Daily Star racism – not an accident
Hope Not Hate are sending a polite letter to the Daily Star telling them to be not quite so aggressive in their coverage of Muslims as they have been recently. It's a fine initiative and we'll wait and see what comes from it. I am guessing the answer is 'nothing', but you never know. This is the paper, after all, that very nearly once had a "Daily Fatwa" edition published.
But there seems to be a pattern emerging with the Daily Star. The tone is getting more and more shrill as time goes on. Last week, there was an article using the tried-and-tested 'us and them tactic' which we've seen so many times before with Richard Desmond publications. And then, on Friday, the front page headline said that Christmas had been 'nicked' by Muslims. Nicked by Muslims? No, not really; a council has left up Eid and Diwali lights alongside Christmas ones. Big bloody deal.
But it adds to the narrative. Today the Star carries a story that a lot of the screamsheets are wailing about, with KIDS AS YOUNG AS SIX TAUGHT TO HATE. As ever it's important to look at the language and the tone:
THOUSANDS of Muslim children are being brainwashed against Brits at weekend schools run by extremists.
Pupils as young as six are taught that all “non- believers” will face the fires of hell.
And they are instructed in the best way to hack off the hands and feet of thieves.
Now I'm no fan of teaching kids to hack off people's hands, but as ever it's Muslims being brainwashed against Brits, as if the two things are incompatible. It's us and them; it's them and us. They are being brainwashed against us; they are being taught to hate us.
You'll remember, also, the delight with which the Stormfront regulars greeted the Daily Star's coverage of the EDL threatening to 'close down towns' that weren't Christian enough. They were amazed that a mainstream paper should have treated them so well. Sadly, I'm not amazed; this is just the way the Star is going. The Daily Fatwa doesn't seem far away now; if they did go and print it tomorrow, it wouldn't really be that much out of step with the rest of their output.
What's the reason for the anti-Muslim agenda, and racism? Well, as Tabloid Watch reported the other day, the PCC couldn't even give the Mail and Telegraph a slapped wrist, even though they'd told a story that was complete rubbish, and which happened to blame Muslims for something which wasn't Muslims' fault. And of course there are plenty of appalling things done across the world and up and down this country in the name of Islam, which deserve to be exposed - but the agenda-driven rubbish you see in a lot of papers should disturb anyone who cares about freedom and not demonising people from one particular group.
I hope that Hope Not Hate do get a good response from the Star, but I'm not holding my breath. You can co-sign the letter and see if it makes a difference. The more people who do, the more impact it may have. But I rather fear that someone, somewhere has decided that pandering to racism and fear of minorities is something that's selling papers; if that is to be believed then I don't think that things are going to stop. All the rest of us can do is expose it and challenge it; they are the ones with a national newspaper to spread their message, after all, and we're not as powerful. But we are many, and they are few. It's the only thing we've got.
Time travel, Charlie Chaplin and the EDL
I find this fascinating, in lots of ways. It is what appears to be a woman, on a mobile phone, in a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film. When you look at it, you can only see it that way. Anyway, see for yourselves.
It's incredible, isn't it? Now, I have no explanation of my own. I can make guesses. I can try and work out what's going on. But the one thing I'm pretty sure about - and I'm afraid I have to disagree with the chap who first pointed this out - is that it isn't a time traveller. (Why would the woman be on a mobile phone anyway? She couldn't be talking to anyone, since there weren't phone base stations in 1928 to carry a signal - unless somehow the signal was travelling through time as well, but I find that a little far-fetched for my tastes. Would she be trying to plant proof of time travel into the past, by sticking it in a Charlie Chaplin film? Why, in an era of time travel apparently not yet discovered, would someone have what seems to be a clunky old brick-style phone rather than a microchip inserted in their brain, or something? And so on, and so on.)
