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Thursday, June 10, 2010
Newspapers can carry a really nasty sting
BY TP O’MAHONY
I ALWAYS thought Sarah Ferguson was a more interesting woman than Diana Spencer.
They married two brothers, and both marriages brought these two women heartbreak. In Diana Spencer’s case the heartbreak was fatal – it’s a fair guess that this lovely woman would still be alive today if she hadn’t married Prince Charles.
That hugely publicised wedding brought her into the media spotlight in a way that she could never have imagined. Here she was, the wife of the heir to the British throne, and the tabloids went crazy.
She was gorgeous and sexy – the two don’t always go together – and she became the object of intense media scrutiny.
She sold newspapers – even the dimmest editor in the world quickly learned this lesson. What constitutes "news" these days is very different to what it was 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.
In the end Diana – as the Princess of Wales – became a hounded woman. At her memorial service her brother got it right. Diana the huntress – according to Roman mythology Diana was the goddess of the hunt – had become the most hunted woman on the planet. She was tormented endlessly by media people.
This is because she was a celebrity and these days it’s open season on celebrities.
Entire magazines are devoted to them – just think of Hello! and OK. And TV3 has a daily programme called Xpose that is now helping to make celebrities of its presenters.
How things have changed. You can now become a media star just on the basis of your persistence in pushing a microphone in the face of someone who may or may not be a genuine celebrity.
There is of course a downside to all of this. Because celebrities sell newspapers – who really cares that Bono couldn’t make it to Glastonbury? – the temptation is to get them to perform even when they think they are enjoying some privacy. And even celebrities have a right to privacy.
The way around this, especially if you work for a newspaper ruthless and reckless enough to always put profit before ethics, is to engage in a form of entrapment. So you set someone up. It’s called a sting – and nobody does a sting better than the News of the World.
Poor Sarah Ferguson – aka the Duchess of York – was the paper’s most recent victim. And the fact that she is poor – relatively speaking – made her vulnerable. She is said to be desperate for money and that made her an easy target.
Okay, she was foolish, naive and even stupid. Her husband, Prince Andrew, is an influential guy. And she was exposed offering access to him for £500,000 when reporter posing as a wealthy businessman fooled her.
Basically she was saying – give me money and I’ll guarantee you access to someone – my former husband –who can get things done. In Ireland in the 1980s if you wanted something done, you were told to go out to Kinsealy and talk to Charlie Haughey. And don’t forget your chequebook.
Sarah Ferguson was trying to put a price on access to her ex-husband. Knowing that she was short of cash, the News of the World decided to go after her. It was a set-up and she fell for it. Hook, line and sinker.
It tells you a lot about her, but it also tells you a lot about Britain’s gutter press. The extraordinary thing about this particular sting is that it happened at a time when a big push is on to reform the libel law in Britain.
But why should parliament bother? Why do newspapers any favours when they behave like this?
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