Archive for November, 2008
Mendacity is contagious
British Sky Broadcasting, as most of us are all too aware, is part of the Murdochs’ News Corp. A nasty ailment they’ve picked up from their bedfellows in Wapping has just got them into trouble again.
For they have acquired from them the compulsive habit of making up stories and saying what they like about anyone, with no reference to the actualité. They had the astonishing, absurdly fanciful effrontery to describe Robert Murat, a totally innocent man, as acting like Soham murderer Ian Huntley in the days after Madeleine McCann vanished in Portugal.
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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.
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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.
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Hypocrisy in the High Street
Hypocrisy from any quarter deserves to be exposed, and especially when it comes from the largest retailer in Britain who will do anything to increase the footfall through their stores.
Tesco have consistently vowed that they will support government in not encouraging young people to drink by offering very discounted booze.
Not so.
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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.
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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.
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Obama – a brave choice, and a wise one.
Today was one of those days when provincial newspaper readers suffer from News Famine. None of the nationals on sale in South Shropshire knew that Obama had won, and they weren’t taking any chances on prognostication. For, despite his significant lead in the opinion polls, many commentators had been airing the view that when it came to that lonely moment in the polling booth, a lot of white folk would find they just couldn’t cast their vote for a black leader.
I have been fairly sure for a couple of months that they were wrong, as it became more clear that blackness was one of the least important of Obama’s characteristics.
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Mayo mesmerized by Fake Shiekh
It was surprising yesterday to hear Radio 5 Live invite News of the World investigative journalist Mazher Mahmood into their studios to puff his recent book. Simon Mayo’s show is usually more discerning.
Starting with a fatuous charade to obscure Mahmood’s identity, the lights in the studio were dimmed so that those viewing through the webcam wouldn’t see his visage, despite that fact that it can be seen on several well-used websites, including Wikipedia.
You might ask – Who gives a shit anyway? The man’s a busted flush. His brand of sloppy, largely fictitious journalism is less in demand than it was as the GB Public become more sophisticated (not enough yet, though; over 3 million morons still buy the News of the World every week to grubby up their Sundays.)
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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 ...