What I find most fascinating of all, though, is the way in which the brain - my brain, your brain, most people's brains looking at that footage - processes what the eyes are seeing. Would we do so if we hadn't been prompted to do so by being told it was someone on a mobile phone? Probably even still. Because it just looks like something we're familiar with - the woman appears to be talking, and holding a phone up to her ear. We see this kind of thing all the time in the streets around us, so it doesn't seem that she's doing anything else. So that's what we decide she's doing, even if it's preposterous to imagine she really is.
So when you're faced with something confusing, you look for an explanation. You look for what to expect, and what seems natural - particularly if you're prompted to see it there in the first place. I think this is similar to the way in which news information can work, and the way in which organisations like the EDL, the BNP and the other fearmongerers can spread their hatred.
So if you're feeling angry, disappointed, upset, impotent, whatever, if you feel like you have no career prospects, if you feel isolated and cast adrift from society, you might look around for reasons why. Why is it all so unfair, and why are you - part of the white majority, apparently, with all the advantages that should be available to the group with the hegemony - seemingly a loser, a failure, incapable of achieving what you want? That seems somehow ridiculous, and it jars with what you've been taught about working hard and paying your taxes and everything falling into your lap. So what's gone wrong? Well, what if someone tells you that Islamists are trying to take over the country, and that everyone's looking the other way because they're too scared about offending them? What if someone tells you immigrants are taking your homes and your job prospects, and no-one does anything to stop them, because of this invisible barrier called political correctness? Suddenly that anger doesn't seem so impotent - it makes sense. No wonder you haven't got what you wanted in life; it was those pesky terrorists and their traitor/helpers who have pulled out the rug from underneath you!
Articles like the Daily Star one I wrote about yesterday in which Christmas was apparently being 'banned' for the millionth time, which received such a delighted response from some EDL members, are part of the picture. Today and tomorrow we will see articles about first names of children, which will bring up the old chestnut about Mohammeds/Muhammads apparently taking over the country and drowning everyone in a sea of Islam - articles which are so sadly predictable that you can look back at this post by me from last year to see where the agenda is coming from and where the problems lie with the cherrypicking, the failure to put things into context, and so on.
It's much more complicated than someone pointing you at what appears to be a woman on a phone in an old Charlie Chaplin film and saying "Look, it's a woman on a phone!" because this kind of pressure is coming from all angles, in all places, at all times. But how to counter it? Well, one way is to point out that the EDL is wrong to talk about Christmas being banned, as some brave souls have already done on EDL Facebook groups. Another way is to take the media to task for the inaccurate and skewed reporting, as this and other media blogs will try to do. And there are other important avenues to explore as well - not the counterproductive 'getting the white folk angry' of Phil Woolas, who is still, I remind you, a shadow minister, but a genuine attempt to try and reach out to the kind of people who are suffering from the injustices and perceived unfairness that the EDL, BNP and other groups prey on.
That last task is one for politicians, community groups and all kinds of miscellaneous others, but it's important. I know that not all possible EDL folk can be engaged with - some are out-and-out racists, wilfully ignorant, and don't care what they're told - but I think people need to try. It's one thing to just say that the myth-making about immigrants and Muslims is wrong (and it is), but that's not the whole picture; if you don't try to offer some alternative explanations for what's going on, offer some hope, offer some way of dealing with stuff other than taking to the streets under a ruddy great banner and inflaming racial tensions, then things are going to get pretty nasty pretty quickly. But who's going to step in and do that?
If no-one does, though, things are going to get worse. One national newspaper is now happy to report unquestioningly on groups like the EDL; will it stay at one, or will others follow, for easy angry newspaper-buying poll-texting readers, a whole revenue stream of racists just waiting to be tapped?
As for the woman in the Charlie Chaplin film, I really can't offer any explanation. I thought maybe she was holding on a wig, or a hat, or something like that, but the more I look at it, the more it looks like a phone. All I do know, though, is that it isn't. All I know is that much.
Housekeeping 2 – What a charmer
You'll remember the story about the man 'of Somali origin' who was arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences, labelled as a terrorist by the media... and then released without charge, to a great deal less attention than he received when it was thought he might be 'one of them'.
