tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/uk-tabloids-6694/articlesUK tabloids – The Conversation2024-02-07T12:03:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2218272024-02-07T12:03:09Z2024-02-07T12:03:09ZWhat recent Netflix shows – including The Crown and Beckham – get wrong about the British press<p>Twelve years after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-affair-is-not-over-but-what-would-a-second-leveson-inquiry-achieve-29715">Leveson inquiry</a> and the closure of News of the World, the British press are having a reckoning on Netflix. Recent celebrity documentaries Beckham and Robbie Williams, and the final season of TV drama The Crown, have painted a portrait of the UK tabloids as cruel, sadistic and predatory of its homegrown celebrities.</p>
<p>While criticism of the British tabloids – particularly the ethics and methods of the News of the World – is often justified, the specifics offered by all three shows fall flat. Focusing on the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Princess Diana, Robbie Williams and David Beckham were each at the height of their fame, they prioritise individual stories over the big picture. </p>
<p>In doing so, these Netflix releases paint specific paps and a broad, amorphous “press” as demons, but ignore the broader socio-political forces, corruptions and collusions uncovered by Leveson in 2012 and the #MeToo movement in 2017.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571232093-retromania/">music journalist Simon Reynolds</a>, mass-market pop culture operates by a “20-year-rule” which sees trends and preoccupations return every two decades. This makes the turn of the millennium ripe for nostalgic and critical reflection in the 2020s. </p>
<p>The Crown explores the death of Princess Diana 25 years after her death. Robbie Williams tells the story of the singer, 25 years after the release of his biggest song, Angels. And Beckham explores the aftermath of the footballer’s infamous World Cup red card, 25 years on. </p>
<p>While these shows all try to claim part of the noughties nostalgia trend, they feel politically and contextually vacant. They each miss the opportunity to rigorously critique constructions of celebrity in the 1990s and 2000s.</p>
<h2>The millennium press</h2>
<p>Something all three shows miss is how textured and transitional the media landscape of the period was. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13183222.1998.11008685">By 1998</a>, only 8% of editorial in The Sun and The Mirror could be classed as “public affairs” – the rest focused on gossip, sports, or both. </p>
<p>Inevitably, as celebrity culture became news, news also became gossip and both categories <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0163443711411005">disintegrated</a> into what we now call “clickbait”. </p>
<p>In the 2000s, internet publishing and blogging also changed the way news was circulated and reported. As literary critic <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-the-essay/essay-online/BD8747CA96D6E6FF398B2392223A6E0D">Jane Hu</a> argues: “The commercial internet generated an economy of attention that rewarded stories that were at once sensationalist and relatable – personal and universal – in a drive for content that would go viral among the broadest range of readers.”</p>
<p>This changed not only the way stories were reported, but how subjects of those stories were treated. As The Crown dolefully shows, one picture of Princess Diana could sell for millions to print newspapers in 1997. A decade later, the economy of attention cultivated by internet journalism would <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiarosenbaum/downfall-of-the-paparazzi">drive the price of those pictures down</a>, even as the demand for content rose. Photos were now readily available online for free, and regular people could upload favourite “spotted” photos of their favourite celebrity for anyone to see, making the work of the paparazzi less valuable. </p>
<h2>The Crown</h2>
<p>The final season of The Crown covers the last eight months of Princess Diana’s life. The late princess’s treatment at the hands of her husband, the royal family and the British press had previously been covered in <a href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270">eight hour podcasting</a> deep dives, various documentaries, and the Oscar nominated film, Spencer (2021). </p>
<p>These works largely stressed how sexist cultural responses to Diana were both before and after her death, when she was depicted as <a href="https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/81f2c07a-ece0-4bb7-841f-08baeab9e0c3">“bitter”</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/princess-diana-bbc-interview-martin-bashir">“unbalanced”</a> and “<a href="https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/81f2c07a-ece0-4bb7-841f-08baeab9e0c3">silly</a>” by the British media.</p>
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<p>For a drama once well regarded for the breadth – if not the accuracy – of its historical storytelling, The Crown’s monomaniacal fixation with the final weeks of Diana’s life marked a season one critic called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/16/the-crown-season-6-review-so-bad-its-like-an-out-of-body-experience-netflix">“so bad it’s basically an out-of-body experience”</a>. </p>
<p>Through fictionalised monologues from actors playing real photographers and journalists, the press compare themselves to “hunters” and “killers”. It’s as if the show – which was once semi-critical and adamantly contextual of the Royal family – wanted to reframe them as powerless innocents, exploited by the dastardly press. </p>
<h2>Beckham and Robbie Williams</h2>
<p>Unlike The Crown, the main characters in the documentaries Beckham and Robbie Williams are not only living subjects but also active participants in the programmes. This means they must balance the egos of their subjects, justified critique of the press intrusions they experienced, and appeals for audience sympathy, which often minimises the role of the celebrity in their own media dramas. </p>
<p>Beckham consults a litany of talking heads – former managers, teammates, Spice Girls and two suitably shame-filled paparazzi – to build a portrait of the footballer and his union with wife Victoria. </p>
<p>Produced by Beckham’s own company, the programme is a portrait of how the couple <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/beckham-shows-us-how-david-and-victoria-beckham-see-themselves">“see themselves”</a>. This is reinforced by the <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/10/david-beckham-netflix-doc-doctored-truth-spin-narrative-say-fact-checkers-1235586518/">errors journalists have found</a> in the narrative Netflix presents. These include exaggerations of the level of hostility Beckham experienced at Manchester United and cuts in footage which imply he was fouled at times he wasn’t. </p>
<p>When it’s done right, and particularly with the benefit of hindsight, critiques of the tabloids adhere with wider critique of other institutions – like the royal family, music industry, or Premier League football. In doing this, they can show how hostile to difference or dissension our dominant systems really are.</p>
<p>Two things can be true. The Beckhams can both manufacture tabloid interest to engender lucrative brand deals, and be unfairly stalked by predatory photographers and highly sexist critiques of their family, relationship, and parenting. As Williams notes: “When you become famous you want to give away the privacy you want to give away. You don’t wanna have your privacy taken from you.”</p>
<p>With their hyperfocus on sympathy for the celebrity, and lack of wider context, all three Netflix shows fall short of offering larger analysis of the British press.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Sykes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While these shows all try to claim part of the noughties nostalgia trend, they feel politically and contextually vacant.Rachel Sykes, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1564242021-03-08T10:16:52Z2021-03-08T10:16:52ZMeghan and Harry’s Oprah interview: why British media coverage could backfire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388087/original/file-20210305-15-44ug0a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1080&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sussexes' interview with Oprah aired on CBS on Sunday</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7LJrh5UTr4">CBS/YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“I would sit up at night, and I was just, like, I don’t understand how all of this is being churned out … And I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.” This stark admission from the Duchess of Sussex during her and her husband’s much-anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey captures how press treatment of Meghan drove the couple’s decision to step back from royal duties.</p>
<p>In the run-up to that interview, with uncanny timing, damaging stories about the couple have emerged from the palace, which seems distinctly rattled by the couple’s determination to speak out. Predictably, these allegations have been seized upon by a British press that thrives on reporting – and fomenting – royal discord. </p>
<p>The previous week, the Times broke a <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/royal-aides-reveal-meghan-bullying-claim-before-oprah-interview-7sxfvd2c3">story</a> that a bullying complaint had being lodged against Meghan while she was living at Kensington Palace. The complaint had been made over two years earlier, but royal aides had only just approached the Times in order to “tell their side”. </p>
<p>These timely leaks included the suggestion that Meghan was given earrings by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shortly after the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been murdered, a wardrobe story deemed sufficiently heinous to warrant a dedicated <a href="https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1366887706085773314?s=20">tweet</a>. Clearly, the Oprah interview is worrying minds.</p>
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<p>Where the press goes, some TV programmes follow. Bethan Sayed, a member of the Welsh parliament tweeted a picture of how ITV’s Good Morning Britain (hosted by Susanna Reid and Meghan-critic Piers Morgan) chose to cover the story, with a revealing <a href="https://twitter.com/bethanjenkins/status/1367018346638696448?s=20">picture</a> of four ageing white men on a Zoom call. Her accompanying text read: “5 men character assassinating a woman. No wonder Meghan left the UK.” </p>
<p>As one journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1367019345956786177?s=20">put it</a>: “We’re getting to the point where if Meghan Markle were to take a posy offered to her, the press would report it as: ‘Evil Duchess steals flowers from child.’”</p>
<h2>Years of toxic tabloid coverage</h2>
<p>This kind of visceral hostility is not new. When Meghan launched her legal action against the Daily Mail in October 2019 for publishing a private letter that she wrote to her father, Prince Harry referred to Meghan as “one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences – a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year.” He spoke for many victims of Britain’s toxic tabloid culture when he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/02/put-simply-its-bullying-prince-harrys-full-statement-on-the-media">continued</a>: “Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people.”</p>
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<p>The tabloid media’s ever-expanding charge sheet of distortion and vindictiveness towards the Sussexes is extensive, and sometimes beyond parody: one particularly absurd Mail headline from 2019 <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6621047/How-Meghans-favourite-avocado-snack-fuelling-human-rights-abuses-drought-murder.html">read</a>: “How Meghan’s favourite avocado snack…. is fuelling human rights abuses, drought and murder.” </p>
<p>The sheer volume of hostility was captured by a BuzzFeed <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markle-kate-middleton-double-standards-royal">article</a> which juxtaposed headlines about Meghan and Kate Middleton to demonstrate how Meghan was routinely vilified for behaviour that the same papers applauded in Kate. This treatment isn’t always confined to the tabloids, however. The British broadsheet The Telegraph, for example, was equally happy to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/23/meghan-cookbook-mosque-linked-19-terror-suspects-including-jihadi/">headline</a> a highly tenuous link with terrorist groups in 2018.</p>
<p>Underlying some of this reporting has been implicit and unpleasant racism that refers coyly to Meghan’s “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3909362/RACHEL-JOHNSON-Sorry-Harry-beautiful-bolter-failed-Mum-Test.html">exotic DNA</a>” or labels her as “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3896180/Prince-Harry-s-girlfriend-actress-Meghan-Markles.html">straight outta Compton</a>”, carrying the unambiguous message that she is “not one of us”. In her Oprah Winfrey interview, Meghan all but confirms that the racism she experienced extended into the royal family itself. </p>
<h2>The reasons behind the media’s malice</h2>
<p>There are at least three reasons to explain this apparently visceral hostility to the Sussexes.</p>
<p>First, there are the legal cases which both royals have brought against the press and comprehensively won. Last month, Harry <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-prince-harry-wins-substantial-23420878">won</a> an apology and “substantial damages” from the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online for publishing false allegations that he had turned his back on the Royal Marines. </p>
<p>Ten days later, Meghan <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56028583">won</a> her privacy case against the same publisher in a summary judgement in which the judge called publication of her father’s letter “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful”. The British press does not like being bested in court, and the Mail in particular will be looking to exact revenge.</p>
<p>Second, there is the commercial imperative: sales and clickbait. The royal family sells newspapers and attracts online readers. In the pre-electronic era, every publisher knew that a front page picture of Princess Diana would be guaranteed to shift copies from newsagents, street sellers and garage forecourts. Today, casual readers are drawn to headlines on social and online media, which are fed by a worldwide fascination with the Royal soap opera. </p>
<p>Every soap opera needs its heroes and antagonists. Britain’s tabloid press has demonstrated over the years how adept it is at creating fairy tale princesses and pantomime villains, regardless of the impact on the individuals themselves. Stories are embellished, distorted or simply manufactured to generate more clickbait and thus more revenue. </p>
<p>Third, there is a longstanding culture in British print journalism that, as far as celebrities are concerned, their business is our business. At one level, this is an entirely appropriate journalistic imperative to hold power to account (think, for example, of the Prince Andrew <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtBS8COhhhM">interview</a> on the BBC’s Newsnight). </p>
<p>Too often, however, the norm of journalistic scrutiny is exploited as a fig-leaf to justify monumental invasions of privacy and downright lies that cannot be justified by any arguments around accountability. A healthy journalistic culture knows the difference between exposing incompetence, corruption or dishonesty in high places and the vindictive hounding of individuals designed simply to maximise corporate profit.</p>
<p>It is just possible that the press in this case has overreached itself. Its vilification campaign is transparent and is being called out on social media in the <a href="https://twitter.com/munyachawawa/status/1367182324291493894?s=20">UK</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrissieEvert/status/1367300705405591557?s=20">US</a>. As legacy newspaper circulations continue to fall, such grievance-driven journalism looks increasingly like an ageing relic from a bygone age. Even before the current pre-Oprah drama, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/16/harry-meghan-media-critics-worse">wrote</a> that “Much UK media reaction to Meghan and Harry reeks of this gathering powerlessness.” </p>
<p>No doubt more vicious headlines will greet the Sussexes after Sunday’s interview. But we may just be witnessing the decline of a toxic tabloid culture that treats individuals – ordinary people as well as celebrities – as sensationalist copy fodder. If so, it will be good news for British journalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Could the press’s increasingly hostile campaign against the Sussexes lead to the fall of our toxic tabloid culture?Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1554232021-02-17T14:48:28Z2021-02-17T14:48:28ZBritain’s right-wing tabloids have turned to ‘green nationalism’ to sell climate action<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384743/original/file-20210217-13-hr1ugk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lenscap Photography / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s right-wing tabloids have historically not been champions of action on climate change and other environmental issues. In fact they have prominently opposed such action, regularly providing space for <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4503006/global-warming-sums-experts-bullies-james-delingpole-opinion/">climate scepticism</a> and running frontpage stories that <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/370670/Global-warming-is-nothing-more-than-an-expensive-con">challenged the existence of global warming</a> and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural">its relationship to human activity</a>. </p>
<p>In this context, the recent launch of a “major new” environmental campaign by the Daily Express for a “<a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394652/Green-Britain-campaign-daily-express-pollution-wildlife-nature-boris-johnson">Green Britain Revolution</a>” has generated an understandable mix of surprise, distrust and <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoHickman/status/1358724099179167744">wary welcome</a> from long-term supporters of environmental change.</p>
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<p>The Sun has also launched a less prominent but similarly focused “Green Team” campaign encouraging its readers to make “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/12904172/green-team-campaign-changes-save-money-planet/#comments">small lifestyle changes to help save the planet</a>”. The paper has also <a href="https://www.news-future.com/p/as-environmental-concerns-grow-the">appointed a dedicated correspondent</a> to provide sustained coverage of the run up to the UN’s COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November 2021.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason for their <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/gary-jones-express-long-way-as-paper-surprises-with-climate-change-campaign/">new-found concern for environmental action</a> (and it’s still not clear how much the <a href="https://twitter.com/ColinBaines1/status/1360604961755852801">overall editorial line</a> has changed), UK tabloids require new kinds of storytelling. Climate change is a notoriously difficult story to tell. Many of the existing frames have been seen as too negative, too reliant on doom and gloom and apocalyptic scenarios, or perceived as elitist and “holier-than-thou”, too eager to blame unthinking ignorant consumers. </p>
<p>I have researched environmental storytelling in <a href="https://www.keele.ac.uk/humanities/study/mcc/ourpeople/pawasbisht/">my work</a> for the past ten years. So, how have historically right-wing tabloids, that in the past denied and belittled climate change, framed the issue so that it is relevant to their largely conservative readerships?</p>
<h2>Framing environmentalism as patriotic duty</h2>
<p>The campaigns – and the reporting accompanying them – demonstrate astute understanding of the need to make environmentalism resonant with the moral and emotional values of their readership. Nationalism, invoking a history of global leadership on the part of the UK, and green entrepreneurialism, the promise of a prosperous future for the nation powered by a green economy, are two key components of the storytelling. </p>
<p>The Daily Express campaign for instance is presented as a national mission, a “green crusade”. The headline accompanying the launch invites readers to <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394685/green-britain-dale-vince-ecotricity-daily-express-campaign">get behind the “Green Industrial Revolution”</a> positioning the industrial revolution as a glorious heritage of “ingenuity and ambition” that will engender the new green future.</p>
<p>The narrative is further personified in the choice of “green entrepreneur” <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1397855/Green-Britain-campaign-plant-trees">Dale Vince</a> as a key spokesperson for the campaign. Vince is a former hippy who now owns the electricity company Ecotricity, and his life story of making millions from green energy companies emphasises a “can do” optimism and a focus on technological solutions to environmental crises. The pandemic is also used as part of the narrative. Britain’s role in the development of the COVID vaccine is cited to strengthen the claim the country should lead the global environmental challenge. </p>
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<p>Overall, the climate crisis is presented as a problem that is eminently solvable through green energy technologies and entrepreneurial innovation. These are areas where Britain has existing global strengths, and therefore it is seen as an opportunity for a glorious national revival that is both morally sound and materially prosperous.</p>
<h2>Limits and dangers of green nationalism</h2>
<p>What we are seeing is the development of a story about environmentalism informed by nationalistic pride and the promise of a materially better future. If successful, this kind of storytelling would allow an older and more conservative readership to feel part of the wider environmentalism narrative, and as a result they might even put their weight behind demands for urgently required policy action. </p>
<p>In the long term, it may help to gradually shift some established conservative political orthodoxies that have prevented climate action. For instance, a key demand of the Daily Express campaign is for the UK government to <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1394662/green-britain-zero-for-zero-explained-sign-express-petition">actively intervene in the economy</a> – using taxes, subsidies and regulations to favour greener enterprises and penalise those that harm the environment. This idea of active intervention from the state in the market in favour of a green economy is a significant shift in conservative political values. </p>
<p>On the other hand there remain significant problems. The invocation of the national frame, here presented as global leadership motivated by ecological concerns, could easily slip into a more problematic and exclusionary vision of <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-nationalism-how-the-far-right-could-learn-to-love-the-environment-76035">preserving “a green and pleasant land”</a>. A linked problem of a retreat into the local, already evident in the Sun’s urge to “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JS-Graphic-ECO-Part4.jpg">go local, buy local</a>”, is that it removes focus from the systemic and global issues underpinning climate change and pollution. </p>
<p>Finally, the uncritical narrative of a glorious national past and prosperous green future silences issues around inequalities in the experiences and effects of environmental degradation both <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920919300392#!">within the UK</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-reinforces-inequalities-even-in-developed-countries/a-50596957">globally</a>. Neither the Express nor the Sun afford much space to global climate justice and the narratives and demands of <a href="https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/">environmental movements from the global south</a>. Ultimately, these are significant limitations that should temper our enthusiasm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pawas Bisht receives funding from the British Academy's Humanities and Social Sciences’ Tackling Global Challenges Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.</span></em></p>An academic expert in environmental storytelling reads the Sun and the Express.Pawas Bisht, Lecturer in Media, Communications and Culture, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1246192019-10-02T15:38:14Z2019-10-02T15:38:14ZMeghan Markle letter: what the law says about the press, privacy and the public’s right to know<p>The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced plans to sue the Mail on Sunday and its parent company Associated Newspapers, after they published a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6686817/Letter-showing-true-tragedy-Meghan-Markles-rift-father.html">private letter</a> from Meghan to her father earlier this year.</p>
<p><a href="https://sussexofficial.uk/">In a press release</a>, the lawyers for The Duchess of Sussex said that they have taken legal action over what they called an:</p>
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<p>Intrusive and unlawful publication of a private letter written by the Duchess of Sussex, which is part of a campaign by this media group to publish false and deliberately derogatory stories about her, as well as her husband. Given the refusal of Associated Newspapers to resolve this issue satisfactorily, we have issued proceedings to redress this breach of privacy, infringement of copyright and the aforementioned media agenda.</p>
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<p>A spokesman for the newspaper said: “The Mail on Sunday stands by the story it published and will be defending this case vigorously. Specifically, we categorically deny that the Duchess’s letter was edited in any way that changed its meaning.”</p>
<p>But can private letters be protected by copyright – and if so, who owns it? Copyright protects original literary works, among other things, such as books and literature – and this also includes letters. Therefore, a letter can be protected by copyright.</p>
