tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/tabloid-newspapers-13549/articlesTabloid newspapers – The Conversation2023-05-29T20:07:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049142023-05-29T20:07:48Z2023-05-29T20:07:48ZRupert Murdoch: how a 22-year-old ‘zealous Laborite’ turned into a tabloid tsar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527924/original/file-20230524-10299-l4fgym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C17%2C3970%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The successor: Rupert Murdoch, on right, with his parents Sir Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch around 1950.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">New South Publishing</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September 1953, Rupert Murdoch arrived in sleepy Adelaide to take up his inheritance of News Limited. He was only 22 and had little experience of working at a newspaper, let alone running one, but his family had inherited a majority stake in the company following the death of Rupert’s father, the well-known journalist, editor and media executive <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-before-rupert-keith-murdoch-and-the-birth-of-a-dynasty-49491">Keith Murdoch</a>. </p>
<p>After Rupert had completed his matriculation at Geelong Grammar in 1949 with marks that had not impressed his parents, he had worked briefly as a cadet reporter at the Melbourne Herald under his father’s watchful eye, spending a few months at the police courts with a friend from school before heading off to the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Keith had accompanied him to London in early 1950 and introduced Rupert to leading figures in Fleet Street, helping his son land a summer stint as a junior reporter on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Gazette">Birmingham Gazette</a> – where Rupert made an impression when he told the proprietor the editor was so incompetent he should be sacked.</p>
<p>Rupert had then studied at Worcester College, Oxford. Again, he did not excel academically, but his contemporaries noticed he was financially astute and a shrewd problem-solver and risk-taker. Like Rupert Greene, his namesake grandfather on his mother’s side, Rupert dabbled in gambling and drinking beer more than his parents felt was good for him. And, like his father had been as a young man, Rupert was attracted to Labour politics. He famously kept a bust of Lenin in his room at Oxford. </p>
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<span class="caption">Keith Murdoch was confident son Rupert would ‘outgrow his socialist ideals’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Keith tolerated Rupert’s excursion into left-wing politics and, in earlier years, had put him in touch with Labor prime minister <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Chifley">Ben Chifley</a>, who always replied courteously to Rupert’s letters. Keith told Chifley his 18-year-old son “is at present a zealous Laborite but will I think (probably) eventually travel the same course of his father”.</p>
<p>In the last months of his life, Keith was confident that Rupert was on the right track and would outgrow his <a href="https://theconversation.com/socialism-is-a-trigger-word-on-social-media-but-real-discussion-is-going-on-amid-the-screaming-113507">socialist</a> ideals. After finishing his studies at Oxford, Rupert worked on the subeditor’s desk at Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, edited by the legendary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Christiansen">Arthur Christiansen</a>, considered one of Fleet Street’s greatest editors.</p>
<p>Christiansen was obsessed with detail and worked up to 18 hours a day for more than 20 years. His memorable instructions to staff were handed down through the ages, including his exhortation to “always, always tell the news through people”.</p>
<p>The Daily Express was chosen for Rupert because it was one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism. Keith had personally asked Beaverbrook to arrange this work experience for his son and Rupert trained as a down-table sub (a junior subeditor).</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528516/original/file-20230526-23-lgkmj9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Daily Express was ‘one of the toughest and most prestigious schools in journalism’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gillfoto">gillfoto</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>When Rupert took up the reins at News Limited, that was the extent of his experience – a few months each at the Herald, the Birmingham Gazette and the Daily Express, plus all he had picked up from his father’s shop talk at home and the detailed letters Keith sent Rupert during his school years.</p>
<p>As part of the grandeur surrounding his rise, it is often said that Rupert built an empire out of just one tired Adelaide newspaper. To be pedantic, that is not quite true. When he inherited a controlling interest in News Limited, it published the News (Adelaide’s afternoon newspaper), the (Sunday) Mail (also in Adelaide) and the Barrier Miner (in Broken Hill). It also had a large stake in Southdown Press, which was housed in West Melbourne and published the national women’s magazine <a href="https://www.newidea.com.au/">New Idea</a>. </p>
<p>The company also controlled radio station 2BH Broken Hill and had a minor holding in 5DN Adelaide. Certainly, it was a small company by comparison with the then giant of the media industry, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_and_Weekly_Times">Herald and Weekly Times</a>, but it was still a substantial start for a 22-year-old. It is true that the News was a tired and insignificant paper. It had a stagnant circulation and was drained of resources and revenue. </p>
<p>When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, he set about changing that and gave himself the unusual title of “publisher”. Old-timers raised their eyebrows and expected Rupert would sit in a corner at the News for a few years until he knew enough to contribute. They were misjudging him.</p>
<p>Rupert was a hands-on proprietor from the beginning. Editorially, he initially relied on, and gave a good deal of leeway to, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rivett-rohan-deakin-11533/text20575">Rohan Rivett</a>, who had been editor of the News for almost two years. </p>
<p>Rupert and Rivett were already close friends because Keith had sent Rivett to report from London between 1949 and 1951, with a side instruction to keep an eye on the boss’s son. Rivett, the grandson of <a href="https://theconversation.com/alfred-deakin-provides-a-contrast-to-an-abbott-lost-for-words-37900">Alfred Deakin</a>, had been a war correspondent, and for three and a half years a prisoner of war, including on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-war-ii-ended-70-years-ago-while-the-forgotten-death-railway-was-completed-45612">Burma–Thailand Railway</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">News editor Rohan Rivett was the grandson of Alfred Deakin.</span></figcaption>
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<p>From Keith’s perspective, Rivett had some radical views but he was satisfied that Rivett was no <a href="https://theconversation.com/still-under-the-bed-red-baitings-long-history-in-australian-politics-and-why-its-unlikely-to-succeed-now-177543">communist</a>, and in the early 1950s he was a favourite Murdoch confidante. Rivett even named his son after Keith. </p>
<p>When Rupert arrived in Adelaide, Keith’s older protégé turned nemesis, Lloyd Dumas, chairman of the Advertiser, gave Rupert a memorable welcome by trying to push him out of business before Rupert even got started. On October 24 1953, the Advertiser launched the Sunday Advertiser.</p>
<p>It was designed to crush News Limited’s weekend paper, the Mail, which was the biggest-circulation paper in the state and a solid earner. The intention was to force Murdoch’s heirs to sell out so the Herald Weekly Times could reclaim the News. Dumas was a knight, a pillar of society in Adelaide, a city renowned for its “luminous and eccentric” establishment, its British-style manored estates, and blue-blood <a href="https://adelaide-club.asn.au/">Adelaide Club</a> members.</p>
<p>But Rupert showed immediately that he was not going to play by the usual rules of conduct, including the unwritten rule that newspaper owners did not publish stories about each other. A month after the Sunday Advertiser launched, Rupert’s Mail published a front-page story airing some industry dirty linen. </p>
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<span class="caption">Adelaide was renowned for its ‘luminous and eccentric’ establishment and manored estates. Pictured: St Peter’s Cathedral.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>It reported that, after Keith Murdoch’s death, Dumas had gone to his widow, bound her to secrecy so she could not consult anyone, and told her to sell the family’s controlling stake in the company to him. When Elisabeth refused, he gave her an ultimatum: either sell him the Mail, or the Advertiser would start a new weekend paper and drive the Mail out of business. The article included excerpts from a private letter Dumas had sent to Elisabeth.</p>
