{"id":50696,"date":"2012-06-15T23:04:15","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T23:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=50696"},"modified":"2012-06-19T07:50:06","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T07:50:06","slug":"one-girl%e2%80%99s-school-dinners-campaign-is-enough-to-give-us-all-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=50696","title":{"rendered":"One girl\u2019s school dinners campaign is enough to give us all hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

News Commentary \u2013 June 15, 2012<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>We have no wish to disparage or deride 9-year-old Martha Payne\u2019s web page devoted to her school dinners. Indeed, we wish her well. Yet the coverage of her web page speaks volumes about the corporate media and the way it manipulates and prioritises \u201cnews\u201d.<\/h5>\n
The BBC\u2019s main six-o\u2019clock news devoted several minutes to it: featuring a spokesman for her local municipal council, Argyll and Bute, praising Martha for her efforts<\/span><\/a>, after she had earlier been banned from taking photos<\/span><\/a> of school meals.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/h5>\n
Other national news outlets told of how she had become an \u201cinternet sensation<\/span><\/a>\u201d.<\/h5>\n
Yet as stories and articles about Martha and her web page proliferated across the corporate media<\/span><\/a>, one is forced to ask why?<\/h5>\n
Why does a nine-year-olds web page about her school dinners generate such abundant coverage, particularly when there is so much else happening on the Internet?<\/h5>\n
The corporate media studiously ignores most of the groundbreaking material featured elsewhere on the web. Yet they fall over themselves to cover a nine-year-old girl\u2019s web page about her school dinners.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/h5>\n
Is this an attempt by the corporate media to trivialise the Internet? Or\u00a0are they simply trying\u00a0attempt to dumb down their audience with meaningless trivia? Either way they are striving against the tide: newspaper sales are in decline and television viewer figures are also having to compete with the lure of the web.<\/h5>\n
Deservedly so, some would say,\u00a0given the corporate media\u2019s coverage of more pressing issues.<\/h5>\n
Nonetheless, numerous investigative reports into 9\/11<\/span><\/a>, 7\/7<\/span><\/a>, Princess Diana\u2019s death <\/span><\/a>(murder) and what\u2019s really happening in Afghanistan <\/span><\/a>have been posted on the web: most of which have been pointedly ignored by the corporate media. Now suddenly, the corporate media is focused on a new \u201cInternet sensation\u201d and what is it about?<\/h5>\n
A NINE-YEAR-OLD girls opinion about her school dinner!!!<\/h5>\n
This is nothing short of an insult to our intelligence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
It\u2019s also a reflection of the essential petty mindedness the corporate media likes to foster and that many of those who work for it embody.<\/h5>\n
Like they say: \u201cempty vessels make the most noise\u201d. A fact illustrated by many of the journalists working in the corporate media: prolific wordsmiths who write a lot of fine sounding articles, which essentially say nothing.\u00a0<\/h5>\n
If those journalists were independent minded enough to say something of significance they would not be working in the corporate media. It\u2019s that simple.<\/h5>\n
The corporate media strives to instil a herd mentality and genuine independent thinking is not part of that or evident among those who labour on its behalf.\u00a0<\/h5>\n

One girl\u2019s school dinners campaign is enough to give us all hope<\/h2>\n

Rowenna Davis \u2013 Guardian.co.uk June 15, 2012<\/h3>\n

Martha Payne<\/span><\/a>, I salute you. This nine-year-old has won a victory for child activists everywhere. A few hours ago she was allowed to reinstate <\/span>her blog on school dinners<\/span><\/a> as her local council performed a screeching U-turn on its call to censor her. National media agencies rejoiced and the Twittersphere is still beaming. Hopefully the experience won’t just make her a stronger activist, it will inspire a generation of young bloggers to follow suit.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone’s for child empowerment in principle. Far fewer of us can handle it in practice. When Martha photographed her school meals for her #neverseconds blog and gave them a health rating and a mark on her “food-o-meter” everyone thought that was sooooo sweet. Until it actually started ruffling feathers. Then Martha told the world how <\/span><\/span>she was hauled out of maths class and ordered to stop blogging<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apparently, this was a decision on behalf of Argyll and Bute council, who issued an amusingly long and defensive press release against the “unwarranted attacks on its schools catering service \u2026 which have led catering staff to fear for their jobs”.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s astonishing. This nine-year-old should have been held up as a heroine for the region. She’s a shining example of what true education is about. We don’t go to school to learn passively and swallow what is given to us, whether it’s dogma or croquettes. True education is about learning to question and to challenge. The pinnacle of education is when you’re empowered to have agency in the world. That’s exactly what Martha had.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps that’s why she captured national attention. Even before the outcry she had 2 million hits and raised money for <\/span>Mary’s Meals<\/span><\/a> <\/span>charity, which donates food to the third world. When the censorship started <\/span>Jamie Oliver<\/span><\/a>, Ian Rankin and Mike Russell MSP jumped on board. By mid-morning she was the top “trending” item in Britain and the third most popular worldwide. But we should be careful not to be overtaken by celebrities \u2013 the point about this story was that a child was leading.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kids learn early if they’re going to be listened to or trampled on. One of my first political experiences was with our school canteen. We were 17 and our meals were horrific \u2013 chips, beans and cheese and\u2026 no, wait, that was it. We asked them to change, but they wouldn’t, so a collection of us decided to make and sell our own healthy, home cooked food right next door at knocked down prices. Everyone joined the boycott, including the teachers. The next week, variety had been introduced and hygiene increased. Victory was ours, and it inspired us to keep going.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor are these fights trivial. School dinners might sound like small fry, but you quickly come up against major issues of power and status. In our school, the canteen couldn’t be changed because it wasn’t just a local contract; it was a national deal between Serco and the national government that gave them exclusive rights to serve us without competition for years.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m not sure who served Martha’s meals, but power was certainly involved. The council sounds arrogant and out of touch, and because she lives on the west coast of Scotland, standards for school meals are different. There are reports that improvements throughout Britain appear not to have been applied to her unidentified school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Martha’s work is also important because of our country’s growing obesity challenge. The fact that obesity now costs the NHS \u00a3500m a year and is affecting one in every three children in the UK means we need more health and variety, and we need kids taking the lead on that. Again, Martha is a shining example.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the victory in my school canteen I went into politics, and now I proudly serve as a councillor in Southwark. Together as a council we have introduced free healthy school meals for all kids. Getting that right and giving young people a sense of ownership over that service is essential. I hope others in Southwark will follow Martha’s lead and blog their experiences to hold us accountable. We adults could learn something, the food is likely to get better and kids get involved. We’ll all have second helpings of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk about the corporate media attempting to \u2018dumb down\u2019 the public. Or how it makes \u2018news\u2019 out of what is essentially trivia while ignoring real issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50696"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50858,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50696\/revisions\/50858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}