So here we are in interesting times. Virus, Brexit and the Stay Put President all in a packed few days - and Christmas/New Year too. Not boring stuff, actually - but trying to sift truths, actualities and facts is not easy. We get hand pressed patties of news shaped to the Channels editorial. I know personally of a highly informative  interview that was withdrawn - and the probable reasons for it. So we get such news as is good for us - or an attitude someone is trying to project. In this home we watch many  news channels daily,  read world wide news papers such as are on line and discuss assorted info that we have gleaned - but yet I have this nagging feeling that there is so much more going on .......... History in the Making.... yes, there is, but a true record? Where  might that be?

Priscilla,

I think your questions are also mine. I already started somewhere on this board a thread about the journalists and the history "in statu nascendi".
And coincidentally I started a question on the "agora" the tumbleweed suite of the French Passion Histoire
http://passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=42262
As I regretted that I had pointed to a specific one in a thread that had to be more general about the problem of "document makers" (they translate with "documentary producer" and I found that there are schools to become a "honest" producteur de documentaires) and I can't edit my message as overhere, I have added an addendum as you see, unanswered till now.

If I understand you well your question is: if journalists or, in my case, documentary makers make statements, in that way contributing to the corpus of "history writing", where are then the peer journalists, the peer documentarists, to control the utterings of those people as in a real "university (or other establishment)" do about history writing?

One wonders perhaps in that climate, why there aren't no more conspiracy theories and false claims?

Kind regards, Paul.

Priscilla,

I reread your message and perhaps your key sentence in it is?:
"History in the Making.... yes, there is, but a true record? Where  might that be?"
 
and in that sentence the keyword?:
"a true record?"

I watched yesterday two German documentaries: One about Maximilian I of Austria and his grandson Charles V (Carlos I in Spain). As I have some remarks on it, I will make a new message about it.

But lamenting yesterday about documentaries about history and if a true record of the reality was given by the documentary producer and asking if it hadn't do be a real historian, who provided the content of these documentaries, I see now that in these documentaries it were all historians who were interviewed to compose the documentary. That is already better in my opinion than to let it to the competence of one sole producer with no antecedents in the academic world?

But even that is perhaps not free of interferences from whatever corner, as for instance political ones.
Perhaps each time a legal "court" of academici, who try to debunk the statements made in a given documentary ?

And for honest "journalism" I have even lesser solutions to let emerge the "true record"...
Perhaps an international team of top journalists, backed by all kind of experts of several disciplines, subsidized by the UN to seek for the failures in honest journalism   ? At least for the serious cases of world importance?

Kind regards, Paul.

Priscilla wrote:

..... History in the Making.... yes, there is, but a true record? Where  might that be?

Your point seems to be that the present does such a lousy job of recording itself that the so-called historical record can only ever then be viewed with suspicion. This is of course correct, and so has it always been. There are far more restrictions, impediments and restraints preventing the objective recording of human activity than can ever be overcome by even the most intelligent and open minded recorder. And for every open minded and objective recorder who manages against the odds to add to that general record there will always be a far greater number of contributors, often with much more ability to dictate that which should be handed to posterity, whose combined effect of heavily filtered additions to the record is to render the whole project as suspect. Your suspicion is being directed in real-time to the events as they are being recorded, which is a healthy scepticism to have at any time anyway, and that very same suspicion is therefore completely justifiable too when examining the recording of the same events in retrospect. But there is at least one advantage you have when judging history over when you operate in the moment - armed with the knowledge that suspicion of veracity is always handy to maintain, retrospection then affords you the luxury of time and distance which, if profitably used, improves the chances of your scepticism being brought to bear on your analysis with practical results. It might be a case of "better late than never" and of very little use in tackling real time dilemmas but then the prospect of what "never" might engender in this context when it comes to intelligent analysis of human activity is a horrendous one too.

