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Last year Hugh Grant and a group of celebrities launched “Hacked Off”, an organisation hoping to protect celebrities against the media.
A quick glance in the papers seems to suggest that this, and even the entire Phone Hacking Scandal and the Leveson Inquiry hasn’t made one iota of a change.
It actually seems that, after being quiet for a few months, the media is getting worse than ever before. Every paper around the world (well, certainly the English-speaking ones,) seem to be turning into their own versions of the News of the World. The Sun on Sunday was launched with the obvious idea of turning into a new News of the World 2.0. With scandals like Tulisa’s drug deal (which reminded me of the infamous NOTW Sheikh expose’s in it’s set up,) and especially it’s almost weekly revelations on Michael Jackson from various ex “employees” and “friends” whom he never met longer then one day (or one hour).
As if this wasn’t enough the Mirror Groups are also out for a piece of the action. Many of the former News of the World writers interestingly found a place at either The Mirror or The Sunday People, and continued their old MO. This was intended as both papers want to out scandal Murdoch’s paper and see their sales rise -by any means possible.
But it isn’t just the journalists that mark the change in direction. There is a new style of writing that is slowly seeping through all of the papers in the UK even the Guardian).
Did people complain about “tabloid style” writing, it seems that new writers are further lowering the bar. Journalists have begun writing articles as if they were writing Tweets. I have seen this strange style in the most serious of papers and magazines, so it has apparently become the norm. Personal comments and feelings have replaced facts.
This is new style has given a new kind of power to TV critics. Instead of writing a normal, informative criticism on a TV show, the columns have changed into hurtful, personal attacks. If a critic doesn’t like you, you are described in terms that would usually be used to describe to a serial killer (literally, as poor old Bobby Davro was compared to Fred West in 3 different Mirror group papers last week.) Recently Ben Elton was attacked in a way not seen before, but it was soon clear that this would be the new norm: Creating a TV show the critics don’t like is a crime. If the public like you, or your show and they don’t, they will continue to badmouth you in your column until they find enough support for their opinion. Once they do, they will find ways to prove “everybody” hates you. These days TV journalists think they are celebrities themselves with the power to make or break people. The same goes for showbiz journalists who insist on posing with stars and publishing that picture in the paper. They want some kind of cult following and crave celebrity for themselves. They Tweet opinions and are desperate to re-Tweet agreements. Even if they know they’re wrong, they want to be right. True investigative journalism is thin on the ground nowadays.
Newspapers have become no different from hate spewing trolls on Twitter and have gone from info to insults. This seems to be what their audiences want to read: one sentence of “news”, followed by 5 insults and jokes about the same issue or simply on the artist in question.
If they are unable to think up criticism for themselves, they make up articles using the most hateful Tweets they can find. In fact the modern journalist can make up entire articles backed by a single Tweet.
The Sunday People (which is going through a massive change in a bid to become the biggest Sunday Tabloid) even baits celebrities and their fans by Tweeting shocking and nasty remarks on its Twitter. Is this the behavior of a Paper?
This new kind of “hate” journalism has always been around, but they didn’t realize how much money they could make from it, until the rise of Michael Jackson. Was the media bad before, they became vultures after, often singling out a special target to victimize.
Many celebrities have suffered traumatic incidents with the media.
All to often celebrities that start out fun, happy and open change into shy nervous wrecks once they realize the extend to which the media will go to find out about their private lives. Massive amounts of money are spent on people who vaguely know a celebrity just to back up a story that will be printed anyway. Often papers don’t fear lawsuits, as the publicity for the paper and what the story earns them is higher than the payment in damages.
With the rise of internet journalism, where the best headline gets the most hits, and a story has to be short and sharp to gain the most reactions it is getting worse.
No star is safe and the more outrageous the gossip, the better it is. And not just celebrities either; its open season for anyone anywhere: Jews, people of colour, gays if there is a group the conservative red tops have it in for you can brace yourself for an attack at least once every fortnight. These days the media has the audacity to claim they are righteous, despite articles looking as if they were written by a prosecutor in a barbaric witch-hunt.
And nowhere the witch-hunt is more clear than when it comes to Michael Jackson. “For a newspaper to risk its credibility with two provably fraudulent stories about the same subject in 8 days. Stories which have been in the public domain, and discredited, for several years each. Something is clearly going on behind the scenes.” Says Charles Thompson an investigative journalist who used to write for these papers, but is now actively against fighting them. He adds: “I simply find it inconceivable that the Daily Mirror did not know this latest story was fraudulent when they published it. The very files Daily Mirror quotes state that the story is untrue, and it was already published/discredited 3yrs ago.”
In the light of all this, is it totally inconceivable that people who work at companies with such low standards – desperate to be biggest selling paper in the country and always in need of cash, would accept payment to smear a dead star so a certain company can get away scot-free? I think not, especially when the stories are written by a guy Michael Jackson successfully sued after a judge ruled he’d made up stories about him.
As Charles Thompson says: “I feel that serious questions need to be asked about what is really going on here.”
“Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don’t make it factual
Though everybody wants to read all about it”
Michael Jackson
