Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

Scum-watch: Don't know what you've got till it's gone.

They must have known it was coming, but the defection of the Sun back to the Tories after 12 years of "supporting" Labour has still quite clearly shook Labour. While the paper's representatives claim that it was yesterday's speech that finally confirmed they could no longer support the party, it's been obvious that the switch has been coming ever since last year's Conservative conference, when it gave David Cameron the sort of positive coverage he must have dreamed of. Since then the paper has been overwhelmingly anti-Labour without necessarily being anti-Brown. Some of the signs have been slight: calling Cameron "prime minister" when he was invited onto the paper's recently launched piss-poor online radio show was one, but the demand for an immediate general election earlier in the year was far less guarded.

The final nail in Brown's coffin was more than likely David Cameron's decision during his speech on quangos to focus almost solely on Ofcom, the regulator which is currently investigating whether Sky has an unfair stranglehold on the pay-TV market. With Cameron's culture secretary making menacing noises towards the BBC, which the Murdochs have all but declared war on due to the fact that their news websites simply can't compete with the far superior corporation offerings, it's clear that the Murdochs can now trust Cameron not to hurt their businesses just as they once trusted Tony Blair not to. That's the first condition of Murdochian support filled; the second is that you're going to win, and few are willing to bet anything other than a Conservative victory come next year.

It's still curious then that the paper has come out so decisively for the Tories when there is still plenty of time for anything to happen. The paper, after all, didn't swap sides until March in 97, when the Labour victory was already in the bag. As unlikely as it currently seems that there could yet be a fourth Labour term, it's not the first time that Murdoch's papers have got it wrong recently: the New York Post endorsed McCain last year. As a comfort, it's unlikely to warm the hearts of the Labour leadership.

More likely to do so is that the Sun is no longer the behemoth that it once was. While gaining the support of the Sun has always been second to gaining the support of Rupert Murdoch, the other major reason why Blair and Alastair Campbell entered into the original pact with the devil was, as Campbell said himself, he was never going to allow the Labour leader's head to be in a light-bulb on the front page on voting day again. While actual support for a political party from a newspaper on voting day has little to no impact whatsoever on the votes cast, it was the constant demonisation, undermining and ridicule which Kinnock was subject to, especially in the tabloid press, that helped to ensure he never became prime minister. The key difference today is that the Sun is no longer the attack dog it once was; while the paper ostensibly supported the Tories up until March 97, Kelvin MacKenzie famously told John Major after Black Wednesday that he had a bucket of shit and that the next morning he was going to pour it all over his head. MacKenzie might still be a columnist, and the likes of Bob Ainsworth might now be the person having a bucket of shit thrown over him repeatedly, but unlike back in 97, the media has now diversified to such an extent that the paper doesn't have the hold it once did. If anything, the paper has overplayed both its hand and its influence: it is still feared and respected mainly because of its former reputation rather than because of what it currently is.

One of the many repeated myths spouted today by those who deal in clichés is that the Sun follows its readers rather than getting its readers to follow it. Perhaps at times they get surprised by the strength of reaction, but this is a newspaper that wraps itself in what it thinks its readers want as defence against criticism, as a reassurance that it's what they want, and finally to tell them that because they're saying they want it, then it must be true. If anything the Sun is probably one of those newspapers which has the least loyal readership: the circulation of the broads, while falling, has not changed hugely since the advent of the internet; the tabloids, with the exception of the Mail and the Daily Star, have seen theirs fall massively. At one point the Sun dropped below the 3 million sales mark, triggering an almost panic-stricken price cut. Even with its lower circulation, the Daily Mail now almost certainly sets the agenda far more often than the Sun does.

This didn't of course stop the love affair between Blair and the paper, which remained to the advantage of both. For Blair, always determined to annoy the left of his party while reaching out to the cherished middle Britain, it served a double purpose. For the paper, it meant exclusives of even the most banal significance: Piers Morgan in his diaries was furious on a number of occasions about the access which the Sun got while the Mirror was shut out, most famously when someone (probably Cherie herself) told Rebekah Wade that the Blairs were having another baby, a story which Morgan believed was to be a Mirror exclusive. It meant obscene cooperation between the two, including policy stitch-ups involving asylum seekers. While New Labour and the Sun's politics may not look close at first examination, both shared, indeed share a contempt for civil liberties and an unaccountable lust for social authoritarianism, even if Blair could never come close to putting the paper's demands into action. On foreign policy, the two were inseparable: the Sun has always believed that might is right, and the fact that Blair dressed up his wars in the language of "liberal interventionism" only made them even more attractive.

Arguably, there have only been two occasions when Labour genuinely needed the support of the Murdoch press. Without the unstinting loyalty of all Murdoch's organs between the Iraq war and up to the end of the Hutton inquiry, there was still a possibility that Blair could have been forced out. In 2005 the paper all but abandoned the party except over Blair's wars. The real reason why remains Murdoch's certainty that the war was going to lead to oil at $20 a barrel, something that has not even come close to reality. The other occasion, is, well, now. Just when the party needs support, it loses it. This was the especially brutal part of the Sun's sudden but long in coming decision, knowing full well that it was not just kicking someone while they were down, it was the equivalent of a desecration of a corpse. Any hope that there might be the slightest boost from Brown's speech has been neutralised. David Cameron really must be delighted with the outcome, and again, this only highlights exactly why he's installed Andy Coulson as his very own Alastair Campbell.

As for the Sun's actual supposed reasons and dossier of "Labour failure", they're mostly so flimsy as to be not even worth bothering with. The dossier puts together often completely irrelevant data, and when it doesn't, it naturally cherry picks the information it relies on. On justice the paper absurdly highlights the cost of legal aid, as if the giving those who can't afford it access to briefs was a bad thing. It highlights the rise in alcohol tax receipts since 97 without pointing out this might be something to do with err, the rise in tax on it and not just increased sales. It compares the spending on police with the rise in deaths by stabbings, without mentioning that last year saw the lowest number of murders since the 80s. It also uses the 2007 figures rather than the 2008 ones, which saw a fall from 270 fatal stabbings to 252. Their data even directly contradicts some of the claims made in the leader, such as here:
But they FAILED on law and order, their mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" becoming a national joke. Knife murders are soaring.

Their dossier shows that knife murders between 2006 and 2007 soared by, err, 1. In 2005 they were down to 219, then leapt in 2006 to 269, only two more than there were in 2002. As pointed out above, fatal stabbings were down to 252 in 2008, hence proving the editorial completely wrong. The weapon used should be irrelevant: it's that there are murders, not that one particular weapon is used. The idiocy continues:

Smirking criminals routinely walk free in the name of political correctness, while decent people live in a virtual police state of snooping cameras and petty officials empowered to spy and to punish.