<h2>Who has copyright?</h2>
<p>Under <a href="https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/uk_law_summary">UK copyright law</a>, the owner of a piece of work is usually the person who created it. Once a person owns copyright in a piece of work, the law allows them to restrict others from copying or sharing that work without permission. So, the content of the letter belongs to the writer of the letter – although the actual physical letter belongs to the recipient.</p>
<p>This means that in order to share the content of a letter, the permission of the writer would be required in order to avoid copyright infringement.</p>
<p>But there are exceptions to copyright. These are circumstances where permission is not needed – for example, if the use is for the purpose of criticism, review or quotation, or for the purpose of reporting current events. Each of the copyright exceptions have specific requirements that must be followed in order to benefit from them.</p>
<p>The exception for <a href="https://www.copyrightuser.org/understand/exceptions/quotation/">criticism, review or quotation</a> requires that the material used was already available to the public – so this would not apply to a private letter. The exception for <a href="https://www.copyrightuser.org/understand/exceptions/news-reporting/">reporting current events</a> requires that the use of the material is fair. </p>
<p>When considering if a use is fair, a court would take into consideration if the work had already been published, or whether it was confidential. The courts are unlikely to decide that use of material that is confidential was fair unless a legitimate and continuing public interest could be demonstrated, for example “leaked documents” with a clear public interest.</p>
<h2>Public interest?</h2>
<p>In 2006, the <a href="https://www.emplaw.co.uk/node/15309">Prince of Wales sued Associated Newspapers</a> after they published extracts from his diary. The prince also brought an action for copyright infringement and breach of privacy. In relation to copyright, it was found that the prince was the copyright owner and that the reproduction of the diary was an infringement of that copyright. </p>
<p>Associated Newspapers argued that they benefited from the copyright exception of news reporting, but the court found that the quotations from the journal had been chosen for the purpose of reporting on the revelation of the contents of the journal as itself an event of interest and not for the purpose of reporting on current events.</p>
<h2>Privacy law</h2>
<p>It is here that the European Convention on Human Rights comes into play. In the context of publishing private information, <a href="https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Guide_Art_8_ENG.pdf">Article 8</a>, which provides a right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence, would be weighed against <a href="https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/incorporated-rights/articles-index/article-10/">Article 10</a>, which provides the right to freedom of expression and information.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ben-stokes-v-the-sun-gross-intrusion-or-simple-reportage-how-media-privacy-law-works-123827">Ben Stokes v The Sun: gross intrusion or simple reportage? How media privacy law works</a>
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<p>In the UK, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/data-protection">Data Protection Act 2018</a> (the UK’s implementation of the <a href="https://eugdpr.org/">General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)</a>) provides protection for personal information. This means that personal information cannot be processed or published without permission. There is a possibility of arguing that a breach of this law is allowed when it is necessary for the public interest, for example if it supports or promotes democratic engagement.</p>
<p>But just because something is interesting to the public, does not mean that it is in the public interest. Public interest requires a higher level of justification, in order to justify the breach of the individual’s human rights.</p>
<p>In this 2006 case, the Prince of Wales also argued that the information in his diary was confidential and therefore protected under Article 8. Associated Newspapers argued that the publication of the diary was in the public interest and permitted under Article 10.</p>
<p>The judge, The Hon Mr Justice Blackburne, agreed with the Prince of Wales, ruling that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The right to be able to commit his private thoughts to writing and keep them private, the more so as he is inescapably a public figure who is subject to constant and intense media interest … The Prince of Wales is as much entitled to enjoy confidentiality for his private thoughts as an aspect of his own ‘human autonomy and dignity’ as is any other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although a letter and a diary are slightly different – in that a letter was intended to be read by the recipient and a diary is usually intended to be entirely private – it is likely that they would be treated the same in the circumstances of being published without permission. </p>
<p>So, in general, publishing a letter without permission could be ruled to be an infringement of copyright and breach of privacy and confidentiality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hayleigh Bosher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Duke and Duchess of Sussex say they plan to sue a UK paper for publishing a private letter.Hayleigh Bosher, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1244562019-10-02T12:34:14Z2019-10-02T12:34:14ZMeghan Markle, Ben Stokes, Gareth Thomas: three reasons why UK press needs help to understand ‘public interest’<p>The Duke and Duchess of Sussex <a href="https://sussexofficial.uk/">have announced</a> their intention to launch legal action against the Mail on Sunday for <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6686817/Letter-showing-true-tragedy-Meghan-Markles-rift-father.html">publishing a private handwritten letter</a> the Duchess had sent to her estranged father. Prince Harry <a href="https://sussexofficial.uk/">said in a statement</a>: “I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”</p>
<p>This latest episode follows two similar instances in September where high-profile sporting figures accused UK tabloids of insensitivity and invasion of privacy. The treatment of Ben Stokes and Gareth Thomas brings back to memory the litany of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/14/leveson-inquiry-full-list-participants">press abuses</a> uncovered during the hearings of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12</a>. Taken together, these sorry stories show the need for tougher regulation of media processes to ensure fairness for people directly affected by publications.</p>
<p>Thomas, a former Wales international rugby union player, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49739345">revealed</a> on September 18 that he had been compelled to publicly disclose that he was HIV positive after an unidentified tabloid had threatened to publish details of his diagnosis. This was essentially the same thing as threatening to reveal details of someone’s medical record or treatment. This type of information has always been <a href="https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2004/22.html">seen by the courts</a> as being worthy of privacy protection.</p>
<p>What makes the conduct of the press particularly egregious in this case is the callous behaviour towards a person who belongs to a particularly vulnerable group. The right and opportunity to tell something so deeply personal appears to have been taken away by a journalist who, according to Thomas, informed his parents of his HIV-positive status before he had the chance to tell them himself.</p>
<p>The Sun’s <a href="https://imagevars.gulfnews.com/2019/09/18/The-Sun-tweet-Ben-Stokes_16d4512b8a3_original-ratio.jpg">front-page story</a> on the tragedy that affected the close family of Stokes, an England cricketer, about 30 years ago – before the player was born – was described by Stokes in a highly poignant <a href="https://twitter.com/benstokes38/status/1173893834377441280">statement</a> on Twitter as the “lowest form of journalism”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1173893834377441280"}"></div></p>
<p>The newspaper defended its publication, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49726913">stating</a> that the unfortunate events were already in the public domain following wide coverage in New Zealand at the time and that an estranged family member had shared details. Although Clause 2 of the <a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">Editors’ Code of Practice states</a> that “in considering an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy, account will be taken of … the extent to which the material complained about is already in the public domain”, this is not always easily reconciled with how privacy law works.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ben-stokes-v-the-sun-gross-intrusion-or-simple-reportage-how-media-privacy-law-works-123827">Ben Stokes v The Sun: gross intrusion or simple reportage? How media privacy law works</a>
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<p>The Sun’s explanation disregards the seminal 2016 Supreme Court judgment in PJS v News Group Newspapers Ltd (known as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/may/19/supreme-court-upholds-celebrity-threesome-injunction">“celebrity threesome”</a> case), in which the private information that a high-profile public figure (known only as PJS) sought to protect through an injunction had already been widely circulated in other jurisdictions – similar to the story concerning Stokes and his family. </p>
<p>The fact that the information was available was not decisive, the Supreme Court held. Such a proposition overlooked the invasiveness and distress which unrestricted publication by the English media would entail. The Sun should have known – not least because its own publisher was the defendant in the PJS case – that the same could apply to Stokes’ case. There was little doubt that publication in England would unleash, as the court put it, a “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2016-0080-judgment.pdf">media storm</a>”, which would reproduce intimate details likely to add greatly to the intrusiveness felt by Stokes and his family, who had not courted any publicity.</p>
<h2>The public interest</h2>
<p>Occasionally journalists may act in a way that is incompatible with the Editors’ Code of Practice. Breaches of <em>some</em> of the code’s provisions may be justified if an editor can demonstrate that what was done was “<a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">in the public interest</a>”. This includes (but is not confined to) exposure of serious impropriety. Intrusions into a person’s private life may also be warranted to <a href="https://www.editorscode.org.uk/downloads/codebook/codebook-2019.pdf">unmask hypocrisy and prevent the public from being misled</a>. But Stokes’ story and Thomas’ treatment were nowhere near these exemptions. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">Clause 4</a> of the editors’ code places the onus of responsibility for appropriate sensitivity in cases involving trauma squarely on the press and requires journalists covering tragedy and suffering to make inquiries with “sympathy and discretion”. But Stokes’ <a href="https://twitter.com/benstokes38/status/1173893834377441280">tweet stated</a> that “serious inaccuracies” were included in The Sun’s article which, in his words, exacerbated the impact of the publication for his family. The same code also <a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">makes it very clear</a> that a public interest defence <em>cannot</em> be put forward in cases which engage Clause 4.</p>
<p>Thomas’ public figure status cannot also, by and of itself, justify a threat to publish sensitive details such as his HIV status. The journalist who initially approached the athlete’s parents ought to have appreciated that it was not part of his role to break the news to his family, something which reportedly caused Thomas enormous upset.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1174262770700824576"}"></div></p>
<p>In both cases, in my view, the press flagrantly ignored its responsibilities towards the public interest, in whose name it exercises its privileged position in society. There is always of course a considerable role to be played by the courts, which maintain powers to order <a href="https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1964/1.html">exemplary damages</a> (if sought through a privacy claim) in order to punish outrageous press misconduct that disregards claimants’ rights for commercial profit.</p>
<h2>Wrecking ball</h2>
<p>The treatment of the two sportsmen’s deeply personal stories has swung a wrecking ball through responsible journalism. It raises serious questions as to whether the tabloid press has learned any lessons from the Leveson Inquiry, <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/leveson-statement-in-full-8368769.html">which concluded</a> “beyond doubt” that the British press had “damaged the public interest, caused real hardship and … wreaked havoc in the lives of innocent people” for many decades.</p>
<p>In 2018, the government <a href="http://merlin.obs.coe.int/cgi-bin/article.php?iris_r=2018%205%2019&language=en">regrettably decided</a> against putting into motion <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/section/40/enacted">section 40</a> of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, under which publishers not signing up to be members of a formally recognised regulator (for example <a href="https://impress.press/about-us/faq.html#what-benefits-impress-membership">IMPRESS</a>) would be hit with the potentially severe penalty of having all the costs of a complainant’s privacy (or defamation) action automatically awarded against them, irrespective of whether they won or lost the case. Although this provision remains on the statute books, it has been <a href="https://pa.media/2017/01/09/pa-bringing-section-40-force-will-simply-enact-expensive-pointless-injustice/">vehemently opposed</a> by much of the news industry.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-what-you-read-section-40-will-protect-the-local-press-not-kill-it-71226">Don't believe what you read: section 40 will protect the local press, not kill it</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Whatever happens in the case of the threatened action by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, alongside the experiences of both Stokes and Thomas, one can now see less reason than in the past as to why this provision should not be put into effect. If it is implemented by a future government, it is likely to create an additional incentive for the press to think twice before publishing a story that unreasonably interferes with an individual’s privacy and lacks any meaningful public interest.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Conversation is a member of the independent press regulator IMPRESS.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandros Antoniou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A number of recent controversial stories show why the UK media needs a regulator with teeth.Alexandros Antoniou, Lecturer in Media Law, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093092019-03-01T14:20:00Z2019-03-01T14:20:00ZBrexit and migration: our new research highlights fact-free news coverage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254757/original/file-20190121-100273-h6j1sf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/">Immigration anxieties</a> played <a href="http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-34/key-findings/brexit-and-immigration-a-country-divided.aspx">a significant role</a> in British people’s decision in June 2016 to vote to leave the EU. This has fuelled a debate over the quality of media reporting on migration issues. </p>
<p>In order to get a better idea of the role the media played, we examined nearly 1,000 news items, feature articles and editorials from six UK newspapers: the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, the Sun, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, published in 2006 and in 2013. </p>
<p>These were politically important years: 2006 was the year before Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU and the time when it was becoming clear that migration forecasts for the countries that joined the EU in 2004 had been way off. In 2013 David Cameron, delivered his <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-speech-at-bloomberg">Bloomberg speech</a> in which he promised the EU referendum.</p>
<p>One thing that quickly became apparent was that media coverage contained a selective mixture of statistics, reported comments from politicians and other public figures, academic studies, think-tank reports, and emotive polemics backed with no evidence at all. The practice of mentioning evidence in passing and then dismissing or overriding it was also present. </p>
<h2>Bolt the door</h2>
<p>The most prominent theme was that mobility within the EU damages British sovereignty. Newspapers from across the political spectrum suggested that intra-EU mobility was impossible to control and that the free movement principle overrides British sovereignty. The theme was also marked by growing scepticism towards migration data and evidence. </p>
<p>The language used to describe EU migration tended to emphasise quantity and scale (“mass”, “vast”, “large scale”). There were lots of “floods” and “waves” and extensive use of military metaphors (“army”, “war”, “battle”, “siege” or “hordes”) in the tabloid press. </p>
<p>When covering migration from Bulgaria and Romania, the press regularly trotted out the figure of <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/bulgarians-romanians-in-press/">29m migrants</a> – which, in fact, is the combined population of the two countries. Rather than reporting on actual migration of Bulgarians and Romanians, papers preferred hypothetical scenarios where they would migrate en masse simply because they could. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/enhdocview.do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T28495996547&format=GNBFULL&startDocNo=0&resultsUrlKey=0_T28495996549&backKey=20_T28495996550&csi=234674&docNo=1&scrollToPosition=0">opinion piece</a> from the Sun, dated September 22 2006, claimed that “any Bulgarian or Romanian will be free to come here as they please – and come they will, because their own countries are very poor and there is no work”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261651/original/file-20190301-110115-7ftqxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daily Mail, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gideon via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Overall, the Guardian did a better job than the other papers when it came to using evidence. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/29/rise-labour-migration-from-eurozone">An article</a> from 2013 used statistics form the Department of Work and Pensions to reveal that immigration to Britain from southern European member states had increased by 50% while using national insurance registrations to show that “data shows little evidence of any surge in Romanians or Bulgarians arriving”. </p>
<p>One article in the Sun covered the story <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/enhdocview.do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T28496006505&format=GNBFULL&startDocNo=0&resultsUrlKey=0_T28496006507&backKey=20_T28496006508&csi=234674&docNo=1&scrollToPosition=0">from a different angle</a>, arguing that because of the negative impact of the financial crisis on the building trade in Italy and Spain, migrant workers were bound to be laid off and flood into Britain. The article was centred on an interview with “jobless William Razval, 24” – who, it said, “is desperate to lead the exodus”. </p>
<h2>Benefits scroungers</h2>
<p>The topic of EU nationals abusing the welfare system was the second most popular theme. Despite official figures, newspapers often chose to ignore evidence and play on public fears that welfare abuse was all but inevitable. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"642285075871215617"}"></div></p>
<p>The press trotted out crude decontextualised comparisons between living standards in Britain and eastern Europe. Once again, newspapers focused on the hypothetical possibility of welfare abuse, rather than on specific instances where it has actually taking place. In 2006, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/honestys-the-best-immigration-policy-634982">Tony Parsons</a>, then a columnist with the Daily Mirror, asked: “At what point does mass immigration, even if it’s good for the economy, push our social services to breaking point?” </p>
<p>Nothing much had changed by March 2013, when a news article from <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/enhdocview.do?docLinkInd=true&ersKey=23_T28496052119&format=GNBFULL&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=0_T28496052147&backKey=20_T28496052148&csi=10939&docNo=2&scrollToPosition=0">the Times</a> quoted Iain Duncan Smith, who claimed that it was “too easy for EU migrants to claim access to social housing, health care and tax credits” without providing any evidence as to show how many were actually doing so. In June of the same year, the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2334550/Softer-benefit-rules-immigrants-Not-IDS-around.html">Daily Mail</a> sounded a familiar dog whistle, claiming: “It is easy to imagine how a public fed up with abuses of the welfare state would react.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"883020914295799808"}"></div></p>
<p>In light of <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/decade-immigration-british-press/">recent arguments</a> that journalists become increasing proactive in framing and reshaping migration debates instead of being content with reporting them, it is important to assess the relationship between news coverage and evidence. After all, anti-immigration, eurosceptic reporting did much of the grunt work for the Leave camp and put immigration anxieties in the centre of Brexit discussions and negotiations. </p>
<p>Now we are faced with the danger of race-to-the-bottom <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/11/immigration-regime-after-brexit-risks-new-windrush-scandal">post-Brexit immigration policies</a> where EU citizens could be downgraded to migrants overnight on the basis of unsupported anxieties and wild speculations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denny Pencheva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A close reading of news articles and editorials from 2006 and 2013 shows that UK newspapers have systematically ignored the evidence to influence the public against EU migrants.Denny Pencheva, Associate Teacher, UK and EU migration policies; Assistant Teacher, Comparative Politics, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/923012018-02-23T11:05:50Z2018-02-23T11:05:50Z‘Corbyn the Commie’ smear is all about tabloid press fear of regulation<p>Following Labour’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/uk-election-2017-37907">better than expected election result</a> in 2017, right-wing press hostility to Corbyn briefly died down – only to suddenly flare up again in the last week with an almost nostalgic theme. This was summed up in The Sun’s front page: “Corbyn and the Commie Spy.” The Sun’s story was enthusiastically taken up by Britain’s right-wing press and, despite overwhelming evidence refuting the claim, it is still at – or near – the top of their news agenda.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207631/original/file-20180223-108128-e4eam4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sun: all the news that’s fit to print?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sun</span></span>
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<p>The smearing of Labour and its leaders as Communist agents has a long and dishonourable history going back to the Daily Mail’s notorious <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/feb/04/uk.politicalnews6">Zinoviev letter</a> in 1924. This was a forgery that painted Labour as secret agents of Moscow. In the 1990s, former Labour leader Michael Foot won a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/michael-foot-wins-six-figure-libel-award-1590183.html">large libel settlement</a> from the Sunday Times when it wrongly suggested that he was a KGB “agent of influence”. More recently, the Daily Mail made a sustained and unsuccessful attempt to paint Ed Miliband as a far leftist with a communist father “who hated Britain”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207629/original/file-20180223-108150-kpqkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daily Mail tried to use Ed Miliband’s father against him.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2439565/As-Ed-Miliband-reacts-angrily-critique-Marxist-father--We-repeat-This-man-did-hate-Britain.html">Daily Mail</a></span>
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<p>Now it’s Jeremy Corbyn’s turn – and he’s a far easier target in many ways because of his long and public record campaigning for left-wing causes.</p>
<p>The attack on Corbyn was apparently based on detailed evidence from a former Czech spy backed up by files found in the archives of the Czech secret police. Following The Sun’s revelations, the rest of the right-wing press weighed in. The Mail’s favourite historian, Dominic Sandbrook (who had played a major role in smearing the Milibands), was wheeled out <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5397567/The-useful-idiot-Jeremy-Corbyn-writes-DOMINIC-SANDBROOK.html">to denounce Corbyn</a> under a headline: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The useful idiot: Jeremy Corbyn’s assignations with a secret agent were part of the gullible British Left’s love affair with a totalitarian Russian regime that murdered millions. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the use of the word “gullible” might more aptly applied to Sandbrook and his ilk. Corbyn has had no love for the Soviet Union nor its Eastern bloc allies. As anyone with only a passing knowledge of contemporary British history – and that should include Sandbrook – would know, Corbyn’s politics grew out of the “new left”, which was determinedly opposed to the Soviet brand of communism.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"966648352082292737"}"></div></p>
