Media Watch

by Nick Campion

Apologies for the absence of Media Watch in the last few issues but many thanks to everyone who has sent contributions since January. The archives continue to grow and will be safely housed at Bath Spa University College.

There has of course been one big story, the 'Astrology is Rubbish' report, based on the Sunday Telegraph of 17 August. This went all around the world so there can be few people who are not aware of it. I will not repeat everything here save to give my opinion that, while such stories begin as anti-astrology, the number of astrologers who can be called on to respond is greater than the number of sceptics and the end result may therefore be a pro-astrology bias. That, at any rate, is my impression.

The other issue of the moment is the attempt to change the ITC code, which incorporates an anti-astrology bias into the regulation of British television. This has been dealt with elsewhere by Roy Gillett, so I won't repeat that information here.

The AA's biggest publicity for a while though, appeared in The Daily Mirror on Friday 5 September and included a group photograph of the delegates at the York conference, together with brief write ups by Jonathan Cainer and myself. Apart from those major items, here're just a few snippets.

First, from a book - from Patrick White's The Living and the Dead (London: Vintage 1996, (1st edn., Routledge and Kegan Paul 1941.

I shall call you Kate, Kay said, smiled, the eyes closed up, then opened, to interested, too close. Now Kate, what can I get you? A li-tle [sic] sandwidge [sic]? It was nice of you to come, Kate. I'm interested in people, of course. I've got to know about people. And that gives me such a lot. Ever had your horoscope done Kate?

No. said Mrs Standish, much too gaily. I hate to know too much…… ……

You can never know too much…..

You ought to have your horoscope. I should say you were a Venus subject. I'm a Venus subject. That's why I've had such a terrible time. An, now mother's sick, she said. That was in the stars. I'd go crazy if it wasn't for Arthur. And my work. Arthur makes me feel I'm not a plaything. That's the danger in a Venus subject. A victim of the passions. But Arthur. Mrs Standish, Kate, I love Arthur, body and soul.

Then there was the story from 1 August 2003, which went around the world on inauspicious moments to marry in India, which is online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3116121.stm

Weddings need heavenly help

"Astrology in India is much more than a matter of consulting your horoscope in the daily paper. Hindu families often have their own personal star-gazer to advise them throughout their lives. And the advice they all seem to be giving is that no one should get married for the next few months. The pronouncement is creating havoc with the country's wedding entertainment industry…According to astrologers, Jupiter's entry into the sign of Leo and the disappearance of Venus from the naked eye, along with other planetary complications, makes this a bad time to get married."

And from The Daily Telegraph, 2 August (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml) Astrologers 'help forecast quakes' By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi (Filed: 02/08/2003)

Indian astrologers and seismologists began a workshop in the capital, New Delhi, yesterday to try to combine their disciplines to forecast earthquakes and natural disasters.

Murli Manohar Joshi, the country's human resources and development minister, backed the project.

"Scientists with advanced computers have sometimes failed to predict major earthquakes, but ancient Indian astrology does have the tools to roughly foretell the time and sometimes even the exact date and time of an earthquake," he said.

The minister is an accomplished physicist but has been criticised by rationalists for wanting to introduce astrology to the national school and university curriculum.

The seminar, run by the Astrology Study and Research Institute in Delhi, will extrapolate data from the earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people in Gujarat two years ago with planetary configurations from that time.

Astrological predictions regarding earthquakes and natural disasters over the next decade will also be discussed. Lachhman Das Madan, who heads the Astrology Study and Research Institute, said he was willing to share how he "predicted the Gujarat earthquake based on the movement of stars". He regretted that his warnings had been ignored, he said, because astrological inputs could help governments blunt the devastation of earthquakes.

He said astrology was not an occult science in the hands of eastern religious mystics but modern in its approach, based on cosmic planetary positions needing precise mathematical calculations.

Astrologers at the seminar predicted "serious and violent convulsions" in the next month because Earth and Mars were coming as close together as they have been in 60,000 years. After Aug 29 planetary configurations were likely to become "hostile" to the world, they added.

Most Indians are avid believers in astrology, frequently consulting occultists, palmists and mendicants to favourably manage the heavens for them.

The country's politicians are especially partial to astrologers as celestial guides to help them win elections and stay in office.

And last from the New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp;jsessionid=KOMEGIEGM ACJ?id=ns24101

Power to the patients!

He found himself sobbing uncontrollably, unable to work a sandwich dispenser and consumed by guilt. Clinical psychologist Richard Bentall had taken a psychiatric drug as part of an experiment. Add in personal tragedy and a spell of depression, and he could never see mental illness the same way again. Now he thinks diagnostic labels have no more predictive power than star signs and that plenty of people can live happily with severe psychotic symptoms. And as he told Liz Else, the people doing the suffering should have power restored to them

Saying psychiatry is no better than astrology is a bit strong, isn't it?

No. I've tried to show in my book that there is truckloads of research that shows that these categories are meaningless. They are remarkably similar to star signs because people think that star signs say something about them and about what will happen in the future. They think the same with psychiatric diagnoses, which don't predict the course of the illness, which treatments will work, or say anything about aetiology.