The notion that "history is written by the victors", probably the most well known acknowledgement of such filtering in action and the strongest tautological warning to never relax such suspicion, isn't quite the truth however. People like Churchill aside (who did make a stab at fulfilling the maxim quite literally), it is probably more correct to state that others do the writing while the victors are the ones who best manipulate and impose the filters through which this writing can then proceed. Armed with this insight one can at least therefore examine the historical record and know where and when one can "read between the lines", discount data as false or exaggerated, separate hearsay from fact, and otherwise apply one's facility for critical thinking. Or at least one knows one should even if identifying absolutely all the instances where one can is an onerous task, made more difficult anyway by the awareness that one is fighting one's own biases as much as those of the authors. However when it comes to onerous tasks this exercise is a walk in the park compared to trying to do the same thing in real-time with current events, where "victors" often are far from being determined - something you might think should therefore contribute to a greater chance of impartiality in the reportage but in reality which simply adds so many subjective filters to the mix that the record under construction becomes even more impenetrable, more garbled, and consequently all the more difficult to separate the chaff from the wheat in terms of that which can be relied upon as "true".

In short, if faced with a choice between deducing veracity and dependably impartial analysis from the reporting of current events versus that which has made it - for whatever reason and however subjectively - into the historical record, a study of history is far more likely to yield insight into current affairs than vice versa. History matters.

nordmann,

thank yor for your as ever to the point analysis. In fact I was waiting for it even before I sent my message.

It is perhaps therefore that the 100 years rule exists? To rule out political bias? To have historical perspective in the meantime? To have a more open mind as one is not anymore physically involved in the events?
Although a lot of bias can still exists after 100 years? As I have thought to have seen in some historical and even non historical documentaries, as for instance lately some French jingoism in historical documentaries by a Frenchman?

And as I understand you, history writing is the more easier way versus the writing of history in statu nascendi? And of course I understand that having learned to do a sceptical research about the past can help you to understand and detect the bias in today's emerging events.

Thanks again for your analysis and kind regards, Paul.

Oh Gawd, nord, you don't do sound bites, do you - I reckon a real hammer and tong argy bargy with you would take a weekend before one could get a word in..... however, that said I admit your last bit is easier on the eye and final ......  (stage cue. exit left slam door.)

 I shall read this soon with thanks for your bothering....  and when my head is clearer... and the just arrived Tesco delivery is sorted.

nordmann wrote:

 Armed with this insight one can at least therefore examine the historical record and know where and when one can "read between the lines", discount data as false or exaggerated, separate hearsay from fact, and otherwise apply one's facility for critical thinking.

How easy you make it sound. But that "facility for critical thinking" should always be used also to take stock of ourselves as we reflect - with perhaps the tiniest amount of self-congratulation? - upon on our fairness, our impartiality, our lack of bias in our historical studies and comments. Denial operates everywhere, even in the most intelligent of historians. The lenses through which we view the world - and its various histories - are usually smudged with something, or distorted in some way. But how we all hate to admit such a thing.

Yes, I think that should go without saying, which is why it remained assumed in my point and understood as self-evident.

However the other point I made is, in my view, of far more relevance in the context of the discussion. A huge majority of the biased filters, or lenses as you also refer to them, through which we are almost inevitably obliged to view the world and our history as humans upon it, have been thrust upon us by others, and then of course there are those which no agenda beyond social convention has also interposed between us and the subject matter. We may bring one of our own to the table, but we are negotiating countless others, some even intentionally imposed upon our view in which distortion is the aim and not just an unfortunate consequence. In the case of history and current affairs, both of which document human behaviour, the eye we turn to examining the record is therefore that of the housefly, and never with the 20-20 ocular clarity we might assume we employ.

Your point about "denial" of this is therefore moot. A study of history alone should at least impart to the student one undeniable fact, namely that such denial of personal bias one inevitably brings to the exercise is not only pointless but not even borne out by the evidences which permeate the subject one is studying. Which is why I also said that awareness of this might therefore yield in its own right profitable outcome when studying history in particular, and certainly has a better chance of doing so than when one's critical gaze - even when it falls as much on oneself as on the subject matter - is applied to current events and their reportage. The sheer plethora of filters one is negotiating in that exercise, including one's own of course, makes for a much more daunting challenge if the point of the exercise is to glean dependable data from the input available.

nordmann wrote:

Yes, I think that should go without saying, which is why it remained assumed in my point and understood as self-evident.

But the whole point is that it is not "self-evident". Unconscious bias is just that - unconscious. The "self" refuses steadfastly to acknowledge the "truth" that is often "self-evident" to everyone else. But, Lord, how it leaks out all over the place.