I looked at the Liverpool Echo, as they had done some good coverage of the story (the man had originally flown from John Lennon Airport). I know I shouldn't have looked in the comments, but I went and did, didn't I? And then I saw this charmer:
Umm... except he wasn't plotting to blow up a plane full of innocent people - he was released without charge. And why is it racist to mention that he was 'of Somali origin'? Because you just know that a pink person wouldn't get the same nudge-nudge-wink-wink treatment from the authorities if he'd been arrested under similar circumstances. "Yet again a black screams racism..." - yes, I can't imagine why, can you?
The Mail and the EDL
The Mail distances itself from organisations like the BNP and the EDL, despite providing a lot of their ammunition with inflammatory and misleading articles about race and immigration. Today's story is no different:
A chief constable is seeking emergency powers to ban the far-Right English Defence League from marching through a city's Muslim neighbourhood, amid fears it could provoke widespread violence.
Up to 10,000 EDL supporters are expected to descend on Bradford over the bank holiday weekend in what is claimed will be a rally against Islamic extremism.
But residents fear the provocative march could cause a repeat of the 2001 race riots.
I tend to call people like the EDL and BNP 'ultranationalist' rather than 'far right' nowadays, but that's just a matter of taste really. The EDL are an odd bunch, hard to define in some ways but easy to define in others. They claim to be set up against Islamic extremism, but you have to wonder whether that's really the case, and it isn't just the case that they're a bunch of needle-dicked racist thugs looking for a punch-up rather than protesting about 'their' country.
But as I've written before, the Mail's straight reportage of the EDL and BNP, for example, and the attempts at handwashing by the likes of Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn, finds an angry response from readers. It's no different today, with many readers getting angry with the way the Mail reports the story and calls the EDL a 'magnet for neo-Nazi thugs' and compares them with Oswald Moseley's Blackshirts (who, as we all know, the Daily Mail supported back in the day, but that's by the by). The commenters pile in under the article, firstly with a classic bit of 'whataboutery', comparing the EDL march with the one (which never happened) by Islam4UK through Wootton Bassett; secondly by claiming that Unite Against Fascism are 'the real thugs' and thirdly by claiming that they are just 'English patriots' and there's nothing wrong with the lovely, cuddly EDL.
Have a look for yourself, if you must, but it's not pretty reading. The comments most in favour of the EDL receive positive votes; those against receive negative votes. Now you might suggest these are readers whisked over to the Mail by message boards and forums, and I dare say there's an element of that.
But what if there's something else going on? What if, when you talk about 'white British' mothers explicitly, and wring your hands about the number of 'white British' births, worry about white British mothers, write about 'white flight', and you talk about white people as being 'nationals', and you suggest that second-generation immigrants aren't really British, you're creating a dialogue in which people begin to believe that the only true Brit is a pale pink one? Is the Mail really an innocent bystander in this argument, or actually part of it?
As for banning the march, it is of course provocative and unpleasant, but should go ahead if at all possible. The last thing anyone should do with little Englander 'patriot' types is give them an even bigger chip on their shoulder and give them a genuine sense of victimisation, opposed to the 'stranger in my own country' mentality they carry around with them. The police aren't planning to ban the protest altogether, just the marching element (which you could presume has more potential to be difficult to police). But even so. Scum like the EDL have the right to protest, even if they're completely wrong, and even if they trying to be inflammatory and provocative. Stopping them just makes them believe their own paranoia.
As ever, papers like the Mail fuel groups like the EDL, then step away and pretend to distance themselves from their views when it comes to the crunch. But there's not really a million miles between the obsession with 'white Britons' and the EDL's thoughts of 'patriotism'. Certainly not as much distance as these newspapers would like to think.
Eeek! It’s the invasion of the non-white-British mums!
