An Addiction

There is a huge trial going on at the moment in the UK concerning phone hacking  principally by the News of the World and The Sun.  There is a lot of benefit of hindsight pious tut-tutting about how horrible these people all are. Now I think they are and they and their newspapers are disgusting immoral rags that have done more harm to the country (UK) than any other institution I can think of in the last 30 years. Incidentally, the race to the bottom has infected the Irish press as well. However, there is a great deal of hypocrisy going on.



The public, I feel, are directly culpable and the truth is they lapped up all the sensationalist nonsense for years. If the public didn't want this type of stuff they simply didn't have to buy the papers. If a paper is writing scurrilous stories about the family of a little girl who has been murdered, anybody with a shred of decency would surely say to themselves should I really be encouraging this by continuing to buy this stuff.  But they didn't, they perpetuated the invasive digging because the journalists knew that the public has an insatiable appetite for voyeuristic scandal.  So all this sanctimonious dismay comes across to me as rank hypocrisy and symptomatic of people trying to absolve themselves of guilt.  Scandal sold newspapers and satisfied a gossip addicted public.

Privacy invasion is the new pornography and its seemingly inexorable rise has been going on for years not only in newspapers but via reality TV.  Nothing is sacred and the race to titillate just keeps rocketing on. But people need to hold their hand up at some point and admit you get the media you deserve (also the politicians we deserve but that is for another day).

N.B. Confession time. I really do enjoy I'm a celebrity - it is the only one I watch but I am in there with everybody else laughing at the truly desperate.  Also by way of mitigation - Ant and Dec are a scream.

TO BE CONTINUED

Craig Wilson
18/11/2013