Take you and Brexit (this is not a personal attack - just an observation; if you are guilty, Lord knows I am too - as are we all). It is impossible for you to be impartial and objective, and to discuss the facts of a very difficult situation, because you are so angry. Your fury may be justified - "righteous" indeed - but it is still anger, a raging emotion. Historians are not "supposed" to be emotional - that's for novelists and psychobabblers. But what is your anger really about? It would take Priscilla's interesting weekend to probe that - and such probing would no doubt be unwise and inappropriate. But if you are presuming to inform and guide us as the most intelligent historian around here (uncontested), I would still suggest - with the utmost respect - that your anger makes you suspect in discussion of some topics.

Please do not be offended - I use you and Brexit as a handy example. But Minette as historian, and her Richard III obsession, and Priscilla and the British Empire would be other interesting studies. I find the psychological - the personal - approach to the study of history utterly fascinating, and it is, in my humble opinion, a much neglected area. The Tudor Age was as much Sir Geoffrey Elton's history as Cromwell's. And how Mantel identified with her Catholic-Church-hating, working-class hero...

Lord, I am rambling.  Time to shut up and go and click and collect, preferably my thoughts.

EDIT: I hope I haven't killed the thread - delete this if it's off-topic (but it isn't).

No, no Temp...and I will try to expose my own bias, but still pushing for studies to verify my perhaps biased suppositions in a thread about Maximilian I of Austria and his grandson Charles V. A subject that I know relatively well.

PS: I am afraid to start my inquiry for the workload and "embarras" (embarrassement?), but I will put a question to two historians in retirement from whom I have now the telephone numbers about the Romance-Germanic language border in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and the "Flemish coastal plain" (Vlaamse kustvlakte) to try to convince them to put a student on a thesis about my perhaps biased and unfounded question that this language border is related to the relief (including the same questiion about the Anglo-Saxon language island around Boulogne).

PPS: And yes you are right, despite one tries to be as autocritical as possible one has always to be vigilant for the hidden and many times unconscious prejudices. And yes that is the task of a honest historian and why not of a honest journalist or documentairy producer.

PPPS: And as Priscilla mentioned it, perhaps reading as wide a range of sources with an open mind before making any conclusions? I remember when I started in 2002 on the BBC history messageboard a certain "Mad Mike", who said let us have as many possible narrations and opinions about a certain event. At the end there emerges a much clearer and more honest view on that event.

Kind regards, Paul.

Temperance wrote:

It is impossible for you to be impartial and objective, and to discuss the facts of a very difficult situation, because you are so angry.

Comparisons drawn on a false dichotomy lead inevitably to incorrect conclusions, and that above is a case in point.

Anger does not preclude rationality. And in fact anger that exists even after rational and dispassionate analysis is probably the most justified anger of all. And nor does it preclude one from "discussing" the subject. My analysis of Brexit - where it came from, how it was expressed, what it represents, what it has led to, and where it is apparently leading to - is very much a rational one. My anger might be motivated by the very real detrimental impact it has had on several people I care about, some of them devastatingly so. But my analysis is as rational as yours, I dare say. Or, if not, perhaps you could tell me which of my conclusions about this triumph of stupidity over common sense and common welfare is so irrational as to prove your assertion?

Brexit aside, think of your above claim in relation to any emotive issue. Do you, for example, not feel any anger at all towards those who participate in the trafficking of children for sex? I would hope you do. But does that prevent you from rationally analysing and discussing this vile activity? Does me calling it vile mean I have already betrayed that I am being irrational in my own analysis?

False comparison in the context of this discussion's theme, as I said.

The other point you made about how much of recorded history reflects the personality of the recorders is certainly a valid one within the discussion's theme, however. That is certainly a very important filter indeed of which one must be aware when examining the record, especially the texts. I would add that the personality and character of the interpreter of the texts also play a much greater role than is generally understood too. One of the many vile things Brexit repeatedly exposed (how can it expose anything else?) is just what happens when British history, for example, is interpreted through the filters of bigotry and false notions of supremacy - they have the same source material as you and I available to them but walk away with some very self-serving mythical constructs in place of even a crude attempt to hold to standards of historical veracity at all.

nordmann wrote:

Or, if not, perhaps you could tell me which of my conclusions about this triumph of stupidity over common sense and common welfare is so irrational as to prove your assertion?

Let's look at your language. I did not say you were "irrational": I said you were "emotional". There is a difference. I am not "asserting" anything - I am offering an opinion. I am suggesting a different approach.