Today's Mail editorial attempts to head off criticism at the pass:
(thanks to ArmyofDave for the photo.) But if the Mail is so certain about its attitude and the righteousness of its argument - as well as the 'sanctimoniousness' of anyone ever daring to call racism racism - then you have to wonder why they have heavily edited the story on which the editorial was based.
The story you can see on their website now is bad enough. But it's chickenfeed compared with what was originally up there. I saw the original last night and noticed it had been changed this morning. But how to find it...? I knew of one place where the story would certainly have been appreciated - the ultranationalist/racist Stormfront messageboard.
I don't like delving into Stormfront very often - it's like plunging headfirst into a torrent of human waste, and you feel that if you spend more than fifteen minutes there you might catch racism or something - but it needed to be done, on this occasion. Sure enough, there it was. Of course it was. Alongside truly enlightening and delightful discussions about 'polluted bloodline' mixed-race Barbie dolls ("Use them for target practice") is the Mail's story, as it was, before they decided to change it. The original headline was along the lines of "THE MATERNITY UNITS WHERE ONLY ONE IN TEN MOTHERS IS WHITE BRITISH' and the story went like this:
New statistics taken from NHS records of women who have just given birth show that white Britons now account for an average of just six in ten of those receiving maternity care.
They also reveal the startling changes that a decade of record migration is having on different parts of the country.In some inner city areas the proportion of white British mothers slumps to fewer than one in ten.
But the impact on parts of Middle England is even more staggering. NHS trusts which cover parts of the home counties - such as St Albans - report less than six in ten mothers are white British.
The figures will reignite the debate about the scale of immigration and the scale of social division, as well as the impact on public services.
One of the reasons why it's so vitally important for newspapers, as trusted news sources, to get their stories about contentious issues right is because of the way in which they're hoovered up by people like Stormfront, the EDL the BNP and other 'patriot' organisations. There is (or should be) an extra onus on reporters to ensure that what they're saying is accurate first time out. But is it accurate, or is it misleading? Well, the revised story certainly changes the tone:
Just one in ten babies is born to a white British mother in some parts of the country, figures reveal.
The statistics - based on NHS monitoring of the ethnicity and nationality of patients - show a sharp contrast in the backgrounds of new mothers in urban and rural areas.
While white British mothers accounted for just 9.4 per cent of all births in one London health trust, the figure was 97.4 per cent of all births in Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust.
The birth statistics reflect how mothers described themselves, not the ethnicity of the fathers or the babies.
It's good to see that the story has been revised and its tone is now a lot less shrill. But the online Daily Mail is only part of the story - it's the original version of the story (with the question about 'reigniting the debate about immigration' and the accompanying editorial about 'unfettered immigration' and 'an urban Britain dominated by ethnic minorities'*) that appeared in the newspaper, and which was read over the breakfast table. So did the Mail think the original story was a bit wrong? Was it a free hit? Do they think its tone was a bit amiss? Is the more up-to-date story more accurate? Will they update their newspaper readers with today's story? We don't know.
As to the accuracy or otherwise of the original or revised stories, I'll leave it to others. But I will point out this section, which still remains in the revised version:
Across England 62 per cent of all births last year involved a white British mother.
The largest other single ethnic groups were 'other white' - including Eastern Europeans - which made up 7 per cent of births, black (5 per cent), Pakistani (4 per cent) and Indian (3 per cent).
Of the rest of the mothers 8 per cent described their ethnicity as 'other' (including mixed-race women) and the remainder were listed as 'not known'.
There's a whole 11 per cent of 'not known' there, which could be anything - people who don't like ticking boxes, people who've got better things to do when they're about to bring another life into the world than fill in diversity forms that are going to be manipulated by people arguing against immigration, and so on. I wonder if 'other white' includes Irish, as I would have thought that would have been one of the biggest categories - in all the box-ticking exercises I've ever done, there's a 'white British' box and a 'white Irish' box as well as a 'white other'. But again it's a question of the Mail looking for it's "New Labour's unfettered immigration evil" agenda - by saying that 'other white' includes 'Eastern Europeans', it's trying to make a fairly obvious point. But what percentage of 'other white' are these Eastern Europeans? It's not mentioned. For all we know, it might be 0.001 per cent. Sure, they're 'included' but are they significant, compared to white people from the USA, Australia, etc?
