Yellow press fever spans oceans
The announcement on Tuesday, July 5, of the opening of an investigation into the hacking of email files of the Minister of the Presidency, Jimmy Papadimitriu brings into focus yellow news fever.
In the UK, the government is under intense pressure following revelations of hacking into the cell phones of families of murder victims and relatives of victims of the London 7/7 tube (subway) and bus bombings. Yellow journalism, originally ascribed to American newspapers has crossed the ocean and, led by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian, has engulfed papers that have sunk to levels of journalistic depravity previously unplumbed in Britain.
And this from a newspaper empire that can decide elections according to political commentators. Actor Hugh Grant, himself a victim of hacking says Britain is no longer a democracy whose leaders hobnob with the rulers of an unprincipled news conglomerate that decides who will "govern".
When, years ago, my inks stained fingers were banging away on an Underwood typewriter in a cigarette smoke filled room on Fleet Street, home to most of Britain’s leading newspapers, The News of the World, was known as “The Barmaids’ Bible” or “Screws of the World”, because of its lascivious coverage of sex crimes and scandals. They ranged from predatory local church ministers and scoutmasters and their young victims, to the bedroom escapades of celebrities and rapes and murders . Bowler hatted purchasers were often seen wrapping the Screws inside upscale Sunday Times or Observer.
Its prurient coverage was partially clothed in respectability. Having sex was translated as being “intimate.” The barmaids who kept newsmen afloat in the Streets well filled bars and who were privy to many intimate rumors of thier private lives, got a chuckle from that one.
The News of the World also had some of the finest sports coverage in the country and helped father check book journalism as it signed up former sports celebrities for their names and opinions, even though the copy may have been ghost written by underpaid hacks. Above all, the then broadsheet (now a tabloid) had a shattering world leading circulation of over 8 million proving, as the American publishers of Playboy and Hustler discovered, that sex sells.
In Panama, the emphasis of local coverage centers largely on politics and corruption. There is enough of that to satisfy the over abundance of daily newspapers in a country with just over three million people, including illiterates and those who can’t afford the daily 35 cents. Journalists have been threatened by at least one minister, and are under siege by the administration, which hopes to cool things down by creating a round table discussion.
But the blandishments of the local tabloids with their front pages covered with the blood of gang murders, wife beatings and killings, or traffic accidents, pale compared with what is going on in the UK.
If you want to get more on this disease and its spread to North America, go to http://www.newsroompanama.com/panama/3028-the-septic-depths-of-hacking-journalism.html
