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Tuesday 13 December 2011

Opinion: The Scumbags Puppetshow.

Ok... I thought I'd got the hang of this blogging lark. Keep it light, dispassionate... amusing if possible. Thus armed I have proceeded to blog virtually fuck all. Seems what I needed is some out and out rage.

Today the News of the World Apologists have been out in force. It was previously reported that deleted voicemails may have given the parents of a murdered schoolgirl 'false' hope. This was blamed on a Private Investigator working on behalf of the News of the World. The previous information was provided by the police, and has since been amended. Now they no longer believe that he deleted those particular voicemails.

Ok... that is the premise. It is not known who deleted those voicemails, it is still believed highly probable that later voicemails were deleted by the P.I, Mulcaire, and the fact that he hacked the phone on their instruction is no longer a matter of any doubt.

So why the Crowing? Why the sickening screams of 'Poor Me' by apologists for the sick rag?

I am not in the industry. I am one of those members of the public that the tabloids always claimed to be 'serving'. I don't know how they work, I am learning now, thanks to the Leveson inquiry. The fact that it wasn't a particular set of voicemails that were deleted is not the issue to me. The fact that they hacked the phone in the first place is.

Now people are oozing out of the woodwork to say that if we'd have known that then, nobody would have wanted the News of the World to close. (To be honest, I don't think most people did... they actually wanted Rebekah Brooks to go.. but she didn't, she decided to close the paper as a, thankfully shortlived, stay of her own execution)

In my opinion this is a ludicrously simplistic view, and more than a little bit insulting to the other victims... Sara Payne? Victims of Terrorist attacks? Was nobody bothered about them? Not according to the apologists... we became a mob over that one incident, and hounded a respectable newspaper to death, over a few voicemails that they never deleted anyway...

No, this view isn't true... people are angry with the all of the hacking. They are angry with the way the management dealt with the hacking. They are angry with the way the media are covering the hacking. They are livid that the 'opinion comics' are telling them what they were 'angry about in the first place'...

Ok.. I understand, not everyone cares about hacking. But I do. I see Tabloids as a blight on the already tarnished reputation of our species. Opinion rags that celebrate idiocy whilst belittling science (Coverage of MMR being a fine example of this) that pursue political narratives under the cloak of impartial news coverage, that feign disgust over artworks whilst leering over young girls (Not 'people'.. almost exclusively female their targets... remember the amazing spectre of an attack piece on Chris Morris's Brass Eye Special, opposite a shot of 13 and 11 year old princess's in bikinis)... That cultivate an audience ignorance, whilst pretending they are responding to it...

I said earlier that most people didn't want the News of The World to close. This is true. I did though. I hate Tabloids. I hate the fact that they claim to be 'News'... They are gossip mags, nothing more and I hope to see them all close soon. If you want a gossip mag, there are plenty there that don't pretend to understand the economic impact of immigration, or European legislation... there are plenty that don't campaign to 'Out' Paedophiles whilst showing titillating pictures of young singing stars... there are plenty that don't straight out 'Make up' stories and then justify them by saying 'people want to read it'... If you want to print fiction... do it... printing fiction isn't unheard of, but tying your fictions to a living, breathing human is vile.

Apologies for this... it is a rant, not well thought out.. but I am genuinely furious. On Twitter I called Tabloids the Scumbags Puppetshow. The argument is that the audience want this kind of stuff so that justifies it, or that those on stage are doing 'bad' stuff and that justifies it... but with the increasing doubt over whether any of it is true it renders it all an illusion. In reality there's someone behind the curtains, pulling the strings and we are only just getting to see how much power they wield in this relationship.

They are the Scumbags, and I hope their whole industry fails.