Status Anxiety: A word in defence of tabloid journalism

Keith Badhan

this is, as usual, a nonsensical defence of the indefensible. Could Mr Young explain how hacking the mobile phone of a murder victim, or dead soldier will have any impact other than some ghoulish fascination? How on earth can anyone justify any of these actions with the defence that sometimes, journalists uncover important things. Milly Dowler was not, I would guess, in possession of any national secrets. It may be the culture of the tabloid journalist Mr Young, but it is not what people want. It is also a journalists job to be able to read the mood of the general public, and you are so wide of the mark here.

B Hewerdine

Good grief... I'd forgotten what an idiot you are.

John Blackburn

Absolutely typical hack-speak. To suggest that actions can be justified by results is wrong. In fact, this article, in it's trivialising references to a very serious matter - the abduction and murder of a child - is itself an example of the current media culture. This needs to change, and fast.

Tim Osmond

You really ARE an odious pratt aren't you? Just because there is a reason that something is done, does not make doing that thing OK.

Matt

I don't know. I think Toby is on to something here. I guess that to try and defend wholesale hacking of the phones of all and sundry in the name of unearthing some gem that genuinely is in the public interest is a bit of a stretch. BUT, who can anyone geninuely say they are shocked at these 'revelations'?
The reaction today in the media and on messageboards etc is extraordinary.

Will Stevens

How to lose even more friends and influence people, heh heh.

William

Would you want to send your child to a free school run by someone with the ethical sense of a fruit fly, as displayed in this apologia for the morals of the sewer? Best advice to prospective parents - give this moral imbecile a wide berth!

David

What a nasty, blinkered, self-absorbed, attention-seeking prick Toby is.

Insatiable Angst

Bullshit.

FvH

The headline of the article is wrong. Toby is providing an "explanation" of what happened but not a "defence"

What are we supposed to think? "Oh the poor souls were under pressure to get a story out, so its all ok then!!"

This article is more about Toby's brand image as the contrarian right winger who says the unthinkable - I suppose we can expect more of the same as his bank balance depends on it!!

John Adlington

I totally fail to get the outrage people are expressing over listening to unsecured voicemail messages. There are far worse things going on like paying the police for tip-offs or paying trusted staff to disclose confidences. Listening to voicemail is small beer.

Dan Bradshaw

If you knowingly cross the line into illegality then by definition you are dishonest or corrupt, whatever vacuous ulterior motive you might have regarding "doing what it takes" to get the story.

I understand that your proposed school will concentrate on teaching old-fashioned values. Presumably this won't include Ethics....

Stan Cook

Attempting to profit by eavesdropping on bereavement is plainly disgusting. But Toby Young is right to point out that tabloid journalists also perform a more creditable role in uncovering dishonesty.

Nick

Toby you may be right that this was business as usual, but journalists routinely concealed their methods from readers. Now that they have seen behind the curtain, will they continue to buy?

Rupert

Brilliant stuff, Toby.

Now here's the contract for your new contract at the NOTW.

Ooops, too late.

stabledoor

Toby I agree with all of this. You can't have a free press without the gutter tabloid end as well. Ignore the manufactured outrage in these comments - you are absolutely right on this one

Insatiable Angst

Rupert is a moron.

Herbert Thornton

Toby says that without its tabloid newspapers, Britain would be France. That's something to be thankful for, but I suspect that political correctness has already made Britain more like France than we realise.

However, can anybody explain why I've never read of any intrepid journalist hacking the phones or emails of people such as the more inflammatory preachers in many Mosques?

Is it politically correct self-censorship, or is it also because eagerness to publish scoops is outweighed by newspaper proprietors' fears for their own safety?

FvH

Can you imagin how desperate you'd have to be to send your kids to a school run by this cretin - Tuesday 9am - Phone Hacking
Wednesday 2pm - How to avoid Police inquiries

Roger Wilsher

Toby, it's quite endearing but I do think you are being naive. Hacks don't cross over into criminality because they have to nail a story by 5.30pm. They do it because they are immoral beasts who care nothing for the hard-won and very fragile freedom of the press. In many of the cases where the NOTW has plumbed the depths of depravity they have been encouraged to do so by a corrupt and rotten police establishment that has manipulated their press brethren (and sisterhood) to "reveal facts" that they themselves couldn't bring to bear. In cases that I am personally aware of the police have themselves been manipulated by the criminal underworld to snub out and ruin little people that just happened to be innocently getting in the way. RIP NOTW Good riddance!

gillian23

Thank god for a voice of reason in this ridiculous witch hunt. I will subscribe to the Spectator from now on solely because i have at last found a journalist willing to speak out and a newsprint willing to give him space (i suppose his status in this org helps though!).

i gave up on the telegraph....which wanted to wallow in what it believed to be a bullet between the eyes for Murdoch, and is in fact simply a tragedy for all those people who have pointlessly lost their jobs...

The great British public, cozying up to its scruples, couldn't give a damn about them though......

D Short

It is not 'lack of sentimentality' that is wrong with the tabloids; it's an overabundance of it.

Sentimentality is a mark of sociopaths and psychopaths.

Stephanie Tohill

" Without its tabloid newspapers, Britain would be France."

You say that like it's a bad thing...

A Response

@ Toby Young. You say 'But to describe such behaviour as ‘shocking’ is to reveal an astonishing ignorance about the tabloid profession.' Why should the 'man/woman in the street' know this happens? How much do you know about the 'dark arts' of an industry in which you're not involved in? How much did you know about, say, the inner workings of the UK education system before you researched the subject/became involved in it?