<p>Dumas and Rupert fought a “nasty circulation war”. The challenger Sunday Advertiser was the better product but many of the Mail’s readers stayed loyal and it remained in front. As Adelaide was not large enough to support two Sunday papers, both companies bled money for nearly two years before the opponents called a truce and agreed to merge. Both took 50% of the newly merged Sunday Mail from December 1955. With no competition, it was very profitable. Rupert considered this co-venture a great victory and let it be known that Dumas had backed down.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992">The secret history of News Corp: a media empire built on spreading propaganda</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Liberalism and sensationalism</h2>
<p>Rupert let Rivett develop the News into the most liberal daily paper in the country, one with a social conscience that published very different views to
the establishment Advertiser. </p>
<p>Murdoch learned all he could by working in various roles at the paper and developed a reputation for his overwhelming energy and for rolling up his sleeves and observing every phase of the production process. He was also becoming known for criticising and trying to make constant changes. One overwhelmed staff member called them “Rupertorial interruptions”.</p>
<p>Rivett focused on editorial while Murdoch focused on increasing advertising revenue, improving circulation, cutting costs and making production more efficient. Murdoch was particularly good at gaining retail and some new classified advertising for the News. News Limited’s profits jumped from $62,000 when he began in 1953, to $432,000 in 1959.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch was known from the start for being very involved in his media properties.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Murdoch had his eye on expansion immediately. His first move was to expand News Limited’s interest in magazine publisher Southdown Press. His next move,
in October 1954, was to acquire Western Press Ltd, publisher of Western Australia’s only Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, in Perth. (It also owned a Saturday publication called the Mirror, and 20 country newspapers.)</p>
<p>The Sunday Times was where Murdoch honed his <a href="https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-and-the-news-international-tabloid-grotesquerie-2330">tabloid techniques</a>. The paper was “tawdry” even before Murdoch bought it, but <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/902842.Murdoch?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=GwPBFNOkUt&rank=1">he made it</a> more “sparkily so”. </p>
<p>Murdoch began flying to Perth every Friday to personally hammer the paper into a more sensational style to increase its sales. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2298216.Citizen_Murdoch">Murdoch biographer, Thomas Kiernan</a>, said the Sunday Times was the birthplace of Murdoch journalism, “the exaggerated story filled with invented quotes; the slavishly sensationalised yarns; the eye-shattering, gratuitously blood-curdling headline”. </p>
<p>An infamous early one was “LEPER RAPES VIRGIN, GIVES BIRTH TO MONSTER BABY”. He also used competitions and zealous promotion to sell the paper. These became some of the other hallmarks of Murdoch’s tabloid approach.</p>
<p>The Sunday Times purchase was funded by a loan. Rupert’s new bank was the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney. It was then relatively small and had become a trading bank only in June 1953. Its general manager, Alfred Norman “Jack” Armstrong, and Vern Christie, who later became a managing director, thought Murdoch was a good risk, commercially savvy and always met his repayments.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth Bank’s willingness to lend Murdoch huge sums would prove crucial to the growth of his media empire. </p>
<p>Rupert stayed in Adelaide for seven years, from 1953 to 1960. Aside from newspaper production, he was also learning everything he could about radio and television, including on trips to the United States. It was a crucial turning point when Murdoch’s Southern Television Corporation Ltd (60% owned by News Limited) <a href="https://televisionau.com/2019/09/tv-at-60-tv-comes-to-adelaide.html">was granted</a> one of two commercial television licences in Adelaide in 1958.</p>
<p>After a visit to the Philadelphia office of the popular US magazine TV Guide, Murdoch launched an Australian weekly television magazine. Southdown Press began publishing <a href="https://televisionau.com/feature-articles/tv-week">TV-Radio Week</a> in December 1957, 14 months after Australian television had begun (it was called TV Week from 1958). Murdoch was also buying up small papers in remote towns across the country. He acquired the Cold War–born NT News and the Mount Isa Mail at the end of 1959. </p>
<p>Murdoch would fly into town in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3">DC-3</a> and haggle with the owner. Former News Limited executive Rodney Lever said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His technique was simple: he would bully the owner into selling his paper with a threat that he would start a competing paper in the town.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Murdoch soon turned the NT News into a tri-weekly, and the Mount Isa Mail into a bi-weekly. By 1965, both were daily papers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-irreverence-to-irrelevance-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-bad-tempered-tabloids-113656">From irreverence to irrelevance: the rise and fall of the bad-tempered tabloids</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bold moves</h2>
<p>Murdoch made two bold moves in Adelaide in 1958–59. One was political
and the other commercial, and as journalist and author George Munster noted, these moves were not well coordinated; they ran in opposite directions.</p>
<p>The News took a strong stance on the trial of <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/92649.pdf">Rupert Max Stuart</a>, an Indigenous carnival worker who had been convicted in 1958 of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. </p>
<p>After a confession to police over which there hung significant doubt, Stuart was sentenced to death and his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court of South Australia. Rivett was convinced Stuart had not had a fair trial and the News campaigned fiercely for the case to be reopened. The paper’s attacks on authorities in South Australia’s police force and courts were the talk of the city.</p>
<p>Murdoch supported Rivett “wholeheartedly” and saw the case as a way to attack both the Adelaide establishment and the conservative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Playford_IV">Playford government</a>, which had been in office since 1938 as the beneficiary of a ruthlessly gerrymandered election system.</p>
<p>Labor politician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Cameron">Clyde Cameron</a>, who was dining and socialising with Murdoch at this time, found Rupert “was much further Left than me”. When the case was at its height, Murdoch said to him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m in a spot, Clyde. Myers [sic] have phoned to say that unless we drop our campaign in favour of Stuart, they are going to withdraw all of their advertising from the News and that means a lot to us … I told them to go to hell.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Playford was forced to set up a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_in_regard_to_Rupert_Max_Stuart">Royal Commission</a> to examine <a href="https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/events/stuart-case">the Stuart case</a> and the News ran fierce attacks on it too, including lambasting royal commissioners for improperly sitting in judgement of their own earlier decisions. The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-18/max-stuart-rupert-murdoch-true-crime-case/10614666">News’ coverage</a> landed Rivett, Murdoch and other employees in court on a string of charges, including the archaic, rarely used charge of seditious libel, which could have seen them imprisoned. </p>
<p>Rupert was said to be deeply shaken by the potential risks and how far matters escalated. Eventually, the charges were dismissed and the News ran an editorial apologising and disavowing criticism of the judiciary members. There was
speculation that Playford had dropped the charges in return for the News halting its campaign against his government.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US President John F. Kennedy meets a young Rupert Murdoch (on right) in the oval office in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An old friend sacked</h2>
<p>While the Adelaide establishment was still buzzing about the Stuart case, Murdoch made an audacious bid to gain control of the Advertiser. Backed by the Commonwealth Bank, Murdoch made an offer of more than £14 million in shares and cash to Advertiser Newspapers Ltd. At a time when News Limited had less than £1.8 million in shareholders’ funds, it was one of the biggest corporate takeover bids in Australian history.</p>