The idea that criminals walk free in the name of political correctness is so ludicrous as to be not worth dealing with, while if there is a virtual police state, it was the Sun that helped create it. When has it ever opposed more CCTV cameras or more state powers? Answer: never.

Most disgracefully of all, Labour FAILED our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving them to die through chronic under-funding and the shambolic leadership of dismal Defence Secretaries like Bob Ainsworth.

Again, their dossier shows that spending on defence has risen year on year. The real people who failed our troops in Iraq were those who demanded they be sent in in the first place, but the Sun has never pointed its finger at itself. It wasn't those fighting them that left them to die, but then it also clearly wasn't Baby P's parents that killed him. It was instead the system:

Billions blown employing a useless layer of public service middle-managers like those who condemned Baby P to die.

Everything about this leader is backward looking, trying to turn the country back to halcyon days which never existed. Murdoch, despite his Australian-American citizenship, is a nationalist wherever his newspapers are. Loyal in China, neo-conservative in America and anti-Europe here, he somehow imagines that if only we were to spend more on defence and give the troops what they "need", they'd instantly "win". This doesn't of course apply to anyone else, but this is the kind of outlook we're dealing with. The leader concludes with:

If elected, Cameron must use the same energy and determination with which he reinvigorated the Tory Party to breathe new life into Britain.

That means genuine, radical change to encourage self-improvers, not wasting time on internal party wrangling or pandering to the forces of political correctness. It also means an honesty and transparency of Government that we have not seen for years.

We are still a great people and, put to the test, will respond to the challenges we face.

The Sun believes - and prays - that the Conservative leadership can put the great back into Great Britain.

Sub-Churchillian jingoism which turns the stomach. This is the relationship which Labour is crying and angry about losing today, to such an extent that it seems to have almost made Gordon Brown walk out on an interview. Labour never needed the Sun, but now it doesn't know what it had.

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9/30/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 

With baited breath...

The waiting then is finally over. The moment the nation has been looking forward to has arrived. After months of tension, irritation and terrible puns, not to mention writing, the next editor of the Sun, taking over from Rebekah Wade will be... Dominic Moron (surely Mohan? Ed.).

Who he? Well, he's probably best known for being a former editor of the Sun's Bizarre showbiz pages, which is increasingly becoming a signifier for going on to "greatness", with Piers Morgan and Andy Coulson both formerly helming the columns. More recently he's been the deputy editor for the last couple of years, although even the sad individuals like myself who "watch" the Sun will have been hard pressed to see any of his personal influence on the paper. Indeed, he's even been editing the paper for the last month while Wade, sorry, I mean Brooks, has been getting to know her new husband even better, when not flying to Italy in a private jet and back in a single day of course, and I doubt anyone has noticed any difference whatsoever. Mohan did for a time have a comment page all to himself, a success so huge that he was swiftly recognised by Private Eye as the World's Worst Columnist.

None of this will be seen as a surprise. Wade's appointment as editor was the one which caused the most comment and controversy since Kelvin MacKenzie's days, both because (durr) she was a woman on what has always been a distinctly laddish paper, and also due to her role as the nation's paedofinder general while editor of the News of the World. Murdoch's choices prior to that had actually been far more conservative, perhaps with the exception of the young and relatively untested Morgan, and also more anonymous. Mohan might have had his photograph taken with every "star" going while editor of Bizarre, but that was quite a while ago by modern standards. Murdoch's apparent predilection for showbiz reporters to gradually become editors of his tabloids can be explained easily: they rarely have defined political views, let alone ones which are likely to be counter to his (read Morgan's anguished and fevered political revision prior to meeting Murdoch in his "diaries"), hence leaving all that tiresome stuff to either him or his trusted lieutenants like Trevor Kavanagh, and secondly, considering that most of the nonsense printed in them now is either about who's shagging who and who currently has the biggest pair of tits, it makes good business sense that someone who understands that first and foremost has their hand on the tiller.

As it happens, the editor of the Sun has probably never mattered less, with the exception of when the paper was transformed from the Daily Herald into (gradually, with Murdoch's purchase of the paper in 1969) the super soaraway form which we now know and loathe. No editor since MacKenzie has ever fully stamped their own personality all over it: sure, Wade has stepped up the campaigning slightly, and her continuing emphasis on saving children from the evil all around them has never wavered, while it has probably become slightly more liberal, in line with society in general, but the politics have remained exactly the same. Up the arse of Blair, less up the arse of Brown, and now up the arse of Cameron, all dictated by the true management. The lies, laziness and obsessions will all remain the same under Mohan, and Sun-watching will be just as necessary as before.

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8/26/2009 07:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 30, 2009 

Scum-watch: It's all thanks to us!

There's a quite extraordinary leader in today's Sun (url will change). Extraordinary in that it is utterly shameless in claiming credit for two campaigns, one that it did indeed lead, and which has had negative consequences which will almost certainly affect social services for years to come, and another which it only jumped on on Monday. The paper of course doesn't personally claim credit; it instead claims that its readers are responsible, as it has in the past. This might be the case in the Baby P campaign, but is certainly not in the case of the Gurkhas. In any case:

WHO said people power was dead?

In one amazing day, TWO Sun campaigns result in triumphs for our readers.

GURKHAS win a crucial Commons victory against Government plans to deport them.

And BABY P social workers finally pay the price for their incompetence and arrogance.

Incredibly, the Sun can't even get the campaign concerning the Gurkhas right. The government has no plans to deport them; retired Gurkhas instead want the right to settle here. One would have thought that if the Sun had been covering the Gurkhas campaign since the beginning, it might have been able to get the key facts straight.

First, the Gurkhas...

Labour’s humiliation at Westminster over its shabby treatment of these brave men is a triumph for decency and democracy.

The Sun is proud to have led the crusade to let the Gurkhas settle here.

Gordon Brown has only himself to blame for his bloody nose.


Led the crusade? Prior to last Saturday, only Jon Gaunt had so much as mentioned the Gurkhas' campaign in the paper this year. Last year the paper made 38 mentions of Gurkhas: just once did it make the Sun's leader column, and then it was regarded as the least important issue of the day, below some completely inaccurate nonsense about the European Union and yet more woe from Helen Newlove. To be fair to the paper, Gaunt has at least repeatedly wrote about the Gurkhas, but one columnist does not make a paper leading the "crusade". Notable by their absence from this leader are the far more important individuals who genuinely did lead the campaign, namely Joanna Lumley and Nick Clegg, who obviously come second to the paper's noble leadership and the readers who did much to put down the motion which led to the government being defeated.

