig (care) for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Consummate critical thinking is simplicity on the other side of complexity, a constellation of components that are systematically employed to function as the 25th strength of character.

САМОЕ КОРОТКОЕ ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

Всякое свидетельство о трудностях и страшных временах нашей жизни, особенно, когда это касается отдельных людей и человеческих чувств — не столько художественная литература, сколько документальный снимок, более или менее четкий, того, какими были люди в этом времени.

Это, в конце концов, частица большой общей истории.Есть великие свидетельства, есть маленькие находки, но все они лежат в одном музее.Сколько раз этот простой и страшный сюжет был в рассказах и на экране. Но литература как вымысел — это все-таки сказка. Конечно, важно, что за этими придуманными героями в «Журавлях».

Другое — когда за этим стоит живая судьба.Именно по этим причинам, мне кажется, грустная и светлая повесть Анны Гудзенко (Блиновой) — это частичка чего-то важного в общей копилке настоящего.

Алексей Баталов

Народный артист СССР

18 июля 1997 г.

Facebook recieves an Uzbek back up

Facebook Inc., the high-profile Silicon Valley start-up, looked far and wide before landing an investment this week from Digital Sky Technologies, and with it, indirect backing from controversial Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov.

Facebook disclosed Tuesday it has received a $200 million investment from Moscow-based Digital Sky, valuing the closely-held, Palo Alto, Calif.-based company at roughly $10 billion. See story about Digital Sky's investment in Facebook.

Usmanov, listed by Forbes as the world's 450th-richest individual with a net worth estimated at $1.6 billion, is a significant stakeholder in Digital Sky.

Though he now receives most of his public attention as a result of his ownership stake in British soccer club Arsenal, Usmanov also owns stakes in iron ore and steel producer Metalloinvest, telecommunications company Megafon and daily business publication Kommersant.

Kommersant reported Tuesday that Usmanov raised his ownership in Digital Sky to 32% from 30%, by purchasing a portion of the stake owned by investment fund Renaissance Partners.

A representative of Renaissance Partners was not immediately available for comment, nor was a spokeswoman for Usmanov. But a Facebook spokesman said that Usmanov's stake in Digital Sky came up during the due diligence process, but wasn't considered a factor.

"With any type of significant deal, there is a lot of due diligence that takes place," spokesman Larry Yu said. "Assuming all goes well with that process, the deal will proceed."

In addition to interests acquired through his backing of Digital Sky, Usmanov, who was born in Uzbekistan, owns other Internet properties including a stake in SUP, which bought blogging service LiveJournal from Six Apart in 2007, and in online video service Newstube.ru.

Usmanov has attracted a great deal of media attention as a foreign owner of Arsenal, one of Britain's most high-profile soccer clubs. In addition, he's drawn widespread questions in the news media about his personal connections and his past.

In an interview with the Guardian published in November, 2007, Usmanov fielded questions about his six-year imprisonment at a penal colony in the 1980s, and about his relationship with Uzbek businessman and boxing official Gafur Rakhimov. Rakhimov was denied entry to Australia for the 2000 Olympics, and later reportedly won a defamation case against author Andrew Jennings, who had linked Rakhimov to organized crime in his book "The Great Olympic Swindle."

Usmanov called the fraud charges that led to his imprisonment false, and noted that a "rehabilitation order" from the Uzbekistan Supreme Court has since cleared him of any wrongdoing. He acknowledged in the interview that he knows Rakhimov, though only "since he was a neighbor of my parents." See Rakhimov's personal Web site.

Still, Usmanov continues to draw criticism. Former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, for example, has persisted in questioning Usmanov's character on his Web site.See Craig Murray's Web site.

In addition to its $200 million investment, Digital Sky has also agreed at a future date to purchase $100 million worth of current and former Facebook employees' shares in the company.

Facebook has long been seeking out a means to allow employees to cash in their shares, in hopes of rewarding and retaining them.

Digital Sky joins a roster of Facebook investors that includes Microsoft Corp.(MSFT 20.13, -0.21, -1.03%), hedge fund manager Peter Thiel and venture capital firm Accel Partners. 

