Read the following article and say what modal verbs could be used to describe the given situation.

 

£1,000 Fine for Knocking Down Castle

A Scottish laird who demolished his 200-year-old castle without permission has been fined £1,000.

Alistair Dickson, 53, was found guilty after a trial at Stirling sheriff court of arranging the destruction of crumbling Lanrick Castle, near Doune, despite warning from the local authorities that he could not demolish the Grade B-listed building.

Conservationists later attacked the fine as too lenient. They said it left the way open for landowners to destroy other historically significant buildings.

Dickson, who inherited the castle from his mother in 1984, had been accused during the trial of allowing Lanrick Castle, the former home of the Clan Gregor, to fall into decline. He claimed he had the building knocked down for public safety reasons.

The court heard that before demolition last February, Dickson had been served a notice from Stirling council officials warning that the castle was structurally unsafe and that action was required to secure it.

The council was criticized by the court yesterday for telling Dickson initially that he would either have to build a fence around the castle or demolish it, but later informing him that he was not authorized to demolish the structure.

Sheriff Wyllie Robertson, referring to the “inaptitude” of the council notices, said: “It frankly beggars belief that such a situation could arise.”

The court was told Dickson had consulted private contractors about putting fencing around the castle and they had told him it was not an effective deterrent. Dickson had said he repeatedly chased children from the castle fearing for their safety.

But Sheriff Robertson said Dickson had ample opportunity to erect a perimeter fence around the castle, which was granted listed status in 1971, but had made a “minimum effort” to do so. “I am unable to accept Mr Dickson was motivated by any reasonable concerns as to the safety of the public,” he said.

Brian Parnell, convener of Stirling Civic Trust, which had fought for seven years to save the castle, said it was disappointed at the outcome. “Unscrupulous owners will now think, ‘For a few hundred pounds, I can get this down.’ It will undoubtedly encourage demolitions elsewhere.”

(From ‘The Guardian’, abridged)

 

Role play. You are taking part in a debate arranged at a local TV station in Doune and are discussing the problem of preserving historically significant buildings in the area.

 

Role 1. You are Kristy Scott, a TV reporter, leading the debate. Introduce the problem to be discussed and ask the participants to present their ideas.

Role 2. You are Brian Parnell, convener of Stirling Civic Trust. Say what castle owners can (cannot) or must do to preserve historically significant buildings. Cite the example of Lanrick Castle and say what its owner was to have done to save it.

Role 3. You are Sheriff Robertson. Criticise the work of Stirling council officials on the example of Lanrick Castle. Say what they should have done to save it and what they must do to prevent possible destruction of other historically significant buildings. Specify what castle owners are to do to save such buildings.

Role 4. You are Patricia Lester, a Stirling council official. Say what the council can (cannot) do to preserve historically significant buildings. Explain why you were unable to save Lanrick Castle.

Role 5. You are Alistair Dickson. Explain why Lanrick Castle couldn’t be preserved. Say what the authorities should do not to let historically significant buildings fall into decline.

 

Mass Media

Reading and Speaking 1

 

5. Read the following article and do the multiple choice task givenbelow.

 

The Other Air Battle

 

“A lie,” according to a 19^th century epigram, “will go round the world while the truth is pulling on its boots.” This assumes, of course, that the boots can give chase eventually. But what happens when the lies and truths (and half-lies and half-truths) are pouring off satellites?

Before the Iraq war, the US government had been carrying on a huge propaganda campaign for months. That’s why the Pentagon allowed reporters – including Arab correspondents – to “embed” with troops, and why top officials like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wined and dined Al-Jazeera. But they lost that campaign badly. Saddam Hussein turned out to be a Madison Avenue Machiavelli, the Pentagon’s ingenious embed system didn’t work and Washington’s “message discipline” broke down. Even as the US military strove to avoid Iraqi civilian casualties, it found itself depicted as a bunch of baby killers in the only air war most of the world saw – the one that appeared on TV.

Al-Jazeera was to the Iraq war what CNN had been to the 1991 gulf war – the primary source for news worldwide. From the Middle East to Asia to South America, its reports were used by scores of networks that needed raw information and didn’t much care what Donald Rumsfeld had to say about it. This rendered many of the decisions made on what to air in the United States less relevant. At least two of the families of American POWs learned of their loved ones’ fate from satellite dishes that picked up foreign-language broadcasts using Al-Jazeera or one of the four other Arab satellite channels.