And why did it take Haringey Council so long to appreciate anger over their failure to sack those who betrayed Baby P?
I don't know; maybe they were following proper procedure rather than just deciding to instantly sack people based on what was written in Sun leader columns?
Four went yesterday without compensation, including social worker Maria Ward, her superior Gillie Christou and two bosses.

That would be the same Maria Ward who was driven to the edge of suicide by the Sun's targeting of her. Before the Sun shut down comments on its Baby P reports, readers had commented on the Sun's article daring her to do it. The paper had also demanded that another social worker, Sylvia Henry, be sacked. The council found that she had no case to answer. Doubtless she too suffered similar treatment to that which Sharon Shoesmith and Ward were subjected; if she was hoping for an apology, she'll be waiting a long time.
It’s good to see that public opinion can still count in national life.

As long as that public opinion corresponds with the Sun's views, naturally.

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4/30/2009 11:51:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 27, 2009 

An interesting set of priorities.

It's interesting and perhaps informative to note that on the day that there was another case which showed the deficiencies and incompetence which often dogs police investigations into accusations of rape, both the Daily Mail and Express decided that a man cleared of rape after 45 minutes of deliberations was far more worthy of going on the front page than the conviction of Kirk Reid, who raped or indecently assaulted as many as 71 women before finally being caught.

The acquittal of Peter Bacon predictably touches all the issues which the Mail and Express love to highlight. His accuser admitted that she was drunk and couldn't remember what happened. She claimed that because she couldn't remember what happened, the sexual intercourse the pair apparently had must have been non-consensual, in line with an appeal court judgement from 2007 which adjudged that a woman who is drunk may well be unable to give her consent, but the decision is still ultimately left up to the jury to decide whether the man had a "reasonable belief" that consent had been given. For a paper that continues to take a highly moralistic line when it comes to sex, Bacon gets off remarkably scot free from criticism, especially considering his comment that he was aiming to try to get a one-night stand legitimately", with predictably the woman copping it instead. She was a self-confessed "recreational binge drinker", had not a boyfriend for a number of years, "was close to her mother", had been suffering from depression, "was known for flamboyant outfits in court" during her work as a lawyer, and had had another one night stand with a different man when Bacon and the woman had previously crossed paths. Bacon, instead, is "a very kind and caring individual, and would never speak badly of anyone", was holding down two part-time jobs, and also studying sociology at Canterbury university.

All of this is with a contrast with the Kirk Reid case, which you might have thought was more newsworthy. The second case within a month concerning police incompetence and repeated attacks on women over a number of years, the conviction of John Worboys being the other example. Reid had first entered the police's inquiries in 2004, and came into contact with the police 12 times before a detective inspector who had just been handed the case joined the dots in a matter of days. Both Worboys and Reid targeted women returning from nights out, often the worse the wear from drink, which Worboys then compounded by offering the women who entered his cab a drink, claiming that he had a major betting or casino win. The drinks were spiked; the women often woke up unable to remember what happened, but knowing that they had been sexually assaulted.

The obvious point to make is that despite improvements over the years, women are still all too often completely disbelieved or not taken seriously when making rape allegations, especially when drink has been involved. This is further not helped by surveys which routinely return results that up to a third believe women are partially responsible if they flirt with someone who subsequently rapes them, with around the same number also thinking the victim should accept some of the blame if she was drunk. As potentially irresponsible as getting drunk on your own is, with no one to take care of you while you get home, all the blame has to lie with the person who takes advantage of it - not the victim.

As much as Peter Bacon has undoubtedly suffered since he was accused, the end result shows that the system has worked. There is an argument to be made for the accused in rape trials to be given the same protection as the victim until conviction, but that then raises implications for those accused of other crimes. Why should those charged with murder or child molestation/possession of child pornography for example not also claim they should be protected until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt? Bacon couldn't really have asked for a better confirmation of his innocence than for him to be splashed across the front page of the second biggest selling newspaper in the country, which will hopefully be some kind of recompense, however slight. A far bigger travesty would be if the wide publication of his case was to further damage the belief in those who have been assaulted and who have never faced a greater challenge in bringing their attackers to justice.

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3/27/2009 09:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 26, 2009 

Scum-watch: Disgraceful journalism shocker.

There was a major story today which highlighted some truly reprehensible journalism by the Sun which I was intending to post on, but which has since been removed from the newspaper site on which it was posted, not I presume because it was inaccurate but because of a court order which had previously been granted that had brought the initial coverage to an end. I'm not going to repeat it because I think the story, broken in the Sun, should never have been published in the first place, but if you're so inclined you'll undoubtedly be able to find it. I do however hope that the Press Complaints Commission, which was already investigating the initial story, now throws the book at the Sun.

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3/26/2009 11:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 

Scum-watch: Demanding the immediate arrest of Anjem Choudary.

One of the great things about the Sun is that every so often it gets enough of a bee in its bonnet, or rather sees a passing bandwagon, and it can't help but leap upon it. On occasion it starts the ball rolling; at other times it just enjoys the ride. These campaigns, if they can even be termed such, rarely last long; long-term attention span, except when it comes to something like the Human Rights Act, is not the Sun's strong point. Sometimes these campaigns will have a lasting and damaging effect, such as late last year's witch-hunt over the death of Baby P, and at other times they will have absolutely no impact at all, and end up being quietly dropped and forgotten. Their campaign against knife crime is one such example, although ostensibly it is still on-going. "Broken Britain", last year's big motif, has also not been so big this year, what with Jade Goody dying to instead concentrate on.

One of the previous campaigns which the Sun has not since stopped crowing about involved Abu Hamza. The Sun has since claimed that it was more or less thanks to them that he ended up behind bars, which was utter nonsense, as have other "internet investigators" that have since become rather discredited (see Bloggerheads RE: Glen Jenvey). Nonetheless, the Sun's continual emphasis on Hamza ended up turning him into a major villain and the archetypal spouting Islamic madman. How much influence he genuinely had on those who went on to take part in terrorist attacks is disputed; he certainly was involved in radicalisation, but the more lurid claims against him don't necessarily stand up to scrutiny. He was definitely on the periphery, and some who have gone on to become noted extremists certainly did go to the Finsbury Park mosque if not regularly then on more than one or two occasions to hear him speak, but also thanks to the portrayal of Hamza many now imagine that it's radical imams in mosques that do the radicalising when this is overwhelmingly, especially now, not the case. Hamza has if anything now become a cartoon, a puppet who can be brought out and used for almost any purpose.