<p>Dumas quashed the bid. The Advertiser announced in its pages that its board rejected the takeover bid and Dumas announced that the holders of more than 50% of Advertiser shares refused to accept Murdoch’s offer. </p>
<p>Dumas added tartly that the South Australian community and the paper’s shareholders have a “real pride in the Advertiser and would never agree to its being modelled on the News”, nor let Murdoch, as head of Cruden Investments, “a Victorian company”, exercise “complete individual control” over the Advertiser as he did with the News.</p>
<p>The Herald Weekly Times’ old hands had blocked Murdoch but he had made a strong impression and provided a bold declaration of his ambitions. He had also shown the business world he could muster significant capital and it was becoming obvious he would not easily be bought or driven out.</p>
<p>Five weeks after the last charges over the Stuart Royal Commission were withdrawn, Murdoch wrote a curt note from Sydney that “summarily dismissed” Rivett as editor.</p>
<p>This was a man Murdoch had considered “like the brother he never had”. Some speculated that Rivett’s sacking may have been part of the deal with Playford. Others believed it was inevitable because Murdoch was asserting himself more and his priorities were changing. Either way, it was strong evidence that Murdoch was not going to let friendship get in the way of business.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527622/original/file-20230523-15-u9lnp7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&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>
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</figure>
<p>The Stuart case had happened at a formative time for Murdoch, when his political views were still developing. Back in 1953, with a state election imminent in South Australia, he had written to Rivett, “I implore you not to speak out too loudly on either side.” </p>
<p>Personally, Rupert had strong views on <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-robert-menzies-and-the-birth-of-the-liberal-national-coalition-74533">Robert Menzies</a> though. He was said to loathe the prime minister because he was part of the Melbourne business establishment that had rejected him after his father’s death. Menzies had essentially chosen Jack Williams at the Herald and Weekly Times over Murdoch. Murdoch also thought Menzies was holding Australia – and himself – back.</p>
<p>In 1958–59, Murdoch had tried taking on the establishment in Adelaide by bringing on a showdown with the premier and the Adelaide Club, but had to back down. The experience seemed to chasten him and turn him away from advocacy journalism for the moment, and toward safer forms that did not clash with his commercial goals.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://unsw.press/books/media-monsters/">Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires</a> by Sally Young (New South Publishing).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Young received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) future fellowship scheme to study newspaper history and press power. Since 2019, she has been a research committee member of the Centre for Public Integrity which conducts research aimed at strengthening Australian democracy.</span></em></p>Young Rupert took up his inheritance in Adelaide in 1953 with minimal journalistic experience. He quickly revealed himself to be a ruthless rule-breaker and hands on, expansionary proprietor.Sally Young, Professor of Political Science, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1754852022-01-27T13:28:09Z2022-01-27T13:28:09ZWest Elm Caleb and the rise of the TikTok tabloid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442290/original/file-20220124-15-142deel.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=529%2C3%2C1700%2C1250&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On TikTok, stories can be manufactured and dramatized like an investigative gossip reel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jenna Drenten</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can you believe Makayla was dropped from <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/08/10631092/alabama-rush-tiktok-obsession-reason">Bama Rush</a>? Do you think <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/who-is-couch-guy-on-tiktok-the-internets-latest-obsession-explained/">Couch Guy</a> was cheating? Did you see <a href="https://www.insider.com/gabby-petito-brian-laundrie-missing-found-true-crime-tiktok-2021-9">Gabby Petito’s</a> last post before she went missing? </p>
<p>If you don’t spend much time online, you may not recognize these names.
But on TikTok, their stories became sensationalized, memeified, hashtagged and rehashed.</p>
<p>The most recent is “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/discover/westelmcaleb">#WestElmCaleb</a>.” Women took to TikTok to share their experiences of being <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/love-bombing-online-dating_l_61e9d178e4b04e26edba87e2">peppered with affection</a>, strung along and ultimately ghosted by a New York City-based designer named Caleb, who became the exemplar for the worst aspects of online dating culture.</p>
<p>Together, these stories represent the emergence of what I call the “TikTok tabloid,” in which users collectively manufacture and dramatize stories like an investigative gossip reel. Traditional tabloids place the lurid limelight on celebrities and public figures. But the TikTok tabloid targets everyday people. </p>
<p>How did we get to the age of the TikTok tabloid? As someone who studies <a href="https://jennadrenten.com/">digital consumer culture</a>, I see it as an outgrowth of the dynamics of <a href="https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/pub_dom">social surveillance</a>: using digital technologies to keep a close watch on one another, while producing online content in anticipation of being watched.</p>
<h2>Shocking! Exclusive! Scoop!</h2>
<p>Tabloid journalism isn’t new. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/tabloid-culture-reader/oclc/156810350">Common tabloid genres</a> of stars, sex, scandals and slayings have been cultural guilty pleasures since the early 1900s.</p>
<p>In the U.S., early tabloid newspapers like The Daily Mirror and New York Daily News ushered in an era of sensationalist reporting. These papers were particularly popular among <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14616701003638368">working class readers</a> who reveled in the speculative shenanigans of high society.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Stacks of newspapers featuring Bill Clinton." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442811/original/file-20220126-13-1bv1ltd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tabloid newspapers specialize in sensationalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/recent-new-york-tabloid-newspapers-sport-clinton-headlines-news-photo/1594451?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Newsmakers via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1970s, glossy tabloid magazines like People and Us Weekly picked up the helm with behind-the-scenes celebrity exclusives and human-interest stories. Tabloid journalism <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203135211/tabloid-television-john-langer">migrated to the small screen</a> in the 1990s with television shows like “Hard Copy” and “Inside Edition.”</p>
<p>And in the 2000s, the internet churned out <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/gendersarchive1998-2013/2008/10/01/fame-losing-game-celebrity-gossip-blogging-bitch-culture-and-postfeminism">round-the-clock celebrity gossip</a> with clickbait headlines on websites like TMZ.com and PerezHilton.com.</p>
<p>Previous eras of tabloid journalism were marked by <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Stardom_and_Celebrity/YSRTvYgS8AwC?hl=en&gbpv=0">highly curated content</a> with a focus on lifestyles of the rich and famous. The brokers of attention were editors, publishers, paparazzi, journalists <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X20920821">and publicists</a>. Tabloids filtered information to the masses, and in turn the masses influenced celebrity behaviors.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A banner for a gossip website." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442372/original/file-20220124-23298-4k9mdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">TMZ is an online clearinghouse for celebrity gossip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.TMZ.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But now we are witnessing a new iteration of tabloidization playing out in real time on TikTok, where digital technologies enable everyday consumers to play the roles of armchair experts, investigative reporters, digital paparazzi, talking heads and celebrities themselves.</p>
<h2>Watching and being watched</h2>
