Express Delivery

Mediabollocks returns this week after over a month of slumber, having been awoken only momentarily by wonderfully overblown reports of storms lashing and bashing our beautiful isle. It probably was a case of “don’t shoot the messenger!” as after all, the Met Office seems terrified of neglecting to warn us of any forthcoming apocalypse. But there’s nothing our broadcast journalists like more than donning their Berghauses and heading for the nearest inundation. Find an old lady (or maybe a horse) in a rowing boat and you’ve got TV gold.

What finally raised mediaboy from his dreams is today’s Daily Express. The apology to the McCanns is interesting on so many levels. This is a very complex moral and philosophical subject as well as an issue of freedom of speech. If it is true that the Express and Star papers collectively published over 100 finger-pointing stories about Jerry and Kate then no one can claim this was a mistake. As one commentator pointed out this morning, this must have been a full blown conspiracy. You don’t mistakenly make the same mistake one hundred times. Surely someone was making a strategic decision to take this angle?

Has the Express group been alone in taking this line? There have been nasty insinuations from all corners of the media along with, it must be said, similar cynicism in bars, pubs and kitchens all over the country. What everyone seems to have forgotten is the concept, in English law at least, of innocent until proven guilty. So even though the parents remain suspects we should at least remember that we owe them the benefit of our support until proved otherwise. But that doesn’t sell newspapers or generate page views. Or at least it didn’t after a while. mediaboy doesn’t know when the tide turned, but turn it did and here we now are once again with the press covered in its own shit. Of course, ‘the public’ ate the same shit as voraciously as a hungry bear.

On the other hand, does this create any precedents for gagging the press? Perhaps this argument will be trotted out once the moral uproar has subsided so we should remember that figure of one hundred. It took what looks like a sustained campaign to force the McCanns to turn to the law. mediaboy fears that the press will remain free to print the occasional white lie or complete fabrication about any one of us whenever it pleases. Other innocent parties with less money and influence will have little or no redress time and time again. Let’s face it; well heeled parties with plenty of influence will have the same problems.

A line will not be drawn today. There won’t be a tidal wave of principled, sensitive, intelligent reporting. Today’s Daily Express has at least 4 pages on “The Warped World of Heather”. And no doubt we’ll lap it up.



Today mediaboy issues a plea for a collective decision to abandon the phrase "root and branch review" and recommends Ask The Parrot by Richard Stark along with Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.