Since Hamza's sad sojourn to Belmarsh, the Sun has been looking for someone to replace him. First they alighted upon Omar Bakri Muhammad, the then leader of al-Muhajiroun, since banned and now exiled in Lebanon, having been denied re-entry to the country. He even more than Hamza was a media whore, who loved the attention and had even less discernible links to those who have subsequently took part in if we must call it that, the global jihad. He still regularly pops up, when the Sun can be bothered to phone him up and incur the international charges. Replacing him though has been the second in command of al-Muhajiroun, now supposedly the leader of one of its numerous successor organisations, Anjem Choudary. Choudary is interesting for two reasons: firstly because unlike either Hamza or Bakri he has no religious training whatsoever, and has not studied to be an imam, and is instead a lawyer by profession, albeit one that doesn't seem to practice; and secondly because Choudary used to be a "normal" person, i.e. got drunk, slept around and generally had something approaching fun. Hamza also didn't embrace radical Islam until he was in his late 20s, during the mid-80s, but was not as well-known for similar behaviour as Choudary was.

Choudary however is even more shameless when it comes to media attention than Bakri and Hamza combined. He appears to adore it, perhaps even crave it. He never seems happier than when appearing on Newsnight or some other news programme, moderating his rhetoric somewhat to not appear completely out there, addressing the anchor by name (he almost seemed to be flirting with Kirsty Wark on a recent NN appearance) and generally enjoying the attention. This is not to deny that Choudary holds undoubted extremist views which go against not just the vast vast majority of people in this country but also the vast vast majority of Muslims as well, but he is, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot, a shill, a complete incompetent who almost seems like a plant by the security services to discredit radical Islam even further. He is leader of a tiny sect that has only gained attention because both of his own inflammatory views, their skills at exploiting the outrage of the gullible, and because the media itself adores him, because he makes either their programme or their newspaper seem exciting, even vaguely dangerous. It's quite accurate to lump Choudary in with the British National Party, except that it's acceptable to use Choudary where it isn't to use the BNP. If anything, the roles should be reversed: the BNP is far more influential than Choudary and deserves challenging in the media spotlight, unlike the clownish Choudary.

Choudary is a distraction. His group may well contain some individuals who might go on to put their words into action, although not necessarily in this country, hence why it should be carefully monitored. Choudary though is just a windbag, someone who can be relied upon for a quote but who can equally be turned on when the press feels like it. Which is what the Sun has done today.

Coinciding with the release of the CONTEST anti-terrorism strategy, the Sun has unilaterally decided that Choudary is such a danger and has got away with his "incitement" for so long that he must be immediately arrested, charged, and locked away. Quite why it's decided now is anyone's guess, although it might be connected with the fact that the terrorist threat from jihadists in general seems to be receding somewhat, as the strategy set out, meaning the Sun might not be able to scaremonger relentlessly for much longer, as it also does today, as we shall come to. Other papers would suggest that the police might well want to look at the "evidence" they've gathered and go from there; not the Sun. No, the paper "DEMANDS" on the front page that the police take action. And inside it does much the same:

So today The Sun calls on police chiefs to stop dithering and charge former lawyer Choudary, 41, before he poisons more young minds.

There isn't of course the slightest evidence that Choudary has "poisoned" any young minds; those he appeals to have probably already gone through their "radicalisation" process.

Needless to say, the Sun's evidence is predictably weak and contentious, with context being everything. In his latest rant, the paper breathlessly informs us:

In his new outburst — a recording posted on a password-protected Al-Qaeda website — he said: “You do not neglect any of our duties...

“If many of our Muslim lands are under occupation then of course jihad — you are going to be talking about jihad. You are going to be recruiting for the Mujahideen.

“You’re going to be working to overthrow, sorry, liberate, Muslim lands. Because you’re living in a situation where there’s lots of Muslim lands under occupation.”

Quoting from Islamic text, Choudary added: “ ‘You cannot accomplish this until you train... train for jihad.’ What kind of training is he talking about? He’s talking about military training.”


Choudary is quite clearly not directly inciting those listening to go abroad and start overthrowing "Muslim lands". He's talking rhetorically, for a start. Britain has also never been considered a "Muslim land"; the caliphate which many radical Muslims wish to re-establish only ever reached as far as Spain. Choudary's group and Choudary himself talk rather hilariously about instituting Sharia law here and flying the "flag of Islam" from Downing Street, but it's for the birds. Not even they really believe it. The Sun doesn't try and suggest he's broken any laws here, but it's painstakingly analysed his other utterances for the slightest suggestion that he may have done:

Last September Choudary claimed the publisher of a novel about the prophet Mohammed should face the death penalty.

Martin Rynja — who put out fictional tale The Jewel Of Medina about the Prophet’s child bride — was placed under armed guard after petrol was poured through his letter box.

At the time Choudary appeared to be condoning the attacks, saying: “It is clearly stipulated in Muslim law that any kind of attack on his honour carries the death penalty.

“People should be aware of the consequences they might face when producing material like this.”

Our legal experts say this breaks section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which states racially or religiously aggravated disorderly behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress, is a crime punishable by up to two years in jail.

If it could be proved Choudary’s comments were directly linked to an attack on the publisher’s life, he could be prosecuted for conspiracy to murder — which carries a LIFE term.


Again here, it's quite apparent that Choudary is not directly inciting violence against the book's publisher. Choudary had made similar remarks to prior to this, including at a demonstration against the speech by the Pope which referred to Muhammad's work as "evil", where he said that under Islamic law the Pope could be executed for his slur on the prophet. He was careful during the actual protest to make clear the inference that it had to be under an Islamic system; with reporters he was not so careful, apparently telling one:

"Whoever insults the message of Muhammad is going to be subject to capital punishment. I am here have a peaceful demonstration. But there may be people in Italy or other parts of the world who would carry that out. I think that warning needs to be understood by all people who want to insult Islam and want to insult the prophet of Islam."

Now that is potentially incitement, but the Met had already investigated and decided not to press charges, as the remarks were apparently made in private. It's unlikely that they'd be able to prosecute or make the case stand up were they to attempt to do so over what the Sun highlights.

The paper isn't beat yet though:

Recently Choudary threatened that Lord Mandelson would be stoned to death under Sharia law and declared: “He would not be able to speak openly about homosexuality.”

Our experts said his comments broke the Public Order Act 1986, section 4A. It outlaws behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Breaking this law carries a heavy fine and/or six months in jail.

They might have a case here, but it would be a piss weak one and not get rid of Choudary for long. And err, that's it. That's all the Sun's evidence. To call this an investigation is itself rather pretentious, considering the amount of work that must have gone into it.