<p>Traditional tabloid journalism is predicated on surveillance dynamics of “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480697001002003">the many watching the few</a>”: an obsession with a relative handful of selected stars and scandals. The emergent TikTok tabloid relies on dynamics of social surveillance, or “<a href="https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/02/25/liquid-surveillance-social-media-three-provocations/">the many watching the many</a>” – a network of everyday people watching and being watched. </p>
<p>According to media scholar Alice E. Marwick, <a href="https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/pub_dom">social surveillance</a> is defined as “the ongoing eavesdropping, investigation, gossip, and inquiry that constitutes information gathering by people about their peers, made salient by the social digitization normalized by social media.” </p>
<p>Classic views of surveillance envision a prison state – <a href="https://books.google.com/books?dq=Big%20Brother%20is%20Monitoring%3A%20Feminist%20Surveillance%20Studies%20and%20Digital%20Consumer%20Culture&hl=en&id=mhdYEAAAQBAJ&newbks=0&pg=PA368&printsec=frontcover&source=newbks_fb#v=onepage&q=Big%20Brother%20is%20Monitoring%3A%20Feminist%20Surveillance%20Studies%20and%20Digital%20Consumer%20Culture&f=false">a Big Brother-esque panopticon</a> where a guard in a tower can watch prisoners in cells but the prisoners in the cells cannot see into the tower.</p>
<p>In social surveillance, everyone online is both a guard and a prisoner, constantly consuming online content and producing content for others to see.</p>
<p>This always-on dynamic works to control behavior. Everyday people have the power to orchestrate what other users see, read and believe – not only about traditional celebrities, but also about regular everyday people. </p>
<p>In the case of Gabby Petito, who went missing in September 2021, TikTokers <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkb5j8/gabby-petito-internet-sleuth-investigation-tiktok-instagram-spotify">developed theories</a> about her disappearance based on her final Instagram post and her Spotify playlists, claimed to <a href="https://www.insider.com/gabby-petito-tiktok-psychics-criticism-controversy-2021-9">psychically track her</a> and scrambled to be the first to report <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/discover/gabbypetito?lang=en">#GabbyPetito</a> breaking news.</p>
<p>Such deep-diving into people’s private lives for public entertainment is a function of social surveillance only further accelerated by the interactive features of TikTok.</p>
<h2>‘Like for part two’</h2>
<p>TikTok’s unique features and storytelling culture make it the perfect social media platform for making everyday people fodder for tabloid-like coverage. </p>
<p>First, interactive features of the platform allow TikTokers to collectively contribute to the TikTok tabloid in real time. TikTokers can directly <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/product-tutorial-reply-to-comments-with-video">respond to comments</a> with new videos, curate and follow content via <a href="https://boosted.lightricks.com/a-guide-to-hashtags-on-tiktok/">hashtags</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/creators/creator-portal/en-us/tiktok-creation-essentials/the-importance-of-sounds/">sounds</a>, <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/new-on-tiktok-introducing-stitch">stitch</a> videos together with other content, <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/introducing-auto-captions">caption them</a> for context, and use a <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/green-screen-effect-on-tik-tok/">green screen</a> effect – just like a real news studio.</p>
<p>Second, <a href="https://later.com/blog/tiktok-algorithm/">TikTok’s algorithm</a> serves users content based on a combination of their interests and what seems to be generally trending. Watching a few videos about West Elm Caleb easily triggers a stream of West Elm Caleb content on the “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/creators/creator-portal/en-us/tiktok-creation-essentials/whats-the-for-you-page-and-how-do-i-get-there/">for you page</a>,” or #FYP: the TikTok version of front page news.</p>
<p>Third, storytelling practices on the TikTok platform mimic exclusive reports, hot takes and cliffhanger media. TikTokers dangle tantalizing bits of stories in front of viewers with caveats of “like for part 2” or by serializing their content. These stories then take on lives of their own, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814535194">becoming culturally embedded memes</a>.</p>
<p>Social media <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047320961562">can be a useful mechanism for accountability</a>. On Twitter, for example, users voiced outrage over racist actions of the <a href="https://www.bet.com/article/74a5kv/black-twitter-ain-t-buying-nyc-woman-who-accused-black-man">Central Park Karen</a> and found solidarity in sharing experiences of sexual harassment through the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/692140">#MeToo Movement</a>. </p>
<p>But where platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook enable users to tell stories, TikTok enables users to create full-fledged narrative rabbit holes. A nugget of content can be collectively transformed into an epic drama.</p>
<h2>The promise and peril of publicity</h2>
<p>The TikTok tabloid democratizes access to fame while fueling America’s <a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/34636">cultural penchant for gossip</a>. </p>
<p>The TikTok tabloid may seem fun and frivolous – an entertaining live action, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335570557_Intensified_Play_Cinematic_study_of_TikTok_mobile_app">participatory role-play</a> version of TMZ playing out in real time. But there can a dark side to this form of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22716772/west-elm-caleb-couch-guy-tiktok-cancel">public shaming</a> and <a href="https://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/blog/2021/10/29/true-crime-tiktok-affording-criminal-investigation-and-media-visibility-in-the-gabby-petito-case/">internet sleuthing</a>.</p>
<p>The constant churn of sensational news can take a toll on <a href="https://www.amity.edu/gwalior/jccc/pdf/jccc-12-19-19.pdf">well-being</a>, particularly for those most <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/tiktok-couch-guy-internet-sleuths.html">directly involved</a>. In November 2021, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/tiktok-true-crime-conspiracy-theory-fake-1264687/">Sabrina Prater</a> became unwitting front-page news of the TikTok tabloid when her mundane dancing video spiraled into conspiracy theories of being a serial killer. She later posted a tearful video pleading for the emotional attacks to stop.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>In contrast to traditional celebrities, few everyday people have publicists, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.37">spin doctors</a> and social media managers who can help them handle <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1637269">the stresses of scrutiny</a>.</p>
<p>Who manages the public images of people who didn’t choose to become public figures?</p>
<p>It would be easy to say they should just stay off TikTok. But it’s not that simple. Social surveillance ensures we all have the potential to become headline news – beholden to the TikTok tabloid taste-makers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenna Drenten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tabloids traditionally have gone after the rich and famous. On TikTok, anyone can be a target.Jenna Drenten, Associate Professor of Marketing, Loyola University ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1335282020-03-15T07:20:40Z2020-03-15T07:20:40ZLaughter in the time of a pandemic: why South Africans are joking about coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320391/original/file-20200313-108932-1fdf1dz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Humour is sometimes used as a coping mechanism in tragic situations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost immediately after the first case of COVID-19 was <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Local/Maritzburg-Fever/first-positive-case-of-covid-19-in-south-africa-20200310">confirmed</a> in South Africa, the jokes started. From memes featuring prominent politicians to bad puns, from TikTok video clips to pictures of people posing with <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/offbeat/coronavirus-challenge-south-africans-twitter/">silly home-made protective gear</a>, South Africans took to <a href="https://twitter.com/MbalulaFikile/status/1237052192634343426">Twitter</a>, WhatsApp and Facebook to make fun of the virus. </p>
<p>It is not unusual for South Africans to make jokes about their many problems, from former President Jacob Zuma’s legacy of alleged grand corruption, known as <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-09-14-00-definition-of-state-capture/">state capture</a>, to the regular <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/watch-rand-slips-further-overnight-with-eskom-announcing-stage-4-loadshedding-44671290">power blackouts</a> caused by ongoing crises at the national power utility Eskom. <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2020-03-10-cartoon-covid-19-tax-agency/">Cartoonists</a> never seem to have a shortage of material.</p>
