I still like the redtops
Bawdy tittle-tattle has always been part of our press – let's not lose it
Suzanne Moore
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 July 2011 20.20 BST
I can't think why, but certain episodes of The Sopranos have been brought to mind the last few days. Remember the one where Tony Soprano tells his consigliere: "Silv, break it down for 'em. What two businesses have traditionally been recession- proof since time immemorial?" Silvio Dante replies in his pragmatically deadly way: "Certain aspects of showbusiness and our thing."
Our thing. Our thing in The Sopranos is referred to as "waste-management". Our thing here and now is what, exactly? A nexus of politics, power, criminality and journalism that some, but not all by any means, are up in arms about.
Journalism obviously is my thing. Well, some kinds of journalism. I wish I could say it was the Nick Davies kind, but it isn't. Does this mean that now all hackery is forever tainted? Unfair and untrue if so. Phone hacking, which at first seemed kind of nerdily obsessive and mostly involved celebrities we didn't much care about, turns out to be a lot more than exposing a few unsuitable "romps" with lap-dancers. I look back over the years and wonder if I have ever written commentary on a story that has been obtained this way. It is hard to imagine now, that I and indeed many broadsheet journalists, haven't.
It's a strange time indeed to be whatever it is I am. A columnist, a writer, a leech. Only this week I have been called a fantasist, a member of the elite and a trollop. Only some of this is correct. Strange divisions have opened up and not ones that I am in any way comfortable with. Not all politicians are corrupt, nor are all journalists – whoever their proprietor. Not all tabloid people are bad and all broadsheet types angels. Still, it must be true that all estate agents are purely evil, surely?
Those who saw the closing of the News of the World as some kind of victory seemed to me terribly myopic. Do we want more or fewer newspapers? Well, go to a country that only has one paper – or even the US, where news is surprisingly local – and you will see how media control rests on limited, partial information. Did I buy the News of the World? No. Did I feel sorry for the people made unemployed through no fault of their own? Yes, just as I do when any workforce is suddenly told they are finished.
The spinning of this as a victory for decency by some wronged celebs was laughable and at times offensive. Steve Coogan is to my mind an utter genius but I don't want him regulating the press. I think Hugh Grant has made a little go a long way and I think Max Mosley is odd, to say the least. The replacing of an old media class by a new one is unedifying. Jemima Khan may have her heart in the right place but after one week's work experience on the New Statesman she was given an editorship at the Independent. That day many young journalism students wrote to me asking me why they were bothering with, you know, training. For some time I have watched the arrival of the new media class, rich, connected, unaccountable, but hey, let's not worry now. Ding dong! The witch is dead!
Murdoch is on the run, or so we are meant to think. Resignation is not enough. Sorry, I won't be convinced until Rebekah Brooks appears shorn of her flaming curls and recites Yeats's view of journalists: "There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness." As MPs flex their newly pumped muscles and even Ed Miliband has come out of his vegetative state, the details don't look good for Cameron. Riding in the mornings with Ms Brooks, briefed in the afternoons by Mr Coulson. Their guys working for the police. The police appear to be working for Gene Hunt. All very bada bing.
Brown's wounded howling means little. New Labour were so much at Murdoch's beck and call, their quick trips to Australia meant they had to knock themselves out with sleeping pills just to get through. Yet here pops up Alastair Campbell to lecture us on truth and ethics. Pass the sick bag. At the height of their powers, which great institution did New Labour attack? News International? No, the BBC. Remember that. Much of the press, too, were craven on Iraq, as they were on the City.
Do the public remember then? Well, we were busy with gossip; bawdy and lewd tittle-tattle has always been part of our press. Good, because actually I don't despise the public or want to be part of any "left" that does. I still write for the Mail on Sunday and if you want to get tribal about it, I say ignore that readership at your peril.
When I saw George Monbiot's proposals for how it should all be my heart sank. I am afraid I could not get past page three of any paper he edited. Call me common, but I still like some bang for my buck. Does Monbiot care about Cheryl enough?
What amuses me and some of the public – mischief – has been entirely ignored in this high-minded debate because public taste may not be suitably bourgeois. Is everyone cancelling their subscriptions to Sky Sports? No.
So let's agree. We need to clean up our act, but it is about much more than having a PCC with actual bite. And please forgive me for mentioning that post-Marxist Louis Althusser (yes, I know he was mental and killed his wife) but he understood what is key now: "Ideology has a material existence". Murdoch knows this. What has happened is that the repressive apparatus of the state (the police) have been working with the ideological apparatus of the state (the media) in a deal brokered by politicians.
The answer is not regulation by the state or a little tidy up then. It is this: bust open journalistic practice. Break the lobby system by which politicians keep feral hacks domesticated. Stop spin. Stop free stuff. Yes, that's you fashion editors, free holiday travel people. Yes, that's the end of that industry made of nothingness:
PR.
Stop politics being about what can be sold. Then journalists won't have to sell it. The press has enough to contend with now with WikiLeaks and the blogosphere. What matters is the public, and there is no reason why ethics and entertainment are mutually exclusive. We do want to be titillated, yes, and there is nothing wrong with that. But titillated with the truth. The truth is that the predators have invaded the state itself and it has pretended to control them, but clearly hasn't – financiers, the press, the police, and its own politicians.
Opposition to the failure of neo-liberal policy was always going to come from the least expected place and this it. Now.
Regard this as a giant kiss-and-tell on how our system really works. But don't forget, whatever the media tells you, this is one we are all still paying for daily.
Bawdy tittle-tattle has always been part of our press ? let's not lose it | Comment is free | The Guardian
I still like the redtops
Linear Mode