Re child sex - I seem to remember that ages ago - we were discussing an older man's having sex with a pre-pubescent boy, as depicted on a famous vase -  I got extremely angry with the Greeks' approach to such dreadful things. If I remember correctly, you told me to calm down, and look at the whole thing from the cultural and historical (not to mention psychological) perspective. I was the one spluttering with rage at the horror of it all. But, as a good historian, you had a point, I admit that now.

But I get so weary of this. If you actually said: "I f**cking hate  the Brits," I'd say - fair enough. Don't we all - at times?

EDIT: views of this thread have shot up to 202 in a couple of hours - nothing like a good slanging match to get the beholders beholding. But why does no one else ever join in?

It may have been Roman, not Greek - can't remember now.

Temperance wrote:

If you actually said: "I f**cking hate  the Brits," I'd say - fair enough. Don't we all - at times?

Why should I lie and reinforce some false assumption you have made just to allow you to declare the discussion closed on terms that apparently suit you? That particular discussion, if it is not one of exposure of some rather vile revelations that require urgent analysis among British people more than anyone else (it is Brexit, after all), cannot terminate with a "fair enough". Or if it does then such a conclusion simply reaffirms some of the more troubling revelations that the whole debacle has thus far thrown up.

PS: It was probably Greek, at least if your summary of my response is accurate. Roman attitudes to such matters were much more nuanced and varied, and harder to evaluate as a natural evolution of thought over such a long period.

Well, if you don't hate us, you must be a saint. If I were you, I'd hate us. But that probably reveals more about me than you. I feel very vile and British today.

It's the Warren Cup in the British Museum. We probably stole it from some unsuspecting nation. It's described as "Greco-Roman".

EDIT: No we didn't pinch it  - just checked - we bought it - that must make a first.

Temperance wrote:

Well, if you don't hate us, you must be a saint. If I were you, I'd hate us. But that probably reveals more about me than you. I feel very vile and British today.

As long as it doesn't lessen your ability to dispassionately discuss why "vile" and "British" have been popping up together in so many sentences in recent times, not all from dispassionate sources but worryingly from some of them too. The discussion after all is about these evidences of possible bias and filtering that Priscilla referred to when trying to extract trustworthy factual reportage from the general background noise in the reporting of current affairs. If "vile" for some reason is in the foreground then that simply makes the discussion all the more necessary to have, even if that discussion is only about if the word will therefore actually make it into the historical record when this period of time is looked back at in years to come. My own bet would be on that it doesn't, but all bets are off with regard to "stupidity".

But we all of us - all of us - have to be on our guard as we make our historical judgements and then, perhaps, have the temerity to record them, here or elsewhere.

As events in wartime have clearly shown, our mentality is distinguished by the shameless naiveté with which we judge our enemy, and in the judgement we pronounce upon him we unwittingly reveal our own defects: we simply accuse our enemy of our own unadmitted faults.

C.G. Jung C.W. Vol.8, paragraph 516.

I can hear voices saying: "What on earth is she on about now?"

Yes, but that was Jung explaining how he reckoned the naive mind confuses the imago with the object, mistakenly identifying that which is imagined and the stuff of dreams with that which is concrete and objectively exists, thereby projecting one's own character flaws on the enemy and possibly missing just how actually bad the enemy really was. His example of this - the line you quote - of newspaper reports about the conduct of the war in Europe (he was writing in the middle of WWI) was derided by his (many) critics at the time, especially fellow psychoanalysts who reckoned this particular line of gibberish was giving them all a bad name. One of them, from the Freudian camp (the opposition), advised him to for god's sake read better newspapers.

The voices you are hearing might just have a point.

No, you need to read more of the man's work.

But my voices and I (classic nord!) need a break now. I see Priscilla is online - I hand the discussion over to her.

Temperance wrote:

No, you need to read more of the man's work.

Of all the things I need right now, believe me, that is definitely not one of them. "Less of his work" would be better, though that is against the laws of physics, alas. I slew my naive imago many years ago, around the same time as I gladly donated my late compulsory Jung course material to the local "help make our land-fill full" campaign. Had I only waited a few years I could more easily have sent it to be recycled as toilet paper. Even Jung couldn't have missed the irony in that one.