BBC Presenter is attacked by a Labour Peer on air

A Labour peer turned on a BBC presenter demanding to know how much she was paid during a live interview on MP expenses.

Lord Foulkes clashed with Carrie Gracie on the BBC News Channel after she asked if MPs who had abused their expenses should pay the money back.

He accused the media of ignoring the good work MPs did and demanded to know how much she was paid.

Told it was £92,000 a year, he said she was being paid "nearly twice as much an MP - to come on and talk nonsense".

He added that BBC presenters such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds "to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. The vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you."

Lord Foulkes was appearing on the BBC News channel to defend Commons Speaker Michael Martin's role in the ongoing row about MPs' expenses.

He said there were "far more important things going on in the world" - but became agitated when Ms Gracie asked why Mr Martin had tried to block the publication of expenses.

"The intention always has been to publish this. Perhaps one of these days you'll do a thing about how much the BBC is being paid. We're paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for presenters who come on three days a week."

Ms Gracie tried to ask another question and apologised for interrupting, prompting the Labour peer to tell her: "You're not at all sorry to interrupt me - every time an MP comes on you constantly harass them. How much are you being paid?"

Lord Foulkes, a former Scotland Office minster, is the only member of the House of Lords to also sit in the Scottish Parliament. He stood down as an MP in 2005.

Watch the video here

Your arrogance is so annoying

I am not a big philosophy fan! But sometimes, simple observations help so much. And there are so many annoying things around thinking of which will do you no good. But observing them, I have discovered, is rather helpful. Arrogance! Jesus, I never was that annoyed before.  Those to whom much has been given sometimes suffer from arrogance; or rather the people around them suffer. Arrogance is doubly a pity, because the talents of the arrogant serve primarily themselves. The arrogant assumes his views and opinions are The Truth. 

In arrogance, natural confidence goes sadly awry. Rather than the self-assurance born of knowing his own strengths and limitations, arrogance admits no limits. The arrogant brooks no weakness in himself and may even secretly rejoice to find flaws in others. But imperfections are inherent in being human, so the arrogant, like everyone else, always has feet of clay, however well hidden they may be. Fearing exposure, haughtiness forms a hard shell masking inner emptiness.

The arrogant sees first himself. Rather than offering respect to all, arrogance demands respect from all. Dismissive, arrogance poisons all relationships: with himself, with others, and with the spiritual depths. Worshipping the grand but empty edifice of ego, the self-important sees others as less human, as cardboard cutouts, relating as I-It rather than as I-Thou, in Martin Buber’s apt phrase.

Like so many self-centered traits, arrogance in others activates the arrogance in us, or its opposite of timidity and self-doubt. Confronted with arrogance, we might erupt indignantly or we might lapse into dwelling piteously on our own limitations. We then infect others and the vicious cycle continues.

A subspecies of arrogance, spiritual arrogance, takes at least two forms. In the first, the victim concludes that he has made progress, perhaps due to having a few deep experiences. Or he prides himself for being part of the in-crowd, or for being friendly with the teacher, or for being the teacher. Whatever the reason, the spiritually arrogant mistakenly determines that he or she is special and then vaunts that assumed eminence over other people. This may be explicit in his outward behavior or implicit in his inward self-image. When a spiritual teacher contracts a case of spiritual arrogance, hubris typically leads to abuses of his unfortunate students.

In another form of spiritual arrogance, the true believer aggressively proselytizes, pushing his own path as the one and only way, browbeating people by claiming that they will not be saved without the chosen path, or that they are misguided. In actuality, this wide Earth harbors many valid and effective paths. The appropriate path for any particular person is a highly individual discovery, and cannot be decided by anyone else. It sometimes happens that when people first enter a path, an obsessive infatuation sets in. They may see their path as the one true way and attempt to convert others, even over protests of disinterest. Maturity brings respect for and acceptance of the validity of other paths.