You know, I think you may have just displayed 'an astonishing arrogance' in your assumption of what people not employed in the media should be expected to know about the workings of the media.

You really are so tightly wrapped-up so in your own self-importance, I am truly amazed you can sufficiently free your hands to pull on some socks let alone punch out the above dross on your keyboard.

Ass-editor

'Without its tabloid newspapers, Britain would be France?' What do you get paid for this puerile and non-sensical babble? Toby, 'Odious pratt', as Tim Osmond calls you, just about covers it. Would you amount to anything in life without the over-privileged start you've had?

kb

The twittertwats are out in force today. Even Murdoch, Ford, et al were cowed by this herd of professional hysterics.

Toby Young appears to be one of the few sane commentators on this affair. And I suspect A. Rusbridger would find France very agreable.

Herbert Thornton

On this topic, I very much incline to side with Toby.

This is not because I in any way believe that the News of the World deserves to be excused - but because I can see no reason to believe that other newspapers act with complete integrity and responsibility either.

Moreover - and even more importantly - I have even less trust in the BBC than in the lowest examples of the gutter press. The BBC has so completely betrayed Britain by abandoning it's duty to be impartial and truthful and above politics that to my mind it has no claim whatsoever to be morally or ethically superior to the most unscrupulous of journalists. I believe that the BBC is worse that they are because it is actually dedicated to undermining the national interest.

This may sound shocking, but I believe that even if the BBC were privatised and sold to the Murdochs it would be an improvement.

ralph perry robinson

The physical resemblance of Mr Young to Rupert Murdoch is startling. Is there something you're not telling us ,Toby?

Jane Kenyon

Toby Young "sentimentalizes" an indefensible moral position - giving viciousness and greed an air of film noir sex appeal.

His final paragraphs, as an after-thought, argue that we need corrupt journalists in order to prevent the powerful from abuses that will damage the public. How, then, do we keep in check a corrupt media that manipulates public opinion for its own profit? This question is, I suppose, to trivial for Mr Young to address.

Mr Young spends 90% of his article saying that journalists are not interested at all in "speaking truth to power", but that they have no ethical principles at all - and are simply looking for the story their newspaper demands to earn it the highest profit.

The soaring rhetoric of the conclusion jars with the cynical body of the article - showing just how morally incoherent is Mr Young's thinking.

James Harborne

On the one hand I can what you are trying to get at, Toby. You rightly say that without this kind of journalistic endeavour certain stories that should and did see the light of day would not have done so. However, on the other hand I do find it incredibly presumptuous to say the least, that you can honestly believe that because a handful of stories about certain public figures come to light as a result of this method of journalism (and I would argue that a number of them do not pass the public interest test in any case- what does it matter if two jags Prezza was having an affair?) that this means hack reporters are the saviours of our so-called modern democratic state. However, what I find most incredible is that you seem to honesty believe that, because this is the code of Fleet Street, it makes it alright to pursue any story at any cost, regardless of the outcome. I would expect that any real journalist would be able to distinguish between right and wrong- and hacking into the answer phone messages of the phone of a murdered teenage girl, for no other reason than to get an edge in a story that ultimately had no public interest, is clearly wrong.

Graphite

I've been reading these Status Anxiety columns for a while now – mildly interesting stuff.

But this one destroys any credibility Young may have had.

It is totally and completely asinine.

robert jackson

Young showboating again in a pathetic attempt to become involved in the broader debate.

D. Short

'Anybody here been raped and speaks English?' is not from the Express rulebook; it was a phrase Edward 'Teddy' Behr quoted after he'd heard it in an African warzone.

Johnjohn

I'd stick to lemonade and table games, Toby. More your heavy.

Jack

I agree that being surprised at the NotW journalist's actions is not really justified. Red top hacks are indeed amoral and only interested in the story, nothing else. However I would take exception at two points. One is the insouciant tone that suggests Young would rather maintain the status quo than find a new way. Yes the poodle that is laughably called the French press would be frightful but the flint-eyed mercenary fucks you describe in this article are not good enough either. Not least, and this leads to my second problem, because they don't get the scoops anymore but scrape through muck, find brass and call it gold. My second problem: you're wrong, with no red tops we still would certainly have heard all about Fifa's corruption. Thanks to Andrew Jennings (see http://transparencyinsport.org/).

John Thomas

Well, there's an awful lot of people trashing Toby Young here, and justifying the anti-Murdoch/tabloid shockhorror ... Don't they know that however bad tabloid journalists are, politicians are worse ... that hacking killed no one, but Blair/Cameron's wars kill dozens ... Or maybe they're just a lot of Guardianistas, who think the non-taloid (ie. left wing) media is really holy.

Ed Griffiths

Toby Young, I cannot decide whether you are being misguidedly disingenuous or if you really do not comprehend the rightful public outrage over these revelations. There is nothing inevitable about rapacious and unscrupulous practices in tabloid journalism or journalism in any wider sense, for any media. Journalism is an honourable profession dedicated to the exposure of the truth in a free society where many powers and institutions seek to keep the truth from us. What you are describing and defending is a perversion of that dedication to truth and its open publication. When journalists attempt to destroy the lives of the innocent or distort the search for victims of crimes such as in the Milly Dower case they have ceased to be journalists. They have become criminals. Your failure to comprehend this and the failure of our media culture to prevent it becoming rooted in news organisations is a sad comment on the brutishness to which you and we have unfortunately descended.