It's the Sun's leader though that is bordering on hysterical (url will change):

GORDON Brown warns of unprecedented terror threats as he prepares to host next week’s G20 summit.

Err, no he hasn't. He hasn't used any such terminology, either in his pronouncements on the anti-terrorist document, or in his Observer article at the weekend, "unprecedented" being entirely absent.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith raises fears further, predicting extremists will stop at nothing, including a nuclear “dirty bomb”, to inflict mass murder.

Again, no she hasn't. The most the document goes is to suggest that the "aspirations" of terrorists to use such materials has risen. My aspiration has risen to not get so worked up about a tabloid newspaper, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen.

So why hasn’t she rounded up dangerous loudmouth Anjem Choudary whose rants are most likely to provoke such an atrocity?

Probably because he is just what the Sun calls him, a loudmouth, just not dangerous. His rants are irrelevant except to his tiny band of followers and to the tabloid newspapers that love reporting them.

Ministers would ban harmless jokes about gays — even by gay comics — yet they allow Choudary to demand homosexuals’ execution.

Only neither is happening, or happened. Choudary was again talking about under Sharia law, while the government is not banning jokes about gays, despite the more ridiculous interpretation of potential laws again by the likes of the Sun.

This rabble-rouser pays lip service to peaceful action, yet is free to stir the hatred of gullible Muslims who might blow themselves and us to smithereens.

The key word here is "might". No Muslim listening to Choudary is suddenly going to decide to blow themselves and us to smithereens; to pretend radicalisation is that simple is more than daft, it's ignorant.

Despite his past as a cider-swigging, dope-smoking womaniser, Choudary demands death for anyone who drinks, takes drugs or fornicates.

He was behind the vile Luton demos against our brave soldiers. And he wants to sack our elected Parliament and raise the flag of revolutionary Islam over the House of Commons.


So? Is the Sun really so frightened of a thing called freedom of speech? He can call for whatever he likes or fantasise about whatever he likes as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, and so far there is nothing to suggest that it has.

This is worryingly like a re-run of the Abu Hamza saga.

“Hooky” spent years fomenting terror right under the noses of our security services before he was finally put away. And that was only to stop America getting their hands on him.


This is simply bollocks. The security services were well aware of Hamza, it's true, probably because like with the other radicals they believed that had a "covenant of security", where they were more or less free to do what they wanted as long as they didn't target this country itself, as well as quite possibly informing the security services of those who wanted to. There are still accusations that Abu Qatada, for example, is a double agent. The others also had regular contact with MI5. How deep the links go we simply don't know. The American part is double bollocks: the Americans still want to extradite him.

If the PM is right, another 7/7-style massacre is looming.

Again, Brown has said absolutely nothing like this. The head of MI5 back in January said the threat level was if anything decreasing, and that al-Qaida had no semi-autonomous structure in this country at present. He could of course be completely wrong, as you can't really trust a single thing a spook says, but considering how they've scaremongered in the past it seems doubtful whether they would suddenly decide the threat level was decreasing unless it actually was.

One day our hand-wringing police will have to take action against Choudary. What are they waiting for?

They should slam this nasty piece of work behind bars NOW — before our emergency services have to count the corpses.


Again, like with yesterday the paper almost seems to be willing such an attack to happen, almost say it can say it told you so. If the paper really cared about the terrorist threat to this country it would completely ignore Choudary and go after the really dangerous people - the ones who don't become media whores who can be contacted by phone for an instant quote, the Mohammad Siddique Khans that stay under the radar until it's too late. That though is far too difficult and costs too much. Far simpler to demand that Choudary be thrown behind bars, no matter how weak or dismal the actual evidence to do so is.

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3/25/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 

Scum-watch: Hypocrisy amongst a defense of Maddie-balls.

You'd really think that the Sun would have just said nothing about Gerry McCann's evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee's investigation into press standards and left it at that. Every line and word would have the potential to be gloriously hypocritical and also highlight their own role in the smearing, not perhaps of the McCanns themselves, where they acted for the most part with relative restraint compared to their rivals, but certainly in their far less balanced coverage dedicated to Robert Murat, who the Sun along with the rest of the tabloid media paid damages to.

Instead, it's dedicated a leader to somewhat defending itself, although the real point behind it becomes evident with its conclusion. Still, let's delve in (url subject to change):

KATE and Gerry McCann suffered the double agony of losing a precious daughter — and media lies about their role in her disappearance.

Dignified Gerry says Madeleine’s nightmare abduction plunged them into an agonising “media storm”.

Distraught with shock and guilt, they faced vile claims they murdered their own child and dumped the body.

Trashy “exclusives” added to the grief of this tragically unlucky couple.


Trashy "exclusives" like splashing on the front page with a picture of a random little blonde girl who looked slightly like Madeleine, for example? Or running a completely bogus story about Murat that couldn't possibly have been true because the McCanns themselves told the paper that their daughter hadn't gone missing at the time the witness claimed to have driven them in his cab? Or a 12-page super special on the anniversary of Madeleine going missing that plumbed new depths of even tabloid journalism?

Much blame lies with Portuguese police who made up for their incompetence by smearing the McCanns as suspects, leaving them defenceless against poisonous rumour.

Ah yes, the blame the ignorant, incompetent foreigners defence. I'm pretty sure they didn't force the Sun to print what it did.

Some newspapers greedily pounced on any dodgy rubbish to increase sales.

The Sun’s own coverage was sometimes less than perfect.

But we are proud to have been praised by the McCanns for our steadfast support.

And the tabloids were not alone in this media frenzy.

The BBC’s Huw Edwards fronted the news standing outside alleged suspect Robert Murat’s front door.


Quite true, the BBC hardly helped matters by flying anchors over to Portugal, which was completely over the top. I seem to remember Sky News (majority shareholder R. Murdoch) however had an entire dedicated section to Madeleine, and when the McCanns returned from Portugal followed them for their entire journey from the airport to where they were staying by helicopter, in the world's slowest and most boring car chase. The BBC merely joined in the race to the bottom, and would use the exact same defence as the tabloids would: that they were giving the public what they wanted.

And, it has to be said, the McCanns themselves fed the headlines.

They hired spokesmen, courted the cameras and at one stage flew to Rome to meet the Pope.

Who can blame them? They were desperate to keep the world focused on the search for their little girl.


Again, quite true: from the moment the McCanns went all out with the media hunt the chances of finding their daughter seemed to decline immeasurably. Making your missing child the most famous face in Europe, if not the best part of the world, is not necessarily the best way to find her. They however did this for the best possible reasons: the media regardless chewed them up and spat them out.