<p>Online jokes, memes and video clips are of course not peculiar to South Africa. The increased accessibility of a growing range of social media platforms and editing tools have made it possible for media users around the world to create and interact with news topics in ever more creative ways. Yet it is remarkable how, in a country like South Africa with its multitude of serious challenges, media users often take to jokes rather than despair when presented with a new problem.</p>
<p>Why is humour so often the first port of call when South African media users find themselves in stormy seas? There may be various socio-cultural, political and psychological reasons for this. </p>
<h2>Socio-cultural reasons</h2>
<p>There is an established body of academic literature about the important role of gossip, jokes, rumour and satire in African politics and societies. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/9013">his landmark article</a>, the historian and human rights activist Stephen Ellis described the phenomenon of “pavement radio”, or <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/passages/4761530.0004.003/-hi1-rendiradio-trottoirhi1-in-central-africa?rgn=main;view=fulltext">radio trottoir</a>, that can be found across Africa. This phenomenon is underpinned by the widespread oral tradition characteristic of these societies. </p>
<p>Ellis defines this form of communication as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the popular and unofficial discussion of current affairs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unlike the press, television or radio, this </p>
<blockquote>
<p>is not controlled by any identifiable individual, institution or group of people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pavement radio is not to be mistaken for ordinary, unverified rumours or gossip, but performs a social and political function. Its subject matter are issues of public interest about which there has not been an official announcement, or where official information cannot be trusted.</p>
<p>Humour also helps build community. For example, popular <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=245435">South African tabloids</a> have established a fiercely loyal readership with their stories of the supernatural, the silly or the absurd alongside a strong commitment to the community interest. Tabloid readers integrate their newspaper reading practices with storytelling, sharing and communal interpretation of newspaper content. </p>
<p>These practices illustrate how the conviviality of African societies also influence their media use. Similarly, joking about the coronavirus may be a way for people to say ‘it is all very absurd, but we’re in this together’.</p>
<h2>Political reasons</h2>
<p>Pavement radio thrives when the mainstream media are tightly controlled by the authorities, or where there is widespread distrust in official narratives. </p>
<p>South Africans enjoy a much higher degree of media freedom than they used to. But during apartheid, alternative media and underground information networks often provided more trusted channels of communication than the compliant mainstream media, or propaganda issued on the state broadcaster.</p>
<p>Widespread corruption in post-apartheid South Africa has not done much to improve citrizens’ respect for official narratives. They know what it feels like to be lied to.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2013.852598">Research has shown</a> that young South Africans in particular are distrustful of politicians and political institutions. And political disillusionment with the current government and feelings of frustration have also proven to be fertile ground for rumours and <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2020/01/on-conspiracy-theories">conspiracy theories</a> that provide more plausible explanations of people’s current circumstances than political, economic or scientific authorities.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560054.2009.9653398">“sceptical laughter”</a> evoked by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Popular-Culture-John-Fiske/dp/041559653X">popular culture</a> is a way of poking fun at authority, undermining the power of politicians or big corporates. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://twitter.com/Rukshana786/status/1238032974005878785?s=20">some of the jokes</a> about the coronavirus it’s clear that South Africans are laughing – perhaps nervously – at the government’s promises that it has everything under control. The news that the first confirmed patient returned to South Africa from a ski holiday unleashed <a href="https://twitter.com/Raphaell_Ranx/status/1237662350276276224?s=20">jokes</a> about the racial profile of the disease. Joking about <a href="https://twitter.com/officialcollinc/status/1237681201789521920?s=20">rich jetsetters</a> becoming infected or <a href="https://twitter.com/KigzKamau/status/1236141452801044480?s=20">making fun</a> of African remedies and responses, may be a way to take the sting out of racial inequality and economic hierarchies.</p>
<h2>Psychological reasons</h2>
<p>Laughter and humour could be used as a coping mechanism. Media coverage of COVID-19 can <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-how-media-coverage-of-epidemics-often-stokes-fear-and-panic-131844">stoke fear and panic</a> through their choice of words (“killer virus”) or images (scary microscopic virus pictures, empty shelves in supermarkets). The sheer stream of reporting and daily tally of the infected and the dead can also be <a href="https://www.ascmediarisk.org/2020/03/epidemic-and-information-turmoil/">overwhelming and confusing</a>. </p>
<p>Given the various other risks that South Africans have to contend with on a daily basis, making jokes about this added thing to worry about may help to take the sting out of the new, unknown threat. </p>
<p>Several <a href="https://twitter.com/Barbara53547705/status/1238358814354821121?s=20">jokes</a> on Twitter named these other threats, as a reminder that while COVID-19 is serious, the other concerns should not be lost from sight. For instance, <a href="https://twitter.com/Distancedfrom/status/1235943948855767040?s=20">a jibe</a> about the coronavirus having to show its proof of residence at the port of entry hinted at the high levels of violent xenophobia in South Africa.</p>
<p>Humour in this context is a way of showing resilience and agency. Although some Twitter users remarked that the humorous tone might still change when the seriousness of the disease <a href="https://twitter.com/PapiHlase/status/1237769298929750023?s=20">hits home</a>, the jokes largely had an optimistic tone. As one person <a href="https://twitter.com/m_zalay/status/1235807002833674240">posted on Twitter</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We did it with Ebola, we did it with Listeriosis, we did it with Boko Haram, we definitely will did (sic) it with #CoronavirusinSA can I get an Amen!</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/iTinyiko_/status/1235637778882474001?s=20">Another</a> was more fatalistic:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Ronas is here to wipe us out but at least we will die laughing.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The downside</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the prevalence of jokes and satire can also spread misinformation, as audiences don’t always know what information to trust and what to just laugh about. <a href="https://theconversation.com/study-sheds-light-on-scourge-of-fake-news-in-africa-106946">Research in Africa</a> shows very high levels of exposure to misinformation.</p>
<p>This is a cause for concern in the current COVID-19 epidemic. </p>
<p>And this is why it’s important to take popular culture seriously. If we understand how people use media in their everyday life, or how they use humour to allay their fears, it is easier to find appropriate responses to those concerns. The fight against the “infodemic” of misinformation cannot be won by only insisting on fact-checking and rational debate. </p>
<p>In Africa, the role of humour and jokes in everyday popular culture is deadly serious.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Herman Wasserman 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>Jokes and satire can build resilience but also spread misinformation as people don’t always know what is trustworthy and what is just funny.Herman Wasserman, Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251662019-10-11T15:52:20Z2019-10-11T15:52:20ZWhat ‘Coleen Rooney vs Rebekah Vardy’ tells us about contemporary gender politics<p>The furore over the apparent betrayal of Coleen Rooney by her friend Rebekah Vardy – who <a href="https://time.com/5695895/coleen-rooney-rebekah-vardy-instagram-leaks-statement/">is accused</a> of leaking private information about the Rooney family to The Sun newspaper – has generated reams of British media coverage, conversation and commentary in just a few days.</p>
