Stopping bugging the press Hugh Grant – they know better than you do
Devil’s Advocate is a regular column providing an alternate viewpoint on a topical subject of the week.
Ah, Mr Hugh Grant, your intentions were almost certainly noble when you envisaged the idea behind the article that you submitted to the New Statesman. It must have been so exciting when you embarked on your super-secret mission, playing James Bond as you went about using a hidden tape recorder to trap ex-News of the World journo Paul McMullan in a web of his own making.
How satisfying it must felt when he blabbed pretty freely about the apparently illegal techniques the press have used to expose royalty, celebs and whoever else they’ve had in their crosshairs .
But what you forgot about – yes, what you really should have paid more consideration to before embarking on your fanciful mission – is the press’s ferocious tenacity when it comes to championing the truth.
Oh wait, did I say ‘championing the truth’? I meant to say ‘protecting their own backs at any possible cost’. For that’s the only plausible explanation as to why there’s been such a distinct lack of coverage when it’s come to the phone-tapping scandal over the past months, which has steadily become broader in scope and ever the more damning.
If it had been members of the police or of some other profession who had been performing similar acts, you could bet your life on it that there’d have been breathless wall-to-wall coverage, opinion columns littered with pointless commentary wherever you looked. And if it had been politicians up to their dirty tricks, by goodness, the tabloids certainly wouldn’t have stood for it – “Off with their heads!” they’d have cried. They wouldn’t let the public suffer such shenanigans at their expense, oh no…
In such hypothetical scenarios defenders of the press might try and argue that the circumstances are different, that those are employees of the state or representatives elected by the public being talked about. In the process they’d quite conveniently forget that their product is purchased on a daily basis by readers eager to get themselves a glimpse of what’s actually going on in the world, not to have a blind eye turned to anything that doesn’t fit in with the messenger’s own particular worldview .
Mind you, such myopic reportage isn’t exactly an uncommon happening, is it? Polls are misreported, scientific evidence misconstrued, quotes misused, whatever fits the agenda really. It’s been the same as regards the coverage of celebs, which is why there’s been so much gnashing of teeth at the idea of privacy laws being used to prevent reportage of a certain footballer’s latest affair, or some cabinet member’s repugnant sexual predilection.
Why on earth should the courts ever be able to restrict freedom of the press? What you need to realise, Mr Grant, is that the press know better than you, or better than anyone else, really. As far as they can get away with it, they feel they every right to be a law unto themselves. They know what their readers want, regardless of whether the readers know that that’s what they want, or would choose to want, or could ever imagine wanting to want. They imagine that they answer to their readers, except they never open up sufficiently to allow the readers to ask the right questions in the first place.
It’s this omniscience of the press that makes it perfectly okay to snoop about the private lives of the stars, laughing uproariously as they reported your dalliance with a hooker, while ensuring that they protect their own, maintaining silence whenever issues that ought to be condemned by the Press Complaints Commission are blithely swatted away instead. It’s all for the common good, even if no-one else realises it.
For decades now the press has been able to set its own agenda, taking a line and sticking to it, realising the only dissenting voice could come from rivals, and that there were some lines that wouldn’t be crossed, and certain people who couldn’t be touched. How very cosy.
Now it could be argued that nowadays the proliferation of social networking sites have left such publications increasingly toothless. To take a recent example, the tabloids and most other hastily assembled hacks appeared to unanimously rule that Charlie Sheen has lost it and is on his way to an early grave – except that in our current day and age Sheen is able to take to Twitter, put forth his side of the story, acquire a massive following and become one of the strangest success stories of the year so far . They’ve already mapped out his character arc, that good old rise and fall, then rise again – except that Sheen isn’t playing those games.
But no, the press won’t take that! So, going back to your own circumstance, you have a fantastically meaty story Mr Grant, but most people won’t be allowed the privilege to read about that, even if it is the most entertaining story to have come out all week. At best they’ll have had their attention drawn in showbiz sections to the claim reported in your article that some unnamed TV actress or other apparently used to be a “street walker”, this focus on a tangential titbit purposely obfuscating the main thrust of your writing and concentrating instead on the one piece of salacious gossip that was contained within a pretty sober piece.
So victory for the press, but of course! And who cares if circulation figures are dwindling, audiences are ever more disbelieving and employees are being bundled off to the nearest clink for behaviour commonly believed to be reprehensible? After all, for another few months those at the top can cling on to the notion that they still wield the power that they used to, that they’re above the law or the people who buy their papers, and that they’re the real Kingmakers. Who knows, play their cards right and they might get to go play polo with the Prime Minister or some minor members of the royal family before their businesses go bust or shrink into complete irrelevance.
Meanwhile you’ve crashed and burned, Mr Grant, your findings ignored by the great and the good.* At most you’ve made one aged and likely harmless TV actress extremely worried that her past may soon come back to haunt her, most likely rendering her a nervous wreck. Some result. See, the press really do know better than you. Mind you, even if they didn’t, they’ve probably got a private investigator on speed dial who could change all that in a jiffy…
* Even if those who’ve discovered your handiwork through word of mouth are now full of newfound respect and admiration for you, generating a level of goodwill not seen since you loped onto cinema screens in Four Weddings and a Funeral. “Bravo, sir,” I bet they’d say. Bravo.
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