Hypocrisy and the "gutter press"

There has been something of an outcry on Twitter over the Mail On Sunday's rather over-the-top article yesterday on Melanie Schregardus.
Schregardus is an air-traffic controller in Shannon. Some time ago, she wrote a blog post describing the male-dominated atmosphere she encountered when she first started in her job.
The Irish Mail On Sunday picked up on the blog post and pumped it full of steroids. The end result was a piece with the following intro: "Controller's web diary reveals the sexism and filthy language that are rife in the tower".
Schregardus is mortified. Her colleagues will be mortified. I don't blame them at all. If I were her, I would be very annoyed.
However, the scale of the rant going on about "the scandal of gutter media" is another matter entirely.
For any of you who would join in this outrage, yet who are among the large majority of Irish newspaper readers who purchase tabloids or gossip magazines, I say that you are a big bunch of hypocrites.
Day in, day out, you cackle and leer and pore over celebrities' private lives in the media. If anything, a good invasion-of-privacy celebrity story will make you buy a paper.
Of course, there are umpteen alternative media organs available to you that do not go in for this type of journalism (my employer being one of them, though that is irrelevant to the point I'm making).
And do you buy them?
Nope.
Do you swap stories on Twitter, Facebook or Bebo about them?
Nope.
Here's the bottom line: you get the media you deserve.
By all means, pursue a newspaper or a journalist or an editor for something underhand. They deserve it.
But spare us the tone of moral outrage. Spare us the pious rant and faux-shock about "the standard of the gutter media". Look in the mirror -- that's YOUR standard, pal.
No? Well you buy three or four times as many copies of a tabloid as you do a broadsheet paper, don't you? The statistics don't lie.

Comments

[Mark Coughlan]

Twitter doesn't seem to be near as flooded with tabloid stories as the rest of my life (virtual or otherwise).

Then again, it's could be down to who I'm following.

[Ethan Cleary]

I have an inkling that people who read this blog are the minority who buy broadsheets. A case of preaching to the converted I feel.

[Adrian]

Ethan,

I wouldn't necessarily assume that. How many readers of this blog will be checking to see which paper has a picture of that masseuse witness, Jean Treacy, from the Lillis trial? Same thing.

[David Q]

Billy Bragg summarised the hypocrisy at work here (I paraphrase):

"Where they offer you a feature on stockings and suspenders
Next to a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders"

[Colm]

Fact is, the kind of person who buys the crap this paper produces isn't the type to care about truth. I'm not an OK or Hello buyer. I don't pay money for those stories, full-stop.

[Steve]

I agree with your rant about people who financially support the tabloids with their blood money payments, ultimately the responsibility rests with those who buy and read the rubbish. The world needs an education in taste - and they are getting it, from the very media they should be be dismantling. Simon whatzisname and Louis thinggy tell the world a piece of pop pap is "awesome" and the drooling masses go out and buy it, a tabloid writes that someone is a "cheating pig" and the mob is already lighting the bonfires on which to roast him. But the crazy situation is that only the media can change itself, because that's where the mob finds its information. So, Adrian, can we expect an article from you in the Sunday Business Post this weekend to put things right for Mrs Schregardus? She obviously needs support and a helpful voice to redeem her reputation and get her life back together.

[Adrian]

Steve,

The problem with an article I would write on this subject is that it would be a screaming rant about the general public. And who would read it? The (comparitive) small minority who buy a 'quality broadsheet' on a Sunday. In other words, the only people who'd be reading it would be the very people who have shown, by purchasing our paper, that they are not tabloid-lovers.

You refer to the "people who financially support the tabloids" as if they're some sort of niche or cabal or minority. So I obviously haven't made the point clear enough -- these buyers ARE the people. The normal Irish people. The people around you right now. Not some scumbag crowd somewhere else. They work for charities. They're community workers. They're teachers. I'm not sure that point has sunk in properly.

[Emmet Ryan]

Yes it's really disturbing. My sister is an English teacher and yet she reads Heat and the National Enquirer. Quite worrying stuff.

[Steve]

The common denominator for "the people" I refer to is their lack of taste and their gullibility when it comes to the media, be that journalism, music or television - regardless of their position in society. What I would like you to rant about in your column is the ever lowering standards of the people who write the articles, commission the programmes etc. Just saying "the only people who'd be reading it would be the very people who are not tabloid-lovers" is a bit of a cop-out. It can't be repeated too many times or in too many editions. Standards have to be maintained, if not raised, and everyone in the media has the responsibility to do it.

[Adrian]

"Gullibility"?

Tell me: when a person in a shop sees five newspapers in front of them (S Times, SBP, F Times, Sindo and S World), why do they consistently choose Sindo and NOTW?

Isn't that called 'choice'?

Or, by "gullible", do you mean that they are not aware of the salacious nature of the papers they choose to buy?

Whatever these people are, they're not idiots. They know. And they choose. Given the choice between quality and salacious, every time they will choose salacious, in greater numbers.

Now, perhaps you might argue that there should be legislation determining what people can and can't read. Saving them from their own instincts, so to speak.

Are you in favour of that?

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will be mortified. I don't blame them at all. If I were her, I would be very annoyed.
However, the scale of the rant going on about "the scandal of gutter media" is another matter entirely.
For any of you who would join in this outrage, yet who are among the large majority of Irish newspaper readers who purchase tabloids or gossip magazines, I say that you are a big bunch of hypocrites.
Day in, day out, you cackle and leer and pore over celebrities' private lives in the media. If anything, a good invasion-of-privacy celebrity story will make you buy a paper.
Of course, there are umpteen alternative media organs available to you that do not go in