THERE IS nothing like a good tabloid story to get middle class chins – and fingers – wagging. It seems there is nothing more exciting than the vicarious thrill of complaining about the tabloids and their lowbrow ways. After all, what better way is there to simultaneously engage with the lastest meaningless obsessions while also striking an aloof pose?
Even among many Irish journalists, who should be the staunchest defenders of the right to speak freely, there is a distressing culture of complaint, tut-tutting at the popular press and discreetly supporting whatever censure is handed-down by the authorities in the name of ‘right-thinking’ people.
But complaints about invasion of privacy, matters of taste and dumbing down mask an essential reality: in libel-happy Ireland, home to one of the most onerous rich-man’s gagging-order laws, the tabloids are the first line of defence of a free press.
As Irish journalist Gerard Cunningham who spent years reporting on garda corruption explains, freedom of speech means having the right to say unpleasant things.
“If you look at the landmark free speech cases in the US, the people the ACLU defend are never nice people – they defend neo-Nazis who want to march in Skokie, Illinois and they defend Hustler magazine.
“The attacks on free speech always come for the unpopular things first,” he said.
Late last year the Sunday World’s northern editor, Jim McDowell, was widely criticised for publishing a photograph of the hanging body of a man who killed himself. (1) McDowell and his newspaper were roundly slapped-down by the authorities, both official and self-appointed. Whatever one makes of McDowell’s defence of his choice to run the picture – that it was newsworthy – it is certainly less absurd than the bizarre notion that a photograph of a corpse will encourage people to take their own lives.
Brash, ugly and unapologetic, the Sunday World not only revolutionised Irish newspapers, it was also responsible for some of the most significant investigative reports during the Troubles. The newspaper gets plenty wrong, but it takes risks that are worth taking and upsets the cosy Irish Times consensus in polite society – and for this service alone it is invaluable.
The charge of ‘dumbing down’ is regularly thrown at the tabloids but it rather misses the point. The popular press has always, in part, presented itself as entertainment alongside news. Moreover, it’s not as though the ‘highbrow’ broadsheets are shy of covering the latest celebrity ‘scandals’, casting down moralistic judgements on the likes of Tiger Woods and Ashley Cole or blathering-on about X-Factor and Big Brother.
The assumption that newspapers are, or should aspire to, high-minded and balanced reporting is an ahistorical fallacy. The stance of the detached, neutral reporter – something forth is in favour of, as it happens – is largely a twentieth century construction. Joseph Pulitzer who gave his name to the highest prize in American journalism was notorious for his biased ‘yellow journalism’.
Of course, not all news is good news. Tabloid newspapers’ relentless focus on crime and attempts to whip-up hysteria over issues such as paedophilia clearly distort public debate and lend support to politicians’ continued attempts to legislate every aspect of private life by pointing to extreme and unusual cases as if they were commonplace. Paul Williams, late of the Sunday World, now with the News of the World, is responsible for contributing to an absurd culture of fear over ‘organised crime’ which hugely inflates its significance.
But whatever shrill hysteria is fuelled by tabloid reporting, snobbish denouncing of it is shriller still.
The British left has long complained about the effect the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun has on elections, effectively arguing it hoodwinks working class people to vote against their economic interests.
Happily, the idea that the Sun wins elections is complete bunk. In fact, the Sun trails popular sentiment, switching to support whomever looks most likely to win. The only people who think otherwise are the broadsheet readers who have swallowed the Sun’s own propaganda about its political importance. Liberal hatred of the tabloids is more to do with middle class distaste for the ‘lower orders’ than anything in the papers themselves. The fact that working class readers of the Sun in England have long referred to it as ‘the comic’ should give some indication that its readers’ critical faculties are functioning perfectly well.
One of the most baffling things about dinner party critiques of tabloid journalism is why people who don’t like them pay any attention to them at all. A culture of free speech and a free press doesn’t mean that all ideas are equal or that all voices deserve to be heard. If you don’t like something, don’t read it. If one is concerned about its distortion of the facts, the answer is simple: fight back.
Tabloids, like the rest of the press, should be open to criticism but that criticism should be carried out in the public sphere, not in courtrooms or parliaments. Just because we don’t like something doesn’t mean it should be censored. The tabloids are a canary in the coal mine – when officialdom comes for them you can bet it’s on its way for the rest of the press.
(1) Killing time, Jason Walsh, forth, November 2, 2009
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