<p>Rooney is married to <a href="https://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/2019101078939/wayne-rooney-breaks-silence-inspiring-instagram-message/">former England football star Wayne</a>, while Rebekah’s husband is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/jamie-vardy">England player Jamie</a>. The pair are stalwarts of the UK’s tabloid media and barely a day does by without a mention of one or the other as they pursue an expensive lifestyle in full view of the paparazzi.</p>
<p>But nobody was prepared for the media storm that would break when Coleen Rooney alleged on Twitter that, suspecting someone close to her had been leaking family secrets to the tabloid press, she had conducted an elaborate “sting” which appeared to suggest Rebekah Vardy had been the culprit. Vardy has denied this vehemently and is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/10/rebekah-vardy-hires-it-experts-over-coleen-rooney-leak-claims">reported to be hiring investigators</a> to prove her innocence.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1181864136155828224"}"></div></p>
<p>The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/09/coleen-rooney-rebekah-vardy-twitter-wag-wars">described the spat</a> as “the best day on Twitter of all time”. The Daily Mirror was quick to line up those celebrities who were on “Team Rooney” and “Team Vardy” in what journalists have dubbed the “<a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/celebs-take-sides-wagatha-christie-20558873">Wagatha Christie saga</a>”. It’s surely one of the best headlines of all time. </p>
<p>On one level the affair has provided watchers with the kind of media intrigue and entertainment that comes as a welcome relief in the UK amid the continuing social divisions caused by Brexit. But we might also stop to ask ourselves why this spectacularised “spat” between “WAGs” (an acronym for wives and girlfriends of footballers) has been seized upon with such obvious and unrestrained glee. Why does tabloid media culture revel so deeply in “cat-fights” between women and what is it about the media spectacle of women at each other’s throats that prompts such relish and delight? </p>
<p>In media culture more broadly, women’s friendship is frequently represented as characterised by jealousy, competition, and rivalry. It’s as if meaningful solidarity, friendship and love between women can never authentically exist. This is not new – think of the intense scrutiny of <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/katy-perry-1984">Taylor Swift and Katy Perry’s</a> “cat-fight”, or the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/feud-bette-davis-went-war-joan-crawford/">long-term feud</a> between Hollywood stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, which has become mythologised in histories of the Golden Age of Hollywood. </p>
<p>Even before mass media culture, fairy tales were replete with battles between witches and fair maidens – these stories are hundreds of years old but continue to be returned to and adapted from Disney to pantomimes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there is no shortage of representations of genuine male friendship – consider the prevalence of the “<a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/girl-friends-film-lifelike-female-friendships-big-screen">buddy movie</a>”. But in much of the contemporary modern cultural imaginary, female friendship is often understood as illusory or a sham – as merely a superficial pretence of supportive companionship that conceals ruthless self-interest or the willingness to throw one another under the bus at the first opportunity.</p>
<h2>Light relief</h2>
<p>The timing of “WAGatha Christie” couldn’t be more perfect. With daily headlines dominated by the relentlessly grim news of Brexit and the bickering, infighting and inability to make decisions by a cohort of powerful (mainly) male politicians, this feud is providing a distraction. To many it’s a welcome respite from the seemingly more serious sphere of mainstream politics and the Brexit negotiations which will have a very real and lasting consequences.</p>
<p>The media vortex surrounding Rooney and Vardy has reinvigorated the notion of the WAG, which was at its zenith in celebrity culture about 13 years ago during the <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/world-cup-2018/6676593/2006-world-cup-wags/">2006 World Cup</a>. This suggests that perhaps the celebrity status of the WAG is not as fleeting as we might have assumed, and what we are witnessing is its evolution and adaptation in a digital context. Platforms such as Twitter and Instagram have of course been instrumental in the unravelling of the WAGatha Christie media storm.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1181890145546571776"}"></div></p>
<p>What this <a href="https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/feud-for-thought-the-rise-of-brand-banter-on-social-media/553995/">context of social media</a> has facilitated is an acceleration and intensification of the gossip surrounding female celebrity cat-fights. Gossip now emerges in real-time – reactions and responses are instantaneous. </p>
<p>The digital architecture and culture of social media incites “bitchiness”, trolling and judgement, while the power to produce gossip is no longer solely in the hands of tabloid journalists and celebrity gossip bloggers. Celebrities themselves are now an accepted part of the gossip-producing industry, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2018/04/02/brands-branding-and-celebrities/">using social media as a platform</a> to reveal their “private” lives and scandals that have long been sought-after by the celebrity audience since the early days of Hollywood.</p>
<h2>Coleen, Mrs Who?</h2>
<p>But if some things have changed since the emergence of the WAG, other things have remained depressingly the same. These women’s identities are still defined primarily – or even exclusively – by their relationships to men: they are wives and girlfriends before they are anything else. </p>
<p>This is part of a much longer history in which women’s lives and identities are trivialised, objectified and made subservient to those of men. But a feminist perspective can help us to reimagine what women’s identities and female friendships can be. </p>
<p>You only have to look at the way the word “gossip” has come to mean a kind of bitchy and backstabbing talk between women. As the feminist theorist <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-women-witch-hunting-sylvia-federici-caliban">Silvia Federici has shown</a>, historically this word had a very different, much less pejorative meaning. Until the rise of the witch-hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries, it signified female friendship, attachment and solidarity – the opposite of the ways it is now used.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1181883632346161153"}"></div></p>
<p>It was the communal power of women’s friendship that was seen as deeply threatening and so which needed to be destroyed: the word “gossip” therefore became a way to pit women against one another and to destroy the bonds between them. In being invited to “pick a team” – Rooney or Vardy – we are playing a clever and insidious game that patriarchy has set the rules for.</p>
<p>It is in patriarchy’s interests for women’s friendship to be understood as competitive, atomised and inauthentic. So when we buy into the narratives of cat-fights, bitch-fests and jealous rivalries, we are in many ways doing patriarchy’s work for it. What would it mean for us to refuse to “pick a team”, and decline to play by the rules of a game in which women can only ever be the losers?</p>
<p></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We might lap up the spectacle of two high-profile women fighting publicly, but when do you ever hear about men having ‘cat-fights’?Jilly Kay, Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of LeicesterMelanie Kennedy, Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1136562019-03-31T19:13:53Z2019-03-31T19:13:53ZFrom irreverence to irrelevance: the rise and fall of the bad-tempered tabloids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266471/original/file-20190329-139352-3eylba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Refusing to change with the times, Australia's tabloids now cater to an aged, monocultural and alienated constituency.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Kick this mob out” shouted the front page of The Daily Telegraph reporting the calling of the 2013 election in which Tony Abbott was to triumph. Restraint and modesty have never been the hallmarks of tabloid newspapers. Sometimes they celebrate what they claim is their impact – most famously when the London Sun proclaimed “It’s The Sun wot won it” after the 1992 Conservative victory.</p>
<p>But it is a long time since any tabloid newspaper could plausibly claim such a role because their reach has shrunk so markedly. In 1972, the biggest-selling newspaper in Australia was The Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne, with a daily circulation of 648,000. Its stablemate, the Melbourne Herald, was the biggest-selling afternoon newspaper with 498,000.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/christchurch-attacks-provide-a-new-ethics-lesson-for-professional-media-113840">Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media</a>