<p>As Robert Colvile, the director of the right-wing <a href="http://www.cps.org.uk/">Centre for Policy Studies</a> noted <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/02/21/truth-jeremy-corbyn-not-spy-fool-hates-capitalism-west/">in the Daily Telegraph</a>: “He was a socialist not a Communist; Team Trotsky not Team Stalin.” And The Times columnist <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/corbyn-s-feelings-for-soviets-are-not-a-secret-2mfd5s8x5">Daniel Finkelstein reminded us</a>, in an odd piece apparently about Corbyn’s “attachment to the Soviet Union”, that in 1988, Corbyn was publicly calling on Moscow to rehabilitate Trotsky. That’s not exactly the action of a potential, or active, spy.</p>
<p>But all this hue and cry has soon turned out to be a complete red herring. First, because authoritative secret service sources in both Prague and London denounced the Czech informant, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/jan-sarkocy">Jan Sarkocy</a>, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/20/no-evidence-corbyn-was-spy-for-czechoslovakia-say-intelligence-experts">a liar and fantasist</a> – who falsely claimed to journalists to have organised either, or both, the Live Aid and the Free Mandela concerts in the UK. But even more definitive refutations came from officials working in the Czech and German archives, both categorically denying that there was any evidence in their files that Corbyn was either a spy or even an “asset”. It has also <a href="http://www.inependent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-czech-spy-jan-sarkocy-meeting-chesterfield-derbyshire-mp-mother-commons-a8221321.html">been reported</a> recently that Corbyn was elsewhere when Sarkocy claims to have been meeting him in London. </p>
<h2>Corbyn fights back</h2>
<p>This might have been the end of the matter but the squashing of the original story has only succeeded in diverting the press to pursue other aspects – in particular the threat to freedom of the press they claim Corbyn might represent when in power. In so doing they have revealed where Corbyn’s true offence lies – for not only has the Labour leader flatly denied the stories, he and his deputy Tom Watson MP have retaliated by turning the spotlight on the right-wing press itself.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VCK9KPgYyXU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>In an online video, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/20/jeremy-corbyn-calls-czech-spy-allegations-nonsense">Corbyn talked about</a> how:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A free press is essential for democracy and we don’t want to close it down, we want to open it up … The general election showed the media barons are losing their influence and social media means their bad old habits are becoming less and less relevant. But instead of learning these lessons they’re continuing to resort to lies and smears. Their readers – you, all of us – deserve so much better. Well, we’ve got news for them: change is coming.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This last line <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5628801/jeremy-corbyn-free-press-threat-communism-spy-scandal/">was interpreted by the right-wing press</a> to mean that a Corbyn-led Labour government will introduce new restrictions on freedom of the press. This provoked an immediate response. An <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5638548/jeremy-corbyns-war-on-press-is-a-hostile-attempt-to-silence-negative-stories-about-him/">editorial in The Sun</a> went for the jugular: “Controlling the press is a first step towards the one-party state Corbyn’s hard-left extremist’s dream of.” Meanwhile the Daily Mail <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/uk/scottish-daily-mail/20180222/281784219574324">sent the BBC a warning</a> that: “The Corporation’s staff should watch out. If this Marxist comes to power he’ll be gagging them too.”</p>
<h2>Leveson II</h2>
<p>Do these papers truly believe that behind the mask of Corbyn sits a devious would-be dictator just waiting to turn the UK into an authoritarian dictatorship? Not likely. What is really fuelling their ire – and also accounts for much of their hostility to Miliband – is the fact that both Labour leaders were enthusiastic supporters of the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of the press.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/facing-a-hostile-press-jeremy-corbyn-cant-win-but-he-could-at-least-try-63557">Facing a hostile press, Jeremy Corbyn can't win – but he could at least try</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>They both backed its finding that there should be a truly independent press regulator (backed by a Royal Charter) And they both supported the idea of holding a second inquiry: Leveson II – which was supposed to be investigating links between the media and the police, but has yet to happen. Most heinously of all, in the eyes of Fleet Street, Corbyn supported the much-delayed implementation of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-what-you-read-section-40-will-protect-the-local-press-not-kill-it-71226">Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act</a>, which changes libel law to favour those newspapers recognised by the statutory press regulator recommended by Leveson.</p>
<p>The newspapers’ hysteria has got to such a stage that, a day after it was revealed that the Stasi archives hold no files on Corbyn, some papers were still calling on the Labour leader to “<a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/leader-comment-corbyn-should-make-public-his-secret-stasi-file-1-4693068">release his Stasi files</a>” even though they didn’t exist. So what does he do then? He either ignores the calls or doesn’t ask for his non-existent files to be released, either way the papers can cry “Gotcha!” </p>
<p>The right-wing press is playing a dangerous game. Dangerous, not because of any threat of press regulation, but because through their antics they undermine trust in both politics and the media. As we know from history, this is a far greater threat to democracy than anything that Corbyn might, or might not, have done in the past. Trust is crucial, we undermine it at our peril.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber is co-author of a book with fellow academics James Curran and Julian Petley. "Battleground: culture wars, the media and the left" will be published later this year.</span></em></p>What was really behind the Corbyn spy smear.Ivor Gaber, Professor of Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/916062018-02-10T08:41:48Z2018-02-10T08:41:48ZWhy the Mirror buy up of the Express is yet another sign of a newspaper industry in peril<p>The Daily Express and the Daily Mirror are almost the same age. Among the UK’s first national, daily, popular newspapers, they both came into being as a direct response to the success of the Daily Mail. The Express was launched as a direct competitor in 1900, while the Mirror was set up as a “woman’s paper” by the Mail’s proprietor Alfred Harmsworth. </p>
<p>By the middle of the 20th century, they were Britain’s most successful ever newspapers. Selling millions of copies, they were considered integral parts of British culture, informing and entertaining huge numbers of lower-middle and working-class readers. Together they marked the commercial and cultural high point of the “tabloid century”, when popular newspapers were a powerful force in British life.</p>
<p>Now, with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/09/trinity-mirror-buys-express-star-127m-deal-richard-desmond-ok">Mirror Group confirming</a> its purchase of the Express (along with the other parts of Richard Desmond’s publishing portfolio) the two papers have considerably different reputations. </p>
<p>The Mirror, for example, is still suffering from the fall-out of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8634176/Phone-hacking-timeline-of-a-scandal.html">the phone-hacking scandal</a>. Editors and executives <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/hugh-grant-wins-trinity-mirror-hacking-case-names-piers-morgan-guilty-editor/">continue to be accused</a> of allowing journalistic behaviour that repeatedly crossed legal and moral boundaries. </p>
<p>The Express, meanwhile, is now commonly associated with hard-line editorial stances against immigration and the recent refugee crises in Europe and North Africa. It has been accused (including by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/24/katie-hopkins-cockroach-migrants-denounced-united-nations-human-rights-commissioner">UN’s Human Rights High Commissioner</a>) of publishing hate speech. </p>
<p>Even united under the same publisher, it is extremely unlikely that either of these papers will reclaim the popularity, power and respect they once enjoyed.</p>
<p>This consolidation of ownership of two of the country’s most-read print newspapers has raised questions of editorial influence. Will the Mirror publisher try to move the staunchly right-wing Express leftwards? Such fears (flatly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42991304">denied by Trinity Mirror’s CEO</a>) are indicative of wider attitudes towards the tabloid media which assume their content is dictated entirely from the top. </p>
<p>But while newspaper owners such as Rupert Murdoch and editors such as Paul Dacre direct the content of their newspapers, they are also conscious of the necessity of a strong relationship with their readers. Any move to change the Express’s politics would be to ignore the interests (and loyalty) of the hundreds of thousands of people who continue to buy and read them. It is unlikely that this merger will lead to a radical change in the politics of the British press.</p>
<p>What is more likely – and more disheartening – is a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/02/09/daily-mirror-owner-strikes-200m-deal-buy-daily-express-daily/">reduction in the number</a> of journalists. While key writers – particularly distinct political commentators – are likely to be kept at both papers, reporting teams will probably merge – and staff will be cut. </p>
<h2>Deadline approaches…</h2>
<p>While Trinity Mirror’s push for cutting costs is understandable in a press environment of declining advertising revenue and print circulations, to see staff cuts across two of the country’s biggest and most historic titles would be a disappointment. </p>
<p>As students continue to study journalism, the sight of further job restrictions on the horizon – particularly from two big name publications – will no doubt dent morale.</p>
<p>Once they were two of the earliest pioneers of tabloid journalism, and found huge success in speaking to large audiences better than any generation of British newspaper before it. At their peaks, they were the dominant forces in the business, with millions of readers enjoying their papers every single day. </p>
<p>Today these two former titans feel more like weary former foes reunited at the end of a long fight. They have joined forces to try and prolong their existence in a media landscape far flung from their past glories. And it may well help them to continue for longer than either would alone. </p>
<p>The fact remains, however, that this merger was unthinkable until only very recently. Just as their birth marked the beginning of print tabloid dominance, their union, propping each other up for the sake of survival, may well be seen in future as a marker of the tabloid newspaper’s demise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Shoop-Worrall has received funding from the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research. </span></em></p>The two papers were once titans of publishing. But their future looks less rosy.Christopher Shoop-Worrall, PhD Researcher in Journalism History, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900572018-01-15T14:26:58Z2018-01-15T14:26:58ZNew look Guardian is a riot of modern tabloid colours – but it’s still the paper I know<p>I almost missed the new tabloid Guardian on the news stand this morning. Without the trademark strap of dark blue colour across the top, I couldn’t spot it immediately. Not that I was expecting a shouty red-top design from Britain’s most stylish newspaper, but I wasn’t anticipating quite such an understated front page either.</p>
<p>Although the new tabloid masthead has a subtle modern blockiness, it seems positively traditional with its two-deck format and return to capital letters. Perhaps this is an attempt to reassure readers that the integrity of its news values has not shrunk along with its size. Or maybe it is just part of what the paper’s editor-in-chief, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/15/guardian-new-look-online-katharine-viner">Katharine Viner, describes</a> as a simple, confident and impactful new font. </p>
<p>Whatever the rationale, its impact was a little lost on me this morning as I impatiently scanned the news stand. The old masthead, with its lowercase letters and palette of blues, stood out in a sea of black, white and red.</p>
<h2>Identity and expectation</h2>
<p>But maybe I just find change difficult? And, of course, a redesign should result in significant changes otherwise there’s no point in it. In the <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/06/13/the-guardians-confirms-cost-cutting-move-tabloid-format">shift from Berliner to tabloid format</a>, The Guardian designers have succeeded in making these significant changes while keeping the title’s overall identity. </p>
<p>This is largely down to the fact that the new “Guardian headline” font is not so different from the old, it just has slightly sharper serifs (the little projections off the edges of the typeface). Also, they have maintained their commitment to giving pictures lots of room to shine, including the famous centre spread image, and have kept all that lovely white space around headlines and bylines.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"952833178800148481"}"></div></p>
<p>Big pictures and white space are crucial to The Guardian’s identity and its readers’ expectations – and it’s clear these elements have remained a major consideration in the new redesign. It’s no mean feat to fit wide gaps between columns of text, and substantial white space into a tabloid design without impacting on the length of stories and the size of the pictures. And there’s plenty to read in this new tabloid Guardian, maybe even a bit too much for a busy weekday, but readers need some value for money at £2 a go.</p>
<h2>In living colour</h2>
<p>Much of the redesign effort seems to have gone into the new range of bright, energetic colours throughout the publication and this really shows. The blue detail of the news pages in the main paper has been replaced with red in the bylines, pullout quote boxes, captions and page numbers. And it’s a nice red – bright but not shocking, which I think works well on the news pages.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201942/original/file-20180115-101498-1ljuybz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New-look lift-out G2 supplement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Guardian</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yellow and turquoise are the colours of the sport pages with blocky black-on-yellow headlines that bizarrely bring to mind the front of Heat magazine. These garish reverse headlines on sport were a bit of a surprise – and I wondered if it was a mistake when I saw the first one. They don’t feature on every page, and I’m still not sure if this randomness is a good or bad thing. They also don’t feature on The Guardian’s new redesigned website, the old dark and light blue colours are still in play on the online sport pages.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201943/original/file-20180115-101502-1rmhkyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The back page of the new tabloid Guardian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Guardian</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The G2 features and arts supplement is a riot of pink, yellow, orange and turquoise, again somewhat reminiscent of a glossy celebrity magazine. The new bright palette works at its best in G2, the colours are engaging and carry the implicit promise of some interesting reads. They also make it easy to navigate the features, and I particularly like the yellow band highlighting prime-time programmes in the TV listings at the back.</p>
<p>The new Journal supplement – which features long reads, comment pieces and puzzles – is a more sombre affair with pale peachy pages and black or orange fonts, more suited to the opinion pieces and readers’ letters that it features. This pullout is very easy on the eye, it’s got an calm, uncluttered design, and it’s good to see there’s still room for a couple of opinion cartoons too. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"952889982523510784"}"></div></p>
<p>It has a very broad content remit – opinions and ideas from across the globe apparently, and only time will tell how this section will fare in the long term. Puzzles have been spread across both the G2 and Journal supplements, making them easier to share, which is a nice touch.</p>
<h2>Mixed bag</h2>
<p>On the digital front, the redesigned website looks clean and attractive with its colour-coded sections and plethora of pictures standing out against plenty of white space. Navigating the site is very easy, thanks to clear categories and a comprehensive drop-down menu in the “More” section. It’s definitely a worthy partner to the newspaper, or should that be the other way round?</p>
<p>The redesign of the newspaper is a bit of a mixed bag for me, but if it gives The Guardian a <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-says-new-tabloid-format-important-milestone-in-turning-finances-around/">new lease of life financially</a>, then it will have served its purpose.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arlene Lawler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Changing to tabloid from its distinctive Berliner format is a bold move. Our newspaper design expert hopes it will help The Guardian survive in print.Arlene Lawler, Associate Lecturer in Newspaper, Magazine and Web Design, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/679022016-11-03T09:42:51Z2016-11-03T09:42:51ZWhy the latest body of UK press regulation is less than impressive<p>The British press has suffered from some bad PR in recent years. It has been dragged through the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a>, investigated at length <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35666520">by the police</a>, abandoned by <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sunday-times-ft-guardian-and-observer-were-best-performing-print-titles-in-september/">large numbers of readers</a>, and its future has been debated in parliament. </p>
<p>Throughout all of this, the question of how to regulate a free press continues. The Press Complaints Commission is no more, IPSO (the industry’s own body) is ignored by several major publications, and now we have IMPRESS, the latest organisation to offer to take on the job.</p>
<p>IMPRESS says it is “<a href="http://www.impress.press">the first truly independent press regulator</a> in the UK” and, despite having no national newspapers as members, claims to be legitimised by official recognition from the Press Recognition Panel (PRP). </p>
<p>A government funded quango <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk">created by the Royal Charter on the Press</a>, the PRP operates with the guarantee of £3m of taxpayer’s funding. But never has so much public money been channelled into a public body that has so little to do and is so unpopular with the industry it has been set up to serve. </p>
<p>This is because its operating Royal Charter has nothing to do with agreement or negotiation. It is a medieval constitutional instrument of executive power imposed by politicians upon the press industry without consent. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the industry itself has spent millions of pounds on its own self-regulator, <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk">IPSO</a>, which it argues is just as “Leveson compliant”.</p>
<p>Among the blunt weapons possessed by IMPRESS with which it can batter publishers of news, is the threat of “exemplary” or punitive damages in media law litigation and the burden of paying both sides’ legal costs whatever the outcome of the proceedings. </p>
<p>The risk of exemplary damages <a href="http://www.carter-ruck.com/blog/read/crime-courts-act-exemplary-damages-libel-privacy-in-force">went live from November 2015</a> and has been <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-freedom-groups-warn-un-that-investigatory-powers-bill-threatens-journalistic-sources/">described by freedom of expression bodies as a menacing threat</a> which will make the media wary of upsetting government and parliamentarians. </p>
<p>There is a strong argument that multiple human rights violations will result, including a lack of freedom of expression and right to fair trial. This is not democracy – particularly when these measures apply to any publisher that objects to its content being effectively licensed by a government body. </p>
<p>It is argued that forcing news publishers to comply with IMPRESS regulation is balanced by the alternative of low-cost arbitration. But the IMPRESS regime can still leave the publisher <a href="http://impress.press/regulation/arbitration.html">picking up the claimant’s costs of up to £3,000</a>. When this is combined with its own arbitration fee of up to £3,500, plus its own legal costs, one IMPRESS arbitration could easily mount up to £10,000 – before damages. The arbitrator’s decision is final – and the process takes place in secret.</p>
<p>Is this is a satisfactory method of resolving freedom of expression disputes? </p>
<p>IMPRESS is essentially the manifestation of a political movement determined to control mainstream media publishers that are largely condemned for being dominated by a right-wing capitalist agenda and dismissive of the rights of “media victims”.</p>
<p>They are also criticised for advancing a prurient culture dominated by what titillates the public in terms of prejudice, scandalous gossip, and tabloid “ruining of people’s lives”.</p>
<p>This is the doctrine that motivated and dominated Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry. It is the raison d'être of orgnisations such as <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/press-release-hacked-off-responds-to-anthony-france-appeal-decision/">Hacked Off</a>, the <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org">Media Standards Trust</a>, the <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk">Media Reform Coalition</a> and their cadre of cheer-leading politicians, lawyers, academics and celebrities bruised by popular media intrusion.</p>
<h2>Stop Press</h2>
<p>IMPRESS does not regulate any significant proportion of the press or its associated online websites. Those it does regulate include an eccentric <a href="http://impress.press/complaints/regulated-publishers.html">mishmash of independent online websites</a>, all of which appear to be unlikely to turn over £2m a year or have more than ten employees. Under the Crime and Courts Act 2013 this makes them exempt from regulation anyway and unlikely to be able to subsidise IMPRESS in the future.</p>
<p>Currently IMPRESS exists thanks largely to a series of donations, including from – among others – former F1 tycoon Max Mosley, via a family trust which has <a href="http://impress.press/about-us/funding.html">guaranteed it £3.8m over four years</a>. </p>
<p>Mr Mosley is well known for his views on the tabloid media and has argued for potential privacy victims to be notified before publication of any potential breaches of privacy. But this idea of linking prior notice to prior restraint has been <a href="http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/774.html">rejected by the European Court of Human Rights</a> because of its implications for political reporting and serious investigative journalism.</p>
<p>Why should mainstream news publishers be bullied through statutory discrimination in liability for punitive damages and legal costs to submit to state sponsored regulation that is effectively bankrolled by Max Mosley? </p>
<p>Mr Mosley has been campaigning on privacy issues ever since the now-defunct News of the World <a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/1777.html">wrongly claimed</a> that his private participation in S&M activities had a public interest link to his fascist father, Sir Oswald.</p>
<p>There may well be an element of poetic justice in his family money being used to advance regulation of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. But the effects will be unsettling, and apply to all news publishers, whether they have offended Mr Mosley or not.</p>
<p>What we should all be offended by is the arrival and official recognition of a regulatory body that will have significant and damaging powers of interference in the content of our news media.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is Chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.</span></em></p>News media publishers could face punitive sanctions from state approved regulation.Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/672002016-10-21T14:03:32Z2016-10-21T14:03:32ZNo shortage of media schadenfreude as ‘fake sheikh’ is sent to prison<p>The machetes of condemnation are out for the investigative journalist and self-styled “king of stings”, Mazher Mahmood. The man who <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3690886.stm">dominated the British tabloid world</a> for decades with his “fake sheikh” operation at the now defunct News of the World has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37727631">jailed for 15 months</a> for tampering with evidence in a high-profile case.</p>
<p>There is something about the modern Greek tragedy in the narrative of the crusading – and to quote media commentator Roy Greenslade, “tawdry and disgusting” – tabloid entrapper, who ended up standing in the dock to face the kind of justice he wished for his many targets.</p>
<p>Such is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37563509">coverage his trial has received</a>, you could be forgiven for thinking Mahmood had committed a crime much worse than the paedophilia, terrorism, class A drug supplying, arms dealing, immigration rackets, and political corruption, dodgy doctors, solicitors, pimps, judges, bent cops and even murderers that his adventures sought to expose. </p>