Oh wait, scrub that. Jung of course associated both toilets and irony only with tragedy, never with comedy - gloomy little imago that he was.

As far as I note both ends of the baton being passed to me look pretty shitty. Can't say I'm a Jung fan, sorry Temps for lack of support there.. I think my copy of Jung's take on  the Elysian mysteries went for a new bike ride in the eternal paper chase.
 I have tried to sift through the previous discussion for my own take - and understanding of the above -being of a simpler mind than both of you. In the main I think bias in recorded events in the past was mainly revealed in books and pamphlets by writers with an angle based on experience or direct observation. It seems - to me - of the smaller pig-ignorant intellect - that the hack writers and media blabbers are employed because of their political persuasion and are reasonably well paid for what they churn out. If they can stir up a stink that brings in more interest, more money follows. Thus the facts are pulled about like chewing gum. Now I have to deduce with a critical mind what the truth is. yes, History matters but pinning down the truth is another matter.

As  for anger - being angry about the past is all very well but unproductive; anger does not breed well. Deep sorrow and concern may reproduce in policy, somewhat better. It is interesting that dementia blocks out recent memory and where old memory hold fasts in people, national dementia is often quite the opposite for pragmatic progress; the formation of the EU comes to mind.

 Now there ought be enough in there for nord to shoot down in flames while I go off and watch a film... and unpick about an inch of very messed up Fair Isle. Must be the double jab wot caused that! Kindly inform the cagey Norweigian govt about that if they are still wondering about the vaccine. For a free ticket I'll come and explain in person..... and get some decent British cheese in too - somehow..

The Norwegian government to which you refer is currently defending its prolongation of the local lock-down by informing us all to blame the "British Mutant Virus".

Sometimes being world-beating isn't necessarily a good thing.

Ah - by which you mean they have not got enough vaccine ordered to out wit any ol' covid  19virus and its mutant relatives? I hope their population is well educated enough to be able to make a critical appraisal  to find a truth worthy of History  - or are they all in a British miff about something else?

 I never felt hated by the Norwegians - the French, yes, I think we exasperate the Germans, amuse the Italians, are ripped off by the Spanish - and largely ignored by the Greeks.....I could go on with daft notions I have garnered over the years....... non right, probably.

Priscilla wrote:

 I have tried to sift through the previous discussion for my own take - and understanding of the above -being of a simpler mind than both of you.

That is not so: I am the one who is naive and who has a "simple" mind. You two are the complicated ones. I do not say that for "effect": I mean it - or at least I think I do.

I shall just add this, then I shall shut up about Jung. Our culture has had great trouble in accepting his legacy; but he is being rediscovered in these terrible times. Jung probably would agree with nordmann's scathing assessment of his work: he felt he had failed utterly in what he had try to do. In a poignant letter he wrote very late in his life he said:"I have failed in my foremost task to open people's eyes to the fact that man has a soul, that there is a buried treasure in the field and that our religion and philosophy are in a lamentable state."

I would add "and our politics" to the list.

But I introduced Jung's work into the discussion because I believe people's eyes are opening: we need to heal - literally and metaphorically. Religion, philosophy, honest and mature political debate - whatever happened? The world has passed through - is still passing through - a nightmare in both the public and private spheres. We have come close to collapse and have - as mankind is wont to do periodically - chosen leaders totally unfit for the great offices they hold, men who have pandered to our own darker sides. Public debate - or what passes for debate these days - reflects this. In two great Western democracies there is hatred, anger, bitterness, exhaustion, fear, corruption and plague. Apocalypse ("unveiling") now? I wonder if future historians will understand this - whatever they read in the official - and unofficial - records we leave behind. But the tide has - perhaps - just turned.

That is why I shall end this muddle with a typical piece of Temperance woo-woo. But, God knows, the words I quote below resonate so much with me, and I believe what Dr Jung wrote is still true -  for the individual and for larger society. But his thinking is not for everyone, that I understand.

I regret that this has become an unhappy, mocking sort of thread, and I am sorry if I have contributed to any ill feeling around here. Not doing a blessed are the cheesemakers (or cheesebringers) here - just speaking from the heart. Nord would probably identify another part of my anatomy as the source of my various posts, but that's his prerogative, and I am past caring. I can only say what seems true to me - some source of reason and hope - yes reason! - in the chaos and darkness:

The meaning of "whole" or "wholeness" is to make holy or to heal. The descent into the depths will bring healing. It is the way to the total being, to the treasure which suffering mankind is forever seeking, which is hidden in the place guarded by terrible danger.