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<p>By 2018, the print circulation of the merged Herald Sun was around 303,000, still the largest in the country. However, in 1972, Melbourne’s population was 2.6 million and by 2018 it was 4.9 million. The Sun’s circulation in 1972 was around one-quarter of Melbourne’s population. In 2018, the Herald Sun’s was about one-14th.</p>
<h2>Sure, business models changed, but so did the tabloids’ temper</h2>
<p>This is a stunning story of commercial decline and failure. Of course, over the past two decades, all major media have had their business models challenged by the digital revolution. But the decline of newspapers in relation to population had already been going on for several decades, partly because the first source of news for most people had become radio and television. My guess is that tabloid newspapers are the least likely of all legacy media to thrive in the digital age.</p>
<p>Beyond the changing technologies, where tabloid newspapers are on the wrong side of history, at least part of the reason for their decline is the changes in their own product. Viewed over decades, we can see how these papers, and especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, have been on an editorial trajectory that is self-defeating and has added to their decline. Compare the Herald Sun of 2019 with the Melbourne Sun of the early 1970s.</p>
<p>One of Australia’s most distinguished journalists, Adrian Deamer, the first successful editor of The Australian until Murdoch fired him in 1971, later a senior legal adviser to Fairfax newspapers, had once been an editorial executive at The Sun. In the 1980s, he told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Sun was extremely competent in its coverage of news. It was short and sharp, limited background. The Sun was then a serious tabloid, not like the Sydney afternoon newspapers. Its news covered the same things as The Age but sharper. It had a very wide, comprehensive coverage of the news, although it didn’t disregard trivia. It knew Melbourne better than any other paper knew its city. It presented Melbourne to Melbourne. It was very close to its readers. A remarkable association.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tabloid newspapers are much less close to their readers now. One indicator suggesting this is how human interest news has changed. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17512781003642956">My research showed</a> that in The Sun/Herald-Sun and Daily Telegraph, human interest stories covering “ordinary people” comprised 10% of all stories in 1956 but only 3% by 2006. Entertainment-related and celebrity stories had grown from 3% to 12% in the same period. </p>
<p>Perhaps there were changes in public demand, but equally it was much cheaper to feed off the spin of the entertainment industry than invest in the reporters necessary to engage with community news.</p>
<h2>The columnist as outrage machine</h2>
<p>Perhaps the clearest sign of change is in the papers’ major columnists. For more than a decade, The Sun’s columnist was Keith Dunstan. His “A Place in the Sun” was marked by warmth and humour, eloquence and lightness of touch.</p>
<p>Today their major columnist is Andrew Bolt. Bolt is the highest-profile person to have been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/bolt-found-guilty-of-breaching-discrimination-act/3025918">convicted of breaching Section 18C</a> of the Racial Discrimination Act in an error-filled article full of bile against his Aboriginal targets.</p>
<p>Recently, Paul Barry on <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/islam/10936140">Media Watch called out</a> some of Bolt’s Islamophobia </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And if our politicians will not speak frankly and protect us from Islam, watch out for a civil war. A frightened public will not put up with this for much longer, and will defend themselves. (15-7-2016)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On March 25 this year, ten days after the massacre, <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/christchurch-do-the-greens-have-blood-on-their-hands/news-story/c1b893d2b43ba280840f19cca2d64c1c">his headline</a> was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Christchurch: Do the Greens have blood on their hands?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The default setting for Bolt and his fellow columnists is outrage. There is rarely consideration, let alone appreciation, of contrasting views. Rather there is dismissal of climate “warmists”, political correctness, the left and so forth. Waging culture war is their core business.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266472/original/file-20190329-139368-391f8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The London Sun famously boasted of its electoral clout in 1992.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today’s tabloids are the result of a long editorial trajectory. Murdoch’s London Sun is often blamed for many of the sins of modern tabloids. It had the page three girl, was irresponsible in much of its reporting, and full of marketing gimmicks. But that paper for most of the 1970s, under Larry Lamb, had a refreshing cheekiness and humour. After another decade under Kelvin Mackenzie, the humour was gone. Its politics and its view of the world were consistently nasty.</p>
<p>Perhaps there was a marketing logic to this. Its main competitor in circulation, the Daily Mail, set out on a similar course denigrating racial minorities, calling for more punitive approaches to crime, and denouncing those it disagreed with.</p>
<p>Paul Dacre’s last memorable front page before he ended his 26-year reign as editor was about the Supreme Court judges who ruled that the executive government had to get parliamentary approval for Brexit. <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3903436/Enemies-people-Fury-touch-judges-defied-17-4m-Brexit-voters-trigger-constitutional-crisis.html">The story</a> screamed: </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266655/original/file-20190330-70986-gk5lnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=992&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GuerillaWire</span></span>
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<h2>You’re either with us or against us</h2>
<p>Polarisation runs through the way tabloids frame the news – between triumph and disaster; heroes and villains; common sense and absurdity. These papers offer their readers certainty and simplicity rather than ambiguity and complexity; they give them the opportunity to vent their anger at the modern world.</p>
<p>We should not romanticise the old Herald and Weekly Times newspapers. Their editorial outlook was rooted in a smug conservatism. Their international coverage was simplistic and stereotyped. They were unresponsive to emerging issues on the political agenda – including feminism, multiculturalism, environmentalism and consumerism. They were indifferent to many of the injustices in society. </p>
<p>But there was a tolerance and occasionally a generosity of spirit that is markedly lacking in their successors. Moreover, they believed in honest reporting. This in addition to their large audiences which gave them a political relevance today’s tabloids lack. </p>
<p>Probably the most important journalist in the Canberra press gallery during the Whitlam government was Laurie Oakes, working for the Melbourne Sun. It is impossible to imagine any Murdoch tabloid reporter having that centrality today.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-right-wing-media-have-given-a-megaphone-to-reactionary-forces-in-the-liberal-party-101982">How the right-wing media have given a megaphone to reactionary forces in the Liberal Party</a>
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<p>Bill Shorten, unlike his predecessors Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-28/bill-shorten-turns-down-meeting-with-rupert-murdoch/10755892">recently been reported</a> as deciding not to have dinner with Rupert Murdoch in New York to pay homage. This is a sound political judgment. Very few swinging voters are reading the Murdoch tabloids. </p>
<p>The papers are so set in their anti-Labor ways that there is little prospect of meaningful change in their news coverage. Moreover, the anti-Labor diet has been so constant that if the readers have not yet been persuaded to go against Labor it is hard to imagine what future coverage will make them do so.</p>
<p>Much of their coverage of the coming campaign can be anticipated. There will be unflattering photoshops of Labor or Green politicians. Each day will bring either a triumph for the government or starkly presented disasters and scandals for Labor and the Greens. But shrillness should not be mistaken for relevance.</p>
<p>For a long time, the tabloids have given up trying to engage with the range of views in a pluralistic and dynamic society. Instead they have practised ghetto journalism, catering to an aged, monocultural, alienated constituency. </p>
<p>Commercially, this is the equivalent of a political party knowing it is bound for defeat trying to save the furniture. Politically, it means their coverage is full of sound and fury, but signifying almost nothing of electoral relevance.</p>