All forms of arrogance lie well beyond the pale of true spirituality. Freedom from arrogance begins with seeing. At first we may only receive hints from how our behavior affects those around us. Then we might glimpse, in action, our overwrought and inflated assumptions about ourselves. Gradually, we learn to allow ourselves, in our own estimation, to be at the same level of importance as others: not higher, despite our gifts, and not lower, despite our defects - just ordinary. This is the antidote to arrogance and its second greatest fear: to be an ordinary person. How bloody marvelous!?

Are you Cocky? Or do you have Balls?

Uncocky people don’t like cocky people. This is likely because you are both jealous of them and repulsed by them at the same time. They represent both what you hate and what you aspire to be and have. You want their confidence, their swagger. You also want their jobs. But how do you get what they have without turning the asses that they are?

You need balls.

Having balls is an unappreciated strength. Having balls can open doors and create opportunities like you could never imagine. Having balls will change your life.

There is a person I know very well. He is taking something related to computers in school. The school sucks. They are not providing the education he paid for. This is a concern.

One of the classes he’s taking has to do with databases. His teacher, hereafter referred to as “Database Dude”, is not actually a teacher but a database administrator at a very big company nearby. He didn’t think it was necessary to provide his students with a textbook or tutoring or even open office hours. He comes, he babbles, he leaves.

This person is concerned because many people are failing this class and he doesn’t want to be one of them. Database Dude is being unhelpful, as is the college’s administration. This person does not know what to do.

His class is divided into three types of people.

Group One does not worry because they are certain they will be fine. They are smart and if they fail this course, f*ck the college, they don’t care.

Group Two is generally hysterical. “OhmygodwhatamIgoingtodo?” whines Group Two. “I’mgoingtofailandIwon’tgetmydegree! ThenI’llnevergetajob! I’llnevergetlaidagain!”

Group Three consists of one man, the very person we started talking about in the beginning of this post. He’s calling in favors from every nerd he knows. He’s asking his brother-in-law, his neighbor, some guy his wife met on the internet - everybody. He’s going to figure this out if it kills him. He’s close to knowing more about databases than Database Dude.

Pretend you’re in this situation. You want to be in Group Three.

Cocky people are in Group One. Wimpy people are in Group Two. People with balls are in Group Three.

I’m not going to give you a nice, handy list of ways to get balls, but you need them to run a home business. Balls is not something you can Google. (Well, you could, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t get the kind of results you were looking for.) You just need to be conscious of balls. You need to channel balls. You need to look your life in the eye and say, “I have balls.” (This is very different from looking your life in the balls and saying, “I have eyes.”)

Christine at Self Made Chick has a post called The Closed Mouth Doesn’t Get Fed (or something like that). When I read it, I was thinking of writing a post about asking for what you want, but I’ve decided not to bother. Hers is better. This is a tremendous tutorial on one of the most important aspects of balls. Please go and read it. Seriously, this is one of the most important things you can do for your career.

When you’re done, can someone figure out how to get a keyword density on how many times I’ve said “sucks,” “cocky”, “balls”, and “ass” in this post?

And they ask me why I didn’t run a picture.

Are we too selfish to change?

A hundred years ago, waste was considered immoral. Throwing out something that still worked was just plain wrong.

What changed that? Marketing. Factory owners wanted to keep their production lines churning and factory workers wanted to keep their tummies full. Repetitive consumption seemed like the answer.

Slowly but surely we convinced ourselves that new was better than old. It became ok to throw things out. It became ok to waste. In fact, out with the old and in with the new kept the economic wheels turning. Buying became downright patriotic.

The result of this old messaging is that, now, everybody wants the newest iPod, the biggest SUV, a huge vacation. And no one is going to give these things up voluntarily, right? Wrong.

Because history shows us that acquisitiveness, a twentieth century phenomenon, is not based on selfishness (which presumably would have been present from the Stone Age). Instead, our consumption arose because of newly-learned social norms and values.

So, we can change the message.

For many years, in this country, smoking was trendy. Now it’s not. The message changed. When I was young, people threw their wrappers on the New York streets without a thought. Now people sneer if you drop your trash. The message changed.

