Stephen Glover

Trivia is all well and good, but a few facts wouldn’t harm the broadsheets

Trivia is all well and good, but a few facts wouldn’t harm the broadsheets

As I write, I have in front of me page three of last Monday’s Daily Telegraph. The headline is ‘Outlook steamy as celebrities land in the jungle’. One large photograph shows the ‘model Jordan’ (a woman with freakishly enlarged breasts) standing with the ex-pop singer Johnny Rotten, who is holding a koala bear. An even larger photograph shows the rest of the so-called celebrities, who have fetched up in the Australian jungle for the delectation of television viewers. And below these smiling faces is a story, written without a trace of irony, which pays homage to the whole ghastly crew.

There is a question we should ask ourselves. How it is that a great newspaper such as the Daily Telegraph can run on page three a feature as vulgar as it is trivial, as well as, on the same day, carrying an enormous photograph of the actress Joely Richardson, and a smaller picture of the interior designer Kelly Hoppen, on its front page? How on earth could this have happened? The question is not directed at the Daily Telegraph in particular. The Times could easily have been guilty of the same excesses — perhaps more easily — and the Independent and the Guardian are almost capable of them. Nor I am singling out the Telegraph’s splendid new editor, Martin Newland, since a feature about Jordan and company in the Australian jungle could have appeared under his predecessor. That said, I believe Mr Newland is responsible for importing into the Telegraph the tabloid habit of inserting brackets in a headline to convey the newspaper’s own opinion. ‘IVF for single women (fathers not necessary)’ is an example on a recent ‘splash’. This is a device that should be confined to the feature pages.

Not long ago I read a marvellous piece by John Cassidy in the New Yorker about the Kelly affair.

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