<p><em>This piece has been corrected. It initially read that the “Kick this mob out” front page was on the day of the 2013 election. In fact, it was the day after the election was called.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>
Rodney Tiffen is Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Australian tabloid newspapers were once an important political force, the “voice of the people”. But these days relevance has been replaced by shrillness.Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed 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/729272017-02-20T15:22:48Z2017-02-20T15:22:48ZHillsborough: Liverpool FC has got rid of The Sun but it cannot rid The Sun of Liverpool FC<p>A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/feb/10/liverpool-ban-the-sun-newspaper-over-hillsborough-coverage">total ban</a> has been put on The Sun by Liverpool football club, 28 years after the city started a mass boycott of the newspaper for running a false story about supporters’ behaviour during the Hillsborough tragedy. It means that its sports reporters no longer have access to football games and training grounds. But the tabloid will still find ways of covering Liverpool FC. </p>
<p>The ban came after new inquests into the Hillsborough disaster in 2016 found that all 96 supporters were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36138337">unlawfully killed</a>. The Sun had already been refused exclusive player and manager interviews for 28 years but following the inquests the Merseyside club also barred the paper from its Anfield stadium and Melwood training ground after being approached by the Total Eclipse of The Sun campaign group and following consultation with Hillsborough victims’ families. </p>
<p>In response, The Sun released a statement which read in part: “The Sun can reassure readers this won’t affect our full football coverage”. The newspaper can make this claim because sports journalists are no longer purely reliant on firsthand information to get their news and can easily locate alternative secondhand, mainly mediated sources in ways that were not possible in 1989. Far from ideal, certainly, but The Sun will see it as better than nothing. Clubs can deny access but they cannot control information flows in 2017.</p>
<p>As it stands, The Sun will still be able to cover Liverpool’s away games from other stadiums. The newspaper can still run live blogs, match reports and quote pieces from home matches because sports journalists will be able to access live TV feeds. The Sun is also a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/22/sky-sports-signs-deal-for-near-live-online-premier-league-highlights">co-holder</a> of the Rupert Murdoch-controlled rights to online highlights, shared with The Times and Sky Sports. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157307/original/image-20170217-10195-1iurynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=773&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 boycott.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/36593372@N04/6932997707/in/photolist-byDqFe-6wR7kb-oranrv-9DXzFR-7aX2rT-7aX33a-7b1Q4o-7b1R8o-7aX2iB-nXEi8L-FGnUyN-7b1QQd-7aX2Y4-7aX1Lt-Gcigz8-bWR4fs-7aX1SX-7b1Qvh-Cq7tBQ-HkdYRa-Hke6CX-FgeyoS-HomFvu-ehH58a-ehNMco-b8PkrZ-b8PiN6-6wR2XN-6nc1SB-oHBBof-or8FxB-oHAMCL-da7a7D-b8Pix2-6oiVsm-ehH5nK-ehH4Ca-b8PnyH-79fJH8-6wR6x5-or8ZSo-ehNMCb-6zW99n-6ngaob-8WnvY-6nwVyg-6fnRsx-P9PG-6g9Eo8-eG1tbN">Mick Baker/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As BBC reporter Simon Stone <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-38933817">noted</a>, Sun reporters will be able to watch Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp’s weekly press conferences on the club’s website. Press conferences also tend to be broadcast live or near-live by Sky Sports News so there is nothing stopping an office-based reporter tweeting or writing a story from the TV broadcast.</p>
<p>This mediated coverage can be underpinned and supplemented by copy from news agencies such as the Press Association, whose reporters have access and provide The Sun and other national newspaper sports desks with story feeds on Liverpool. The Sun sports journalists could also still seek exclusive stories on transfer rumours involving Liverpool players from external sources. </p>
<p>The complete ban simply reinforces the commercial damage that was already being wrought on The Sun by a combination of the city boycott and limited access to the club. The newspaper has already lost millions of pounds in sales and advertising revenue over the past 28 years due to the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_APdCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT252&lpg=PT252&dq=sun+lost+revenue+liverpool+hillsborough&source=bl&ots=KFJkaQNDit&sig=X6ATx4TdO7SiiZFDaYamsK_T9x4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQkqSE2Z7SAhVpJ8AKHcFHAVM4ChDoAQhMMAw#v=onepage&q=sun%20lost%20revenue%20liverpool%20hillsborough&f=false">circulation black hole of Liverpool</a> and will continue to do so. Also, The Sun’s secondhand coverage of the club and difficulty in obtaining exclusives has put it at a huge competitive disadvantage to its rivals. </p>
<p>The Sun will still be determined to cover Liverpool because of its standing as a big club both nationally and globally. The newspaper has always hoped Liverpool fans outside the city would adopt a softer stance. It will also be aware that its digital platforms have global reach and access to a significant overseas Liverpool fan base. Liverpool FC <a href="http://www.liverpoolfc.com/fans/lfc-official-supporters-clubs">claims</a> that 200 official supporters clubs exist across 50 countries.</p>
<p>But why did it take 28 years for Liverpool FC to enforce a complete ban? David Prentice, head of sport at the local newspaper, the Liverpool Echo, <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sn-liverpool-took-28-years-12587844">explains</a> that, in 1989, sports journalists had built close and trustworthy relationships with club contacts and were seen as entirely separate from the news desk. But the outcomes of the Hillsborough inquests in Warrington last April demanded more accountability.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/157312/original/image-20170217-10223-1k18nzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The number of people that lost their lives as a result of Hillsborough.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/motti82/3444478511/in/photolist-6fnRsx-6nwVyg-6g9Eo8-P9PG-eG1tbN-bWR4fs-FNodaT-6hJJUK-a1adN-ngTAcj-HkdYRa-Hke6CX-HomFvu-GvRSeD-Hke1oP-Hke2aZ-HkdZ5X-Hke3iv-HomxdC-GvRTBZ-HrjD7X-HhR7Gs-HrjVfi-HhRbzs-H23t39-HhR9LC-HomyfY-H23qFq-H23qCj-GvRUax-HomxAG-GvRTXi-HhR7SC-GvKynj-HkdZvB-HhR6G1-HhR6gm-HhR68A-GvKBYs-Hke6NB-H23snb-GvKA7G-Homztu-Homxo7-HomwqL-Hke1Sz-HhR7BN-HhR61w-GvRSir-HrjJme">Joe Mott/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s also worth adding that it’s now a more straightforward decision for football clubs to ban newspapers. Top flight clubs in 1989 would have seen sports journalists as key intermediaries between them and supporters - not any more. National newspapers used to be relied on for publicity but declining print circulations have undermined their value to clubs. The Sun today has a newspaper circulation of 1.6m compared to more than 4m at the time of the Hillsborough disaster.</p>
<p>Also, the traditional journalist-source relationship has been disrupted by the fact that newspaper organisations are now a form of competition to clubs. The Sun’s website may pull in <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/online-abcs-telegraph-decision-to-charge-for-premium-content-sees-website-overtaken-by-fast-growing-sun/">3.5m daily average unique browsers</a> but Liverpool FC has its own social media account, website and TV channel. It wants to publish and broadcast its own exclusive interviews with players and managers directly to fans. Plus, the club can control its message rather than run the risk of journalists adding spin or putting out counter messages. </p>
<p>Newspaper sports journalists are kept much more at arm’s length from sources in an age of sanitised, carefully controlled mixed zones, press conferences and briefings. Source relations are no longer defined by cultivating contacts and building relationships and trust, but by economic arrangements such as the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31379128">£5 billion combined domestic TV rights deal</a> between the Premier League and Sky Sports and BT Sport. Print journalists do not have the same closeness to professional sporting world that they enjoyed in 1989.</p>
<p>Liverpool FC has finally got rid of The Sun - but, in a 2017 media landscape, it cannot rid The Sun of Liverpool FC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McEnnis worked as a sports journalist for The Sun between 2000 and 2009 but is no longer in employment with the newspaper </span></em></p>Liverpool FC has imposed a complete ban on The Sun but it cannot prevent the tabloid newspaper from continuing to cover the club.Simon McEnnis, Senior Lecturer in Sports Media, University of BrightonLicensed 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/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/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/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.