Global Journalism Review

Tabloid cult of intrusion and bullying condemned

"Things change by degrees, landmarks are passed, new barriers broken, slippery slopes slide a bit further. For those who thought the prurient, bullying intrusion of the British media could not get worse, it slid a bit further in the last week, twice," wrote Polly Toybee in the Guardian, July 24.

She described how the Daily Mail had "splattered its page three with intimate pictures of Sven-Goran Eriksson and Nancy Dell'Olio on their holiday yacht. There was canoodling, toe kissing (and some ruder pictures in the News of the World) taken by a long-lens paparazzo, recapturing those unforgettable Duchess of York toe moments and any number of other celebs cavorting in swimsuits fondly imagining they were in private."

So what makes this different ? "Even for the Daily Mail, which savages all famous or barely famous women (as brilliantly chronicled by Julie Burchill in her most recent Weekend column), the twist this time was particularly nasty, headlined 'Is Nancy trying too hard to hold on to Sven?' The story read: 'In almost every image it is clear it is Nancy who has initiated the display of affection... Having seen off the younger, thinner Ulrika Jonsson... the wily dark lady seems to have lost the plotline in this saga... pawing for attention.' But soon: 'it will be Nancy who gets the red card'."

That was all routine Mail fare, Polly Toynbee wrote: "The kind of copy their staff have programmed into their function keys. (Linda Lee-Potter had already pressed that button.) No, what was startling was the author of this dross hired to write copy to liven up the snatched pix: Cristina Odone, triumphantly credited by the Mail as deputy editor of the New Statesman, no less.

"More than that, she is a national moral pontificator, a regular contributor to Thought for the Day because she is a Catholic (a slot denied to distinguished atheist ethicists and philosophers such as Professor Sir Bernard Williams). She is also an Observer columnist. When a New Statesman editor and member of the moral establishment takes the fee of the Daily Mail to write this stuff - proving to the Mail's glee they can buy anyone just as Beaverbrook used to corrupt the left - another marker has been passed. Celebrity gossip, malign speculation, poisonous vilification of someone who is not even a public person has been graced with new respectability. Hunting down the private moments of semi-celebs is now a game for bien-pensant Thought for the Day wallahs too."

Another privacy barrier broken last week was "Jeremy Paxman's brutish questioning of Charles Kennedy about his drinking habits along with not-so-subtle insinuations about his sex life. You can imagine the pre-programme discussion - Oh God, we've got to do Kennedy but the Lib Dems are soooo boring. How can we spice it up?"

Yet another example, the article continued, was that of the former government minister, Stephen Byers, and '"The kiss-and-tell sting after a one-night stand with a Labour councillor.....'."

Ms Toynbee pointed out that "Sir Christopher Meyer takes over the press complaints commission from the shamed Wakeham in a few months. Good ambassador, well-versed in the press and diplomacy, charming and emollient, will he be minded to do much more than his predecessor? The PCC, paid for by the press itself, acts as protector of tabloid hegemony, not regulator. It mildly reproves its editors' roughest excesses only to safeguard them from outside interference. But if he were inclined, Meyer could demand the right to enforce their own press code, starting with article 1: 'Newspapers and periodicals should take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted material including pictures'."

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