The Mail shouts about a free press, but used that freedom to run two celebrity stories that were either false or pointless
The Observer, Sunday 13 July 2014
The Daily Mail runs another resounding editorial: "Only a free press can lift the lid on scandal."
Though a few dossiers short of a load, this is at least a good point. The Mail plays a bravura role whenever press freedom is threatened, including the supposed right to be forgotten. But do ordinary readers judge by deeds as well as by words alone? Did they choke when, that selfsame day, a story about George Clooney's fiancée and her family was withdrawn apologetically after an irate George dismantled it? And did they gag over half a front page given to "hollow-eyed, pock-marked … Angelina Jolie, the junkie, captured on camera"?
Captured, that is, in 1999 by a convicted drug dealer who dished his old dirt to the US National Enquirer, which seems to have done a deal with the Mail. Thrill to her "emaciated frame" and "dirt-encrusted fingernails". Wonder how this young, troubled actor went on to have six children with Brad Pitt and travel the charitable world with William Hague. It would all be utterly surprising – if Ms Jolie hadn't talked frankly, years ago, about the "heavier, darker times" in her life. "I didn't die young, so I'm very lucky".
None of this was new, then. Even the drug dealer has peddled his memories before. "Watch the astonishing footage on Mail Online." No thanks. There's no remote scandal here, just grubby leftovers in Jolie's long march (on a suddenly kindlier day two) from "heroin to heroine".
Perhaps UK print Mail and worldwide Mail Online dance to different tunes. Perhaps there isn't a right to be forgotten, any more than American privacy rights can survive moral transfer, via the National Enquirer, to Britain. But there is, surely, an opportunity for redemption, a chance to make a new, better life. You might even call it a human right to be treated with humanity by a free but humane press?
Source - The Guardian - here. -----------------------------------
COMMENT
An attack on free press by The Guardian, calling for a 'free' but, ehem, 'humane press'.
'Humane' and Truth cannot be bedfellows. By extension, nor can 'humane press' and democracy.
The Guardian, as you may recall, published material from the the Edward Snowden stolen data cache that broke the NSA scandal and, as I understand, 'partnered' with other select news sources (rather than a broad range of media outlets), when it began to look as if the data was under threat from UK authorities. The Guardian's data was eventually destroyed, but data in the hands of other news sources appears to still be under the control of those respective sources; and it appears as if the US government has not sought redress.
The Guardian, as a member of the press, ought to be upholding the freedoms of press in the UK and elsewhere around the world, instead of looking to undermine important freedoms with a cheap shot at the Daily Mail.
As far as I am aware, Daily Mail has not publicly stated that they have (a) lied or (b) covered up anything in relation to the Clooney article (they did, however, apologise and state that third-party information was relied on in good faith); action (if any) that may ensue regarding this matter is yet to take place.
In those circumstances -- if this is all there is to the matter at this stage -- it's beyond me how The Guardian can lower itself to cast aspersions merely on the grounds of a 'false' story (that is the subject of a 'source' issue & subject to publication in good faith) and a 'pointless' story, as designated by The Guardian.
Dear me, how inconsiderate of Daily Mail publish a story The Guardian deems 'pointless'!
The right to be forgotten? Biggest con ever thought up. What kind of press gets behind the preposterous UN 'right to be forgotten' censorship of the press, of the internet and of broader freedom of information?
As for 'pointless' celebrity stories? Aren't all celebrity stories pointless; which is the whole point of celebrity stories. LOL.
It seems to me that The Guardian's issue is with the 'quality' of the press (as defined by The Guardian), but The Guardian cannot expect to impose their lofty notions of what is or is not suitable as a topic in the way of celebrity press coverage -- or any other coverage -- upon the press as a whole or, indeed, upon the entire nation.
Whether trashy, 'unimportant', trivial, 'old' news, unsavoury news, embarrassing news -- or whatever kind of news sectors of the press choose to present to their readership -- we should all stand and defend the right of news sources to print as they will (subject to truth and the laws as they stand) and we should also vehemently defend the right of readers to read as much lurid 'tabloid journalism' as they desire.
That's the poster's take on this.
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ADDENDUM
"Though a few dossiers short of a load ..."
It is actually the UK government that is currently short of a dossier:
The UK Home Office has admitted that it can’t find 114 “potentially relevant files” relating to the pedophile scandal engulfing Westminster, in which there are allegations that senior political figures were involved in, or covered up, child sex abuse.
The lost files were part of a dossier compiled in the 1980s by the now deceased Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens and which was passed to the then-Home Secretary Leon Brittan, British media reports.
SOURCE - RT News - here.
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