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PCC demands apology from News of The World
On July 7th I blogged about the absurdity of a classic Screws front page fantasy headed ‘BURRELL: I HAD SEX WITH DIANA’, with a photo of the Princess filling the page.
At the time it was clear to anyone with any perception of the Screws version of the truth that the whole story was nonsense. They’d paid Burrell’s brother-in-law, a shifty little chancer called Ron Cosgrove to tell them that Burrell had told him (back in 1993) that he’d had sex with Princess Diana.
A new set of teeth for the Press Complaints Commission?
In April 2009, the Press Complaints Commission will have a new boss, Baroness Buscombe. Peta Buscombe is a former lawyer of broad experience, most recently as Chief Executive of the Advertising Association, where she earned the respect of a number of admirers.
In many ways she looks more suitable for the job at the PCC than the incumbent, Sir Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador to Washington, who has never really recovered from indiscretions and his own inner thoughts revealed in DC Confidential – a book about his time in the US.Lady Buscombe has a reputation for being a toughish cookie who doesn’t hang back when a there’s a job to be done; the media watchers will be anxious to know if her sympathies will be with the public or the press.
Ginger whinger
For an editor of a national newspaper – if you choose to call the Sun a newspaper when there’s a strong case for reclassifying it as a comic – Rebekah Wade has a pretty flaky idea of how the law works. She told the Guardian today:
The point of concern is there is just one man making the law by setting a precedent sitting on his own. In a democracy that cannot be good for society. The point of having one solitary judge who is unelected and unaccountable who is setting a precedent in British law … I think a lot of people will be surprised that he sat alone in the Max Mosley case because there’s no jury in privacy cases.
The Spluttering Man from the Soaraway Sun
It was fun on the BBC’s Today programme this morning to hear a stuttering, burbling, ill-informed Graham Dudman – managing editor of the Sun, attempting feebly to defend the right of the popular press to plaster private details of individuals’ lives all over the pages of their unpleasant little organ.
Like every Shag-Rag editor, Dudman agreed with Paul Dacre’s claim yesterday that Mr Justice Eady was introducing a privacy law “through the back door.”
He contended that if these papers didn’t give their readers the vicarious smut they craved that somehow the standards of our national press would decline. Any claim that papers like the Sun, or the Screws or the Mail uphold any kind of journalistic standards is laughable.
Muck-raker Dacre decries the right to personal privacy.
When Max Mosley sued the News of the World for invasion of privacy last July, and won, Paul Dacre’s paper launched a vicious personal attack against Mr Justice Eady, the High Court judge who made the ruling. He ordered his hacks to write pages of frothy-mouthed vindictive in which the judge’s personal life was attacked from every angle. It was disturbing to witness a full-grown man behaving like a small child who thought someone was trying to take away his favourite toy. (see my blog post: “Why are the Mail backing the Screws?” July 27th.)
The papers for which Dacre is responsible, the Mail and the Mail on Sunday rival the News of the World in their lust for the blood of wounded celebrities. The Mail on Sunday in particular, under the specious guise of Guardian of the Moral Values of Middle England, loves to get down and dirty among the private traumas of the rich and famous.
How not to treat a Man well?
There’s no question that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross need their arses spanked for mobbing up one of the stars of the greatest British comedy of all time. But if not literally – how?
The BBC can’t take them off air for good; quite apart from difficulties with contracts and irritating though Ross’s ego can become, there’s no doubt that large numbers of licence-paying punters enjoy him. Perhaps some kind of ritual public humiliation for him. Maybe he should stand in a set of stocks in Trafalgar Square (or outside Broadcasting House) while passers by are invited to pelt his visage with sponges soaked in low-grade Vin Ordinaire.
Thank God for JS Bach and Glenn Gould
Thank God for JS Bach and Glenn Gould, who sometimes, between them, seem to make more sense of the World than anyone – especially perhaps during the metamorphoses from ‘surgical patient’ to ‘well man’ in which I’m now listening to them.
Like many who have lain in a hospital bed for a few weeks, anticipating then recovering from the incision of a surgeon’s knife, I have found the sojourn rich in reflective material.
But relax; this is not a preamble to a self-indulgent exposé of those personal and abstract thoughts that appear so much richer in semi-delirium than they ever do on the page.
More immediate and practical topics also arose.
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Glad to see the bile level are back to normal.