The so-called

Why do all newsreaders call IS "The so-called Islamic State?" Surely if that's what they're called, we just need to call them by their name? I assume it's something to do with them not actually being a legitimate state, but there was an interview on BBC breakfast this morning which turned into a bit of a joke as the two people talking almost fell over themselves saying "the so-called." They were refereeing to something else as a "so-called" something as well, but I had no idea what the word they were using meant and no one felt the need to translate.

We did an afternoon of reccying in Liverpool yesterday. I don't really know how to spell that word. Reccying, not Liverpool. I'm not even sure what reccying is short for... reconnaissance? For those who don't work in telly or film, you reccy locations before going on a shoot to discover exactly which shots you want to use and the perils/ logistics of doing so. Of course, I would normally have a chance to reccy exactly a week before the shoot, which offers the most realistic sense of what the location will actually be like in terms of light, busy-ness of traffic and numbers of people milling around. As it turned out, we reccied in darkness. #guerilla

Just as a little aside, I watch, with horror, the news emerging every day about sex crimes in Parliament and the media. Obviously I have no knowledge whatsoever about the individual cases, but will say that they seem to have been incredibly fast to condemn Kevin Spacey. Netflix has already announced that they won't screen a film he produced and that he can pretty much forget about playing his role in House of Cards. I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of the allegations, but do wonder why a 14-year old lad was at a Hollywood party unchaperoned and why this same person opted to go to the media with his allegations instead of the police. In respect to Parliament, I think it's important that we start to differentiate between sexual morality and actual crimes. If we want to create a code of conduct, we can't retrospectively punish people for breaking it. It is not yet a crime to touch someone's knee. We may yet decide that it needs to become one, but talking about knee-touching in the same breath as rape seems crazy to me. They're simply not the same crime, and it seems incredibly insensitive to victims of violent sex crime if we decide to throw everything in together like this.

It also seems quite a knee-jerk reaction to refuse to screen a film that someone who may or may not have committed a crime has produced. I wonder how the writer, director and actors would feel to hear the news that their hard work has been for nothing. Scratch the surface in this industry and you'll find someone shady working on every film and TV show that exists.

I suppose I just hope for a little less sensationalism and a bit more rationality. There's plainly a problem here which needs to be addressed but I'm just not sure a witch hunt is the best way to wheedle it out.

Any thoughts?