mediations: Jodywatch

Mediations: Philip Young

Mediations comments on public relations theory and practice, with an emphasis on social media and communication ethics. Philip Young is project leader for NEMO: New Media, Modern Democracy at Campus Helsingborg, Lund University, Sweden. All views expressed here are personal and should not be seen as representing Lund University or any other organisation.

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Scoop!
Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society.

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You will be pleased to learn that Jody Dunn, the Lib Dem candidate for Hartlepool has a new cat, Jeremy (left). More interesting for media students are the other blogs that are springing up around the campaign, including the amusingly-titled Guacamoleville, which bills itself as 'Comprehensive coverage of the Hartlepool by-election, blog-style'.

Taking a slightly different tack is DunnIn. Tag-lined "Jody Dunn is the Darlington-based barrister who wants to be MP for Hartlepool. The thing is, she is EU crazy and soft on drug abusers..." it includes an allegation that the despite professing backing for British business Jody's blog is hosted in Germany, and highlights a number of quotes that suggest her peripatetic lifestyle is somewhat at odds with her claim to be the 'local candidate'.

DunnIn is hosted by someone calling themself MonkeyBoy. The authorship of Guacamole is not apparent on on first glance but the style and content do seem rather similar to Hartlepool 2004: "A day by day account of the campaign to elect a UKIP MP for Hartlepool", hosted by Peter Troy, 'a British subject', of Sedgefield Co Durham. Follow the About me link and
you discover that Peter is 50, his favourite music is Land of Hope and Glory and his favourite film, The Dambusters. Oh, and his favourite book is The Great Deception - a secret history of the European Union.

Google 'Peter Troy' and you quickly come to AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER TROY: LEAD CANDIDATE for the UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY in SCOTLAND . Are they by any chance related?

Comments

Indeed Jodi is a barrister who lives in Gainford, Darlington. And she works in Middlesbrough. But she continually hides this and maintains she is a "local hartlepool" barrister. Why does she do this?
Whether she is pro-EU is neither here nor there. But she does avoid policy on her blog and easily re-directs people to site with her policies. This obviously prevents anyone asking any questions what-so-ever. so the blog is a bit of a farce, when it maintains that it is inter-active

Posted by: Quaker Watch | September 04, 2004 at 11:26 AM

Well... you can ask people questions by writing, ringing, emailing - in fact by lots of ways. Are you saying Jody Dunn has refused to answer questions through any and all of these ways - or are you fibbing with your claim that no-one can ask any questions?

Just as you "forgot" to mention that she works in Hartlepool I guess ... :-)

Posted by: Mark | September 04, 2004 at 01:01 PM

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