<p>In fact, he has been found guilty along with his driver, Alan Smith, of one offence: plotting to pervert the course of justice by suppressing evidence in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37429114">drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos</a>. The singer had been accused of arranging for Mahmood to be sold £800 worth of cocaine by one of her contacts. Her case was later dismissed after Mahmood’s evidence was called into question. </p>
<p>This was in the context of one of Mahmood’s elaborate stings for The Sun on Sunday, the paper he joined after <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-closes-a-new-page-for-rupert-murdoch-2240">Rupert Murdoch liquidated</a> News of the World – the most successful ever Sunday newspaper – following the toxic Milly Dowler <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10429135/Phone-hacking-trial-News-of-the-World-told-police-Milly-Dowler-was-hacked.html">phone hacking scandal</a>.</p>
<p>When the trial judge realised Mahmood had given evidence in direct contradiction to what he had said in a pre-trial hearing, Contostavlos was acquitted. The tables then dramatically turned on the journalist who had posed as a film producer and plied Contostavlos with alcohol as they discussed an acting role alongside Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.</p>
<p>The phone hacking victims’ lawyer Mark Lewis <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/05/new-corp-20-lawsuits-fake-sheikh-conviction">talked about £800m of claims by Mahmood’s “past victims”</a>. The Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service, once enthusiastic and grateful champions of Mahmood’s operations, became <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-rev1.htm">reverse ferrets</a> of criminal justice.</p>
<p>The Crown Prosecution Service has since dropped live cases given to them by Mahmood’s alter ego and has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/04/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-cases-reviewed-cps">reviewing 25 past convictions</a>. Six <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-tulisa-court-cases-reviewed-dropped-a7347396.html">cases of high-profile figures</a> have been taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the grinding of the wheels of justice, within the profession of journalism the methods of the “fake sheikh” have always attracted controversy. Greenslade <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/06/mazher-mahmoods-journalistic-game-has-finally-been-brought-to-book">has been on his case</a> ever since the pair worked together on The Sunday Times. In 2006, Greenslade wrote a piece in The Independent with the headline: “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-6103585.html">Why I am out to nail Mazher Mahmood</a>”. The formidable John Sweeney of the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">turned Mahmood over in 2014</a>; Channel 4 castigated Mahmood’s tactics and reputation in a documentary in 2012 which was made with the help of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/aug/01/mazher-mahmood-newsoftheworld">one of his former assistants who had turned against him</a>.</p>
<p>However, this whole affair has been diminished into a reductionist fable of good and evil with no tolerance for the light and shade, moral ambiguity and rough and tumble of raucous tabloid sensationalism. The past is being judged harshly by the politics and values of the present.</p>
<p>Domonic Ponsford, the editor of Press Gazette, found himself under attack for <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/in-the-race-to-demonise-mazher-mahmood-dont-forget-his-victims-which-rich-people-driven-by-greed-to-do-bad-things/">suggesting that</a> “in the race to demonise Mazher Mahmood, don’t forget his ‘victims’ were often rich people, driven by greed to do bad things”.</p>
<p>Ponsford faced a tsunami of critical onslaught which debunked any credit or merit for Mahmood’s investigative journalism. Nevertheless <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mazher-mahmood-the-baby-for-sale-and-his-use-of-stings-to-target-cocaine-dealing-celebs/">he concluded</a> that “for me, the jury is still out on Mahmood as far as the wider allegations against him go. But I accept that given what we now know about phone-hacking at the News of the World (and elsewhere) it is best to keep an open mind when it comes to historic allegations of tabloid wrongdoing.”</p>
<p>How the mighty has fallen. Mahmood’s 2008 book, Confessions of a Fake Sheik: ‘The King of the Sting’ Reveals All, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Confessions-Fake-Sheik-Sting-Reveals-ebook/dp/0007288093/">can be bought for a penny on Amazon</a>. The “world’s best-known investigative journalist”, a reporter of the year in 1999, is the source of the profession’s self-loathing – Private Eye mocked his fear of reprisals and his efforts to keep his photograph out of the public eye. The Metropolitan police <a href="http://news.met.police.uk/news/two-guilty-of-perverting-the-course-of-justice-189729">released his full facial image on conviction</a>. And The Sun <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1920483/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-is-found-guilty-in-the-former-x-factor-judge-tulisa-contostavlos-sting-case/">revealed his face</a> complete with anorak hood and glasses that he wore to and from court.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s career is neither typical, nor is it the mainstay of British investigative journalism. The theatrical sting of performance journalism will always be resented by those who are embarrassed, or have something unpleasant to hide – particularly when it is teased out by the somewhat juvenile stunt of exaggerated temptation. But while subjects stung by this method might appear to condemn themselves, problems inevitably arise if this is then relied on by the state for criminal prosecutions. Mahmood and his team were tabloid journalists – not police detectives or intelligence officers.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, Mahmood tampered with evidence – and for that he is now to serve time in jail. But it would be wise for the legal system, politicians and public opinion to be wary of throwing bricks in glass houses. They all once delighted and sniggered when concealing their copies of the News of the World inside The Sunday Times or the Observer and other so-called “respectable broadsheets”. Now that the morality of what went on has been judged and found wanting perhaps they should look to their own consciences and measure their condemnation with some sense of proportion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67200/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists. </span></em></p>The downfall – and tactics – of investigative reporter Mazher Mahmood are not typical of British journalism.Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639732016-10-07T15:30:54Z2016-10-07T15:30:54ZBrits abroad: stereotype or media hype?<p>Now that summer is officially over and there is a moment to stake stock, I find myself once again dismayed that “Brits abroad” still made for ample copy in many tabloid newspapers. Not because of their so-called antics, but because of the way they were reported on.</p>
<p>Every year a number of Britons head to holiday resorts across the Mediterranean with its guarantees of sun, sea and sand. And for many there’s a fourth “s” on offer too – sex. Their behaviour seems to attract a great deal of salacious media scrutiny. It expresses both moral outrage and disgust, but at the same time works to titillate the reader. </p>
<p>This summer was no different. For example, in August <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3738819/How-s-clampdown-going-Explicit-video-shows-NAKED-Magaluf-holidaymakers-gyrating-UV-paint-party-year-police-vowed-stamp-debauchery-tourism.html">the Daily Mail asked</a>: </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140297/original/image-20161004-20223-1vxjqc6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sensational reporting by the Daily Mail.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3738819/How-s-clampdown-going-Explicit-video-shows-NAKED-Magaluf-holidaymakers-gyrating-UV-paint-party-year-police-vowed-stamp-debauchery-tourism.html">Daily Mail</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even in late September <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/1850735/the-crazy-x-rated-photos-of-boozy-brits-in-magaluf-this-summer/">The Sun reported</a>:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140298/original/image-20161004-20205-1e4if94.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sun gets in on the act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/1850735/the-crazy-x-rated-photos-of-boozy-brits-in-magaluf-this-summer/">The Sun</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both of these focus on the so-called party resort of Magaluf on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, but it could easily be replaced with resorts in Greece such as Malia on the island of Crete. </p>
<p>This seeming fascination with what the Brits do abroad isn’t restricted to holiday resorts. The violent clashes between England football team supporters and those supporting Russia at the start of the Euros was a classic example of the press taking the moral high ground. In this particular case, it was the Russian fans <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-ultras-are-a-return-to-nationalist-posturing-in-football-and-the-media-61315">who received the brunt of criticism</a>. </p>
<p>But still, images of drunk, bare-chested, fist-wielding men pervaded the UK media, followed by calls for fans to behave responsibly at future fixtures. It is this kind of conduct that goes hand-in-hand with the stereotypes associated with the British abroad – of being over “there” and out of control. </p>
<h2>Shock and horror</h2>
<p>This image of the Brits abroad reached new heights with what is by the now the infamous “mamading episode” reported in July 2014. Based on an incident that occurred in Magaluf, typical headlines <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/magaluf-video-exposes-sleazy-party-3818174">included The Sunday Mirror’s</a>: “Magaluf exposed: Sleazy party capital where girls are bullied into sex acts with strangers.”</p>
<p>The Mirror’s report was based on a video filmed at one of the resort’s nightclubs. The footage, allegedly recorded by one of the club’s reps and sent to a friend who then put it on Facebook, purports to show a young woman (aged 18) engaged in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/03/mamading-magaluf-video_n_5554565.html">“mamading”</a>. This is the practice of encouraging women (who are usually inebriated) to perform oral sex on numerous different men for a reward. </p>
<p>In this report that caused such horror in the summer of 2014, the woman in question was cajoled into fellatio with a total of 24 men. As for her reward, she is said to have believed her actions would earn her a free holiday. The holiday in question, however, was not a vacation but the name of a cocktail. </p>
<p>Alongside the shock and horror, there followed a number of other revelations in the British press about the apparently lewd behaviour of British tourists in Magaluf. A form of moral panic ensued in which British youth – but notably women – holidaying abroad were demonised for their behaviour.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"489107877052030976"}"></div></p>
<p>The events in Magaluf even inspired a TV investigation by tabloid talk show host Jeremy Kyle. When he visited Magaluf for himself <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jeremy-kyle-was-pepper-sprayed-by-a-nightclub-bouncer-in-magaluf-claims-gogglebox-star-9607384.html">and was pepper sprayed by a nightclub bouncer</a>, it added yet more sensationalised outrage to the coverage. The media attention Magaluf attracted during this period built and added to its existing reputation and focused on the shocking and titillating exploits of badly behaved tourists. </p>
<h2>Why now?</h2>
<p>I first went to Magaluf in the summer of 1997 and continued my research into tourism there over subsequent years. During my first visits to the resort I witnessed behaviour similar to that of the mamading incident, and certainly of British tourists’ drunken exploits, but I don’t recall the moral outrage and media coverage then that these activities now attract. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140304/original/image-20161004-20239-8p0oa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Another view of Magaluf.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/antoskabar/13940261173/in/photolist-neRtYz-cmSoS1-7NZePq-7NZv2E-Pg7G2-7NZePC-7NZePL-yDvZK-ntcAQv-nsbNKk-yDwaX-7NVQPe-8jAqux-7NZePE-7NZv2w-7NZv2L-ntdXJ2-7MHKQ5-noaJ1x-nsNsdY-najqzR-nuQjat-njvtve-nqG6QH-nBrkso-8jAgSX-nFE9Ex-an4nCW-5eQQzo-5fBopE-8jA3Ct-5f7xAE-5d9YuX-5fgMzM-pQj62V-cW4s1s-8jAgSr-6z9GMr-e8oPc8-8jAgTa-5cHstS-nYhx4E-dp8GGy-57dTzc-9ejwX8-5g9Sof-8jA3Me-8jA3LP-8jA3Gr-8jAgT2">Antoskabar/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My latest visit in 2015 I found that very little had changed in terms of the look of the resort and what it had to offer from when I went in 1997. This begs the question “why now?” Social media is certainly a factor. The ability to instantly upload photos and videos means that what happens on holiday no longer stays on holiday. The ability to transmit behaviour at the push of a button and on a global scale, takes things much further out of the control of the individual concerned. </p>
<p>Another factor is that there is a whole industry based on this material. There is money to be made here by a media that knows how much the moral right enjoy tut-tutting over those Brits who do not travel for what they deem to be the “correct” cultural reasons. But while these moral arbiters express their disapproval their reporting creates an image of the destination that itself helps establish expectations of what people find when visiting and, in turn, how they should behave when there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Andrews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The antics of ‘Brits abroad’ continues to fill copy in tabloid newspapers but it’s more about titillation than genuine moral outrage.Hazel Andrews, Reader in Tourism, Culture and Society, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/662402016-10-04T12:09:15Z2016-10-04T12:09:15ZReality bites: the mutant giant-penised fleas invading the tabloids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140292/original/image-20161004-30459-14boch7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coming to a dog near you...</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cosmin Manci</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Here we go again. The latest wave of shouty headlines about outsized monster invaders is rolling in. The latest crop – fantastically – are the “<a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/billions-super-fleas-giant-penises-8888941">billions of super fleas with giant penises”</a> invading British homes.</p>
<p>These monsters are giants, said <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/billions-super-fleas-giant-penises-8888941">The Mirror</a> – “far bigger than normal fleas”. And, according to <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/595686/Calais-migrant-giant-penis-flea">The Express</a>, they “have mutated to have large manhoods and are now immune to poisons”. <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1828373/your-home-could-soon-be-invaded-by-a-breed-of-super-fleas-with-giant-erect-todgers-two-and-a-half-times-their-body-length/">The Sun</a> went even further, suggesting that their penises were all “erect”. Save yourselves!</p>
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<p>Hysteria around arthropods (insects, spiders and their allies) is common fodder for newspapers – it’s been barely a month since a completely different swarm of “<a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/705302/Cannibal-spiders-Britain-new-warning-ravenous-arachnids-feasting-your-home">giant cannibal spiders</a>” was “invading British bedrooms”. Pholcids, the spiders in question, are not only <a href="http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html">utterly harmless</a> but are in fact <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3769221/British-homes-invaded-cannibal-spiders-eat-creepy-crawlies-house.html">beneficial</a> because they eat other less harmless insects.</p>
<p>Such headlines pour oil on an unhelpful fire of general fear and aversion towards arthropods. This fear is unnecessary and avoidable. An <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/01/doctor-who-and-spider-phobia/">awesome experiment involving Doctor Who</a> in 2011 demonstrated that there is nothing innate or evolutionary about this fear – and it most likely persists through cultural reinforcement. So if we don’t teach our kids to be afraid of bugs, they won’t grow up afraid of bugs. And that means they won’t miss out on a whole world of awesome.</p>
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<p>At least with fleas there is something to be genuinely concerned about – they are, after all, obligate bloodsuckers and can be vectors for several important diseases including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague">bubonic plague</a>. But we have been living and dealing with fleas for centuries. Caution is sensible; blind panic is not. </p>
<p>But what’s all the fuss about these fleas and their penises? A flea’s penis, however giant, is quite the wrong end of a flea to get worried about. </p>
<p>Let’s try and unpick this story a little.</p>
<h2>Are fleas invading?</h2>
<p>To begin with, fleas are not “invading” – they are already found <a href="http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Pulex_irritans/">everywhere except the Arctic</a>. Fleas typically follow cycles with adult populations booming in summer and generally dying away in winter. They thrive in damp, humid conditions but <a href="http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/1/78">cannot develop below about 13°C</a>, meaning winter usually halts their activity. </p>
<p>However, there has been a succession of <a href="https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/summers-getting-wetter-and-soils-are-less-acidic-ukecn-monitoring">increasingly wet summers</a> and mild winters, which provides good conditions for flea breeding. So fleas may be proliferating in the balmy weather. Some <a href="http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/14720005.Rise_in_pets_at_risk_of_infection_because_of_fleas__says_PDSA/">veterinary organisations and charities</a> have reported increases in cases. And these reports appear to have been <a href="http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/super-fleas-with-giant-penises-aren-t-about-to-invade-your-home-despite-experts-saying-so/story-29747267-detail/story.html">cherry-picked</a> by tabloids in an effort to create panic.</p>
<p>But Natalie Bungay of the British Pest Control Association said: “There have certainly not been any reports of any anomalies in flea reports whether it be the size of them or frequency of them.”</p>
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<h2>Pesticide-resistant mutants?</h2>
<p>Neither is there any truth in the claim that these insects are resistant to current pesticides. While fleas may have become resistant to many <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808790/">older insecticides</a>, there is no conclusive evidence of any resistance to more modern chemical treatments. Concerns about what looks like resistance are mostly down to <a href="http://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/June-2012/Fleas-Persist-But-Reason-Isnt-Resistance/">failure to follow, or stick to, product directions</a>. </p>
<p>There is also no obvious evidence that fleas are getting any bigger. Neither, disappointingly, are their penises. </p>
<h2>How giant, exactly? I’m asking for a friend</h2>
<p>However, it has to be said: there is at least truth in the rumour of “giant-penised fleas”. Fleas do have extraordinarily long penises. Being in possession of a 3.3mm appendage may not sound like much, but it is up to 2.5 times the flea’s own body length – on an average man that’d be a four-metre member. But this was the case anyway – there is no new breed of particularly monstrously hung mutants, just the regular well-endowed ones.</p>
<p>The penis size of the flea is a record for insects, although not for animals generally as is sometimes claimed. That honour goes <a href="http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/15/poorly-endowed-barnacles-spermcasting/">to the barnacle</a> (eight times its body length, which would be 14 metres on a human in case you are wondering).</p>
<p>But flea genitalia are hardly a clear and present threat. On the contrary – what flea penises are is fascinating. They <a href="http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/3/352">have been described as</a> “the most elaborate genital organ in the animal kingdom”. The penis is an immensely long wispy ribbon-like structure, kept coiled up inside the abdomen when not in use. It is <a href="http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9517&context=rtd">so thin</a> that it is “only faintly discernible”, even under a microscope, and cannot enter the female by itself. It must be supported by extra structures called “penis rods” which, along with external claspers, help to manoeuvre the whole apparatus into place for mating to occur.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139961/original/image-20160930-8922-umzegh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Left: The flea penis, 2.5 times its body length, is kept coiled up inside the structure shaded red in the abdomen when not in use. Top right: Human flea <em>Pulex irritans</em>. Bottom right: isolated male genitalia of <em>P. irritans</em></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Left:TB Cheetham 1987, PhD, Iowa State/Entomology Commons; Top right:KatijaZSM/Wikipedia/CCBY3.0; Bottom right: F Abang 1993, PhD, Iowa State/Entomology Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The precise function of the penis rods is not entirely clear – one end is shaped “<a href="http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/3/352">like a cobra’s hood</a>”, so they may act to scoop out rivals’ sperm. Alternatively they may help to transfer the sperm to the female – <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.en.20.010175.001325">one author observed</a> sperm with tails “wound around the penis rods like spaghetti on a fork”. Nobody really knows.</p>
<p>Such a delicate, fragile organ is hardly something to strike terror into the hearts of the nation, so why all the tabloid hate? </p>
<h2>Maters gonna mate</h2>
<p>Maybe they were thinking of <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/03/parasitic-junk-trunk/"><em>Strepsipteran</em></a> penises, or possibly <a href="https://theconversation.com/invertebrates-inject-a-bit-of-romance-during-sex-by-stabbing-each-other-24154">bedbug</a> penises. Those are a whole different, rather stabbier ball game: genuinely the stuff of nightmares. Look them up if you dare. Or maybe bushcricket genitals, some of which resemble <a href="https://theconversation.com/handcuffs-traps-and-spikes-shed-light-on-sex-lives-of-insects-26425">bear traps and handcuffs</a>. </p>
<p>The mechanical details of how males and females mate is enormously important in determining whether – and which – DNA is passed on. It’s therefore somewhat central to the process of evolution. Genitals are used as anchors, hooks, locks and keys, turnstiles, advertisements, titillators, manhole-covers, crowbars, weapons, mazes and many more – and with such a bewildering array of functions they are some of the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16701234">fastest-evolving structures in nature</a>.</p>
<p>Insect genitals, particularly, are a smorgasbord of delightful weirdness. Male damselflies have <a href="http://ccsbio.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/i-googled-dragonfly-penis-so-you-dont.html">shovel-shaped penises</a> for removing rivals’ sperm. Some male spiders <a href="http://www.livescience.com/18227-cannibalistic-spider-detachable-penis.html">snap off one of their two detachable penises</a> inside their mate, both to deter future lovers and to prolong sex while they run away. Female barklice’s vaginas are <a href="http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/17/in-this-insect-females-have-penises-and-males-have-vaginas/">shaped like a prehensile penis</a> and literally reach into the male to grab his sperm.</p>
<p>The point being: insect genitals are compelling enough already, without the need to invent reasons to be scared or disgusted by them “invading our bedrooms”.</p>
<p>So fleas may be enjoying a bit of a comeback in some warm, wet weather. But they are not invading, and neither are they mutants with giant penises. Fleas, in general, have impressive members – but the flea class of 2016 has no particular claim to endowment over previous alumni.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Gilbert has previously received funding from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme.</span></em></p>You can get out from behind the sofa, reports of an invasion of mutant insects are exaggerated.James Gilbert, Lecturer in Zoology, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/585292016-04-27T13:06:39Z2016-04-27T13:06:39ZFinally, the truth about Hillsborough (but you won’t read it on the front of The Sun)<p>As Jared Ficklin <a href="https://theconversation.com/hillsborough-at-last-the-shameful-truth-is-out-58456">wrote here</a>, the verdicts returned at the inquest into the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 completely vindicate the 27-year campaign for justice resolutely undertaken by the families of the 96 who died.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36138337">The verdicts</a>, which will surely have far-reaching consequences for the South Yorkshire police, found that those who died were unlawfully killed and that a series of failures by the police and ambulance services contributed to the tragedy. The jury also unanimously agreed that the behaviour of Liverpool supporters did not contribute to the horrific events. After the decisions were made public, the <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/david-cameron-hillsborough-verdicts-official-11246715">prime minister, David Cameron</a> was moved to say:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All families and survivors now have official confirmation of what they always knew was the case, that the Liverpool fans were utterly blameless in the disaster that unfolded at Hillsborough.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Outside the court, <a href="https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/uk/hillsborough-disaster-inquest-rules-96-victims-unlawfully-killed/">Margaret Aspinall</a>, whose 18-year-old son James died in the disaster, said: “Let’s be honest about this – people were against us. We had the media against us, as well as the establishment.”</p>