C.G. Jung, C.W. Vol. 18, paragraph 270.

I trust I make myself totally incomprehensible. I'll probably delete all this at about 11.17 pm, but what the heck. Let's hope tomorrow comes and goes without incident.

The subject of news reportage with respect to filtering news for particular consumer markets is very evident at the moment in relation to Covid vaccines, examination of which specific theme is as good as any to both back up Priscilla's previous observation regarding "selective information dissemination" and also to illustrate how she is unwittingly part of that process at the same time. More importantly, given her own healthy levels of scepticism and intelligence this unwitting involvement, we must assume, is something to which we are all prone. After all we each receive "news" in the same way, the only major variable these days being to what extent we, as individuals, might rely on gossip in the form of social media (increasingly demonstrated to be itself manipulated by largely invisible agencies) versus authorised accounts relayed through more traditional agencies whose output we have long been conditioned to trust, or at least to understand their own respective biases so that we can measure how much of that trust each agency merits.

In Britain, for example, a government which has demonstrated an ambivalent relationship with the truth in many respects, now has the task - along with several other governments around the world - of persuading the population that its vaccine roll-out merits public support and confidence in its effectiveness. However its previous track record regarding its other initiatives related to tackling the same pandemic, along with all the other things it has done that have contributed to public suspicion of its motives, competence and honesty, means that it has created challenges for itself beyond just achieving an effective health care measure. In short, it needs the measure to be effective not just to secure the health of the population but also to repair public perceptions of the government itself in the process, and knows that the public in general is aware of which of these goals the government most prioritises. This is a complex agenda therefore, one that goes way further than a simple health measure, and as with all establishment agendas this translates directly into public discourse management, of which "the news" is an important element.

If you take Norway as a point of comparison in relation to the same health measure then one can see close parallels and obvious divergence, again with implications for news reportage. In simple terms the Norwegian government has the same challenge regarding vaccination - securing doses, prioritising recipients, and conducting the exercise as quickly and effectively as possible. Both countries' news outlets therefore tackle this issue in almost identical ways with regard to explaining the clinical goals. However this is where the similarity ends and manipulation of how the public should interpret government performance begins.

In Norway, a society in which faith in the government's honesty has not been eroded and faith in its competence only slightly eroded, the focus is not on performance but on the degree of intelligence being applied to the process and what it may expose regarding shortcomings in the systems employed. So while both countries news reports focus largely on the same points in this process, how they are phrased differ, wildly in some respects.

If just one topic - procurement and "jabs" - is considered then the issue of reportage disparities can be easily demonstrated. In the UK this has been a problematic part of the process and news management has been intense. The public has been encouraged to assuage its justifiable fears based on other procurement fiascoes in the last twelve months by concentrating on comparison with other countries based on very limited criteria - the "patriotic origin" of the vaccine procured and the volume of "jabs" the procurement allows, especially when compared to others. In Norway, where procurement already exceeds full population vaccination, the focus is on the actual quality of the vaccines procured (an issue hardly mentioned in the UK news media) and the supply potential to cover the next five years. In both cases this focus encourages misinformation, some intentional but most down to what you might call an over-enthusiastic subscription to the agenda by journalists. Norway ends up being falsely presented to the UK public as a country "behind" in terms of vaccine procurement (it needed far less "jabs" to cover its population so the numbers can be easily misrepresented). The UK ends up being falsely presented to the Norwegian public as being over-invested in all the wrong aspects of the vaccines it has procured - most ludicrously an obsession with its "Britishness". Lately the very concerning issue of how Britain intends to count vaccinations and how it will even depart from recommended clinical procedure just to boost the numbers has also been promoted for public consumption.

If you read both countries' news however and look for whatever common truth might pertain then what emerges is a reasonably satisfactory procurement process with as yet unresolved long term issues, being translated into a vaccination programme being run by reasonably competent health authorities very closely matched in terms of method and progress thus far. The much vaunted caution as a virtue that is fed to Norwegian consumers and the equally vaunted "we'll all muddle through this together very quickly" attitude as a virtue fed to British consumers have led to blatant misinformation in both cases, but these points of untrustworthy reportage simply become all the more obvious the more one consumes and compares each source. In both the UK and Norway however the dependable reportage far outweighs these obvious compromises with the truth, and at least so far the compromises can be identified and consumed with critical caution.

