When the Reverend Alan Walton was going to drive home after Sunday’s sermon at Meadow Lane Church, Huntingdon, the boot of his car was badly smashed in and behind the windscreen wiper there was a note which said…
Foxes trapped in backyard
Early on Saturday morning when 10-year-old Jason Patel came down to have his usual bowl of porridge in the kitchen, he couldn’t believe his eyes when looked into the backyard. Two foxes were running around the bushes, obviously trapped without any way of getting out. Jason…
Activity 13. Match the newspapers’ titles with their descriptions:
FHM, Children’s express, Friends of the Earth, FORBES, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail,
The evening standard, 19, New Woman, The Daily Telegraph
1. …founded in 1827 and now London’s only
evening newspaper. It focuses on the top news
stories that will be in the national newspapers
the next day. Nearly half a million copies are
sold throughout the day – from the first edition
at 9 a.m. to the evening final.
2. … is an American weekly magazine with features
on business, finance, law and technology. Its
focus is national and international.
3 …is a British news agency run by young people
aged 8-18. This charity was started in Britain in
1995 and has two bureaus: London and Newcastle
(in the northwest of England). It aims to give
young people a voice in the media. Over 50 articles
are published every year in the local and national newspapers.
4. …one of the UK’s leading pressure groups, focuses
on protecting and improving the environment,
present and future.
5. …is a magazine which targets working women aged
25-34. It features articles on fashion, fitness, health
and psychology, as well as focusing on beauty
photojournalism. Over a quarter of a million copies
of the magazine are sold every month.
6. Over 2.2 million copies of the … are sold every day.
The paper has won many awards for its campaigning,
its news reports, special features and design.
7. …is a monthly magazine for women, published in
various international editions, which addresses
the issues that all women face – in love or work
and in the world. Its UK edition sells over 405,000
copies every month.
8. For him magazine is a full-color magazine for men
with features on famous people, fashion, health, food
and travel.
9. …is the best-selling of the four “quality” British newspapers,
selling over one million copies a day. The newspaper was
first published in 1855.
10. …is a British monthly magazine for women (aged 19) with
features on life, style and entertainment.
Activity 14. Listen to the message about widely read gossip columnist Nigel Demster and answer the questions suggested by the teacher.
Headlines
Activity 15. Newspaper headlines use a lot of distinctive vocabulary. They prefer words that are usually shorter and generally sound more dramatic than ordinary English words. Here is the chart with commonly used words in headlines. Learn them in order to be able to explain the meaning of the headlines.
Newspaper word meaning
Newspaper word meaning
Aid help
Axe cut, remove
Back support
Bar exclude forbid
Bid attempt
Blast explosion
Boost encourage
Clash dispute
Curb restraint, limit
Cut reduction
Gems jewels
Go-ahead approval
Key essential
Link connection
F) Make brief headlines from the following news stories:
a) Eighteen people were killed when the army tried to overthrow the government
b) A leading diplomat has been mysteriously murdered
c) The Prime Minister is trying to win the support of the coal miners’ trade union
d) The director of British Petroleum has been forced to resign
e) A member of Parliament was questioned by the police in an investigation into the use of illegal drugs
G) Express the following headlines in ordinary English
PEER DIES IN FLATS BLAZE DRAMA
BLAST TOLL RISING: WITNESSES SOUGHT
COMMONS STORM OVER DEFENCE CUTS
M – WAY DEATH CRASH: BRITON HELD
Activity 18. Read the article, discuss it and render.
Journalists under fire
On March 8, 2002, business reporter Natalya Skryl, 29, was assaulted outside the apartment building where she lived in the southwestern city of Taganrog. Skryl was struck a dozen times a blunt object and died shortly afterwards. To this day no one has been charged with her death.
Skryl worked as an investigative reporter for a local newspaper, Nashe Vremya. At the time of her death, she was investigating, among other stories, the struggle for control of Tagmet, one of the Russia’s biggest metallurgical plants.
The day before she was killed, Skryl told her colleague that she was going to meet a source to get some exclusive, secret information about the ongoing machinations over Tagmet, and hinted she would write something sensational. According to her fellow journalists, Skryl’s reporting had become more prying and analytical all round a couple of months before her death.
Skryl’s case is not the only unsolved murder of a journalist in Russia. According to the latest report of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) there have been at least12 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since President Putin assumed power in 2000. CPJ research has found that Russia now ranks as one of the five most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work in.
Perhaps most striking is the fact that journalists in Russia are not being killed while reporting on the scene, but just for their intention to write or investigate a story.
“Russia hasn’t changed much”, Igor Yakovenko, head of the Union of Russian Journalists says. “When the communist censorship disappeared, the other types of censorship became effective: censorship by Kalashnikov, judicial censorship and tax increases.
The Union of Russian Journalists has done its own investigations into unsolved murders of Russian journalists. Russian officialdom has responded indifferently to the problem. As Yakovenko points out, this is symptomatic of a larger problem: the government’s callous indifference to the lives of ordinary citizens.
“We still don’t know who is responsible for the sinking of the submarine Kursk as well as for the Nord-Ost or Beslan hostage-taking”, Yakovenko says. “ Russian law enforcement agencies and courts are very ineffective”.
In the case of Skryl, local police and prosecutors inspected the crime scene, her office, and interrogated young men from her neighborhood.
“The day after the murder, the police brought several young men, of Natasha’s age, to the police station”, said the victim’s mother. “And the policemen beat them, trying to make them confess to participating in the crime. The mothers of these boys then called me to tell me that it was my fault that their children were beaten up.”
In the beginning the prosecutors claimed the murder was a case of hooliganism, then they insisted it had been a robbery, but neither money not jewelry were stolen, only reporter’s notes. In the end, the investigators finally agreed with Skryl’s colleagues, who suggested that this was a contract killing because the journalist knew about damaging information about an ownership battle connected with the Tagmet plant.
Nevertheless, the prosecutors did not seek any evidence for a constant killing. They did not even question Skryl’s colleagues. Having found no suspect, local prosecutors halted the investigation.
“They don’t do anything, because it is much easier to stop investigating on the grounds of the absence of any suspects than to admit that this was a contract killing and search for the masterminds and executors,” said G.Bochkaryev, of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
More than two years have passed since the murder, yet no one has been charged. Both Skryl’s family and her colleagues requested information on the progress of the investigation at the local prosecutor’s office, but there was no answer.
The Glasnost Defense Foundation, a non-governmental organization that protects the rights of journalists, also requested information and wrote protest letters to the Prosecutor General’s Office, but this did not yield any results. CPJ sent another request to the Prosecutor General’s Office in August. It is still waiting for a response.