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<p>And, when we consider Mrs Aspinall’s sentiments concerning the media and the fact that both The Sun and The Times, in isolation, originally <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/27/sun-times-front-pages-ignore-hillsborough-verdict?CMP=twt_gu">chose not to cover</a> the verdicts on their front pages the following morning it’s impossible not to think about how the tragedy was <a href="http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/docs/PRE000000340001.pdf">originally reported</a> by The Sun.</p>
<p>On April 19, four days after the disaster occurred, The Sun printed its “THE TRUTH” edition, where its front page alleged that Liverpool fans had stolen from the bodies of the victims, urinated on “brave cops” and, in a particularly appalling piece of fantasy which I quote in full, alleged that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In one shameful episode, a gang of Liverpool fans noticed the blouse of a girl trampled to death in the crush had risen above her breasts. As a policeman struggled in vain to revive her they jeered: “Throw her up here and we will **** her.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120351/original/image-20160427-30950-10ckm6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sun’s front page following Hillsborough.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In their book about the Sun, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stick-Up-Your-Punter-Newspaper/dp/0571299709">Peter Chippendale and Chris Horrie</a> describe the atmosphere inside The Sun’s newsroom in the Hillsborough era under the editorship of Kelvin Mackenzie. </p>
<p>It was a place, they write, of terror – where the editor’s personality dominated to such an extent that even though there were grave misgivings about the accounts of what happened at Hillsborough (none of the allegations, of course, were attributable) journalists felt intimidated and powerless to object to the terrible smears. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-19507065">Harry Arnold</a>, the reporter whose by-line appeared next to the story along with John Askill, told the BBC in 2012 that when he saw the article ready for print he was “aghast”. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact is reporters don’t argue with an editor. And in particular, you don’t argue with an editor like Kelvin Mackenzie.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s worth pointing out, though, that various other newspapers were culpable in peddling the narrative of supporter misbehaviour and criminality. The Daily Express, for example, on April 18 ran with the front page headline, POLICE ACCUSE DRUNKEN FANS. Football Fanzine <a href="http://www.exacteditions.com/read/wsc/june-1989-48242/4/3/%20.">When Saturday Comes</a> did a round-up of some of the headlines including the Sunday People’s: BODIES SPIKED AS CRAZED MOB FLEE.</p>
<h2>Anger on Merseyside</h2>
<p>Such reports must be seen in their political and social context. The subject of football hooliganism had great currency in the late 1980s and, as <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14616700050081786">Jemphrey and Beddington </a> point out, Liverpool as a city had been subject to continual negative imagery and bad press from the national newspapers in general. Hooliganism as a cause of the tragedy was the accepted “wisdom” in the aftermath of events – and <a href="http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/report/main-section/part-2/chapter-12/page-7/index.html">not just</a> in the tabloid press.</p>
<p>Yet it is The Sun that remains most closely associated with the lies and disinformation perpetuated around the Hillsborough tragedy. There are a number of reasons for this. It’s because of the apparent certainty of the THE TRUTH headline and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154177221679540&set=gm.10154060738061772&type=3&theater">belated apologies</a>; it’s because of the habitual cockiness of <a href="http://www.themediablog.co.uk/the-media-blog/2012/09/kelvin-mackenzies-latest-hillsborough-insult.html">Mackenzie</a> and his return as a Sun columnist. It may even be, as Mackenzie himself maintains, because The Sun <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/sep/27/kelvin-mackenzie-hillsborough-disaster">was so pro-Thatcher</a> – and the city in general was so vehemently opposed to a variety of Tory policies.</p>
<p>But it is little wonder, reading once again The Sun’s accumulated coverage of the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, that the anger on Merseyside felt toward the paper since 1989, despite the seemingly grudging and <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4535743/23-years-after-Hillsborough-the-real-truth.html">belated apologies</a>, has hardly subsided. After the verdicts were announced, former Liverpool players called for the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hillsborough-disaster-inquest-the-sun-kelvin-mackenzie-trevor-kavanagh_uk_571f8103e4b06bf544e0c423">closure of the paper</a> – and at the post-verdict press conference it became clear that Sun journalists were <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hillsborough-inquest-verdict-the-sun-kelvin-mackenzie_uk_571f4311e4b06bf544e0a7fa">not welcome</a> as they were asked to leave “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hillsborough-verdict-the-sun-and-the-times-criticised-for-leaving-inquest-verdict-off-front-page-a7002806.html">quietly by the back door</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120359/original/image-20160427-30946-4jrgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sun journalists need not apply.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what must not be forgotten or side-lined is the fact that, as <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/12872#.VyB7wVUrKUk">Mick Hume</a> wrote in Spiked in 2012, The Sun (and the other papers, for that matter) did not simply make up the slanderous and despicable stories they ran. They were wilfully fed false stories by the establishment and by police officers who have subsequently <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/how-the-suns-truth-about-hillsborough-unravelled">admitted their guilt</a>. </p>
<p>In truth, it’s not only the Sun but also other major newspapers who bear collective responsibility for failing in their duty to adequately investigate the terrible allegations before printing. But it’s the actions of the Sun, in it’s misplaced confidence and brazenness, which partially fuelled the campaign for justice which lasted 27 years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58529/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
All UK tabloids, but particularly The Sun, have a lot to answer for with their disgraceful reporting.John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453812015-07-29T10:52:05Z2015-07-29T10:52:05ZVery British scandal continues rich tradition of tabloid titillation – and never mind the ethics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90111/original/image-20150729-30846-195tv3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gotcha: The Sun carries on the tradition of great British scandals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sun</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a scoop worthy of its deceased predecessor, the News of the World, the <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6560352/Baron-John-Sewel-drug-binges-with-prostitutes.html.">Sun on Sunday</a> ran a five-page exclusive at the weekend alleging that Lord Sewel, deputy speaker of the House of Lords, had been “caught on video snorting cocaine with a pair of £200-a-night hookers”. </p>
<p>Monday’s Sun <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6561588/Lord-Sewel-bra-snap-released-as-he-resigns.html">kept up the momentum</a> with a front-page picture of Sewel smoking a cigarette clad in the “hooker’s bra and jacket” while on <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6562981/Lord-Sewels-flat-raided-by-police-after-cocaine-scandal.html%20">Tuesday</a> we were treated to “Lord Sewer” naked from the waist up accused of bragging of “sex with a BBC host”. And that was his career over with.</p>
<p>In the probability of police charges being brought, Sewel <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/28/lord-sewel-quits-house-of-lords-over-sex-and-drugs-claims">resigned from the Lords</a> apologising for the “pain and embarrassment” he had caused. One day he was the deputy speaker of the House of Lords and (oh, the irony) chairman of the Lords committee for privileges and conduct which investigates <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lord-sewel/house-of-lords_b_7808916.html">breaches of conduct by peers</a> the next he was the disgraced “sneer of the realm” allegedly prone to bad-mouthing political colleagues whilst indulging in adulterous, illicit, drug-fuelled sex sessions. This was public humiliation of a terrible sort and whatever your view of Sewel, we can only imagine his family’s shame and embarrassment.</p>
<h2>Yellow press</h2>
<p>There is something terribly old-fashioned about a political sex scandal and this one is currently delighting the majority of the national press – <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11764002/Lord-Sewel-the-cocaine-snorting-prostitute-using-peer-doesnt-deserve-our-sympathy.html">broadsheet</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3176675/Lord-Sewel-s-humiliated-wife-not-expecting-home.html">tabloid</a> alike – not just The Sun. Indeed, you could say that it is part of a rich cultural tradition and full of the very details that have been a feature of the popular press since the 1850s.</p>
<p>That was the decade when, according to <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Murder-Edition-History-Communication-Britain/dp/0340983256%20">Kevin Williams</a>, a new journalism began to emerge which challenged the serious reporting and commentary of The Times. This “new journalism” aimed to entertain its readership – often with reports of crime, sexual deviancy and the peculiarities of human existence. The Sunday papers, as is the case today, carried the most salacious stories. As Williams records, the first edition of the News of the World in 1843 carried an “extraordinary story of drugging and violation”. </p>
<p>As the century progressed, overtly political content began to decrease in the popular titles whilst criticism of their content grew. But the proprietors and editors of the time knew that scandal and entertainment attracted readers. Perhaps it will surprise nobody that the first publisher of the News of the World, John Browne Bell, was unequivocal about what would sell his newspaper: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/07/news-of-the-world-history">crime, sensation and of course, vice.</a></p>
<p>The peccadilloes of the ruling classes have long been of fascination and as shadow secretary for media culture and sport, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690015/Scandals-sexminster-The-Cabinet-Minister-passes-Etonians-MP-paid-14-year-old-boys-floggings.html#ixzz3hE1oNDtm%C2%A0">Chris Bryant</a>, has written, sex scandals of all sorts – including adultery, homosexuality (when illegal) and murder – have gone hand-in-hand with political power for centuries. What would the modern world have made of Lloyd George? The prime minister for most of World War I known for his multitude of lovers and illegitimate children.</p>
<p>Yet it is in the past half century or so – as society and the press have become gradually less deferential toward those in power – that we have seen the private lives of our politicians held up for public judgement. It’s just over 50 years since the <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/profumo-affair-50-years-top-1931952">Profumo scandal</a>, the daddy of them all. This one had everything – sex, spying and suicide all going on in the intense atmosphere of the Cold War. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90115/original/image-20150729-30879-1bnrp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Classic Sunday fare for the News of the World.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">News of the World</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it’s entirely possible to go through the decades and choose your personal favourite. There’s <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1304827/Sex-lies-Downing-Street-cover-left-Krays-free-kill.html%20">Lord Boothby and Ronnie Kray</a>, the Liberal leader <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/11274214/Jeremy-Thorpe-scandal-where-are-they-now.html%20">Jeremy Thorpe</a> who was tried and acquitted of hiring a hit man to kill and silence his lover Norman Scott. </p>
<p>Then there is <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/26/newsid_2478000/2478303.stm">Jeffrey Archer</a>, stepping down as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party as a result of reports in a Sunday newspaper alleging he tried to pay a prostitute to go abroad to avoid a scandal, an episode which ended in a jail term, and another best seller, for the disgraced peer. </p>
<h2>Riding the tumbril</h2>
<p>There can be no denying the public appetite for political sex scandals – but why is this the case? Perhaps, as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/myisha-cherry/the-reason-we-are-obsesse_b_3662185.html%20">Myisha Cherry</a> suggests, it’s because we take “vicarious pleasure in the rule-breaking of another”. The actions of Sewel are reprehensible but also titillating – he is breaking rules in the most flagrant fashion and behaving in a way many of would certainly not dare to. </p>
<p>Then there is the pleasure of seeing someone privileged and monied get caught in such an obvious way. The exposure of Sewel’s hypocrisy is especially delicious because he was hoist by his own petard, damned by his own foolishness and hubris. Such behaviour also fits into an historical narrative which positions Lords of the realm as feckless, out of touch and generally dismissive of the laws which govern the rest of society. This reinforces the moral superiority of the audience, who in times of austerity see their leaders as disconnected from real life and representative of the fact that we are certainly not “all in this together”. </p>
<p>In this sense it matters not a jot that Sewel was a Labour-appointed peer. More generally, returning once again to the ideas of Cherry, perhaps political sex scandals provide a “distraction from the tedium of one’s own difficult everyday problems”. Simple familiar escapism, then, where unacceptable sexual behaviour is punished by public humiliation – followed, in some instances, by professional ruin.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"626315220198260736"}"></div></p>
<p>But there is already a sense that the Sewel scandal is different to those that have preceded it. All the main newspapers have followed The Sun’s lead and piled in on the beleagured peer. So much so that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jul/27/lord-sewel-national-newspapers-public-interest-demand-resignation">Roy Greenslade</a> writes of the “cruel” treatment that Sewel has received pointing to the fact that he could find no paper, columnist or commentator, willing to do anything other than condemn him. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/28/the-guardian-view-on-the-sewel-affair-caught-in-the-spotlight%20">Elsewhere in the Guardian</a>, the leader piece speaks of events affecting the future existence of the House of Lords itself. Meanwhile, the “soaraway” Sun basks in the glory of another successful sting – and few give any thought to notions of “honeytraps”, entrapment or hidden cameras because, after all, this is journalism in the public interest – and the public are interested. That’s right, isn’t it?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45381/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In a scoop worthy of its deceased predecessor, the News of the World, the Sun on Sunday ran a five-page exclusive at the weekend alleging that Lord Sewel, deputy speaker of the House of Lords, had been…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/382562015-04-30T10:45:45Z2015-04-30T10:45:45ZThe Sun’s SNP-Tory split shows newspaper endorsements aren’t what they used to be<p>It’s the news “the nation has been waiting for” exclaimed The Sun in its front page editorial, and “it’s a Tory!”</p>
<p>The British red-top tabloid famous for the now-defunct topless page three models, has traditionally claimed to have influenced election outcomes. This year it called on its readers to vote Conservative to keep the UK economy on track, guarantee a referendum on the EU, and stop the Scottish National Party running the country. </p>
<p>But there’s a twist. Somewhat bizarrely, its Scottish edition backed the SNP in its front page editorial, declaring party leader Nicola Sturgeon represented “a new hope” for Scotland.</p>
<p>The question is, though, does it matter? Do newspapers ever really influence elections? And for all the bluster, will the cries from the newspapers make a blind bit of difference?</p>
<p>The campaign to date has been relatively uninspiring, and intensely stage-managed. Local media have <a href="http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/election-2015-its-time-stop-9097618">complained they have been ignored</a>, and in some cases locked out of events, while the major parties toured the country. Squabbles over who won the debates and minor gaffes – such as when the prime minister David Cameron <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3057630/Phoney-Cameron-says-confused-team-supported-driving-past-West-Ham-s-stadium.html">forgot which football team he supported</a> – have received much coverage, while there has been relatively little substantive debate in the national press on important issues such as the economy or healthcare. </p>
<p>Labour and the Conservatives have appeared happy to play along – with everything to play for, both are desperate to avoid a Mrs Duffy moment, a reference to 2010 when former prime minister Gordon Browne was recorded making <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8649853.stm">disparaging comments</a> about a woman who had challenged him while campaigning. </p>
<p>All the while, the main newspapers have attempted to set the agenda. The “Red Ed” narrative pushed by The Daily Mail has seen daily attacks on Labour and its leader Ed Miliband. The left-leaning Daily Mirror <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-camerons-election-bribes-cost-5526753">attacked the Tories</a> on several occasions on its front pages, warning of the dangers of continued Conservative government. </p>
<p>Some of the more eye-catching headlines have included The Sun’s <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/election2010/2947914/White-Van-Man-backs-Cam.html">White Van Man Backs Cam</a>, The Daily Mail’s <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3058349/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Red-Ed-s-politics-banana-republic.html">Red Ed’s politics of the Banana republic’</a> and The Daily Telegraph’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11565080/The-5000-small-business-owners-supporting-David-Cameron-and-the-Conservatives.html">5,000 small business owners supporting David Cameron</a>. The Guardian later reported the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/27/how-the-conservatives-orchestrate-letters-from-business-leaders">letter was orchestrated</a> by the Conservative party – with meta-data showing it was authored at Conservative party headquarters.</p>
<p>But for all the bluster, the partisan reporting appears to have had little impact on the campaigns; both Labour and the Conservatives are locked in the low to mid-30s in terms of party support and polls are predicting <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-britain-be-governable-after-the-election-39468">neither party will have enough seats</a> to form a government alone.</p>
<p>So why are the parties so keen to court the press? There are two diverging views of the importance of newspapers in setting public opinion and influencing elections – the agenda-setting view (newspapers set agendas and influence opinion) and the reinforcement view (papers tend to reinforce views their readers already hold) – many studies which find that in some cases newspapers set the agenda, but in other cases newspapers are an echo chamber for the broadly shared views of readers.</p>
<p>For example, one <a href="http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/63/4/802.abstract">2010 study</a> after the last election found that 59% of Daily Mirror voters voted Labour, and just 16% voted Conservative. For The Daily Telegraph readers, 70% voted Conservative and only 7% voted Labour. </p>
<p>An important study in 1999 by the <a href="http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk/">Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends</a> at the University of Oxford found that newspapers do have some influence on individual voter choices, but relatively little influence in the overall outcome of results, partly because of the highly partisan and non-homogenised nature of the British press.</p>
<p>So no newspaper can ever have claimed (despite what The Sun might say) that any of them ever “won it” for any government. Newspaper readers tend to vote for parties that broadly represent their interests, in the same way they buy newspapers that broadly speak to their interests.</p>
<p>In the digital era, then – and at a time when newspaper circulation is rapidly declining – it is not surprising that all the political parties have <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/general-election-2015-tories-spend-100000-month-facebook-advertising-1486716">invested heavily in social media campaigns</a>.</p>
<p>All the parties know that in the relatively fertile ground of the online world, in particular social media, opportunities to influence potential voters are many. The 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns depended heavily on social media (as well as digital resources such as <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/could-big-data-determine-who-wins-the-general-election--1289767">big data</a> to hone their message and to organise and mobilise their campaign teams).</p>
<p>With the growing influence of social networks, voters are as likely to take their cues from peer groups than from traditional news media. Newspaper readership is declining, as are television audiences – especially among younger viewers – for news and current affairs. In the digital world, peer-sharing of content is king.</p>
<p>Various <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/results/">surveys</a> following the 2010 British elections showed that engagement and commentary by 18 to 24-year-olds occurred mainly on social networks. That cohort are an age bracket older now, and have been joined by a new group of young voters. In the UK, <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/cmr/cmr14/2014_UK_CMR.pdf">47% of adults use social networks</a> such as Twitter and Facebook – a lalrge proportion the <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access---households-and-individuals/2013/stb-ia-2013.html">42m people who use the internet</a>.</p>
<p>So if 2015 proves to be “the year when social media won it”, why are the parties still courting the press? And why are newspapers making such a song and dance about who they support? There are many reasons and no clear-cut answers. The British media tends to latch on to issues, so the agenda-setting role is still strong (we just have to think of the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6499657/MPs-expenses-scandal-a-timeline.html">2009 MPs’ expenses scandal</a> as a case in point). </p>
<p>But it’s also the case that this is a campaign where margins are won by inches. No party will be willing to take a chance and abandon newspapers altogether, even if their influence has dwindled significantly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Felle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Sun goes separate ways in England and Scotland, but does it matter?Tom Felle, Acting Director, Interactive and Newspaper Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/408752015-04-27T15:16:40Z2015-04-27T15:16:40Z‘Never mind her policies, what’s she wearing?’ Newspapers run a sexist eye over UK election<p>In <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20http:/news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/news/318237-nicola-sturgeon-sexism-in-politics-can-put-women-off-public-life/">a recent interview</a> with Scottish Television’s Debi Edwards, the leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon spoke about the sexism she routinely encounters. Referring to the fact that her appearance is regularly scrutinised, Sturgeon also told of how she is often asked about not having children. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Alex Salmond doesn’t have children. He might tell you differently but I’m not aware of reading an interview or seeing an interview with Alex Salmond asking that question.</p>
<p>So yes, I understand it but I think it’s just one of these things. I’m not moaning about this but it’s just one of these things that I think is just a bit different if you’re a woman in politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sturgeon’s estimation that things are a “bit different” for women in politics is an understatement – which, to be fair, I’m sure she realises. Over the past few weeks the media coverage that she, Leanne Wood (leader of Plaid Cymru) and Natalie Bennett (leader of the Green party) have received indicates that we still have sections of a news culture fixated not on them as elected officials but as stereotypical representatives of their sex. </p>
<p>It’s fair to say that their potency as politicians is undermined by a general coverage which links their perceived characteristics to their gender. This just does not happen with men. Sturgeon <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/.http:/www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/21/tories-and-rightwing-press-resort-to-sexist-sturgeon-jibes%20">in particular</a> has been sexualised, patronised, demonised and even animalised. </p>
