Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Lower than a snake’s belly

You know the audience in The Producers, who've just sat through Springtime for Hitler? You know the expression on their faces? It's something like this...

Well, that was the look on my face as I read this little gem from Britain's No 1 middle-market newspaper today:

Missing chef Claudia Lawrence 'got a kick out of married men and had 40 mystery lovers', claims friend

Do you know what I mean? There's a moment where you think to yourself: hang on a tick, did this really happen? Am I just making it up in my head? And then you look at it again, and again, and again, and you think: No, I didn't make it up at all. What I think I'm seeing with my eyes is what's actually there.

Sure, you might think, what with this blog and all, that I would have become somehow immune to being shocked by stuff like this, and you'd be kind of right. But then I really do think this is something lower than the lowest of the low. A woman is missing, presumed dead - how on earth is it in the public interest, in anyone's interest at all, and how does it benefit anyone, to have an unnamed 'friend' tell tales which may or may not be true, about a woman who is suspected to have been murdered? What do we gain from this? Anything?

The Mail even contemplates itself that the woman's relatives may have been distressed by her disappearance:

'Anguish' - yes, indeed. And what further 'anguish' might be caused to the missing woman's father by having salacious and superfluous details of his daughter's life splashed all over the papers? Again, the question must be asked: how does this benefit anyone at all? Does it?

What's the Mail's justification for this? They don't offer one, but instead leave that to the 'friend' (some friend!) of the missing woman:

Until now her friends and family have been reluctant to speak about any possible liaisons she may have had in the past.
But her friend said that it was important the public should be given a complete picture of her character, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

And why is it 'important' that 'the public' should learn about these matters? Will a vital witness suddenly think "Oh I hadn't recalled anything about that well-publicised disappearance until I remembered details of the woman's sex life, and then it all came flooding back"? Or was there another sort of 'importance' involved in this whole story - a financial transaction that benefited that 'friend', perhaps? Surely if he really thought it was important the public knew he would tell everyone about it, not just the Mail on Sunday?

Here, then, is a textbook example of the kind of anonymous 'friend' that newspapers use all the time, while thinking it's perfectly acceptable that anonymous bloggers like NightJack should be outed at the first available opportunity - as the Mail described last week in a piece headlined "Bloggers beware" (I won't link to it as it's got pics etc of NightJack). Yet while someone like NightJack wrote in the public interest and gave a valuable insight into the life of a serving police officer, whether you agreed with what he said or not, you have to question how the public benefit from learning stuff like this - which may be completely false - from 'friends' of missing people.

The only hope we can all have is that Claudia Lawrence turns up safe and well, and sues the hell out of those who have printed such nasty rubbish about her.

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