Despite all this, Gerry McCann still believes in freedom of speech.

Which is more than can be said for Max Mosley who wants EU-style privacy laws.

Britain already has draconian libel laws and self-regulation. It also has the Press Complaints Commission where issues are resolved swiftly and cheaply, without £500-an-hour lawyers.

The last thing we need is unelected judges censoring the truth about scandalous conduct among the Great and the Good.

And so we get to the real reason for this tortuous leader. McCann incidentally said much the same as Mosley, with he too wanting far tighter regulation. Mosley's demands also fall short of a fully-fledged privacy law: fundamentally he wants those who are going to be featured in exposes like the one he found himself at the centre of to be informed before they go to publication, which is simply common courtesy, so they can then challenge that publication in the courts. In Mosley's case this would have meant that the NotW would not have been published the story in the form it was; it still probably could have splashed on his antics, just not with the fabricated Nazi angle, although again he still could have challenged it on invasion of privacy grounds. It's also true we have draconian libel laws, but as has been argued repeatedly by myself, the PCC is for the most part toothless. To pretend that it's a completely competent and strong regulator is a nonsense, as the McCann case comprehensively proved. Those who respected and feared it would never have published the articles they did in the first place, and the fact that all those who subsequently sued firmly rejected going to it with their complaints, and that the McCanns themselves were apparently advised by Christopher Meyer to launch legal action is hardly a vote of confidence in its abilities. Fundamentally, the Sun realises that Mosley threatens their business model: they rely on the scandals and the sex concerning the dregs of the celebrity world which has no real public interest. Exposing the real great and good often is in the public interest.

The chances in any event of any change to the law, which is what it will require rather than rulings by judges, are incredibly slim. That the Sun felt the need to defend itself in print, something it very rarely does, suggests that perhaps it isn't that unthinkable after all.

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3/11/2009 10:12:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 

Dehumanised to a commodity.

Never has a truer word been spoken than the description by Gerry McCann of how his daughter became a commodity, with profits to be made out of her disappearance. He sugared the pill slightly in his evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee slightly by acknowledging that to begin with there was a "desire to try to help get facts that would lead to Madeleine's whereabouts", but even this was coloured, as it always is, by the media at the same time trying to promote themselves. There was no need to for the likes of the Sun and the News of the World to splash their logos all over the t-shirts they produced, or the posters which went up across Portugal, where they were almost as big if not bigger than the words "FIND MADDIE". Newspapers know full well that launching such campaigns benefits them, the chances of having to pay out being extremely slight, even though offering such huge rewards tends to attract cranks, and in extreme circumstances, such as in the Shannon Matthews case, even encourage the desperate to stage disappearances.

It's equally difficult to disagree with Mr McCann's other claim:

...our family have been the focus of some of the most sensationalist, untruthful, irresponsible and damaging reporting in the history of the press.

When you know the sorry history of the tabloid press in this country, and some of the recent low points, that's quite the statement. It's all the more depressing that it's almost certainly true.

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3/10/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 09, 2009 

First and last words on the Jade Goody phenomenon.

Part of the reason I've abstained for the most part from commenting on the media/Jade Goody complex is that I've covered very similar examples here in the past ad nauseum. Goody is the latest continuation of what has been building in our media since the death of Diana: the perfect opportunity for the tabloid press to show they care while at the same exploiting the person for all they're worth, even if at the same time the person they're pretending to care about is also exploiting them. The line can be drawn fairly straight from Diana, through to Jill Dando, Sarah Payne, perhaps even Holly and Jessica, Madeleine McCann, Baby P at a stretch and now to Goody. The difference this time round is that Goody is still alive, for now; Madeleine technically is but was being treated as dead from almost as soon as she went missing. The fact that she was missing meant that she and her parents were fair game; to begin with they cooperated, then they were turned on, then they were rehabilitated. Remarkably like Goody, except she went through an initial process of vilification before being rehabilitated before once again being vilified.

The line of defence is that the media is expressing the public will, or the public mood: we too were grieving for Diana, we wanted the murderer of Jill Dando caught, we wanted to string paedophiles up by their testicles, we wanted to find Madeleine, and now we all feel the pain of Goody, of a life unjustly cut short by a disease that strikes us down at random. These moods can sometimes be fleeting, they can sometimes be lengthy, but the media will always be there to milk them to their full potential. Madeleine was only the most extreme example: a press which had lost all sense of its normal journalistic values, reduced to translating gossip in the local Portuguese rags, regardless of how heartless or defamatory, all because they believed that it was what their readers wanted, and that even if it wasn't, it was what they were going to get. Another justification increasingly cited is that the internet now allows constant, almost always unmoderated speculation and rumour, far beyond what even the Express published; the newspapers are only competing in a race to the bottom. It's wholly unconvincing, but expect it to be increasingly depended on as the recession deepens, advertising revenues fall further and circulations drop.

The case of Jade is however slightly different because it's the first real alignment between public relations and media which has dominated the tabloids for such a lengthy period of time. Most of the previous outbreaks of group-think were when those involved were either dead or missing, and when the only people who profited from it, apart from the media, if at all and hardly by much were the relatives. Jade is more comparable with those other individuals famous for no real reason, Jordan and Kerry Katona, the latter also previously handled by Max Clifford. Clifford is both a genius and probably the most shameless individual in the country, other than the tabloid editors themselves: his control and power are probably only comparable in the media world to, believe it or not, Sir Alex Ferguson, another person who can banish media organisations from his presence on the slightest of whims and with the same amount of accountability, namely next to none.

Clifford in fact didn't really devise the model of turning an individual into a brand; Jordan's people are probably those chiefly responsible. Jordan, or Katie Price is not just a perpetually surgically enhanced model, she's an underwear designer, a novelist, the modern equivalent of a diarist, a children's author, a singer, a horse rider, a perfume brand, even a porn star, if you're willing to count her amateur antics with Dwight Yorke which were released onto the net, while at one point she was even set to give birth live online. This edifice is of course a complete and utter sham: she no more writes a single word of her books than she does actively design the underwear sold under her name. Who knows, perhaps it isn't even really her riding a horse or on that TV show with her husband; everything else about her life is fake, why couldn't she herself be? The remarkable thing about all this is that in a world where the tabloids are prepared to scream at the slightest example of phoniness on BBC programmes, they completely indulge Jordan, Katona and Jade. Sure, they might occasionally run the odd article pointing out that Jordan doesn't actually write her books, but the Faustian pact between them is strong enough to ensure that it doesn't affect the next exclusives they've got lined up to keep the punters happy. The other thing is we honestly don't know whether those who buy the books or the garments actually care whether or not they're not getting the real deal: they probably don't. At any rate, the whole thing would be unlikely to come completely crumbling down even if the whole thing eventually turns out to be one long hoax to see just how low someone can go and get some of the general public to follow them.