<p>It’s become an almost daily occurrence - the day after Sturgeon’s interview with Edwards <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%C2%A0http:/www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6426865/Early-years-of-SNP-leader-Nicola-Sturgeon.html">The Sun</a> ran an article entitled: “The Scotweiler – Early years of the woman who would break up Britain” which began:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As a child, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is said to have devilishly hacked the hair from her sister’s beloved doll. It was an early sign of the ruthlessness which has propelled her to the top of Scottish – and potentially British – politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Godzilla in high heels</h2>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"590262432016293889"}"></div></p>
<p>Labelled as the most dangerous woman in Britain by the Daily Mail on April 21 (where, as James Doleman pointed out, the quotation marks which would normally be used in making such a statement have been left out) references to Sturgeon’s appearance have been the norm. </p>
<p>For <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20http:/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3025973/Why-not-calling-Scotland-s-Lady-Krankie-Nicola-Sturgeon-living-proof-women-sexier-age-income-office.htm">Liz Jones</a>, Sturgeon was living proof that women become sexier with age, writing that she had shed the pounds, bleached her hair and squeezed her feet into Kurt Geiger heels. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3047165/PIERS-MORGAN-Meet-dangerous-wee-woman-world-ve-never-heard-of.html">Piers Morgan</a> reasoned that this diminutive but sharp-witted woman has rampaged through the UK election campaign like a mini-Godzilla, breathing fire and brimstone.</p>
<p>In the Telegraph, the increasingly beyond parody <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11548389/If-Ed-Milibands-in-the-driving-seat-Nicola-Sturgeon-will-be-steering-him-to-the-Left.html">Boris Johnson</a> railed against this “Lady Macbeth” whilst invoking King Herod and Attila the Hun at the gates of Rome.</p>
<h2>Wrecking ball</h2>
<p>But the Daily Mail and The Sun are the usual suspects, patently terrified of a minority Labour government supported by the Scottish nationalists. Recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/sexism-is-still-rife-in-the-news-but-we-may-be-about-to-see-some-improvement-39268">Karen Boyle</a> argued that these representations of Sturgeon – most notably when she was depicted, again in <a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/fury-sexist-sun-depict-first-5314278%20">The Sun</a>, clad in a tartan bikini swinging on a wrecking ball a la Miley Cyrus – have received widespread condemnation demonstrating that the news media can be proactive in challenging <a href="http://everydaysexism.com/">“everyday sexism”</a>. </p>
<p>Up to a point this is true – but then what are we meant to make of the BBC’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nicola-sturgeons-head-is-photoshopped-onto-kim-kardashians-body-as-newsnight-give-leaders-the-milifandom-treatment-10198404.html%C2%A0">Newsnight</a> of April 23 , where in the closing credits, Sturgeon’s head was photoshopped onto the body of Kim Kardashian? OK, the skit was part of a sequence which, in the light of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/milifandom-how-young-people-reclaimed-their-political-power-40738">“Milifandom”</a> story last week, saw the heads of Cameron and Miliband superimposed on the bodies of David Beckham and Harry Styles. So equality of sorts, but it was hard to disagree with the sentiments of The Sun’s head of PR, Dylan Sharpe, who tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"591172019208724480"}"></div></p>
<p>Presence in the leaders’ debates notwithstanding, the coverage of Leanne Wood and Natalie Bennett has generally reflected the minority status of the parties they represent. Outside of some splendid <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/10/leanne-wood-plaid-cymru-interview">portraits and interviews</a> in The Guardian, there has been little national focus on Wood. When she did hit the headlines in the first leader’s debate for challenging UKIP’s Nigel Farage’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wxLHVCq26k">“scaremongering”</a> over immigrants use of the NHS, the <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/02/leaders-debate-2015-leanne-wood-had-twitter-swooning-when-she-took-on-farage-5133212/%20">Metro</a> reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The votes are in and it’s clear which party member won ‘Biggest Heart Throb’ during the election 2015 debate.</p>
<p><em>Drum roll</em></p>
<p>Leanne Wood.</p>
<p>Yes, the Plaid Cymru leader had Twitter swooning when she took on Nigel Farage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the name of humour, the Daily Mail’s <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3023800/QUENTIN-LETTS-Leanne-valleys-straight-recording-Gavin-Stacey.html">Quentin Letts</a> easily managed to live up to the caricature of a Mail journalist by resorting to lazy cliché and patronising prose. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And Who On Earth was that Welsh Leanne? Had she walked in from a recording of Gavin and Stacey? ‘I’m from the Valleys,’ she announced. Well blow us all down with a kestrel feather, darlin’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Natalie Bennett’s media performances both before and after the campaign began have attracted criticism but when she took part in a disastrous radio interview with <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20http:/www.lbc.co.uk/incredibly-awkward-interview-with-natalie-bennett-105384">LBC’s Nick Ferrari</a> in February she elicited widespread sympathy from both commentators and the general public. Her failures to communicate were met with offers of a hug – the subtext of that sympathy disturbed Radhika Sanghani in the Telegraph who wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt sorry for Bennett too, but I can’t help thinking that this collective reaction is gendered. Would we really want to give David Cameron a hug if he failed to explain his policies?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The key thing to consider amidst all this sexist coverage is that it is, broadly, all there is: analysis from <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/general-election/media-coverage-of-the-2015-general-election-report-2/">Loughborough University</a> has found that women account for less than one in five of the individuals featured in election news coverage and that the second most prominent woman after Nicola Sturgeon is Samantha Cameron – more attention paid to a leader’s wife than prominent female politicians from all parties bar one.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79462/original/image-20150427-18128-uzj52d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The important point to remember is that the sort of coverage afforded to Sturgeon, Wood and Bennett is entirely to be expected. What the examples above illustrate is the oft-stated tenet that sexual oppression or prejudice in democratic societies is normalised by the prevailing social structure. Women politicians are women in the public eye, yes, but equally subject to the same depressingly familiar tropes and clichés that everyday sexism highlights with weary regularity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40875/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In a recent interview with Scottish Television’s Debi Edwards, the leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon spoke about the sexism she routinely encounters. Referring to the fact that her appearance is regularly…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/405802015-04-22T15:07:16Z2015-04-22T15:07:16ZBritain’s famous red top newspapers struggle to find their voice in general election<p>Strident partisanship in the popular press has a lengthy history. And the wrath of the British tabloids used to give politicians considerable pause for thought, particularly during elections. The long defunct Daily Sketch, for example, consistently attacked the Labour party throughout the 1950s. But it was the late 1970s that marked a step-change. </p>
<p>Having bought The Sun, Rupert Murdoch embraced the Conservatives following the 1974 campaigns with an enthusiastic endorsement of Margaret Thatcher. Debate over the influence of the “Tory press” reached its height in 1992, when a vanquished Neil Kinnock <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/13/newsid_2830000/2830895.stm">bitterly blamed it for his defeat</a>. </p>
<p>Murdoch’s tabloid <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/25/rupert-murdoch-sun-wot-won-it-tasteless">famously agreed with the Labour leader</a>. This controversy seems a distant one in the 2015 campaign. And for good reason. <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/general-election/">Our research</a> shows that this time round, while still flying the flag for their favoured parties, the famous red tops are not beating their respective drums anywhere near as loudly as in the past.</p>
<h2>Some things look familiar</h2>
<p>It’s true that you don’t have to look too far for examples of partisan press engagement. The Sun in particular has not held back, whether in ridiculing Ed Miliband (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11513782/Leaders-election-debate-2015-what-the-newspapers-say.html">OOPS! I JUST LOST MY ELECTION</a>: Miliband blows his chance on TV) or lauding David Cameron (<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6412050/Tory-Story-2-Upbeat-PM-buzzing-at-manifesto-launch.html">TORY STORY 2: UPBEAT PM BUZZING AT TORY MANIFESTO</a>). Mirror coverage offers a predictable contrast (<a href="https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/583739751200641024">CAM HIT FOR SIX</a>: Leaders batter PM over record on NHS & economy; <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-wheres-25bn-pay-5521526">Where’s the £25bn to pay for “the good life”?</a>).</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"583739751200641024"}"></div></p>
<p>This partisanship extends to the issues. Two stories emerged in March that separately discomforted the main parties. The first was the revelation about Ed Miliband’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31875297">two kitchens</a>; the second the discovery that Conservative chairman Grant Shapps had held down two jobs in 2005-6 despite his initial denials. </p>
<p>In the six days after the kitchen story broke, The Sun dedicated 1,025 words to the matter and the Mirror only 51. During the same period of time following the Shapps revelation, the <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-chairman-grant-shapps-branded-5347118">Mirror ran</a> 2,100 words on the story whereas The Sun could only muster 72. </p>
<p>This kind of partisanship resembles past editorial practices but it also represents a return to past form rather than a straight continuation.</p>
<h2>Slight return</h2>
<p>Between the 1997 and 2005 elections we witnessed the rise of the “Tony press”, <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/bp/journal/v1/n2/abs/4200020a.html">where print media support for Labour exceeded that for his Conservative opponents</a>. This change was more a case of de-alignment rather than realignment, given much of this editorial endorsement was equivocal, qualified and muted. The Sun’s lukewarm support typified this and was far removed from the conviction politics it embraced during the 1980s. </p>
<p>In 2010, much of the press <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/bp/journal/v5/n4/full/bp201018a.html">returned home</a>, although uncertainty was still evident in their editorial responses. This time the challenge was to decide who to attack following <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cleggmania-spreads-across-britain-1947687.html">Nick Clegg’s success</a> in the televised leaders’ debates. Now the rise of other challenger parties has intensified this confusion. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/21/tories-and-rightwing-press-resort-to-sexist-sturgeon-jibes">Attacking on several fronts</a> dissipates the cumulative political force of editorial disparagement. And there is the gnawing concern that significant numbers of red-top readers may have some sympathies for the challengers’ message of change. Life was much easier for editors and proprietors when general elections were two-horse races. </p>
<h2>How much coverage?</h2>
<p>Another important consideration for this campaign is the extent to which the red tops are engaging with the campaign. Here major differences emerge between the aforementioned titles and their Daily Star rival. The Sun dedicated 25% of its available front-page space to the campaign between March 30 and April 20. By contrast, the Mirror devoted only <a href="http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/general-election/">12% and the Star just 3.4%</a> </p>
<p>If we consider the coverage in key sections of the weekday editions of these papers between March 30 and April 15, Sun coverage amounted to 29,921cm<sup>2</sup>, the Mirror 21,781cm<sup>2</sup> and the Star 6,175cm<sup>2</sup>. </p>
<p>We can speculate about the reasons for these differences but a significant factor may well be their respective financial positions. Since <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/apr/16/march-abcs-daily-star">March 2010</a> all three red tops have <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/national-newspaper-abcs-march-2015-sun-sales-decline-unaffected-second-full-month-without-page-three">lost significant circulation</a> and readership (The Star is down by 48%, the Mirror 28% and the Sun 38%).</p>
<p>There is an old saying that principles cost – and it may well be that the ability to prioritise electoral preferences at the risk of audience disengagement is to some extent determined by the depth of one’s pockets.</p>
<p>No paper can afford to ignore a national race these days but it is unlikely to be a political one. From April 9-11, for instance, the red tops dedicated 40% of their cumulative front-page news space to advertising free bets and form guides for the Grand National and other Aintree events. By contrast, the election horse race was an also-ran, attracting less than a third of this amount for the same period.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Deacon received funding from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust to analyse the reporting of the 2015 UK General Election (grant reference SG142216). He has received past funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the BBC Trust and the Electoral Commission </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Wring received funding from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust to analyse the reporting of the 2015 UK General Election (grant reference SG142216). He has received past funding from the Guardian, the BBC Trust and the Electoral Commission</span></em></p>The tabloids aren’t the force they used to be.David Deacon, Professor of Communication and Media Analysis, Loughborough UniversityDominic Wring, Reader in Political Communication, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/352252014-12-08T16:09:45Z2014-12-08T16:09:45ZDewani case was catnip to a homophobic section of media still obsessed with gay sex<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-30375335">Shrien Dewani</a> has been cleared of any part in the murder of his bride Anni, who was shot on their honeymoon. A South African judge threw out the case, rejecting the prosecution’s argument as “far below the threshold” of what a court could convict on. </p>
<p>The case has been sensationally covered in excruciating detail in Britain’s tabloid press, with particular focus on claims about Dewani’s sexuality and use of male prostitutes. While these issues were relevant to the case, since they formed a core part of the prosecution’s theory, the way they were reported was a lurid and revealing demonstration of how homosexuality and bisexuality are still framed as deviant by the UK press.</p>
<h2>Beyond the pale</h2>
<p>One of the Mail Online <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2862537/Millionaire-Dewani-SUE-sexuality-Lawyers-used-fetish-gay-sex-motive-murdering-Anni-face-bid-malicious-damages.html">headlines</a> following the verdict states: “Lawyers who used his fetish for gay sex as a ‘motive’ for murdering Anni may face bid for malicious damages.” </p>
<p>Referring to gay sex as a fetish, or conflating it with one, is highly questionable. A fetish usually refers to a sexual fixation with objects, body parts or situations that are not conventionally viewed as sexual. The word also has connotations of (at least statistical) abnormality, and kinkiness. </p>
<p>As Dewani disclosed that he was bisexual at the start of his trial, we would expect him to enjoy having sex with men. That is not a fetish; it’s a normal part of sexuality for millions of men. And while Dewani’s visits to a male prostitute did involve elements of sado-masochism and role-play, gay sex in and of itself is not a fetish. To refer to it as such merely characterises it as something niche, weird, and kinky, rather than a normal and natural form of human expression.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Sun’s story of October 6 reported Dewani as having “<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5973787/shrien-dewani-in-court-accused-of-wifes-honeymoon-murder.html">sensationally admitted being bisexual</a>”. </p>
<p>I looked at a <a href="http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/">100m word sample of general English</a> to find out what other things people are regularly said to have “admitted” to, and the list is a telling one: drink-driving, burglary, robbery, assault, wounding, grievous bodily harm, kidnapping and stabbing. The word “admitted” has a deep association with crime, so to say someone “admits to being bisexual” is a tellingly tilted way to frame their sexual identity. </p>
<p>Perhaps more tellingly, in <a href="http://beta.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5978695/House-of-Commons-aides-SM-romps-with-Dewani.html">another story</a>, the Sun said Dewani “confessed to being bisexual and sleeping with male hookers”. And in the same 100m word sample of general English, the verb “confessed” is even more linked to crime than the verb “admitted”.</p>
<p>The Mail on Sunday, meanwhile, breathlessly <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2789449/anni-said-wedding-sham-dewani-weird-controlling-never-wanted-sex-explosive-new-claims-honeymoon-bride-s-closest-confidante.html">reported</a> that “in a dramatic opening to his long-awaited trial, Dewani pleaded his innocence but revealed he is bisexual and saw male prostitutes”. </p>
<p>It’s that little exception-negating word “but” that gives the game away. Everything after it casts doubt on what came before: Dewani may say he is innocent, but surely we can’t believe someone who is bisexual and patronises male prostitutes.</p>
<h2>Two steps back</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66629/original/image-20141208-5158-1katqb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the Daily Mail covered the case’s end.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A Mail headline on the day of the trial’s end blamed “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2862397/Key-reasons-case-against-Shrien-Dewani-collapsed.html">prosecutors obsessed with gay sex</a>” for the case’s collapse. That’s rich, since the press seems just as fixated. </p>
<p>The Sun’s October 8 edition <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5978695/House-of-Commons-aides-SM-romps-with-Dewani.html">told</a> of “a British parliamentary aide who claims he had gay sex with honeymoon murder suspect Shrien Dewani …” Considering we know Dewani is male, and the parliamentary aide is male (by that pronoun he), telling us the sex they had was gay is redundant, and making it needlessly explicit only speaks of a prurient interest. How many times do we read about people having “straight sex” in similar news stories (especially when it’s obvious from the context)? </p>
<p>In the same vein, over the last few months, Dewani has been described as having <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/shrien-dewani-gay-double-life-focus-anni-dewani-honeymoon-murder-trial-1468640">gay trysts</a>, <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/201427/Dramatic-final-words-of-honeymoon-murder-victim-Anni-Dewani">gay flings</a>, <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5969780/shrien-dewani-tells-rent-boy-of-love.html">gay sex romps</a>, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/shrien-dewani-admits-gay-sex-sessions-prostitute-german-master-1468724">gay sex sessions</a>, a <a href="http://newsafrica.co.uk/dewani-gay-lover-spills-the-beans/">gay lover</a>, and a <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5983176/shrien-dewani-wanted-gay-orgy.html">gay orgy</a>. Put the word “straight” in those phrases and see how absurd they sound.</p>
<p>Bisexuality and homosexuality actually get relatively little attention in the media when compared to heterosexuality, which is of course so ubiquitous it doesn’t warrant a qualifying adjective. Left unspecified, “sex” simply means “straight sex”. And since journalists write about gay sexuality so rarely, these glaringly marked examples have a worryingly major impact on our culture’s view of gay people. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the reporting of Dewani’s personal life proves that much of the media still codes gay sex in the prurient, smirking vocabulary of the 1980s. Clearly there’s a long way to go yet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Shrien Dewani has been cleared of any part in the murder of his bride Anni, who was shot on their honeymoon. A South African judge threw out the case, rejecting the prosecution’s argument as “far below…Paul Baker, Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/350722014-12-05T06:15:29Z2014-12-05T06:15:29ZRussell Brand may be a soundbite on legs – but he’s not about to go away<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66354/original/image-20141204-7250-i287ds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Doesn't look so angry.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/evarinaldiphotography/5622506876/in/photolist-9yQPpJ-9yV352-4oqoYc-9yV34M-9yV34D-jdJWQ4-4TG35g-2BdUY9-4gtTSJ-4ouu6f-4ousaw-4ourwh-4ouur7-4oqqy6-6iqoFj-4oqoxT-4ourES-4oqpsH-4oqraD-4oqrq8-4ousMf-4ouvLy-4oqpVz-4ouqV7-4oqnst-4out7j-4oqqNZ-4outBG-4ourdW-4ouvoC-4ourPy-4oqo5X-4oqsE8-4oqqF8-4outLo-4our5N-4oqphK-4ouugq-4oqqZT-4ousCo-4ouvDC-jbrzE-2BdYmb-4TG3pF-hXZ65-6imgpn-4FQSZ9-6bXLxC-8Kjxzx-7WRuHE">Eva Rinaldi</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Well, we’ve been here before. On Wednesday, the comedian, author and activist Russell Brand <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/03/russell-brand-threat-sue-sun-housing-hypocrite-allegation">threatened to sue The Sun</a> after the newspaper ran a front-page feature labelling Brand a hypocrite for “ranting against high rents and tax avoidance” while paying “£76k a year to tax-dodge landlords”. </p>
<p>Its editorial then witheringly referred to Brand’s current status: he is, the Sun contended: “swept up in a vortex of conspiracy paranoia and clichéd leftie propaganda which he’s read somewhere and only half understood … He is a vacuous soundbite on legs.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66350/original/image-20141204-7250-1sbs1uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Branding Russell Brand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sun</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If Brand decides to sue The Sun (and it is questionable on what grounds he has a case – though legal expert David Banks told the Huffington Post that he could potentially have a claim as accusations of hypocrisy can be libellous in some circumstances) it will be the second time in recent history that he has had recourse to the law against Britain’s most famous tabloid. </p>
<p>In May this year he accepted an undisclosed sum from the Sun on Sunday which admitted in the High Court that its story claiming he had been cheating on his girlfriend, Jemima Khan, was totally untrue, defamatory and shouldn’t have been published. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"456067241428414464"}"></div></p>
<p>In victory, Brand tweeted: “I got some money suing The Sun who lied about me. I am making a donation to the #JFT96 campaign. A tiny piece of justice.”</p>
<h2>‘Hippo-sized lies’</h2>
<p>The “war” between Brand and The Sun has being going on for some time. When The Sun printed the original claims about Brand’s infidelities in November 2013, Brand responded by penning, in typically decorative prose, a wonderful take-down of the paper’s activities. He referred to the “worst lies” – of Hillsborough, Milly Dowler and swan-eating asylum seekers. </p>
<p>In the Guardian <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/29/russell-brand-rages-sun-rupert-murdoch">he wrote</a>: “We will never know the true extent of their dishonesty. We are dealing with experts in propaganda who will stop at nothing to see their version of events prevail, and on the rare occasions when the truth emerges, like a hernia popping through gorged corpse, they apologise discreetly for their ignoble flatulence in a mouse-sized font for hippo-sized lies.”</p>
<p>The Guardian piece so enraged The Sun that it took down its paywall so that non-subscribers could be party to “20 Reasons Why Russell Brand is the Biggest Hypocrite in Britain”. Among other things, the article points out the fact that the “Booky Wookies” of the three-times winner of the “shagger of the year” awards are published by News Corp companies. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66353/original/image-20141204-7259-1ck3o19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fun in The Sun?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sun</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps what irked The Sun the most was that Brand has frequently written for the paper and has edited its notorious “Bizarre” column. One source told the <a href="http://order-order.com/2013/11/29/how-much-does-russell-brand-hate-the-sun/">Guido Fawkes</a> political blog: “He’s written countless pieces for us, I think the last was <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4942468/Blame-this-on-madnessnot-on-Muslims.html">in May this year</a>, so clearly he didn’t have an issue over Hillsborough then!”</p>