This ability to distinguish fact from fiction however is seriously undermined if one limits oneself to just one source. Hence a UK resident, such as yourself Priscilla, telling a Norwegian resident with assuredness that we are "behind" the UK. In Norway, for example, all health care residents who could provably benefit from the Pfizer vaccine have received it. However it has been clinically determined that a minority of these require a very different medical application to boost their immune systems and a lot of extra resources have been invested in securing these people while this second programme is prepared and rolled out. In the UK, where numbers rule at the moment in media reports, this is presented as us being "behind" yourselves. In Norway, where virus elimination and minimal death rates are the principal media focus, this however is presented as being "ahead" of a country that cares more about the numbers than the actual health of the elderly patients. Both are manipulated perceptions and both are based partly on actual data, but neither accurately or fully reflect the goals, methods and conduct of those actually delivering the process.

PS: I'm not at all sure what Jung would have made of all this.

In truth I did not mean to imply that Norway was behind in anything.... it was your earlier remark about Norway's caution and canny observation to see what happened in Britain that I picked up upon.

An on going wrangle in our family is about comparison between countries and their policies. The population of Norway is circa 5.5 million,  spread out too, and  in airy places......... like New Zealand, which was the root source of our on going family discussion. As it happens, neither Norway nor New Zealand are  travel hubs nor centres of constant trade movement as say London is - with  a similar number of people but which ha= considerably more ethnic diversity, economic divergence and density of spread. 

Managing a diversity of applied well being for 65 million is hard going and perhaps unfairly judged when set against a smaller entity. 

You think perhaps that I have been gulled by news - the point of the thread was how to remain ungulled. But I am also a tad amused by your long defence of what Norway is  really about....... do they give Green Stamps for this sort of thing there? 

And I don't  know what Jung would have made of it, either. He seemed to make heavy weather of what to me is not a dark depth but a bright rise in human discovery. However, although moral turpitude and corporate spirituality may be highly relevant regarding  the truth of news that is material for another day, perhaps. Or perhaps, is the core issue. I need coffeee.

Priscilla wrote:

...But I am also a tad amused by your long defence of what Norway is  really about....... do they give Green Stamps for this sort of thing there? 

I didn't defend anything of the sort. I explained in fact that both countries' obvious differences in how their respective governments communicate their actions have coloured news media representations of the other's performance, and hence has resulted in misapprehensions on both sides, especially among people who only receive "news" from within their own societies. I even went so far as to say that there is fundamentally little difference between both countries' approaches when one strips away all bias inherent in the associated reportage. You choosing to interpret this however as me "defending Norway", and to level this as a criticism, only makes me wonder just to what level you have been thus influenced through insularity yourself. As I said, unless you are regularly receiving your news from both perspectives then this is exactly the kind of trap you can fall into, and you have seemingly just demonstrated this in action.

nordmann wrote:

PS: I'm not at all sure what Jung would have made of all this.

He'd probably advise us all - or at least me - to stop fretting, have a cup of tea and see if Larry has tweeted anything this morning. That cat is the most reliable UK news source at the moment.

So that's my lot for today! Sorry about all the Jung crap.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Priscilla,

I reread your message and perhaps your key sentence in it is?:
"History in the Making.... yes, there is, but a true record? Where  might that be?"
 
and in that sentence the keyword?:
"a true record?"

I watched yesterday two German documentaries: One about Maximilian I of Austria and one about his grandson Charles V (Carlos I in Spain). As I have some remarks on it, I will make a new message about it.

But lamenting yesterday about "documentaries about history" and if a true record of the reality was given by the documentary producer and asking if it hadn't do be a real historian, who provided the content of these documentaries, I see now that in these documentaries it were all historians who were interviewed to compose the documentary. That is already better in my opinion than to let it to the competence of one sole producer with no antecedents in the academic world?

But even that is perhaps not free of interferences from whatever corner, as for instance political ones.
Perhaps each time a legal "court" of academici, who try to debunk the statements made in a given documentary  ?

