Insider dealing, media-style

Saturday, 16th February 2008

Just to follow up Stephen's post about the teen traveller and his ace blog, the item in the Guardian has now prompted a tornado of complaints about nepotism. I'm not surprised. Maybe it would be best if papers got into the habit of spelling out family connections as some sort of footnote. I feel sorry for Max himself - some of the comments are plain cruel. It's the editors wot deserve the blame. As one of the readers puts it:

I don't think it honestly occurs to you - and when I say 'you', I mean London based journos on the nationals - just how often, how incessantly and how forcefully we are fed the stories of the lives of a small subsection of London society... It's so dispiriting and depressing to find that there is LESS of a cross-section of a society represented in the acres of newsprint than there was 30 years ago.

I'm not picking on the Graun, btw. All the press, mags and electronic media are guilty. As Max's father puts it on his company's web site: "Knowing the right people is obviously key to getting your message across and building trust in your brand." How true, how true. [Hat-tip: PooterGeek]