<h2>Fox in the stocks</h2>
<p>More recently Brand has aimed his fire at Fox News. His YouTube web series (The Trews – the truth about the news – now running to more than 200 episodes) has asked: “Is Fox News more <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2FSMvrlUlY">dangerous than ISIS</a>?”, as well as: “Does Fox News <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1rcR_MJZDQ">want us to be Nazis?</a>” and “Why Does Fox news <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ed5NOQICAY">love guns so much?</a>”</p>
<p>Bill O’Reilly, Fox News’s most visible and voluble newscaster, has been repeatedly singled out for criticism. Attacked for his supposed stupidity and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/russell-brand-bill-oreilly-fox-news-mexican-immigration_n_5548020.html">bigotry</a> Brand <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/russell-brand-attacks-bill-oreillys-isis-report-were-not-idiots-we-dont-need-to-have-a-conversation-is-beheading-bad-9680883.html">has stated </a>: “Bill O'Reilly’s message is the same as Rupert Murdoch’s, the same as Fox News’s and the establishment’s, ‘Things are ok the way we are, we will stay in charge’.”</p>
<p>Brand is certainly not afraid to take on Murdoch personally, either. Having previously referred to Murdoch’s “glabrous claw” and The Sun as a tiny part of the “demon’s dermatology” the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H46hLibhHA&list=UUswH8ovgUp5Bdg-0_JTYFNw">very latest Trews</a> this week draws attention to Murdoch and tax.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n8sgxsS4T0c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Dem’s fighting words.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Brand rails against the whole media system, not just the Murdoch empire. A media system which, in his eyes, ensures the continued existence of the status quo and the propagation of the views of the narrow elite. This is hardly original criticism, of course, but the fact that Brand has chosen to air his beliefs through his books, journalism and broadcasts is something that has clearly upset not just the right wing but also some on the traditional left of the media who you might think would welcome the intervention of someone so down with the (supposedly disaffected) “kids” and in tune with their own views.</p>
<p>The often antagonistic but always worthwhile <a href="http://www.medialens.org/index.php/about-us/faq.html#whatis">Media Lens</a>, whose <em>raison d'être</em> is to challenge the corporate media system with a view to instigating a more honest and compassionate world, helpfully catalogued and analysed journalistic responses to the publication of Brand’s call to arms, <a href="http://russellbrand.com/revolution/youtube/">Revolution</a>. </p>
<h2>Bête noire – and loving it</h2>
<p>What is most shocking in the examples provided is not so much the volume of criticism that routinely comes Brand’s way but rather the superior tones with which that criticism is expressed. Media Lens highlights the comments of the Observer’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/27/revolution-review-russell-brand-beverly-hills-buddhist">Nick Cohen</a>: “His writing is atrocious: long-winded, confused and smug; filled with references to books Brand has half read and thinkers he has half understood.” </p>
<p>The New Statesman’s <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/stuff-your-revolution-if-it-doesn-t-include-treating-women-people">Sarah Ditum</a> condemned the man, the message and the audience: “Russell Brand, clown that he is, is taken seriously by an awful lot of young men who see any criticism of the cartoon messiah’s misogyny as a derail from ‘the real issues’ (whatever they are).”</p>
<p>For all the criticism of Brand’s style and his failure to articulate the finer points of how his revolution will work, he is at least opening up debate and challenging the mainstream views. For me, he is quite simply a force for good who uses activism to highlight the causes of the under-represented and disenfranchised. Look at the basis for the current furore – Brand was out on the streets marching in support of Hoxton’s New Era Estate residents and affordable properties.</p>
<p>What is unique about him – and he will be the first of many, I’ll wager – is that he doesn’t need the conventional media to support him. He can take on Murdoch and the Daily Mail because his voice is not limited to their platforms. He can respond to the “hypocrite” accusations within hours online and hundreds and thousands <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H46hLibhHA&list=UUswH8ovgUp5Bdg-0_JTYFNw">will watch it</a>. He tweets to nearly <a href="https://twitter.com/rustyrockets">9m followers</a>, broadcasts via YouTube and writes <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2825252/Crack-open-champagne-Russell-Brand-proves-s-big-money-left-wing-ideology-Revolution-book-rakes-230-000-just-11-days.html">best-selling</a> books. He is not going to go away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Well, we’ve been here before. On Wednesday, the comedian, author and activist Russell Brand threatened to sue The Sun after the newspaper ran a front-page feature labelling Brand a hypocrite for “ranting…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/345552014-11-21T14:19:15Z2014-11-21T14:19:15ZMili no mates – mocking Labour leaders is what tabloids do best<p>Another very bad week for Ed Miliband, which has ended with resignation of the shadow attorney-general, Emily Thornbury, over her <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30139832">“sneering”</a> tweet during the Rochester and Strood by election, got off to a shaky start on Monday when, while appearing on<a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/www.itv.com/news/topic/the-agenda/"> ITV’s the Agenda</a> he debated Labour’s mansion tax with pop singer Myleene Klass. </p>
<p>The following day the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2838759/Just-couldn-t-worse-Ed-takes-TV-battering-Myleene-Labour-leader-humiliated-taken-task-singer-proposed-mansion-tax.html">Mail </a> described the Labour leader as looking “lost and bewildered” as Klass took Miliband “to task” leaving him “humiliated”. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11237414/Singer-Myleene-Klass-wipes-the-floor-with-Ed-Miliband-over-mansion-tax.htm">The Daily Telegraph</a> reported that Klass had “wiped the floor with him” and the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/18/ed-miliband-myleene-klass-video_n_6176472.html?1416307444&utm_hp_ref=uk">Huffington Post</a> described the debate as “painful”. </p>
<p>All manna from heaven for David Cameron who at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xiq_ctmXRko">Prime Minister’s Question Time </a> gleefully announced:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This was the week when Myleene Klass wiped the floor with you on TV and this is the week when a poll in Scotland showed more people believe in the Loch Ness monster than in your leadership. The only problem for the Labour Party is you actually exist.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But if you watch the exchange between Klass and Miliband you will see that it was hardly contentious at all. An exchange of views certainly, but nothing to merit the ridicule, scorn and general air of disdain that seems to cascade down upon Miliband from most sections of the press – whether he is eating a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-fails-to-look-normal-while-eating-bacon-sandwich-ahead-of-whistlestop-campaign-tour-9409301.html">bacon sandwich</a>, giving <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-fails-to-look-normal-while-eating-bacon-sandwich-ahead-of-whistlestop-campaign-tour-9409301.html">money to the poor</a> or attempting to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-fails-to-look-normal-while-eating-bacon-sandwich-ahead-of-whistlestop-campaign-tour-9409301.html">articulate Labour party policies</a>. </p>
<p>It has become increasingly apparent – and this has occurred to those staunchly affiliated to the Labour Party, such as the <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2014/11/week-s-new-statesman-running-out-time">New Statesman</a> and the <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed-miliband-has-until-christmas-4594216">Mirror </a>newspapers – that Miliband’s stock is irreversibly low.</p>
<p>That Miliband finds himself the enemy of the Daily Mail and the Murdoch press is hardly a surprise. It was only last year that the Mail ran its infamous <a href="https://theconversation.com/daily-mail-attack-on-milibands-father-is-hardly-a-new-low-18802">“Man who hated Britain”</a> story about Ed’s father Ralph – and don’t forget that in the early days of the phone-hacking scandal it was Miliband, in an interview with the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jul/16/rupert-murdoch-ed-miliband-phone-hacking">Observer</a>, who spoke out against Murdoch’s influence. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it’s unhealthy because that amount of power in one person’s hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation. If you want to minimise the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brave words, when no other leader had been so bold, which saw Miliband’s approval ratings rise. But from that moment on any sort of positive relationship between the Murdoch press and Miliband vanished. </p>
<p>So now we are here – months and years of personal attacks and the steady drip, drip of criticism. “Mili no mates”, ran the Sun’s page two story on November 13. Britain doesn’t want him said the editorial and, furthermore: “His own party doesn’t either.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65197/original/image-20141121-1037-qqn15t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not a big fan of Miliband: The Sun.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To emphasise the point, next to an announcement stating that “Ed is the most unpopular leader EVER” was a picture of Miliband in a Michael Foot wig. Michael Foot being, in the Sun’s view of course, the ideological father of the current Labour leader: the two of them united ineptitude and equally as unelectable.</p>
<h2>Shot in the Foot</h2>
<p>Twas ever thus and there has been much written about the “monstering” of Labour leaders by the press. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/10/ed-miliband-crisis-monstering-campaign-british-press-labour-leader-rightwing-newspaper">Roy Greenslade</a> in his excellent Guardian media blog recently made the point that every leader with the notable exception of Tony Blair has suffered at the hands of the Tory press. He singles out Gordon Brown, Neil Kinnock and the aforementioned Foot as being particularly harshly treated. </p>
<p>It is the vilification of Foot that sticks in my mind. Mercilessly lampooned for his decision to wear a donkey jacket to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day (when he wore nothing of the sort – it was, in fact, a <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/truth-foots-donkey-jacket-2233856">smart coat chosen by his wife Jill</a>) this most principled of leaders was completely unsuited to running an election campaign against the sophisticated Thatcher media machine and a particularly feral Kelvin Mackenzie-edited Sun newspaper, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jE6QAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=%E2%80%98DO+YOU+SERIOUSLY+WANT+THIS+OLD+MAN+TO+RUN+BRITAIN&source=bl&ots=pdyXAtaz7J&sig=pJTKfva_ecVAgIhWHaA-2Z4pehU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dfttVK_eF4bUaqW1gagH&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%98DO%20YOU%20SERIOUSLY%20WANT%20THIS%20OLD%20MAN%20TO%20RUN%20BRITAIN&f=false">which asked,</a> incredulously: “Do you seriously want this old man to run Britain?”</p>
<h2>Lights out for Labour</h2>
<p>For many, it was the constant attacks on Neil Kinnock from 1983 up until the election defeat of 1992 which seriously undermined his credibility as a potential PM. James Thomas in his book “Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics” refers to Roy Hattersley’s contention that the tabloids “destroyed” Kinnock’s hopes of being prime minister and ensured an “extraordinary warped public perception of him”. </p>
<p>Perhaps there are parallels between Miliband and Kinnock when we consider the refusal of the Sun, in particular, to take Kinnock seriously. In the run up to the 1992 election the <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/7474#.VG37TPmsV8E">Sun asked a psychic</a> to contact dead celebrities and ask them who they would vote for. Under the headline: “WHY I’M BACKING KINNOCK, BY STALIN” the readers learned that Uncle Joe was joined by comrades Mao and Trotsky. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65198/original/image-20141121-1040-21hs1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How The Sun ‘won it’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When John Major won the election of 1992 and Mackenzie proclaimed it was: “the Sun wot won it” few outside of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/it-wasnt-the-sun-wot-won-it-official-1364910.html">academia</a> saw fit to disagree.</p>
<h2>‘Very powerful people’</h2>
<p>That Tony Blair escaped the treatment afforded to his predecessors and successors is in large part due to the fact that he was willing to court the editors and press barons. As he told the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18228898">Leveson enquiry,</a> he <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tony-blair-admits-cosy-links-851911">met Murdoch in the Hayman islands</a> in 1995 with the intention of winning the News International titles away from the Tories.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would not have been going all the way round the world if it had not been a deliberate, strategic decision that I was going to try to persuade them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Blair the whole point was cultivating a relationship with, in his words: “very powerful people who had a big impact on the political system”.</p>
<p>For good or ill, Miliband has seemingly alienated forever “the very powerful” people – and it would appear now he is losing the support of the Labour press as well. His perceived failures have become the currency of the news about him. In the age of social media and instantly available opinion, tweets about Myleene Klass “wiping the floor” with Miliband become the headlines of the next day as journalists, once again, wilfully conflate twitter public opinion with the real thing – missing the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/19/mansion-tax-myleene-klass-ed-miliband-self-deception-rich">indicators</a> that most voters are behind the substance of the mansion tax.</p>
<p>The BBC has not escaped criticism in this respect. A recent edition of <a href="http://www.conservativehome.com/video/2014/11/watch-how-the-bbc-reports-miliband.html">Newswatch</a> was devoted to many viewers’ disquiet concerning the BBC’s willingness to follow newspaper agendas on Miliband. One viewer complained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I must protest at the avalanche of hostile coverage about Ed Miliband, based as it is on nothing more than rumour, speculation and unattributed rumour … Your programmes are with great relish mimicking the Tory press by running extended features on the subject of ‘Is Ed up to it?’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In response, Sue Inglish, the BBC’s head of political programmes, defended the Corporation’s coverage vigorously and refuted the notion that the BBC dwelt too much on the “bacon sandwich” episodes. The fact that the issue was debated at all, though, indicates – if nothing else – that there is a body of opinion which sees the coverage of Miliband as too personal and trivialised.</p>
<h2>Is anyone listening?</h2>
<p>Measuring whether or not negative coverage has an effect on voter behaviour is a notoriously difficult undertaking and in the past perhaps all parties have conveniently hidden behind the prejudices of the press as a reason for their unpopularity. But the polls tell their own story – as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/10/labour-problem-not-ed-miliband-voters-dislike-party">Peter Kellner of YouGov</a> has pointed out, according to the latest figures just 18% of the public think Miliband is up to the job of prime minister; 64% do not. As of this November, among people who voted Labour in 2010 only 34% think he is PM material – a huge drop from his 51% rating just one month earlier.</p>
<p>And this latest “Klass war” won’t have helped matters one iota for Ed Miliband or Labour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Another very bad week for Ed Miliband, which has ended with resignation of the shadow attorney-general, Emily Thornbury, over her “sneering” tweet during the Rochester and Strood by election, got off to…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342582014-11-14T13:33:30Z2014-11-14T13:33:30ZPanorama and the Fake Sheikh: trawling tabloid excesses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64584/original/cj5mfrp7-1415968748.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The picture Mazher Mahmood's lawyers didn't want you to see.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Panorama.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">Panorama</a> has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for Monday November 10, but – just one and a half hours before it was due to go out – the BBC decided<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/11/bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh-expose-james-harding-mazher-mahmood"> not to air</a>.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s lawyers had wanted to protect his anonymity – seeking to prevent any images of him post 2006 being broadcast, but this was rejected by the High Court and leave to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal. It seemed that it was all systems go until Mahmood’s legal team expressed <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fake-sheikh-bbc-panorama-show-not-shown-after-legal-challenge-1474174">eleventh hour concerns </a>about the content of a section in the documentary involving one of Mahmood’s high-profile stings.</p>
<p>But this was a delaying tactic and on Thursday the BBC went ahead and transmitted what turned out to be a damning indictment of the journalistic practices of the man responsible for, in his own words to the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/leveson-inquiry-fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-exposed-wrongdoing-6275958.html">Leveson enquiry</a>, more than 500 tabloid revelations leading to 260 criminal convictions.</p>
<p>There is some poetic justice, I suppose, in a man who has gained such success from pretending to be someone he is not, being revealed for who he really is. And let’s not forget how Mahmood made his name.</p>
<p>In a vastly successful career, including 20 years at the News of the World where he rose to be investigations editor, Mahmood exposed the follies and greed of the rich, famous and, to be sure, the downright criminal. His investigations led to the imprisonment of actors for the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707306/Former-London-s-Burning-star-reveals-Fake-Sheikh-destroyed-Tulisa-style-cocaine-sting-left-without-job-benefits.html">purchase of cocaine</a>, the exposure of corruption in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15573463">Pakistani cricket</a> and the tricking of then England manager <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jan/16/pressandpublishing.football">Sven Goran Erikson</a> into saying he would quit his England role if the team won the World Cup and was prepared to become the £5m-a-year manager of Aston Villa.</p>
<p>It was at the News of the World where the “fake sheikh” persona was cultivated. Mahmood would dress as an Arab noble and appeal to the vanities of his targets. In one of his most famous stories, Sophie Wessex was enticed to the Dorchester hotel by the prospect of handling the £20,000 a month PR account for a Saudi Prince. Once there, Prince Edward’s wife described “President Blair” (this was 2001) the “frightening” tax rises and “pap budget” presided over by Gordon Brown. The News of the World of gleefully reported all the details.</p>
<p>No expense was spared on creating the façade, as the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-fake-sheikh-and-his-greatest-hits-310570.html">Independent</a>reported in 2005:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sheikh routine is well rehearsed. The white jalabia is accompanied by a flowing robe and the agal, or headdress. Then there is a special black and gold robe, only worn by members of the 25,000-strong House of Saud. Expensive shoes and a Rolex watch complete the routine, along with a Ferrari or a helicopter. He also likes to puff away on a hubble-bubble pipe as he coaxes the story out of his victim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is these techniques that led to previous accusations that Mahmood is an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">agent provocateur</a> who preys on the foibles of the otherwise innocent, tempting them to commit acts in any other circumstances they would not. In 2006, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-474264.htm">Roy Greenslade</a>, who was once boss of Mahmood at The Sunday Times, wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to put an end to his regular use of subterfuge, the most controversial weapon in journalism’s armoury. I want him to mothball the fake sheikh’s robes. And I want his paper, the News of the World, to take a long, hard look at its journalistic ethics and to reconsider its editorial agenda.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mahmood told Panorama that he had spent his career investigating crime and wrongdoing and had used legitimate methods that brought individuals to justice. He said any criticism of him usually came from those with “an axe to grind”.</p>
<h2>Only way is ethics</h2>
<p>Panorama certainly examined journalistic ethics – that and much more. John Sweeney’s 30-minute programme heard from many of Mahmood’s alleged victims and his former colleague, Steve Grayson, who candidly admitted to setting up model Emma Morgan as a cocaine dealer. Grayson <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">told Sweeney</a>: “He [Mahmood] is a drug dealer, we’re drug dealers, we have paid this guy to supply the drugs to give to her.”</p>
<p>More importantly, perhaps, the programme referred to the alleged relationship between Mahmood and the Metropolitan police. It was stated that he had links with corrupt police officers and a private detective firm called Southern Investigations. One document highlighted by Panorama said: “Source met Maz, a News of the World reporter … on this occasion Maz was with a plainclothes officer … The officer was selling a story to Maz.”</p>
<h2>Perjury investigation</h2>
<p>All this is complicated by the fact that Mahmood is now under investigation by the Met for perjury and suspended from the Sun on Sunday following the collapse of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">Tulisa Contostavlos trial in July</a>. X Factor star Tulisa, who also appeared on the Panorama programme, faced charges of intent to supply cocaine after being filmed by Mahmood who was posing as a Hollywood movie executive. Appearing as a prosecution witness the judge threw the case out saying that the trial could not go any further because, said Justice Alistair McCreath, there were “strong grounds to believe” that Mahmood had “lied” at a hearing before the trial started.</p>
<p>For former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith this means that convictions which occurred as a result of Mahmood’s evidence in previous cases now need examination. He told Panorama:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact that somebody who has been accused by a judge of apparently of not telling the truth may be instrumental in those convictions would certainly be a reason to look at those convictions again and to examine them to see whether they are safe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>John Alford, an actor jailed following a Mahmood sting in 1997, would certainly welcome any investigation at all. He appeared at the end of Panorama, on the verge of tears, to exclaim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No one can give me the 18 years I’ve lost, no one can give me that back. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.superlawyers.com/london/article/One-Rogue-Solicitor/2320f264-f989-4888-9cbb-bd3d43703ba9.html%20i">Mark Lewis</a>, a media law, libel and privacy lawyer who filed the first phone-hacking civil case against News of the World is in no doubt about the severity of Mahmood’s alleged actions he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The damage that’s caused, the damage for people’s livelihoods, the amount of people sent to prison, it’s a far more serious thing than phone hacking ever was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, the phone hacking scandal hasn’t gone away, either. On November 7 the former editor of the News of the World, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/07/ian-edmondson-jailed-eight-months-phone-hacking-news-of-the-world">Ian Edmondson</a> was sentenced to 8 months in prison whilst Operation Elveden, the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into alleged payments to public officials for information by journalists, currently has three trials in the criminal courts. </p>
<p>On trial in in Kingston Crown Court are journalists and senior newspaper executives comprising the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/trial-six-sun-journalists-accused-paying-public-officials-set-start-kingston-crown-court">“Sun Six”</a>. These are still dark days for tabloid news journalism and there’s more to come. With more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/13/mazher-mahmood-potential-victims-bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh">potential victims</a> of Mahmood’s set to come forward in the wake of Panorama, it may be a long time before we see the light.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but Panorama has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/322872014-09-29T13:21:44Z2014-09-29T13:21:44ZBrooks Newmark honey trap story to give IPSO its first serious test<p>They are calling it the Brooks Newmark Sex Scandal. The ethics of the Sunday Mirror’s virtual online honey trap farrago would appear to be the first high profile complaint that the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/">Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO)</a> will have to deal with. Hardly Watergate is it? The matter is a giggle for some, toe-curlingly embarrassing or sheer theatre of the absurd for others and heart-breaking – and distressing for Newmark and his family. </p>
