All Posts Tagged With: "The Guardian"
THE CMS COMMITTEE AND THE TESTAROSSA
It’s heartening to see the Commons Committee for Culture, Media & Sport displaying a set of strong, tenacious gnashers. They have delayed publishing a report on their long-running Inquiry into Press Standards, Privacy and Libel. It was due out this month, and after all the excitement of Nick Davies’ revelations in the Guardian last July about the News of the World being sued for phone-hacking, it has been awaited with much eagerness, not least by the ShagRags at the dodgier end of our national press, who could well do without too much further inquiry into their practices.
But the Committee were so incensed at the dissembling, some say utter bullshit offered as evidence by the senior Screws staff, and former editor Andy Coulson, that they’ve decided to call in the Boss, Rupert Rumplechops’ favourite larrikin and former Sun editor, Rebekah “TestaRossa” Brooks, from whom, I imagine, they hope to extract some real answers, even the truth. It’s quite a hope.
It will be fun to see if she’s as adept at not telling the truth as her employees, Tom Crone (legal) Stuart Kuttner (Managing Editor for 22 years – now sacked) and Tory spinster, Andy Coulson, when they were in front of the Committee last July.
Titfers off to the committee chairman, Conservative John Whittingdale, who must be under some pressure from Central Office not to harass Coulson and young Dave C’s other new Wapping chums.
James Robinson in MediaGuardian says Mrs Brooks has already submitted written evidence – but it’s not on the HoC website yet. Whatever it says, it will be a work of Spinners’ Art, and well worth a read.
And, talking of the Sun, its feeble little editor, gossip-wallah Dominic Mohan must take credit for a classic, bad taste Sun front-page headline this morning:
Darling just screwed more people than Tiger Woods.
I wonder whose side they’re on?
Will Darling sue? Will Tiger?
Evan Davies’ coy delivery of it on Radio 4’s Today was pleasingly bizarre, too.
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The Gag that became a Megaphone
The most significant aspect of Carter Ruck’s attempt to impose a super-injunction on the reporting of a Parliamentary exchange is that it DIDN’T WORK. Politicans are getting their self-righteous underwear in a twist for nothing. They want lawyers to be prevented from seeking gagging orders, but it would be far more dangerous to attempt to stop them trying to do what they can for their clients. In the end these things rely on laws passed by Parliament, and their intepretation by an independent judiciary. Although the Guardian reported Trafigura’s activities last May 14th, until two weeks ago, hardly anyone had heard of Trafigura or its dirty habits. Now the world does; that’s good and, with a pleasing irony, that wouldn’t have happened if C.Ruck hadn’t tried to gag Parliament.
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The Red Tops and the Hills of Jordan
It is a little shocking that a seasoned news consumer such as myself can read a broadsheet headline: “Jordan fears consequences of Israeli Wall”, and react to it by spluttering between clenched teeth, ‘Who gives a monkey’s what she thinks!’ before realising that they’re talking about the Hashemite Kingdom, not the witless, talentless, faux-poitrined ‘former glamour model’.
Because it is part of my function to peruse the front pages of the Red-Tops and Shag-Rags, it is with growing disgust that I have seen these papers leading every day for the last fortnight with the holiday antics of this sad, ridiculous person. I don’t (though I would like to) know if the editors or the punters are driving this incomprehensible obsession. Possibly, by some bizarre twist in the taste of the public who choose to buy these papers, the former glamour model has taken the place of the late Princess Diana, and is required to be on the front page, because if she isn’t, a red-top will lose out to its rivals in the way editors claimed they did in the heady days of Diana’s roller-coaster sex-life. Much as I deplored the gross coverage given to the late Princess, for her privacy as well as my own boredom with her activities, at least there was some justification in that she was the mother of the future king.
But that Jordan, vapid nonentity, should justify any space at all could make you think either that the shag-rag editors or their punters are in the last throes of death by trivia. But this is the insidious nature of persistent coverage that seeps by osmosis from the tabloids e’en unto the Journaux serieux. I don’t know what excuses can be made for papers like the Guardian writing about her and her pointless husband. Of course, any reports (like the most recent, under the banner of television review) in that paper are loaded with appropriate irony. But that’s not enough and still produces more column inches. And was it irony that prompted them to give 2/3 of page to the obituary of the late St Jade Goody – if you can remember who she was?
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Anti-censorship campaigner out of focus on protection of privacy
Jo Glanville is a well-regarded journalist and former BBC producer with a special interest in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. Since December 2006 she has been a professional campaigner against international censorship as editor of INDEX ON CENSORSHIP, an organisation dedicated to fighting any constraints on reporting by the world’s media.
It is a valid and necessary aim in a world where totalitarian regimes routinely control the flow of information to their populations as much as they can. It isn’t evident from their website who funds the organisation. Broadly, one must assume, individuals and bodies committed to international freedom of expression. It seems likely, too, that some newspapers might support it.
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Jaded truth
Even the Guardian gave Jade Goody a front page splash today: At peace – and finally out of the limelight they said. They gave her a full page obit, too. This is surprising, but doesn’t compete with the Sun’s 9 pages of coverage or the Daily Mirror’s absurdly sanctimonious front page:
“MUMMY’S IN HEAVEN NOW.”
What do they mean?
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See how Maggie goes….
The question of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral has surfaced from nowhere, offering, if nothing else, a brief opportunity (less common these days) for stark polarisation between commentators. It emerges, as it happens, that this story may be a wild goose (released by the MoS?), but while political comment in the Shag Rags (Sun, Star, Screws) has been eclipsed by issues like which BB inmate is going to bonk which, it’s heartening to see that at least one of our national newspapers has developed into an organ of broad views.
The Guardian, whose readers’ letters were overwhelmingly hostile to the prospect of a State funeral for the old thing, had the bollocks to field a piece by Simon Jenkins headlined:
This hate figure doesn’t merit a state funeral. All she did was rescue Britain.
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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 ...