Why wouldn’t the same be true of our use of planetary resources? For many years, as a culture, we thought it was great to get more and use more, and that was the message.

People argue that changing course is impossible. You can’t, they say, change human nature. But we don’t have to change human nature.

All we have to do is change the message.

Where the Truth Lies - Trust and Morality in PR and Journalism

Examination of a single, widely-reported story in the press on any day of the week will yield as many different versions of the story as newspapers in which it is covered. At the top of the field, the Financial Times will offer a largely factual account and, at the bottom, the Daily Mail, Express, Sun, Mirror and Star will offer simplifications, distortions and emphases designed to produce the greatest sense of drama and reflect a worldview of the editor’s own imagining, rendering the actual ‘story’ almost redundant.

Into this situation, the Blair administration introduced counter-measures – generally characterised as ‘spin’. As a result, the public was increasingly faced with a pitched battle between one set of distortions and another in a continual struggle to present the ‘truth.’ That neither side seems prepared to accept their part in this situation represents a fundamental, comprehensive atmosphere of self- delusion across the political classes.

The stated purpose of the essays collected in Where The Truth Lies is to examine the relationship between journalism and PR. As it stands, the relationship is one of mutual mistrust. The mechanisms of the public relations industry are frequently attacked within the book by journalists who refuse to countenance the idea that PRs are to be trusted, when in reality so much of what newspapers print is barely re-written PR copy. There is an understandable frustration expressed on this point by several of the essays by PR agents, who moan that while journalists are happy enough to take the copy and work it into something which fills space, they continue to disparage those in the field of PR who are saving them the effort of having to leave to office to find their stories.

The fact of the matter is that PR can fulfil a useful role: making available useful information, much of which is worthy of press attention. Developments in medical science, the latest figures from leading businesses, and reports commissioned by charities are just a few of the fields which are fed to the press in this way. Granted, they are presented with a certain level of gloss and with an agenda, but this does not render the basic facts presented any the less true.

By the same token, it should be acknowledged that the organs of the British press are not solely concerned with the accurate reporting of events. They are also in the business of trying to entertain their own demographic of readers, many of whom - it must be assumed - appear to respond most readily to stories which feature elements designed to frighten, scandalise, or enrage. It must also be recognised that journalists, as a result of these tendencies in their readers, pander to such tastes in their writing.

That this collection, edited by Julia Hobsbawm, coincides closely with the launch of the networking organisation and magazine, Editorial Intelligence, which is also edited by Julia Hobsbawm, gives a fairer idea of its true purpose - to legitimise with pseudo-academic essays a position which has been widely derided as shaky at best. Hobsbawm believes that journalists and those working in the PR industry have a great deal in common, and seeks to build stronger links between the two professions. It is ironic that virtually everyone contributing essays to the book believes precisely the opposite. The cleverness here is that by even deigning to discuss this spurious proposition, all the contributors unwittingly give further credence that it is an idea with any basis in reality at all.

The fact that these essays span such a wide and diverse spread of experience within journalism and PR, and occasionally the intersections between them, also allows the proposition a greater chance of survival thanks to the complete lack of any real scrutiny.

The main problem with the collection, as touched on by a number of contributors - clearly frustrated by their lack of a clear brief, is that there is very little clarification of terms. ‘Truth’ is a difficult concept at the best of times. Doubly so when discussed solely by journalists and PRs. Truth is, after all, something of a moot point - while ‘fact,’ its less ambiguous cousin, is a far more useful commodity, and one which is mentioned far less often within the pages of this book. The very title of the collection – Where The Truth Lies – aside from being a neat pun, is a blind alley.