<p>David Aaronovitch analysed the matter in The Times and came to the conclusion that Newmark’s fall is <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4220629.ece">“from online to the ridiculous”.</a> It’s a classic tabloid story offered to and taken by the Mirror from a freelance journalist. It is not something the “quality” broadsheets and the BBC would be initiating as “investigative journalism”, but if all the ingredients were not in the frame of some “public interest” they would have ignored the story, would they not?</p>
<h2>Nice and sleazy does it</h2>
<p>When the raucous British popular press start ruffling the feathers of the establishment and nipping the back-sides of the sensitive behind of powerful elites with “sleazy journalism” that “ruins people’s lives” it is fascinating how the rest of the media takes great sport in picking over the leftovers and frothing in the methane stream.</p>
<p>But hypocrisy in British politics and media history is an under-rated and neglected cultural shibboleth. There’s an art to it. The dividing line in journalistic respectability is like trying to compare the aesthetic legitimacy of a Sandro Botticelli nude and a Page Three representation of contemporary mammary glands. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is this what’s called a ‘pubic interest story’?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sunday Mirror</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nearly every aspect of this affair is fantasy and imagination. There is no victim except an anticipated foreboding of what might have been. The Mirror in a justifying editorial by Julia Hartley-Brewer said: “When a minister, paid by taxpayers, sends explicit photos to a complete stranger (who turns out to be not a young woman Tory party worker but a man working undercover for a newspaper) <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brooks-newmark-lied-wife---4342177">then he has chosen to make his privates a public matter.”</a></p>
<p>She continued: “If Brooks Newmark was dumb enough to text his post-watershed selfie, how can we trust his judgment in his working life? And how open is he to blackmail? And once he has lied to his wife, what stops him from lying to us, the voters he has not met?”</p>
<p>Sophie Wittams was effectively a texting Whatsapp, Twitter avatar, a concoction in the virtual world constructed by “borrowing” the images of real people and manipulated in Twitter-speak by journalistic subterfuge. Sophie endeavoured to establish liaison with Conservative Party politicians and Newmark succumbed to the allure of imaginative intimacy and shared written confidences and imagery of what of old would be termed “of a lewd nature”. </p>
<p>Have you noticed how a lot of the media has made something of fetish out of the rather classy brand of pyjamas the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2772489/I-complete-fool-admits-Tory-minister-Brooks-Newmark-forced-quit-sending-explicit-photos-Paisley-pyjamas.html">now ex- minister for civil society was wearing</a> while baring his anatomy? Yet as I write, the issue has generated only <a href="http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2195961-Brooks-Newmarks-paisley-pyjamas">four comments on Mumsnet.</a></p>
<h2>Only way is ethics</h2>
<p>What are the media legal and ethical issues engaged here? There’s speculation that Sophie’s portrait may have been that of a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/swedish-model-did-not-permit-sunday-mirror-use-photo-brooks-newmark">Swedish model</a>. It would assist the Sunday Mirror if it had obtained the permission of both the subject and copyright holder of the image to be used in this way. </p>
<p>The Telegraph investigates and reports in the true tradition of the Fleet Street diaspora dog-eating-dog that a “sun-bathing selfie” of Sophie had been <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11126797/Brooks-Newmark-scandal-Woman-whose-photo-was-hijacked-by-tabloid-says-MP-did-nothing-wrong.html">hijacked from the real 26-year-old Charlene Taylor.</a> Charlene says the image was used without her permission and has expressed the maturity and compassion of a generation familiar with the burlesque and mischief of smart-phone photography and social media: “I think grown adults can do whatever they like as long as both of them are over the age of consent. I don’t think it’s something to resign over.”</p>
<p>In theory, using imagery and personality rights without permission in a way that damages reputation, dignity, honour or identity could trigger consideration of potential breaches of defamation, privacy, as well as copyright and intellectual property.</p>
<h2>Ipso facto</h2>
<p>IPSO has the kind of bite the old PCC never had. It can impose fines of up to £1m on contracted members for serious breaches of the editors’ code. The Sunday Mirror is signed up. Ironically had the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Evening Standard or Financial Times been playing “entrapment” games with Tory politicians, they would only be dealing with the potential flack of litigation. These newspapers have been standing off IPSO.</p>
<p>Media commentators of rival papers and “media victim” lawyers have expended much angst striking the questions that Trinity Mirror may have to address. Will they be able to <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/cop.html">satisfy 10(ii) of the editors’ code of practice</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by other means. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Will the story reach the necessary threshold of “public interest” in terms of “preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation,” or there being “a public interest in freedom of expression itself”?</p>
<p>A deciding factor will be whether the story was the result of a speculative fishing expedition. But it’s <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mirror-editor-lloyd-embley-said-public-interest-was-nailed-undercover-sexting-sting-tory-mp">reported by Press Gazette</a> that a freelance journalist had been investigating inappropriate use of social media by MPs and specific sources had briefed him on how they were using social media networks to meet women. Sunday Mirror editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley says there was a “nailed-on public interest” to the story. </p>
<p>That’s as may be. In this case, as in so many Fleet Street cases of old, the public interest is in the eye of the editor. But a familiar refrain from academia and the tabloid loathing sphere post-Leveson might be that in 2014 the public interest needs to be more than what entertains the scandal mongers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and serves on its Professional Practices Board.</span></em></p>They are calling it the Brooks Newmark Sex Scandal. The ethics of the Sunday Mirror’s virtual online honey trap farrago would appear to be the first high profile complaint that the Independent Press Standards…Tim Crook, Reader in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/296132014-07-24T13:54:16Z2014-07-24T13:54:16ZCollapse of Tulisa trial a sting in the tail for Fake Sheikh and the tabloid exposé<p>The fall-out from the collapse of the Tulisa Contostavlos prosecution in London is the detonation of another anti-media rage in the continuing crisis for British journalism ethics.</p>
<p>The former X Factor judge’s trial for brokering a drugs deal came about because she had been targeted in an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/fake-sheikh-tulisa-may-sue-over-fake-sheikh-sting-after-drugs-trial-collapses-9621819.html">elaborate undercover sting by the “Fake Sheikh” investigative reporter Mazher Mahmood.</a></p>
<p>She said she had been set up, plied with drinks, and in the words of her QC Jeremy Dein: <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/tulisa-trial-collapses-fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-tried-to-persuade-singer-to-have-sex-with-him-in-return-for-film-role-9622401.htmll">“from start to finish, evidence has been gathered in a background of lies, deceit, manipulation and falsity.”</a> </p>
<p>Judge Alistair McCreath said there were “strong grounds” to believe Mahmood, working on the exposé for the Sun on Sunday, had lied on the witness stand and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/21/mazher-mahmood-ukcrime">“had been manipulating the evidence”.</a></p>
<p>There might be some irony in Tulisa’s celebrity status being enhanced by her transformation from drug offence defendant to tabloid media victim. She will be describing her “horrific and disgusting entrapment” in <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/tulisa-tell-ruined-year-sun-sunday-story-bbc-documentary-following-drugs-trial-collapse">a BBC Three documentary next week.</a></p>
<h2>Broadsheet disapproval</h2>
<p>Meanwhile the bishops at The Guardian have been banging their staffs in disapproval. The influential journalist-turned-professor, Roy Greenslade, has been in full flow – largely because he has tracked Mahmood’s career since leaving the Sunday Times <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/22/mazher-mahmood-fake-sheikh-tulisa-contostavlos">under a cloud when Greenslade was a news editor there.</a></p>
<p>Greenslade has produced a frisson of articles headlined in the style of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/21/mazher-mahmood-tripped-up-notorious-stings">“Mazher Mahmood has finally tripped up after years of notorious stings”</a>. The Sun on Sunday publisher, News UK, has been seeking rehabilitation and post-hacking exorcism through re-branding, and leaving “Fortress Wapping” for the “Baby Shard”. Greenslade’s advice to them is that Mahmood “is an embarrassment, as the Contostavlos episode illustrates, and the paper should now bid him farewell”.</p>
<p>The Fake Sheikh’s stock is therefore very low. In addition to being suspended by his employing paper, he faces an action for civil libel and calls for the Metropolitan Police to investigate <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/22/mazher-mahmood-sun-perjury-probe-tulisa-contostavlos-trial">his conduct for perjury.</a> While Guardian and Independent books on the phone-hacking and News of the World scandals are best sellers, Mahmood’s 2008 “Confessions of a Fake Sheikh: "The King of the Sting” Reveals All" <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Confessions-Fake-Sheik-Sting-Reveals/dp/0007288107/ref=la_B0034PH8RG_1_1_title_2_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406129538&sr=1-1">can be bought second-hand at Amazon for 1p.</a></p>
<p>Yet again a construction of unethical tabloid skulduggery is being met with the triple jeopardy of dismissal, civil litigation and criminal enquiry. The desire for retribution and revenge against tabloid miscreants is becoming something of fetish. </p>
<h2>End of the tabloid “sting”?</h2>
<p>Does this latest storm herald the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/22/tulisa-contostavlos-trial-sting-fake-sheihk">end of the journalism sting?</a> What it does indicate very starkly is that public, judicial and political tolerance is on a very short fuse for media undercover operations that go wrong. It is the most dangerous and costly form of journalism and attracts the deadliest of legal shrapnel. </p>
<p>When the BBC’s Mark Daly infiltrated the Greater Manchester Police in 2003 as a probationer constable to expose racism, he was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3210614.stm">initially arrested for obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception</a> and criminal damage to his uniform by impregnating it with a pin-hole so he could fit his secret camera. </p>
<p>In undercover programmes for the BBC, Donal McIntyre had to deal with being the victim of a knife mugging, an attack by soccer hooligans in Copenhagen <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/10_october/08/donal_macintyre.shtml">and libellous allegations</a> from the Kent Police over his 1999 exposure of poor care standards in a residential home in Gillingham. Channel 4’s Dispatches programme also had to sue the West Midlands Police and CPS in 2008 for being accused <a href="http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/dispatches-vindicated-over-undercover-mosque-film">of fakery in their programme Undercover Mosque.</a></p>
<h2>Breaking the law</h2>
<p>Nearly every aspect of the performance in undercover journalism engages breaches of civil privacy law and a myriad of criminal offences. At the top of the list is bribery and fraud. </p>
<p>None of these offences have a public interest or “for the purposes of journalism” defence. Media undercover investigators willing to commit these offences for the good of the story are therefore usually at the mercy of the police, CPS and courts.</p>
<p>As the criminal law is often being broken on a <em>prima facie</em> basis, the offending has to be venial or pardonable under common law. That means the performance of deception, lies and criminality has to be shown to be exposing a greater evil. </p>
<p>The performers of media stings are not obliged to comply with the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents">Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000</a> which is the duty of all state investigating authorities such as the police, HMRC, Trading Standards and intelligence agencies. The hoaxing of potential targets by journalists and use of agents provocateurs is not something the police could get away with.</p>
<p>Media regulation in the UK does demand, however, that undercover subterfuge is engaged only when all other <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html">legitimate journalistic methods cannot achieve the purpose.</a> Fishing expeditions targeting organisations or individuals on the basis of mere suspicion is not enough. The investigation has to be prompted by specific information triggering the public interest to <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/privacy/">justify any breach of a reasonable or legitimate expectation of privacy.</a></p>
<p>The concept of a defence of entrapment is not recognised in the English legal system. State prosecution of offenders caught by sting operations may fail if they are shown to breach the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/60/contents">Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984</a>. They can also be judged an abuse of process if it is shown that the investigating authority created a state crime that was <a href="http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/55972.article">an affront to the public conscience.</a> </p>
<p>But these rules do not apply to evidence collected by Fake Sheikh-style media stings. The material generated is by a non-state private third party. It is merely presented by the police and CPS in fulfilment of their duty to prosecute when evidence of crime is brought to them. </p>
<p>There is a clearer crossing-of-the-line point for state investigators. Undercover drugs officers are allowed to pretend to be junkies in cold turkey pleading for a fix in order to arrest somebody whom they suspect of supplying. But it is not permissible to set up a state funded money laundering operation in Spain in order to lure criminals into fencing their ill-gotten gains through it.</p>
<p>Media performers can be more sly, imaginative and the temptations they dangle more exceptional.</p>
<p>It may be the case that Mazher Mahmood’s undercover adventures are more controversial because the tabloid demand to expose the peccadilloes of celebrity no longer chimes with the public’s desire to gorge on gossip and scandal. The News of the World has been shut down, nobody appears to mourn its passing, and his modus operandi faces greater scrutiny from the incisive development and intervention of privacy law.</p>
<h2>Public interest defence</h2>
<p>If the public is genuinely recoiling from the humiliation of public figures over their private sins, it should not be forgotten that Mahmood has also courageously investigated international terrorism, organised crime and corruption. In 2010 this included exposing <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-2056073/Pakistan-trio-guilty-cricket-match-fixing.html">Test Match fixing by Pakistani players.</a></p>
<p>Is it logical that the public interest of the Sun on Sunday has to be the same as that of the Guardian, Independent, Financial Times and BBC? </p>
<p>If the Tulisa sting proves to be Mahmood’s nemesis, British journalism will lose an investigator who can claim to have <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/49877">delivered 134 successful criminal convictions.</a> Is that something that can be claimed by any other journalist in Britain?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Journalists and is a member of its professional practices board.</span></em></p>The fall-out from the collapse of the Tulisa Contostavlos prosecution in London is the detonation of another anti-media rage in the continuing crisis for British journalism ethics. The former X Factor…Tim Crook, Reader in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/284262014-07-01T14:22:20Z2014-07-01T14:22:20ZNasty piece of work: The Sun’s nationalism is doing England great harm<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52759/original/zbk47txp-1404209221.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Everyone loves the Currant Bun, right?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Other than war, few things fire nationalist sentiments in a society quite like sport. On June 27 2010, as the English football team were being thrashed by Germany in the World Cup in South Africa, England’s fans chanted: “Two world wars and one world cup … two world wars and one world cup!” </p>
<p>As pacified contests, sports generate all the emotions of national attachment in a manner that is generally benign and fun. Yet major sporting events also offer opportunities for those seeking to mobilise national identity in a more aggressive way – as The Sun newspaper recently reminded us with its free “Historic Edition”, dispatched to 22m homes in Britain last month.</p>
<p>Make no mistakes about the official prompt of this paper being the start of the World Cup – this is quite visibly a deliberate political publication, the latest effort by the UK’s highest circulation newspaper to shove popular understandings of national identity in its preferred direction. The effort is hardly covert, with the front cover emblazoned with the words “THIS IS OUR ENGLAND” superimposed over the faces of 117 individuals the Sun deems personal embodiments of “the essence of England today”. </p>
<p>The paper’s contents offered an unusually sustained illustration of English nationalism as interpreted by Britain’s tabloids. It’s not a pretty picture. After a superficially worthy iteration of that now trite sentiment of British politicians, public intellectuals and commentators that national pride needs to be “reclaimed” from the “small-minded” and the “racist”, the following 21 pages provided a <em>tour de force</em> in national chest-thumping that could barely do more to put its small-mindedness and contempt for the rest of the world front and centre.</p>
<h2>Pride and prejudice</h2>
<p>Particular “highlights” included the blaring headline declaration, which filled half of page 9: “No one else on the planet comes close to our genius”. As Sun columnist Tony Parsons explained: “For centuries we have entertained and enlightened the rest of the planet” – in part by being “a warrior race that has stood up to oppression and tyrants throughout history (often with the help of our neighbours in Scotland, Ireland and Wales)”. The silent effacing from the nation’s historical consciousness of the way England was typically seen as being the oppressor and tyrant in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the rest of the world is almost Orwellian.</p>
<p>Rod Liddle, a former Labour supporter turned associate editor of the Spectator, likewise tells the Sun’s readers: “I’m proud of the fact that we invented almost everything that matters”. And like any good propaganda, the “Historic Edition” contains a range of pre-emptive broadsides against likely critics of this preening collective narcissism. Or, as Liddle prefers to label them: “white middle-class liberals in London who still think it’s a bit much to admit that you’re proud you’re English”.</p>
<p>One can ask whether this is all that remarkable, for the UK tabloids. But the past month of British politics has seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-election-is-ukip-a-political-earthquake-or-just-a-tremor-26675">local and European elections</a> produce massive gains for the Eurosceptic anti-immigration UKIP, the publication of a report on the gradual <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-more-britons-admit-racism-far-right-draws-strength-from-mainstream-party-pandering-27344">rise in levels of racial prejudice in Britain</a> over the past ten years and a scare about Islamic extremism in British schools. And, as we know, this was followed by the row between home secretary, Teresa May, and the education secretary, Michael Gove – the latter coincidentally a major proponent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/promoting-british-values-opens-up-a-can-of-worms-for-teachers-27846">injecting more nationalist narratives</a> into Britain’s history curricula. </p>
<p>And that is not to mention, of course, the ongoing campaign surrounding the Scottish independence referendum, and debates within Britain’s opposition Labour Party on the degree to which it needs to “reconnect with its roots” – an argument which is often used to justify the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/28/labour-ukip-anti-immigrant-vote-ed-miliband-election">adoption of a more anti-immigration</a> and Eurosceptic agenda.</p>
<h2>Fraudulent and nasty</h2>
<p>Some slow – yet important – shifts are occurring in the place of national identity in the UK. Instances of feverish demagoguery around Britishness and Englishness are evidently no longer confined to neo-fascist groups, but gradually being legitimated by major national newspapers, commentators and politicians.</p>
<p>This should worry us, because the English nationalism on display in the Sun’s Historic Edition is not fundamentally inclusive and quirky, merely defending a bit of pride in one’s country and blending this with a little of what The Sun would regard as “characteristic” British self-deprecation. It is a crowing and unabashed assertion of English superiority, unreconstructed from the Imperial era, deeply reliant on fraudulent history and denialism, and involving the ritualistic reproduction and invocation of racial stereotypes about “foreigners” (both in Britain and outside it).</p>
<p>And it is far from unique – more intellectual versions can be found in the templates suggested by Gove and historian Niall Ferguson for secondary school history courses focus on how <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/25/civilization-west-rest-niall-ferguson-review">“the West” triumphed over “the rest”</a>. This is not a benign form of nationalism to counter that of “racists”, but largely a more marketable, more mainstream and correspondingly more dangerous version of far-right national narratives.</p>
<p>Of course, that is a notion that will be hysterically rejected by nationalist sympathisers, who will fall back on painting any critic as someone who conflates national pride with hate crimes. And the danger of this “tabloid nationalism” may also meet with scepticism from market liberals, who tend to assume that newspapers and politicians just follow the preferences of their respective “consumers”, rather than shifting society’s political and moral landscape. </p>
<h2>Ignore it at our peril</h2>
<p>It may be tempting to hope that this brand of mainstream but assertive English nationalism will follow the same trajectory as the England football team: producing low expectations of success, and then still failing to meet them.</p>
<p>But the truly radicalising shifts in a society’s ideological environment are rarely an obvious march-on-Rome-style coup by a self-consciously extremist movement. Instead, ideas which may originate in an extremist fringe penetrate into the mainstream by being spoken with all the trappings of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ukip-common-sense-tour-bus-collides-with-railway-station-roof-in-portsmouth-9298280.html">moderation and “common sense”</a>. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that this sort of thing appeals to everyone – the Historic Edition was assuredly fast-tracked by many people to the recycling box. But for a substantial group of people, nationalist rhetoric and ideas satiate intense desires to feel good about oneself. They provide alluringly simple stories of society’s problems and how they should be solved – stories replete with thrilling heroes: sportsmen, soldiers, and sexy celebrities; and equally compelling villains: European bureaucrats, immigrants, bankers, and mainstream politicians. </p>
<p>These desires are only strengthened in our increasingly complex, centrifugal and fragmented modern democracies. Yet those very forces of modernity which reinforce the psychological and strategic attractiveness of political nationalism also render it more dangerous. Aside from exacerbating social tension and discrimination, it fundamentally relies on an ideological core of ignorance, denial, and misinformation, one that not only denigrates most of the world’s peoples but is also fatal to a society’s capacity to steer itself effectively through political challenges and crises. The rest of the political mainstream ignores it at its peril.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28426/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Leader Maynard has in the past received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Other than war, few things fire nationalist sentiments in a society quite like sport. On June 27 2010, as the English football team were being thrashed by Germany in the World Cup in South Africa, England’s…Jonathan Leader Maynard, Rank-Manning Junior Research Fellow in Social Sciences, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.