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Richard Bean's tabloid satire is merely propaganda for press regulation Richard Bean's tabloid satire is funny but it's still propaganda
(35 minutes later)
The immediate reaction to the play Great Britain, Richard Bean's appallingly hilarious take on tabloid journalism as revealed by Lord Leveson and the phone-hacking trial, is that it's too funny. Too funny, at least, for such a profoundly serious subject as a red top which takes pride in its mission statement, "we destroy people's lives on your behalf". They're wrong. It is impossible to be as funny as this play is without being deadly serious.The immediate reaction to the play Great Britain, Richard Bean's appallingly hilarious take on tabloid journalism as revealed by Lord Leveson and the phone-hacking trial, is that it's too funny. Too funny, at least, for such a profoundly serious subject as a red top which takes pride in its mission statement, "we destroy people's lives on your behalf". They're wrong. It is impossible to be as funny as this play is without being deadly serious.
The bigger question is whether it is serious about the right thing. The play's fictional red top is called the Free Press, and the audience is being asked to consider whether this unscrupulous, exploitative, immoral bunch of chancers has any right at all to be free to ply its trade in untruths and fictions and other people's stolen lives.The bigger question is whether it is serious about the right thing. The play's fictional red top is called the Free Press, and the audience is being asked to consider whether this unscrupulous, exploitative, immoral bunch of chancers has any right at all to be free to ply its trade in untruths and fictions and other people's stolen lives.
There is no case for the defence. Every single story that emerges from this cesspit of self-serving ambition – from the young model dying of anorexia to the father of two abducted girls wrongly convicted of their murder in the interests of newspaper PR – is printed only to drive up circulation and make the multimedia proprietor richer and more powerful until one day he has captured the whole establishment.There is no case for the defence. Every single story that emerges from this cesspit of self-serving ambition – from the young model dying of anorexia to the father of two abducted girls wrongly convicted of their murder in the interests of newspaper PR – is printed only to drive up circulation and make the multimedia proprietor richer and more powerful until one day he has captured the whole establishment.
So there is only one possible answer: no. There is no attempt to disentangle the criminal acts – the phone hacking – from the abusive one – the bullying of the topless model and the final betrayal that destroys the last thing she has – and the merely exploitative ones – the manipulation of the venal police and politicians.So there is only one possible answer: no. There is no attempt to disentangle the criminal acts – the phone hacking – from the abusive one – the bullying of the topless model and the final betrayal that destroys the last thing she has – and the merely exploitative ones – the manipulation of the venal police and politicians.
The play is broad and painful satire, a brutal cartoon version of the miserable, shocking story that emerged at the Leveson inquiry. There is no room for nuance, or the smallest step to the side to look at the question from another perspective. If that was where it stopped, it would still have all the shameless capacity of an 18th-century cartoon to make us think.The play is broad and painful satire, a brutal cartoon version of the miserable, shocking story that emerged at the Leveson inquiry. There is no room for nuance, or the smallest step to the side to look at the question from another perspective. If that was where it stopped, it would still have all the shameless capacity of an 18th-century cartoon to make us think.
But because in the end it gets to the real point and challenges the audience's own voracious and insatiable appetite for the kind of titillation that makes the reader almost as immoral as the people who provide it, it is making a very serious case indeed.But because in the end it gets to the real point and challenges the audience's own voracious and insatiable appetite for the kind of titillation that makes the reader almost as immoral as the people who provide it, it is making a very serious case indeed.
We know how they get their stories now. Why did it only start to matter, the play asks, when it was Milly Dowler's phone who was hacked? If that was unacceptable (there is a flimsily disguised parallel in the play), why were there no protests when the paper traded on the death and despair of the anorexic model?We know how they get their stories now. Why did it only start to matter, the play asks, when it was Milly Dowler's phone who was hacked? If that was unacceptable (there is a flimsily disguised parallel in the play), why were there no protests when the paper traded on the death and despair of the anorexic model?
The Free Press has subcontracted its morals to its readers. They, the people who choose it off the shelf at the newsagent, are the ones who decide what goes in the paper. The market is the arbiter of the boundaries of privacy. That means the readers also becomes the arbiter of what makes the news. On this business model, no abstract principle need apply at all. There is absolutely no redeeming virtue to justify the existence of this cruel and parasitical publication.The Free Press has subcontracted its morals to its readers. They, the people who choose it off the shelf at the newsagent, are the ones who decide what goes in the paper. The market is the arbiter of the boundaries of privacy. That means the readers also becomes the arbiter of what makes the news. On this business model, no abstract principle need apply at all. There is absolutely no redeeming virtue to justify the existence of this cruel and parasitical publication.
And having poured the bucketload of Sun-style sh*t over the tabloids, just as the Kelvin MacKenzie-style editor threatens to do to the fictional prime minister in the play, and the real MacKenzie once threatened to do to John Major (it is revealing that on the occasions when the play is less than side-splitting, it is when it is fictionalising a real event) there is only one thought in the browbeaten audience's collective mind.And having poured the bucketload of Sun-style sh*t over the tabloids, just as the Kelvin MacKenzie-style editor threatens to do to the fictional prime minister in the play, and the real MacKenzie once threatened to do to John Major (it is revealing that on the occasions when the play is less than side-splitting, it is when it is fictionalising a real event) there is only one thought in the browbeaten audience's collective mind.
If neither the market nor the editor are interested in the fate of the unwitting suppliers of news – the dying, the newly bereaved and yes, even the dead – then the question can only be, is some kind of regulation the only alternative? Great Britain would like us to say yes. I am not so sure.If neither the market nor the editor are interested in the fate of the unwitting suppliers of news – the dying, the newly bereaved and yes, even the dead – then the question can only be, is some kind of regulation the only alternative? Great Britain would like us to say yes. I am not so sure.