But who cares about 'white British' anyway? White British are not better British than black British or Asian British or mixed-race British or 'other whites', surely? I find something rather sinister about the idea that we should be fixated on 'white British' as the marker of something significant - it's verging on 'indigenous population' territory, and all the unpleasantness therein. There's that dirty thread running through the whole story - more obvious in the original version, the one that appeared in the print edition, but still there even now.
The Mail says you're sanctimonious if you say it's racist to question whether this kind of ethnic diversity is a good thing or not. Perhaps not racist to ask the question. It is, however, wrong to imagine that 'white British' is a better kind of British than any other British, though, and it's very clearly misleading to imply that New Labour's government was responsible for all the ethnic diversity that we see in Britain today - these figures aren't compared with any others from another time period, yet are still used in the editorial as proof somehow that it's all Labour's fault. It's not out-and-out racism to complain about the 'impact of immigration on Middle England', but it's not a million miles away either.
So a lot of mums are not 'white British'. So what? Would it be better if they were? I don't think so. The Mail might not like to think it's being racist, but the folk at Stormfront latch on to this kind of story straight away. As I said, that makes it doubly important for the journalists responsible to ensure they've got their facts right, that they're not being misleading and that they're not going to provide ammunition for the ultranationalists and the racists. I wonder if they can, hand on heart, really say that's the case.
* You may well ask how a 'minority' can be a 'minority' when it's 'dominating'.
Daily Express & Daily Star racism: It’s not going to stop
It's not going to stop, but that doesn't mean that it's pointless to be angered by it; or that there's no reason to try and stop it.
It's been going on for some time, as 5cc chronicles today, this pandering to racists, this out-and-out fearmongering about the scale and impact of immigration, this filthy stain on an already tarnished profession of journalism. And it's going to carry on. It's not just one accidental putting of the wrong word in a headline box, or a few mealy-mouthed liberals getting their knickers in a twist over some transgression of the arbitrary lines of political correctness; this is a deliberate policy*.
There's no way that by expressing our anger at the Daily Express and the Daily Star, or by correcting the falsehoods when they appear, or by declaring that we don't want to have anything to do with this kind of lowest-of-the-low reporting, that we're going to change anything. This is the policy. The people who run these businesses believe their readers want to be fed a diet that appeals to racists. They may well be right, but that doesn't make it the truth. And it's not going to stop.
But still, you have to try. We have to try. I'm assuming here that you think racism is a bad thing, and that newspapers misrepresenting minorities to pander to people's very lowest dregs of humanity is not a good idea. I may be wrong, but I like to hope that I am right; without hope, there is nothing. And so while it's unlikely that any of us, individually or even collectively, can stop any of this disgraceful excuse for journalism from appearing on our news-stands, or from making millions of pounds from it, there's everything to hope for.
Today's Express is at it again, of course. Of course it is. After yesterday's atrocity using the archaic racial slur 'ethnics' in a headline - with an accompanying editorial complaining about ethnic minorities being 'over-represented' in professions and linking crime with immigration, while also saying that people who said that Britons were being taken over in the 1960s and 1970s were wrongly labelled as racists - and last week's abomination saying NOW ASYLUM IF YOU'RE GAY - backed up by the memorable NO ROOM FOR GAYS headline in the Star - comes today's little effort.
Is there really 'mounting pressure' for Britain to ban the burkha? I suppose it depends on what you call 'mounting pressure', really. If you think 'mounting pressure' is 'a significant and growing number of people demanding something', then probably not. If you think 'mounting pressure' is 'some rentagob Tory zealot wanting to make a name for himself', then yes, it certainly is. You have to see the front page in the context of the others; it's the policy, it's the pattern, and it's not going to stop.
