Some reporting about history fails even the remedial level test.
The BBC News website has a story about how a 19th century autopsy on an Egyptian mummy probably got the cause of death wrong.
It’s a story now because University College London has just published its own study, in the journal Biological Sciences, reckoning that the female [...]
Entries from September 2009
September 30, 2009
The BBC’s Not Great On History, Either…
September 29, 2009
Pretentious? Moi?
The current Oxford Times (24 September) has an odd article in it about an Oxfordshire life coach who has changed her name to reflect her “flamboyant” personality.
It’s not really news. It’s more of a puff piece that serves to promote this life coach. We wouldn’t be surprised if she had changed her name just to [...]
September 28, 2009
The Guardian Fails GCSE History
Great front page story in today’s Guardian, headed:
“Mad, Bad Backbiter: Byron’s Dig At William Wordsworth”
Headlines like this always attract our attention. We like history, we like Byron, we like a bit of scandal.
But although it’s a great piece by Mark Brown, the Guardian’s Arts correspondent, about some of Byron’s gossipy letters, which are about to [...]
September 28, 2009
Sack Postman Pat!
Poor old Postman Pat.
A stalwart of kids’ TV for years, he is clearly of advancing age (despite his son Julian having been at primary school for the past 20 years) and we think it’s time that Royal Mail considered retiring him.
He’s clearly no longer fit for the job.
We give you Postman Pat: SDS (BBC2 weekdays, [...]
September 25, 2009
Octomum – Disturbing Viewing Of A Disturbed Woman.
There’s a lot we could write about Nadya Suleman, mother of 14 young children, including octoplets. But after viewing Octomum: The 8 Baby Mother on Sky One last night, we feel oddly numb and would rather not give her too much additional publicity.
There was one telling moment in last night’s over-extended, over-intrusive reality-docu-soap event though.
At [...]
September 24, 2009
Where Have All The Sheep Gone?
Interesting advert in Monday’s Guardian (yes, we know it’s not Monday now, but it takes us a while to read a whole paper… which is why we often end up reading online versions).
It’s a Guardian Reader Offer for a pair of sheepskin boots, a la Ugg, but these are called Gumbies.
They’re a bargain at £49.99, [...]
September 23, 2009
Size Matters… To Journos.
There was an odd piece in The Guardian on Monday, which made us wonder who is perpetuating the debate about size in fashion.
Emma Sibbles wrote a report on London Fashion Week (page 5 of the main paper) with a sub-head of:
“Size 14 model row casts only cloud over event”
Apparently, designer Mark Fast chose to use [...]
September 18, 2009
Watch Corrie And You’ll Die! Kind Of.
If you’re a viewer of Coronation Street, then you’d better not read this.
New statistics have been published in The Sun (and repeated on Yahoo here) showing that Coronation Street is losing 1,000 viewers each week – because they’re shuffling off this mortal coil.
One-third of the programme’s viewers are over 65, which, Yahoo reckons, means:
“they’re 165 times [...]
September 17, 2009
Show Me, Show Me – Actually, Don’t Bother.
We’ve written previously about the big hole left in the world of toddler telly when Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee stopped presenting the CBeebies links in January this year.
They formed a fab double act, Chris covering for Pui’s slightly wobbly singing voice by enthusiastic guitar playing; Pui curbing Chris’s tendency to over-camp the most [...]
September 16, 2009
Why Cooks Should Stay In The Kitchen
Here at Journopig Towers, we have one particular bugbear. It’s people who make a success for themselves in one sphere of life, then get their egos massaged a bit too much and assume that they can therefore be a success in another, unrelated, sphere of life. When, in fact, they are singularly lacking in talent [...]