It's only when someone makes a truly glorious mistake, such as that made by Goody when she bullied Shilpa Shetty that for a time they're sent to the dog house, awaiting their rehabilitation. In the most extreme examples this never happens: Michael Barrymore is one such case, and some of the other famous men accused of various crimes, both proved and disproved also come to mind. Some directly link Goody's subsequent living secular saint status to the fact she was diagnosed with cancer live on Indian Big Brother, but she had in fact been back in the tabloids and not been pilloried for some time before that. The cancer diagnosis though changed everything: sympathy will always win through, unless someone is either a paedophile or a murderer, as it ought to. This though has instead been taken to ludicrous extremes over the last few weeks, resembling a unending wake before she's even close to death's door, all the past insults forgotten, just as they were after Diana died, the harlot that betrayed the royal family turned into one of the greatest Britons to have ever lived, as Rosie Boycott so risibly argued (Interestingly, when Channel 4 did its equally unscientific 100 Worst Britons poll, Jordan came 2nd and Goody came 4th<, which was certainly unfair on Goody at the time). It has gone far, far beyond emotional pornography, instead evolving into the journalistic equivalent of an onanism obsessed teenager filling a whole drawer with spunk-laden tissues, not knowing what to do with them. The whole shallow, facile, revolting spectacle has been variously defended on the grounds that it's encouraging young women to get cervical check-ups, which is far from a compelling reason but a slight positive side-effect, to the completely baseless one that Goody is doing it so that her sons can have the life that she didn't. This is nonsense, not only because Goody was already more than well-off before she was diagnosed, but also because it seems to assume that you can't do well unless you're financially stable and go to a decent, presumably private school.

The real reason I was driven to write this drivel was Madeleine Bunting's even worse article in today's Grauniad, a similar act of masturbation, albeit a pretentious one, trying to explain the Goody phenomenon in terms of the economic calamity. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "needing to restore our faith in human nature", "grieving for the death of a fantasy world we have all been living in" or wondering what "sacrifices will we have to make as a nation to pull ourselves out of this economic mess", even if not all of those are directly thinking about Goody's death in these terms but instead through "tap[ping] into vague inchoate emotional anxieties", but is instead all to do with how Jade has been marketed and branded: she is an everywoman, and to those that have followed her, her death is similar to someone they know dying. With Diana certain people felt they knew her, through constantly seeing her life played out in the newspapers; with Goody this has been increased ten-fold, to the point where some probably are on the point of grieving because of her death, or even harming her, as the woman found with the hammer in her room may have done if not disturbed. Goody and the media have signed up because it benefits them both, and to hell with the actual effect that this real-life soap opera has on some people.

This obscene voyeurism is the ultimate tabloidisation of our culture, the latest pinnacle of the celebration of the completely unremarkable individual, the obeisance to the know-nothing. The worst thing of all is that the majority are almost certainly completely unmoved by Goody's demise, sad and sympathetic certainly, but not to the point where they want her to stare out from every tabloid front page for getting on for a month. It is instead being imposed on them by those in on the joke, those personally profiting from it. It just isn't funny. The real tragedy is that the woman with the hammer didn't cave it into Goody's skull and put all of us out of our misery.

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3/09/2009 11:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 04, 2009 

Another diamond in the rough.

After the Sun Lies comes along the new revamped and improved Daily Mail Watch, again masterminded by Tim from Bloggerheads. Do at least go and read Jamie and 5cc's opening messages: both are great arguments for why challenging tabloid bullshit is worthwhile.

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3/04/2009 11:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 16, 2009 

Exploitation by both sides.

Perhaps it's partially down to the Press Complaints Commission feeling the pressure after last week's Media Standards Report, which was rather intemperately responded to by both the outgoing head Christopher Meyer, and by its director, Tim Toulmin, who called it "deranged" while also claiming that the public are "pig-sick of regulation", which seems to suggest that he isn't exactly keeping up with current events, but in any event the PCC has announced that it is launching its own investigation into possible payments by both the Sun and the People to the parents of Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old at the centre of the storm concerning his apparent parentage of a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend.

The paying of the parents of a minor for material on them is explicitly forbidden by the PCC's code - except when it's decided that doing so is in the public interest. It's quite apparent that the Sun did indeed pay Patten's parents for last week's exclusive, not bothering to deny it when asked for a comment, stating that they "absolutely believe [the story] to be in the public interest". As for whether the People did, it seems unlikely that they would have been welcomed otherwise with open arms into Patten's mother's house, or that he would have been frog-marched in to answer the hack's questions, obviously incredibly uncomfortable with the situation.

Key will obviously be whether the newspapers can make a respectable argument for there being a public interest in the story, hopefully beyond the natural prurient interest. Doubtless the broken society will be invoked, the rareness of the situation, despite some columnists attempting to make out that this is happening every day of the week, and that in itself it has spawned a debate about sex education and how to prevent teenage pregnancies. Knowing the spinelessness of the PCC, I can't see any other ruling than that the public interest has indeed been served.

Sometimes though, even when such reports are arguably in the public interest, that doesn't necessarily mean they should be published. Already the story has spawned perhaps predictable claims that Patten, who looks 10 at the most rather than 13, is not the father, with two other teenagers claiming to also have slept with the child's mother. That these claims have been reported completely seriously, with those making the allegations being named, which will doubtless do plenty for their self-aggrandisement, is disturbing enough: nothing seems more inclined to break up any long-term relationship between father and mother than such rumours. Little thought has also so far gone into how those who are already struggling with getting used to the idea of being parents at such a young age will be affected by their being splashed on the front page of the biggest selling newspaper in the country, let alone how they feel about their sex lives being discussed almost pornographically. We also have no idea whatsoever on how the money which has changed hands will be used - one hopes that it will go towards the child's upbringing, but as there only seems to have been one side paid, and that indeed the money seems to have gone to both Patten's mother and his estranged father, that is also in doubt.

This blog tries not to moralise or come across as too sanctimonious, but this sad tale has all the hallmarks of only two sides profiting, that of the media, with the Sun already boasting of how their exclusive broke their previous records for online hits, and the parents, those who abjectly failed to prevent this situation from developing in the first place. Neither seems to have the interests of the children, for that is after all what they are, foremost in their minds. Patten in the photographs, holding and looking over the baby, looks absolutely bewildered, as numb and overwhelmed as you'd expect a 13-year-old looking at his first-born in the glare of the flashing lights to be. The odds on him remaining in contact with his child, let alone developing a proper relationship with either her or the mother, must be slim, especially in the full glare of the media spotlight. Those of us who are almost double his age have enough trouble with the latter on its own without even considering the prospect of additionally becoming a parent in the bargain. Exploiting such a situation for money and notoriety, as both sides appear to have done, is wrong, regardless of whether the public interest has been served or not.