Al-Jazeera’s chief, Mohamed Jasem Al Ali, met personally with Saddam Hussein before the war. “Whether you like him [Saddam] or don’t like him, being a good reporter is about having good contacts,” Ali told NEWSWEEK’s Martha Brant from the network’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

The Pentagon tried to play the ball with Al-Jazeera. It offered the network four embedded positions with American forces, though only one – with a Marine unit in southern Iraq – came through because of difficulties with the Kuwaiti government. (Many Arab regimes loathe Al-Jazeera for its aggressive coverage of them.) The US State Secretary gave Al-Jazeera an exclusive interview, and the CENTCOM officers provided Al-Jazeera and other Arab reporters with plenty of personal attention, including a special room for prayer. Al Jazeera, in turn, said it would consult with the United States before airing pictures of dead Americans.

But it was no use. Statements from Iraqi officials were covered on Al-Jazeera as facts; comments from American officials were portrayed as “claims”. The phrase “so-called” always preceded “war on terror”, and the crawl line under the screen kept a running tally on civilian Iraqi casualties. Rumsfeld’s news conference was split-screened by Al-Jazeera with a wounded girl in an Iraqi hospital bed. While the Al-Jazeera reporter covering CENTCOM, Omar-al-Issawi, is professional and fair, his network downplayed many of his reports. At its best, Al-Jazeera treated the United States roughly the way the Fox News Channel treated anti-war protesters – with a half-hearted effort at balance, followed by withering commentary.

So it was not surprising that the war was playing poorly for the United States even in the countries where the governments supported it. “The trauma is unimaginable,” wrote the Indian daily Asian Age. “The suffering acute.” The Mirror, a London tabloid, juxtaposed a grinning President Bush next to a distraught Iraqi woman amid the rubble with the headline: HE LOVES IT. Italy was one of the only nations in the world with a consistently pro-American view on TV, and that’s because billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns 90 percent of the stations.

To keep the focus on brave American soldiers, the Pentagon was relying on the embed system, which both the military and the news media considered a huge improvement over the 1991 gulf war, when the Defense Secretary Dick Cheney blacked out most coverage. But after a week video from the front that looked fresh worldwide in the early days of the war – of tanks rolling through the desert or soldiers brushing their teeth – was more ho-hum, even for American viewers.

With the news turning worse for the Pentagon, some of the sheen was wearing off the system. Commanders in the field were giving embedded reporters realistic appraisals at odds with the rosier assessments of the briefing room – a gap that was angering Washington. Quite soon many embedded reporters found their satellite phones blocked for unexplained reasons. And the prohibition on identifying dead American soldiers for 72 hours (to allow for notification of kin) was informally extended even to pictures of unidentifiable bodies, where time to contact the family was not at issue.

This was part of a larger debate within the American news media. “Any time you show dead bodies, it is simply disrespectful in my opinion,” Charles Gibson of ABC News said to Ted Koppel on the air. Koppel, embedded with US forces in southern Iraq disagreed: “I feel we do have an obligation to remind people that war is a dreadful thing.” The rest of the world agreed with Koppel and aired unsparingly images of dead American POWs and Iraqi civilians.

The holy grail of coverage – still rarely achieved – is context. That’s why the minute-by-minute live reports during the day proved more disorienting and less useful than a traditional TV format – the evening news programs (both broadcast and cable), which filter, clarify and package developments rather than flinging them at the viewer.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

 

Choose the best answer to the following questions.

 

1. What does the quotation from the epigram “A lie will go round the world while the truth is pulling on its boots” imply?

