steamchicken, I hadn’t read your post when I wrote the post below, but see you’ve pretty well said the same as I have in your post of 7 April.
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The FACT is, the ‘Sun’ journo (or ‘journo’ [sic] as many of you would have it) achieved absolutely EVERYTHING he attempted to achieve with the article in question and his editor will be congratulating him for it – and the proof of that is in the ‘n’ outraged posts it has attracted on this thread.
He writes for a tabloid publication that makes no pretense at being high literature. His job – his JOB – particularly on a ‘slow news day’, is to turn the most mundane event into a four inch headline that will sell newspapers.
If he’d turned in a factual, (read ‘boring’) account of the event that has us all so outraged, his editor would have thrown it back in his face and told him to sensationalise it – or far more likely, mark him down for the chop in the next staff cuts. And the ‘hack’ knows this.
It ain’t perfect, in fact, it’s frequently annoying as hell to see what we know to be the norm beat up into ‘seconds from death’ bullshyte, but sadly, it’s what sells newspapers, particularly (at the risk sounding smug and middle class) to those among our population who buy publications like ‘The Sun’.
The most important lesson we should all take to heart from this is to treat any story on any other topic on which we don’t have inside knowledge with healthy skepticism – but at the same time, thank God we don’t live in a society where we only get to read what the Government deems we should and should not read.
And yes, a newspaper will put whatever ‘spin’ fits its political or other agenda to any story that crosses its editor’s desk. I love the old yarn from Australia in the 70’s about the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who had (and continues to have!), shall we say… a rather high opinion of himself. The word was that, urged on by his adoring disciples, he (He?) stepped out and walked across Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin. The newspapers next morning were full of this astounding news – except for Rupert’s flagship (Rupert had decided by this stage that GW was no longer the flavour of the month). Rupert’s headline? ‘Whitlam Fails In Bid to Swim Lake Burley Griffin!’
Last edited by Wiley; 9th April 2002 at 04:28.