The sheer range of types in both journalism and PR also goes largely unaddressed. It is suggested that over 50 per cent of what one reads in a newspaper nowadays is the product of PR work, but there is no further breakdown of what this really means. There is no effort made by anyone to distinguish between, say, the public relations operations of a major record label and government ‘spin doctors.’ This is a serious fault as there is a world of difference between the news that Puff Daddy has bought a yacht and whether, for instance, a new commitment to a vast expansion of Britain’s nuclear energy industry is in everyone’s best interests. There is also a qualitative difference in the intentions behind these divergent fields. While entertainment PRs are essentially interested in securing free coverage for the celebrities or products that they represent, Government PR is concerned with putting its message across on stories which will usually be reported anyway as a matter of course. Similarly, journalism is frequently treated as a single entity: lumping the numerous foreign correspondents of the broadsheets into the same bracket as the ‘3AM Girls’ makes it impossible to make a single sensible point about either journalism or the effect of PR upon it.

A majority of the authors of essays in this collection tend to stick to what they know. The PRs tend to write frankly, or pleadingly, about how important their jobs really are, and how the world couldn’t function without them, in ways that - in the worst cases - cause the reader to wonder how on earth the writer has ever managed to eke out any sort of career making a case for anything. Similarly, many of the journalists writing in the collection exalt their profession in the most heightened Platonic terms imaginable, as if every article ever written for a newspaper was hewn from a rock of pure truth with tools of sheer objectivity.

The spread of articles offered in the collection is patchy: Peter Oborne simply rehashes, for the umpteenth time, his arguments against government ‘spin,’ which have already been written up into one book (The Rise of Political Lying) and countless columns in the Daily Mail, Evening Standard and Spectator. Simon Jenkins offers a characteristically Olympian viewpoint on the entire issue and indeed provides a far more sensible overview than the one written by the nominal editor - but offers only the lame conclusion that: ‘This collection is by way of being a conversation. But it is a conversation to a purpose. It is between professionals with many conflicting interests, but one that is shared, the maintenance of conversation as such. Long may it last.’

There is a hilariously po-faced ersatz-academic essay complete with diagrams of ‘ethical decision-making models’ from Anne Gregory who, we learn, is ‘the UK’s only full-time professor of public relations at Leeds Metropolitan University.’ Elsewhere, Emily Bell and Kim Fletcher offer the sort of fare to which readers of the Media Guardian are well used by now, except that cut loose from the useful moorings of news-related relevance their usually astute analysis drifts into generalised navel-gazing. Elsewhere, contributors ignore the brief of the book altogether and offer simple narratives concerning a single experience in their journalistic career (Janine de Giovanni) or more general points about international journalism (Nick Fraser).

The remainder of the book is stuffed with the thoughts of the editor’s friends and various non-entities, while the list of major omissions gives serious cause for concern. Where are the essays from Roy Greenslade or Stephen Glover - surely two of the most incisive commentators on the modern press? Or Piers Morgan, the former newspaper editor most obviously in the thrall of modern celebrity marketing? Or David Yelland, the former editor of the Sun who went on to work in PR? Or from the other side the almost mythical embodiment of modern PR, Lynne Franks? Or Max Clifford? Or Alistair Campbell? Or Peter Mandelson?

What this book fails to address is precisely that which it sets out to explore - what level of effect on journalism does PR have? Does PR compromise or enhance the public’s understanding of the world? And, is there sometimes a case to be made suggesting that PR offers a better degree of truth than journalism?

There is some considerable discussion in the book devoted to the notional ‘rise of spin’ in British politics - the blame for this being placed squarely against the door of the New Labour party machine. This pays little attention to the fact that in 1994, along with a party in some disarray, Tony Blair inherited a largely hostile national press, in the face of which, a bit of positive self-promotion seems like the only sane response.

How much actual effect newspapers and journalists have on their readers remains an unknown quantity. The claim that it was ‘the Sun wot won it’ appears to lose some value, when successive surveys find that the paper’s readership both fail to correctly identify its political bias, and, if they vote at all, vote in patterns demonstrating significant independence from its editorial line. The fact remains that journalism in this country is not a creature producing clear, unvarnished truth across the board, and this collection suffers for a refusal to face this fact. Similarly, despite Hobsbawm’s best attempts to argue to the contrary, most journalists understand that the job of the public relations sector is not to provide them with accurate reportage, but to present their clients in the best possible light. And herein lies the flaw of Hobsbawm’s project: any attempt at a greater degree of collusion between the two camps than already exists should be viewed with deep suspicion.