 
When watching again new documentaries in the series that I mentioned before in this thread I have changed my opinion (or wishes  ) a bit. As it are in the series:
"Les Coulisses de l'Histoire"
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-017120/les-coulisses-de-l-histoire/

Perhaps nobody is that nitpicking as I am...sigh... ...

I sought now for all the authors of these documentaries and I will not name names...
but as "Arte" says:
"L’histoire n’est pas une science exacte. Alors qu'en est-il d'Hitler, du président Reagan, du pape Jean-Paul II ou de l’explosion atomique sur Hiroshima ? En se fondant sur les derniers travaux des historiens, « Les coulisses de l’histoire » aborde des personnages et événements marquants du XXe siècle dans toute leur complexité pour en proposer une lecture inédite."
(History is not an exact science. So what about Hitler, President Reagan, Pope John Paul II or the atomic explosion on Hiroshima? Based on the latest work of historians, "Behind the Scenes of History" addresses the most complex figures and events of the 20th century to offer an unprecedented reading)
On my provider, Arte announces it in English: "History uncovered".

But when I sought for the authors of the documentaries and their names (and I will not call names) I only find "réalisateur, scénariste...and all that...

For instance the latest documentary that I saw in that series was about Pope Jean-Paul II was rather interesting and well made, but as Arte says:
"based on the latest work of historians"...where is that link to the latest work of historians?...Have we have to give the authors carte blanche how they compose their sources from perhaps "latest work of historians" and about the interpretation of the work of those historians?

As when an author said on some occasion as I think to remember a bit denigrating about the Marshall plan and the mass consumption and the American way of life introduced to Europe after WWII..."bien joué" (well played?)...as "play" is an action, it has to be intended I suppose by the Americans to reach that goal? On what base does the author support that claim?

PaulRyckier wrote:

When watching again new documentaries in the series that I mentioned before in this thread I have changed my opinion (or wishes  ) a bit. As it are in the series:
"Les Coulisses de l'Histoire"
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-017120/les-coulisses-de-l-histoire/

Perhaps nobody is that nitpicking as I am...sigh... ...

I sought now for all the authors of these documentaries and I will not name names...
but as "Arte" says:
"History is not an exact science. So what about Hitler, President Reagan, Pope John Paul II or the atomic explosion on Hiroshima? Based on the latest work of historians, "Behind the Scenes of History" addresses the most complex figures and events of the 20th century to offer an unprecedented reading"
On my provider, Arte announces it in English: "History uncovered".

But when I sought for the authors of the documentaries and their names (and I will not call names) I only find "réalisateur, scénariste...and all that...

For instance the latest documentary that I saw in that series was about Pope Jean-Paul II was rather interesting and well made, but as Arte says:
"based on the latest work of historians"...where is that link to the latest work of historians?...Have we have to give the authors carte blanche how they compose their sources from perhaps "latest work of historians" and about the interpretation of the work of those historians?

As when an author said on some occasion as I think to remember a bit denigrating about the Marshall plan and the mass consumption and the American way of life introduced to Europe after WWII..."bien joué" (well played?)...as "play" is an action, it has to be intended I suppose by the Americans to reach that goal? On what base does the author support that claim?

Further in respons to Priscilla's initial question and in my "queste" (quest?) for as ARTE says: "based on the latest research from historians" in its series: "history uncovered" I have now seen:
"Mao father of modern China?" 
https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/079409-004-A/mao-father-of-modern-china/
I saw it with French subtitles but here I found on ARTE the same with "English subtitles". I guess you can see others too, with English subtitles as the one about Hitler...

The emission was well made and up to my! historical knowledge correct and it gave indeed a critical but complete survey of the period and certainly it posed the question correctly: Was Mao the father of modern China? putting it in an context and with details that even I wasn't aware of (with all my knowledge about the subject. I read a biographical book about  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping) 

But again I searched for instance for the two names mentioned as authors of the series:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Korn-Brzoza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Wieviorka

Really (to return to Priscilla's question) I don't see a solution to investigate if a certain documentary is historically a "true record". Perhaps an attempt could be, that the "réalisateurs" let a scholary peer review done by "historians" before they start with the documentary in public? And perhaps have these particular ones done it.

As I saw now several documentaries of the series, it would be a loss even for historians, that documentaries of such a worth could be considered by the average community as conspiracy theories...or perhaps not the average community but only some nitpickers as I am...