We haven't looked at any examples of transparent churnalism in a while, and on a day in which there is one which is deadly serious and another that is not so, it seems as good as any:
THESE chilling pictures of teenagers brandishing guns and knives were found in just ONE DAY on the Bebo website. The users’ homepages glamorise gang violence — despite 19 young people dying in vicious attacks in London this year.
Incredible as it may seem, teenagers tend to do a lot of stupid things, and posing with weapons in a feeble attempt to look tough or hard is not exactly a new development. The only difference is that now with the rise of the social networking, on any slow news day the put-upon hacks on both local and national papers can easily put together a story purely through browsing Facebook/MySpace/Bebo and exposing some new scandal of the how the young live so dangerously.
There are just a few problems with this story. First, the Sun provides absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they even were on Bebo to begin with: there's no screen grabs of the pages with the profiles showing the images, so we have to completely take the Sun's word for it that they were on the site. You also can't now go and attempt to find whether they were or not because Bebo has now "frozen the profiles", again, something you have to take the Sun's word for, although the only profile name they give in the article, "Craks Capone" did exist, and is now "unavailable" (At least one of his "friends", again a rather loose term on social networking sites, lives in Norwood/Heath). Then there's the fact that nowhere does the Sun mention whether the images they've exposed are of individuals actually living in this country; it's not as if Bebo isn't a global site, even if it is especially popular with school age children in this country.
With all that in mind, we then have the relatively slight problem of this not exactly being just an issue on Bebo. Amazing as it may seem, there are doubtless pictures of youths with weapons on Facebook, and shock, horror, MySpace. You know, the social networking website that just happens to be owned by the Sun's own parent company, and which mysteriously never receives any bad press while Bebo and Facebook have in the past been criticised on a large number of occasions in the Sun. Perhaps there's also a clue to why the Sun's chosen Bebo to embarrass on the front page of Bebo itself, which currently has as one of the featured profiles the "STOP Knife Crime" campaign group. Meanwhile, over on MySpace, second in the blog charts is this thoughtful piece: Are All Women Whores Till Proven Otherwise???
Far be it from me to suggest how Sun hacks do their job, as that's obviously what Red Rupert and Rebekah Wade are paid for, but it would have been just ever so slightly fairer if they'd investigated all three of the major social networking sites, took screen grabs of the profiles with individuals showing off their weapons, also proving that they happen to live in the UK, and then presented the shocking evidence to the salivating public, i.e., you and I. This would however have taken far more time than simply banging out 250 words accompanied by photographs you have to take on trust are from Bebo and feature UK youngsters, precious time that may simply have not been available to Vikki Thomas. This is of course also the tabloid media we're talking about, where too much effort, rather than attempting to make the best of the medium available to you, is simply trying too hard.
Trying too hard is not something that afflicts the PR industry in attempting to get the most daft references to their company into the press. Previously we had the ridiculous story of the teenager that wanted a taxi but ended up with a cabinet because of her mockney patois, which just so happened to also advertise the company that provided the cab, innit, that the teenager didn't want. Today there's the equally preposterous story of a woman who put her bra on "while in a hurry" who just didn't happen to notice there was a baby bat nesting in it until five hours later. Now, never having needed to wear a such a constraining item of clothing I wouldn't personally know, but somehow the idea of not realising there's a living creature in an item of clothing next to your skin, and such a sensitive area of epidermis to boot, for five hours, doesn't wash. Luckily, not only is the woman in question attractive and willing to pose in just her bra, she's also more than willing to make clear that all this occurred while she was working at the Holiday Inn near Norwich International Airport.
The Churners were on the spot, tipped off by none other than 5cc, but the story has spread far further than even the tabloids now, also infecting the Independent, Torygraph and the BBC, as well as numerous other news sites worldwide, although it appears to have started via the Eastern Daily Press. You have to credit whoever thought the story up, as it's been one of the most viewed reports throughout the day. 5cc speculates it might have something to do with the new Batman movie also, but that part of the original article is one of the few parts of it that hasn't been copied and pasted into all the subsequent ones, so it seems far more likely this was an attempt to get trade over to see the famous Abbie Hawkins at the Holiday Inn near Norwich International Airport. The fact that this is lazy journalism of the lowest kind, with apparently no one actually bothering to check whether this isn't a pathetic attempt by Holiday Inn to bypass advertising costs doesn't seem to matter when it's a story apparently too good to be true and gives the excuse of being able to show a woman in the flower of youth with large breasts either in your newspaper or on your website. Still, at least it shows more creativity than yet another "worst lyric" poll, which is where this post's title comes from.
Labels: Abbie Hawkins, bullshit, churnalism, hacks, knife crime, Scum-watch, social networking websites, Sun-watch, tabloid stupidity