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2/16/2009 11:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 09, 2009 

Why does lack of trust not equal lack of sales?

One of the most ponderous and unanswered questions concerning the British media is why, when survey after survey suggests that journalists, especially of the tabloid ilk, are trusted only slightly more than estate agents, the papers that lie the most to their readers continue to be the ones that are the most successful. Last month Edelman found that just 19% trust newspapers in this country, while the latest survey, this time for the Media Standards Trust, found that national newspapers were the least trusted of six institutions and organisation. The police, supermarkets, the BBC, hospitals and banks were all more highly trusted, although they did come second, behind the banks, when asked which should be more strictly regulated.

Historically, it's true that while newspapers may have been founded with the best of intentions, their owners were far less principled. The barons, for the most part, only had making money as a side interest; their first concern was propaganda and the status that owning a newspaper brought. This only changed when the barons gave way to the grocers, and now, in the form of Richard Desmond, and arguably before him Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black, the asset-strippers. Others might add the Barclay brothers, considering their current cuts at the Telegraph, to that list. Rupert Murdoch combines both making money with propaganda, the losses on the Times more than subsidised by the other sections of his empire and by the profits made by the Sun and News of the World. Murdoch's own contempt for accuracy in contrast to money-making could not be more exemplified than by his order that the presses should keep rolling when the Sunday Times printed the Hitler diaries, despite their exposure as a hoax.

It's also true that throughout their history newspapers have been criticised both for their intrusions into privacy, their salacious content and their downright lies. Only once though has a scandal and the complete contempt for accuracy directly resulted in a huge drop in circulation, when the Sun more or less lost 200,000 sales overnight after splashing, ironically, with "THE TRUTH" on its front page. Those 200,000 sales lost in Liverpool after their coverage of the Hillsborough disaster have also never returned.

It's with that in mind that we ought to be careful in suggesting that things now are worse than they have ever been, as few can honestly live up to the excesses of Kelvin MacKenzie's reign whilst editor of the Sun. Likewise, on the political front, it's also true that campaigns now are nowhere near as distorted as they once were, when popular papers of both left and right seemed to do battle to outdo themselves in their respective smears on Conservative and Labour alike. 1992 was the last real time that such partisanship potentially had an impact on the result itself, although the Sun's own claims that it "won it" for the Tories are highly dubious. Newspapers have always exaggerated their ability to influence their readers to vote a certain way; most, after all, read a newspaper that plays to their own prejudices or at least shares their own politics.

One of the explanations for the continuing sharp fall in trust is that trust across the board is declining. The British Journalism Review's collection of polls actually showed that last year trust in red-top journalists went up from 7% to 15%, a completely inexplicable rise, while trust as a whole only went up in leading Conservative politicians and people who run large companies, also inexplicable. That survey, which distinguished between journalists on the red-tops, middle-market, and the up-market papers, found trust of 20% in the former and 43% of the former. All were behind BBC, ITV and Channel 4 journalists.

Why then, when so many don't apparently trust a word of what they're reading, do they continue for the most part, even when we take into consideration falling sales, mainly explained for reasons quite different to falling trust, to buy the likes of the Mail and the Sun? Is it because they completely ignore most of the news coverage and especially the political reporting, and only focus on the sport and the features, is it macohism, or is that they don't really care about whether the newspaper they read tells the truth or not? Some of it might well be down to most newspapers' complete refusal to be self-critical or so much as suggest that they might get it wrong, except when they're forced to: after all, both Paul Dacre and Rebekah Wade recently gave defiant speeches in which they directly attacked those critical or cynical of where the newspaper industry is going, while Dacre unleashed an assault directly on Nick Davies' Flat Earth News, even if not naming it, one of the most critical books in years on the press, with the added sting that it was written by an industry insider, even if from the Guardian, probably the most critical and cynical newspaper on the wider press.

Fundamentally, the main issue is not trust in the press, but accountability. The same press which widely has taken to assailing the BBC for every slight misdemeanour is far less accountable than the publicly-funded broadcaster, yet this never enters into the discussion when the BBC so openly self-flagellates. As today's report by the Media Standard Trust points out, the Press Complaints Commission is more or less a direct cabal of the press itself, something which on almost any other industry regulator would be completely unacceptable. Its powers when it comes to imposing sanctions on those that breach its code are little more than a joke: often corrections and apologies are featured in derisory positions in the paper, far back from where the original ran. For every complaint which goes to adjudication, hundreds of others are either completely rejected or "resolved", which often means that nothing more than a note on the PCC website is posted to suggest there was ever an issue. Reading it is another of my incredibly boring pastimes: often there are potential scandals, especially those regarding intrusion into grief, in my mind amongst the most serious of the abuses which the press routinely involves itself in, which are never so much as mentioned again. Both the Mail and Mirror recently removed articles from their sites, wrote letters of apology and made donations to charity after their intrusive coverage of the death of a Preston teenager, but no one would have known that such serious action was taken to make amends unless they too perused the PCC site regularly. Surely the most serious omission which would go some way to reassuring the public would be if, like Ofcom, the PCC could impose financial penalties or full, front page apologies in the cases of the most serious breaches of the code; this though would defeat the whole purpose of the PCC, which was never meant to be an independent regulator with teeth but to be one which could prevent the government from having to introduce either a privacy law or another quango of dubious independence, to give the veneer of there being some sort of body which could provide redress.

The Media Standards Trust report concludes that without reform of the PCC there will be an even further decline in standards and that the freedom of the press itself is likely to further suffer. As we have seen however, it takes an error on the level of the Sun's Hillsbrough coverage for there to be anything resembling a public outcry; the coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, probably the most recent example we have of a significant and extended period of libellous and indefensible journalism with its consequences being well-known, didn't have anything like a similar effect. It takes something on the scale of the Mirror publishing fake photographs of alleged mistreatment for its editor to be sacked, while Andy Coulson eventually left his position after the Clive Goodman affair. Notably, in both examples both have since gone on to greater things: Morgan becoming a celebrity in his own right while Coulson is now David Cameron's chief spin-doctor. The inference is obvious: only in banking can you both get away with more while there being a higher public desire for reform. The only difference is the rewards available.

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2/09/2009 11:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

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