Archive for June, 2008
Another editor takes the Hypocritic Oath
When dear cuddly old Hello! magazine arrived in 1987 from Espana to ooze innocuous platitudes all over its celebrity subjects, it revealed a nauseating and shameful British hunger for tattle and trivia about the rich, the famous and the spuriously celebrated.
Where once gossip was tucked on a quarter of p.13 or so, it is now a globally traded commodity and dozens of organs of far more vicious temperament and determined to get fat on the proceeds have burst onto the scene like a pack of hunting dogs eager to extract every morsel of meat on offer. Such was their appetite that when TV companies started conveniently and relentlessly manufacturing throwaway celebs through BIG BROTHER, the new gossip mongers pounced on the defenceless victims in a feeding frenzy which is truly symbiotic.
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The PCC’s rejection of JK Rowling's complaint provides hacks with a lovely new loophole.
If you want to give your readers a celebrity’s private details, first post them on Wikipedia.
Yesterday the Press Complaints Commission generously granted tabloid journalists who deal in tattle extra protection from complaints about invasions of privacy.
JK Rowling objected to three newspapers revealing her private address and details of an adjacent property she has bought. Optimistically but with laudable intentions, she brought the complaint under the ambiguous terms of Clause three of the PCC’s fuzzy Editors’ Code of Practice.
The Commission rejected her complaint, although they had said in a previous judgment that when publishing details about celebrities’ home without consent, newspapers must take care to ensure that they do not publish the precise address or material that would enable people to find the whereabouts of the home.
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News of the world? Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trappings
‘… that is what we do – we go out and destroy other people’s lives.’ Former news editor on the News of the World
Do the great British public get the press the ‘Red Tops’ think they deserve? Or are the tabloids’ pious protestations of public interest really just a prurient self-serving attempt to halt declining circulation?
Peter Burden examines the News of the World’s performance – with its Fake Sheikh and the illegal mobile phone tapping, which lead to a gaol sentence for royal reporter Clive Goodman and the resignation of the editor. Burden also highlights the paper’s hypocritical bleating when Mazher Mahmood, the Fake Sheikh, was himself unmasked.
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Bernie Ecclestone catches Max Mosley with his pants down
It seems that Bernie Ecclestone, short, not very attractive commercial boss of Formula One is seeking yet more ways of filling his already bulging pockets. The opportunity for controlling even more of the F1 circus than he already controls must be inviting and now he’s trying to use FIA president, Max Mosley’s recent predicament in an attempt to distance the FIA from F1 racing. He has told the Jewish Chronicle in an interview today that “some of the people on the boards of large companies who invest in Formula One are Jewish and they might be unhappy with the allegations about Max. They might decide they don’t want to be involved with Formula One anymore because of it. I completely appreciate why people felt offended by the allegations about Max.”
Although, he added, nobody had removed any funds yet.
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Hello Peter
Listening to you at the Leveson Inquiry today, I thought you might be interested to have a look at ...
@Fleur,
I suspect he still has a job because he knows where the bodies are buried. 
Not much to write home about Neville? 
hi peter,great website. i bought your book news of the world and managed to get hold of CAMERA ASSASSIN 2 ...
they finally caught the little toad if he can lie at a small tribunal he certainly can rely on ...