A. A lie travels faster than the truth.

B. Lies are more widespread than the truth.

C. People are likely to believe lies rather than the truth.

2. In its pre-war propaganda campaign the US government

A. sent top officials to parties with Al-Jazeera journalists.

B. tried to win the support of Al-Jazeera.

C. provided reporters with complete information about what was going on.

3. What is implied by “message discipline” mentioned in the article?

A. Reporters should only give the information approved by US officials.

B. Reporters must be disciplined.

C. The messages sent by reporters must be accurate.

4. During the Iraq war Al-Jazeera news was

A. as good as CNN news programs.

B. quite contrary to what the United States meant to air.

C. the basic source of information for the whole world.

5. Al-Jazeera’s chief met personally with Saddam Hussein because

A. he found it essential for his job.

B. he likes Saddam as a person.

C. he wanted Al-Jazeera reporters to be stationed in Baghdad.

6. The article says: “The Pentagon tried to play ball with Al-Jazeera”, which means that

A. the Pentagon was aiming at open cooperation with Arab reporters.

B. the Pentagon was eager to come to terms with Al-Jazeera.

C. it wanted to get a wide coverage of the war.

7. Describing the way Al-Jazeera portrayed American actions in Iraq the article means to say that the reports were

A. biased.

B. one-sided.

C. not true.

8. The Pentagon’s emphasis on embed system of reporting proved a mistake because

A. embedded reporters showed too many tanks.

B. they didn’t show what American viewers wanted to see.

C. embedded reporters got realistic information which didn’t correspond to the news given at briefings.

9. How did American military authorities interfere with the work of embedded reporters?

A. They banned information.

B. They prevented reporters from presenting up-to-date information.

C. They persuaded reporters not to present certain information.

10. The article points out that the most important thing in accurate reporting is

A. a traditional TV format.

B. filtering, clarifying and packaging developments.

C. the right context.

 

Vocabulary. Read the article again, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Use these words in the further discussion of the problem.

Ingenious, (civilian) casualties, to depict smb as …, a primary source (for news), to render smth less relevant (irrelevant), to give smb an exclusive interview, the crawl line (under the screen), to black out smth, coverage, to be at odds with smth, to say smth on the air, to air smth.

 

Discussion

 

1. Do you think the author of the article is biased against Al-Jazeera? Why do you think so?

2. What means did reporters use to create a negative attitude to Americans during the Iraq war? Do you think such methods always work or do you think they are effective only under certain circumstances, for example, when viewers are ready to be receptive?

3. Do you think Al Jazeera was accurate in its reporting of the Iraq war?

4. Can you find examples cited in the article proving the significance of context for accurate reporting?

5. Do you think Americans had a right to ban certain information and to block satellite phones of embedded reporters?

6. Comment on the quotation from the epigram: “A lie will go round the world while the truth is pulling on its boots.”

 

Vocabulary 1

 

6. Study the meaning of the following synonyms and near synonyms. Make up sentences or short situations to show how you understandthe difference in their meaning.

1. to assume, to presume

to assume – допускать, предполагать; исходить из предположения

E.g. Let’s assume that this is true. – Допустим, что это правда. (Будем исходить из предположения, что это правда.)

to presume – полагать, допускать; (юр.) исходить из предположения

E.g. I presume from your statement this decision to be final. – Судя по вашему заявлению, я полагаю, что это решение будет окончательным.

NB. ‘ To assume ’предполагает принятие чего-либо на веру, без доказательства. ‘ To presume ’предполагает признание чего-либо верным с оттенком выражения личного мнения. В юридической терминологии ‘ to presume ’ означает признание чего-либо верным до тех пор, пока не будет доказано обратное.

2. casualties, losses

casualties – (воен.) потери (в живой силе)

E.g. The unit suffered heavy casualties.

losses – потери, урон

E.g. Losses in manpower and materiel – потери в живой силе и технике

3. fate, fortune

fate – судьба, рок

fortune – судьба, счастье, удача

E.g. to leave smb to his fate – оставить кого-либо на произвол судьбы

to try one’s fortune – попытать счастья

4. a channel, a canal

a channel – канал, путь, источник; телевизионный канал

E.g. It can be done through diplomatic channels.

a canal – канал (сооружение)

E.g. irrigation canals – оросительные каналы

5. acute, sharp

acute – острый, сильный

sharp – острый, резкий

NB. ‘ Sharp ’ и ‘ acute ’ означают высокую степень ощущения. При этом ‘ sharp ’ указывает на интенсивность и кратковременность состояния, а ‘ acute ’ – на его глубину и длительность.

a sharp pain – острая (резкая) боль

an acute pain – тяжелая (мучительная) боль

6. obligation, liability

obligation – обязанность, долг, обязательство

E.g. I have an obligation to help him. He’s always helped me out.

liability – обязанность, ответственность

E.g. liability for military service

NB. ‘ Liability ’ относится к ответственности (обязанности) по закону, ‘ obligation ’ – в основном к долгу по моральным соображениям.

