Mosley, the Nazi orgy & media freedom

Fleet Street mourns after Grand Prix boss Max Mosley wins privacy case – but are the tears for freedom or profit?

 

There’s been a prolonged bout of breast beating, wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the UK press following Formula One chief, Max Mosley’s record win in a tabloid privacy case. With damages of 60,000 pound plus legal costs, the News of the World (the defendant) lost close on one million pounds. In a titillating tale that obviously had the tabloid rubbing its hands in glee, the World reported that Mosley had participated in a five hour ‘Nazi styled’ orgy with a dominatrix. The ‘deep throat’ in the story was one ‘Woman E’, a call girl who secretly taped the interlude and then sold her story to the tabloid.

 

The real scandal is the meal those press have made about their so called “loss of media freedom”. The UK’s Independent opined: “Max Mosley's court victory over the News of the World yesterday was immediately mourned in many sections of the media as heralding an end to the era of "kiss-and-tell" in British newspapers. As integral to our popular culture as the saucy seaside postcard and Carry On films, kiss-and-tell stories have, down the years, often been a force for good – morality tales for modern times. They have exposed hypocrisy. They have enabled the poor and powerless to bring down the rich and famous (in return for handsome payment, of course).”

 

The Sun called the ruling a "dark day for British freedom" and vowed to fight on for the public interest, while The Daily Mail reported that it was a "good day for the grubby and corrupt" saying that "press freedom and parliamentary democracy in Britain are significantly diminished."

 

A sole voice of sanity in the debate was The Guardian who put the real issues in perspective. The Guardian pointed out that the tabloid’s extreme self interest had skewed the apparent ‘public interest’.  In a scathing attack on The World its editorial read: “Since the judgment, there has been much hand-wringing about the freedom of the press. Most of it is self-serving. The damage to the press has not been done by Mosley, or the law, but by the practices of the News of the World.”

 

There are many forces shaping the media agenda both locally and abroad, but perhaps the most fierce is commercial. In and age of cheque book journalism, the tabloid vulgarly repositions commercial interest as “public interest”. Are tabloids really interested in the public right to know, or is their lens focused more closely on the celebrity skin of privacy to desperately and salaciously surge sales?

 

Since when did Britney Spears’ exposed genitalia or the exact manner in which David Beckham fills out his Y-fronts constitute public interest? The real issue here is a tabloid that through reckless reporting made the introduction of stringent privacy laws in the UK a strong possibility.

 

While I don’t deny tabloids have their place in society, they are at times their own worst enemy. Tabloids that have embraced the crass pursuit of celebrity sensation employ a style of ‘churnalism’ largely devoid of investigation. They have largely lead the march into commercialism – the new print media compass for finding a way out of the economic downturn. Together with media selling their souls to the commercial agenda, celebrity tabloids are helping to replace the religious, cultural, community and the other values that once held societies together with vacuous commercial values. And they do so pious in their pursuit of the so called ‘public interest’.

 

Thankfully South African tabloids like The Daily Sun play a more civic role by strongly featuring community stories. Sure, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but they give voice to the poor and marginalised who struggle against spiralling food prices, lack of service delivery, crime and other issues our leaders in their comfortable residences don’t have to deal with. 

 

There’s a real danger our media are cutting their own Faustian contracts and will be hit with a double punch. Not only are we seeing increased commercial content as a strategy for dealing with the economic downturn (look out for more advertorials alongside editorial and ‘innovative’ ad formats from Naspers print titles) but political interference is reaching new heights. On the commercial front compromising ad formats, blurring editorial with advertising, and sacrificing content integrity to sponsored media is a great seduction for a press squeezed by an advertising recession. There are local magazines that sell front pages to CEOs without specifying it is a paid for placement while others parade paid content as special features, white pages and case studies. If one lesson can be learnt from the US newspaper bloodbath it is that people buy newspapers for news and views, not advertorial or weakened content. 

 

While the one punch that is hitting local media is commercial, the other is political. According to Raymond Louw a SANEF study shows that government has become obstructive in dealing with the media. While they were falling over themselves to get to the media in 1994, they have now become sullen and withdrawn. The Promotion of Access to Information Act is used to avoid giving journalists information, phone calls are not returned, and emails deleted without being answered. It appears government communicators have harnessed an arsenal of ploys to try squash stories, kill stories or otherwise influence the media agenda. Then there is the issue of the media tribunal, Film and Publications Amendment Bill, National Key Points Act and the Protection of Information Bill. Singly and collectively they have a profound impact on the freedom of the media in South Africa, and the ability of the media to act as a fourth estate. If realised, the likes of a Zuma rape trial could not be reported on, stories on service delivery protests would have to be vetted by a bureaucratic censor board before being published, and journalists could get 20 years in prison for writing about anything deemed an “official secret”.

 

At this watershed moment in our media history perhaps the tabloids do have a crucial role to play. If they wanted to do something really useful they could forgo one more story of Amy Winehouse’s drug problem and tell the voting public what would happen if these repressive media bills do become laws and the South African press is no longer free.