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Saturday, 12 January 2002 |
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A Guide for the Unitiated into the weird and wonderful world of tabloid journalism Not just celebrities but ordinary people (who are just celebrities without the image) suffer from media attention when they have been accused, charged or convicted of a crime - whether it's true or not. Local rags pump out rubbish. Regional news coverage goes ghoulish. We've watched Jonathan Aitken fall on the sword of media coverage. Gary Glitter suffers from the spotlight of the Sun. Alex Ferguson discovered the poison of the press. Jeffrey Archer cannot move without a slant being placed on his actions. Michael Barrymore learned what it's like when the writing worm turns. Ditto John Major. And Sven Goran-Eriksson. And, of course, me. Normally the media works in one simple guaranteed way: Badly. Sadly, they are incompetent. Forget the malice and venom and glee - that's human nature. It's inside us all, especially the Brits. We adore hypocrisy and nothing makes us happier than watching someone else get caught for doing something we've gotten away with. No - if we didn't want to read it, we wouldn't buy them/watch them/listen to them. It's the inefficiency that boggles the mind. How given such magic material, the backs can fail to come up with anything worth reading. I blame alcohol and drugs myself. Journalists generally - and I know quite a few - rely on outside chemicals to get through the day. They numb the brain, believing they are stimulating it. Then, lost for inspiration, they turn to the tried and honoured text book guide and simply change the names to protect the innocent. So, for budding journos, here's the JK key to standard stories about celebs inside. 1) PRISON ROMANCE! This normally takes place "in the showers". Preferably, however, it should involve a prison officer or a chaplain-thus ruining another person's life in the process. But it can simply be linking inmates. It really can't be denied as, unfortunately, none of the stories can. 2) BEATEN UP! This standard fiction not only makes readers feel pleasure, that someone is really suffering inside, but it also convinces them that life behind bars is a hellhole. The truth is-in closed communities we actually develop far greater tolerance towards other human beings than out there. We put up with a great deal more than we would in society, because we have to live with each other. General health scares fit into this category too. 3) PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT! The tabloids love to foster the concept that celebrities get special favours inside - in reality the opposite is frequently true, with prisons bending over backwards to be seen to be fair,so names often don't get decategorised or given enhanced status where ordinary inmates would be allowed such benefits. 4) MAKING MONEY! Those lovely tales of businesses set up, profits made, "rings", links with outside concerns - anything to look as though prison isn't stopping those awful men and women from making vast wealth from the dull punters who read this rubbish, and pay the bills of the hacks and editors. 5) PHOTOSHOP! And they do it so badly. The recent(and amazingly true) store that I'd had a T-shirt made up with a slogan reading I'M A CELEBRITY-GET ME OUT OF HERE! and was provoking much hilarity wearing it around, was illustrated in the People with the worst conceivable Photoshop combination of my head on Tony Blackburn's body (or was it Christine Hamilton's?). The resultant cartoon would have looked amateurish in a prison magazine, let alone in a national paper. 6) HE'S GOT A MINDER! Anther way to ruin other lives, some poor sap gets lumbered with this pretend job, and has his name, case and mugshot smeared all over the press -which reminds me... 7) MUGSHOTS! Somehow, someone smuggles the picture on your door to the waiting media, which pays large sums for it. Why? They have thousands of other photos out there on file. But it's just another tabloid tired old trick-worthless,predictable, boring and dull. These ridiculous and unimaginative stories irritated me so much, by their lack of originality, that I invented several fresh approaches which, I'm sure, will now get adapted and utilise for future poor victims... 8) PORRIDGE IDOL! At the peak of the Pop Idol era, they came up with the amusing, though fictional story that I was auditioning future rock stars on the prison landings. Indeed, after it ran, several inmates and quite a few officers at Belmarsh approached me to see if they fitted the bill. 9) WEBSITE! Yes in this era of new technology it's perfectly legal, and allowed by prison rules, to send out a letter (censored) or make a phone call (taped) with legitimate opinions on music and life, as long as it doesn't breach the security rules or offend against fairness and decency by printing inmate or officer names or details. And friends and family are entitled to put such views online. 10)WRITING! In my case, for prison publications. In Archers case, for the mass market. In Aitken's case for God Literacy is the new season black. As a follow-up to the predictable feature there are the predictable...READERS' LETTERS! It's not generally known that the tabloids frequently make up letters, pretending to agree with previous stories, in order to convince readers that the editor has the favour of his or her readers' opinions. I used to do it on The Sun..."I so agree with brilliant columnist Jonathan King..." Check out the names - invariably Brown or Jones or Moss or McInley or Cassidy or Hooper from Tyne and Wear or Surrey or Canvey Island or Liverpool. Most are totally fictional. Pay no attention. Ah, the glorious fantasy world of the tabloids. It doesn't really exist. It's all a harmless mirage, designed to entertain without a word of truth contained therein.
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