«СЕЗАМ» ЁПИЛДИ! «УЗБЕГИМ ТАРОНАСИ» ЭШИКЛАРИ ОЧИЛДИ…

Internet saytlarini kuzata turib, mana shu maqolaga duch kelib qoldim! Boshida rosa qotib kuldim, endi sizlar bilan ham baham ko'rmoqchiman!
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-Кимга дейсизми?! «Сезам»дан кетган бошловчиларга! Агар тинглаётган булсангиз тунги соатларда Квартет тайм дастури билан икки эзма радиобошловчилар Рустамбек ва Саидаъло «Сезам»нинг саркит услубини такрорлашяпти. Яна уша бачканаликлар…Кеча бир эфирида кандайдир балик ови билан боглаб «тилла баликчадан тилак сураш» суровномасини уткашди. Бу дастур шахсиймикан?! Икки бошловчили бир-бирини мактагани мактаган, бир-бирини куз-куз килишдан бошка иши йукмикан?! «Узбегим таронаси»нинг уз формати бор! Чегарадан чикиш яхши эмас! «Узбегим»чилар айнан мана шуни эътиборга олишса яхши буларди.

FM даги «КЕЛДИ-КЕТДИ»лар

Радиолар- келди-кетди манзилларига айланиб колди. Бугун кулогинг бир радиобошловчи овозига FM 101 да урганиб улгурмай уни бир он йукотиб куйиб кейин FM 102,7 тинглаб коласан ё яна бошка… Айланма даврада бир бошловчи у шохга, кейин бошкасига, яна бошкасига сакрайди. Аслида бундай ишлар «мода» га 3-4 йил олдин кирганди…Болаликда «Гулливернинг саёхатлари» асарини укиган булсангиз керак. Бугун эътиборингизга «Rjлар саёхатлари ва саргузаштлари» ёхуд FM даги «КЕЛДИ-КЕТДИ»лар руйхатини хавола этамиз:

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5.Ферузабону «Ёшлар»да «Аср» ахборот янгиликларини укиб, сунгра «Сезам»да Жахонгир Махсумов билан биргаликда антика тунги сухбатлар олиб борган бошловчи, не сабадир «Водий садо»сига утиб олди… Бошловчиликдан мухаррирликкача кутарилиб, хозир урнини Нурмухаммад Исроиловга бушатиб берганмиш…

6. Нурмахумад Исроилов «Узбекистон» каналида ишлади, сунгра «Сезам»да портлаб чикди, овози билан купчиликниузига «бемор» килиб куйди, сунгра бу мафтункор возни «Узбегим таронаси» да тинглай бошлагандик, анча ойлар олдин у водийларни яёв кезганда дея, «Водий»га учиб кетди!

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«THE BEST RJ»

Бу номинация голиби ким булиши мумкин? Сизнингча айни пайтда энг рейтинги юкори радиобошловчи ким?

(Куйида номзодлар номига хазил таърифлар хам келтирилган. Уйлаймизки, бошловчиларимиз бу кичик хазилларимини тугри тушунишади.)

1.Зайнаббегим Юнусова (тутикуш)

2.Нурмухаммад Исроилов (Навоийнинг кариндоши)

3.Лазиза Азиззода (аслзодаларга ухшамокчи)

4.Ширин Гофурова (думбоккина ширин киз)

5.Музаффар Мирзабеков (ё ха, ё йук!)

6.Жамшид Хожиниёзов (эзма)

7.Рустамбек (озгин бачкана)

8.Дилмурод Гуломов (кичик огма)

9.Саидаъло (нотаниш бачкана)

10.Вахобиддин Зиё (аклсиз аклли)

11.Насриддин Асриддинов (сифатдош ва равишдош)

12. Жахонгир Мирзо (кичкина декча)

13.Ферузабону (зирапча)

14.Сардор Рахимхон (бачкана бошловчининг хамкасби)

NY near the Ocean....