 

Reading for Information

 

7. Read the article given below quickly and find answers to thefollowingquestions.

1. Why was Haiti’s most prominent journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, gunned down?

2. What accusations did Dominique make against officials of the ruling Lavalas Family Party?

3. What implicating information on Party officials did Dominique have?

4. Why does Dominique’s murder seem so peculiar?

5. What facts suggest that Dominique’s murderers will never be found?

6. Why has the president of the country shown so little interest in the investigation of his friend’s murder?

7. What challenges does the president face?

 

Haitian Murder Mystery

Bodies have disappeared. Suspects have died mysteriously. And the cast of characters who may have conspired to kill Haiti’s most prominent journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, is more colourful than any mystery writer could dream up. More than a year after Dominique was gunned down in front of his radio station, his death still haunts Haiti – not just because he was an icon of the resistance that fought the Duvalier regimes of the 1980s and ’90s, but because he was a strong supporter of the ruling party and a close friend of the president himself.

The Dominique case illustrates some of the phenomenal challenges facing the President: a breakdown in the rule of law and corrupt political elite, not to mention a political crisis that has led international donors to freeze $500 million in aid the country desperately needs. Hoping to improve Haiti’s sorry state, Dominique had used his pulpit to fight high-level corruption. He “was so close to power he underestimated the danger,” says Marvel Dandin of Radio Kiskeya, an independent station. “Those in power are determined to stay there.”

Sources close to the investigation believe the 69-year-old journalist was killed in retaliation for accusations he made during his popular radio program against officials in the ruling Lavalas Family Party. Many of the men are former military officers who joined Aristide’s cause in the 1990s. Dominique was privy to internal information that implicated the officials in shady businesses – from car theft to drug trafficking – according to investigation sources. They say Lavalas officials also wanted him out of the way because he posed a political challenge. He was prominent in a national “peasant movement”, and Lavalas politicians believed Dominique wanted to challenge the President in the next presidential election, which the President won by a landslide. (Dominique’s widow denies this.)

In the most serious accusations against those in power, Dominique suggested that Sen. Dany Toussaint and some of his associates were responsible for some unsolved attacks on Haiti officials, including the murder of Jean Lamy, slated to become chief of police. In fact, Dominique often accused Toussaint of being corrupt. Toussaint denies any wrongdoing. He refused to be questioned by the investigating judge and challenged the investigation after it was leaked to the Haitian press that he was a prime suspect. “I’m ready to defend myself,” he declared recently in the Haitian press. “The Senate can strip me of my immunity … I’m ready for battle.”

Dominique’s widow, Michele Montas, also a journalist, used her Haitian and international contacts to keep the case alive. But the investigation progressed slowly. Judge Claudy Gassant, a dapper small man with a quick smile, told NEWSWEEK he would finish the investigation no matter what. He ended up resigning in June and fled Haiti after he learned there was a contract on his life. He returned in July, after international pressure led the government to offer him protection. But the trail is growing cold. Last September the car thief who supplied the getaway vehicles to Dominique’s assassins died unexpectedly after an operation to remove several bullets from his buttocks (inflicted in an unrelated incident). When Gassant went to examine the body, it had disappeared from the morgue.

So far the President has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of his friend’s murder. He has bigger worries, like trying to reach a political accord with the opposition over charges that the election won by Toussaint and other Lavalas politicians was rigged. A two-month effort by the Organization of American States (OAS) almost produced a settlement that called for holding re-elections for 18 Senate seats and the entire lower house. Those efforts were thwarted by a rash of attacks by men in military uniform in late July, directed at several police stations, which left five dead and 15 wounded. The government and the opposition traded accusations over who sponsored the thugs.

Dominique believed that Lavalas (which means ‘cleansing’ in Creole) would survive as a movement only if party leaders honored “justice, transparency and fairness.” Getting to the truth about his assassination won’t end Haiti’s problems, but it might at least put the country closer to the ideal.

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

 

Now read the article carefully, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particularpoint to use them in the further discussion of the problem.

Resistance, a ruling party, a corrupt political elite, to freeze aid, a source, to do smth in retaliation for smth, to be privy to (internal) information, to implicate smb in smth, a shady business, to be prominent (in a movement), to challenge smb, to leak (a leak of information), a prime suspect, to flee a country, an assassin, an unrelated incident, to get to the bottom of smth, to reach a political accord with …, a settlement, to trade accusations.

 

Discussion

1. Do you think Dominique’s murderers will ever be found? Why? Who are the likely murderers?

2. Do you think the President would be able to get to the bottom of the murder if he chose to?

3. Do you think other prominent Haitian journalists must demand that Dominique’s murder should be investigated to the end? Can they succeed?

4. Do you think Dominique’s widow might also be in danger?

5. Can world public help bring Dominique’s murder case to the logical end?

 

Vocabulary