But that doesn't mean anyone should stop bothering about it. Easy to dismiss the Express and Star as just a couple of nutters shouting in the precinct; but they're 20% Britain's daily newspapers. In the same style as yesterday's Express front page, you could say ONE IN FIVE NEWSPAPERS IS RACIST GARBAGE - but then that would ignore the similar stories being churned out, albeit with a half-ounce more of subtlety, by the Daily Mail and the Sun, and even the Telegraph. It's probably more than 20% of newspapers that happily trot out this vileness on a fairly regular basis, if truth be told.
It's a big and influential target to try and attack, then. And it's not going to happen overnight. We're never going to knock Richard Desmond out of the park in one hit, or smash his polished desk of oak, or stop his boring dirty joke and make him yell. But that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting back. Will targeting advertisers make a difference? It's hard to tell, but Glenn Beck staggers on in the US as brands desert him. Will targeting readers work? It's hard to win the hearts and minds of racists; but there are plenty of people, no doubt, who pick up the Express or Star because it's what they've always done - or because they're cheap - and don't necessarily buy into the politics. There's still a chance for them, and it would be wrong to alienate them by calling them all racist scum - although some undoubtedly are.
But we are many, they are few. And we've got a long way to go before this kind of bilge is regarded as being unacceptable. I don't want to censor anyone; I just want this kind of thing to be seen for the naked racism it is, and for readers not to want to buy it. This isn't about freedom of expression; this is about some people's expression being seen as influential, and important, and somehow representing the truth, whereas in fact it's far from that. The more these newspapers are allowed to keep peddling this awfulness, the more eroded the image of journalism is as a whole, and the less credibility the real, decent, honest reporters have, purely by association.
And I think it's important for very simple reasons. I'm pleased I live in a multicultural society, where people from different backgrounds, beliefs and nationalities can exist together. I feel almost apologetic about saying this kind of thing, as if it's somehow naff or cliched or will be scoffed at as being naivety of the highest order, but do you know what? It isn't. It really isn't. I don't care what the racists say, or do, or try to tell me is the truth; I know what I think, and I'm not going to be part of their lies. Now we're in a recession it's more important than ever that minorities aren't seen as scapegoats or parasites - it's very easy for them to be portrayed as such.
I have limited skills and I am afraid I am not very good at organising people, or things, or anything. All I able to do, as able as I am to do it, is to write about this stuff and to challenge it when I see it, and to call it out for what I believe it to be. It may make no difference at all; it may be a tiny drop in the ocean. But I can't just sit back and let it sit there unchallenged.
It's not going to stop, but sales of newspapers are declining - apart from the cut-price Daily Star, which is why it's important not to dismiss it as simply some kind of comic that no-one reads. People are getting their news from other places now, and they're more and more sceptical about the printed page. It's going to take time, and it's going to be a slow process. But anything that fights it is worth it. Don't ask whether it's worth it or not to try; just try. We may not get anywhere, but let's try.
* It could have been even more explicit. It was only staff standing up to their employers that saw the "Daily Fatwa" edition of the Star fail to make it into print, so we were spared the 'hilarious' sight of "What Britain would look like under Muslim rule".
Express and ‘ethnics’: Now the veil has gone
Previously, I've talked about racism so thinly veiled that you can hardly see it with regard to Richard Desmond's Daily Express and Daily Star.
Now the veil has gone.
'Ethnics' is such a 1970s word, dripping with contempt. It's not the first time that Richard Desmond's Daily Express has used it:
'Ethnics and women' lumped together in that delightful front page splash from June 2008. But to have it slap bang in the centre of the front page, as if there's nothing wrong with it at all, is one step further down the road to out-and-out racism. This has gone beyond dog whistles. This is not about a nudge and a wink any more - Richard Desmond's Express and Star leave that kind of subtle signposting to the Daily Mail, who are more than capable.
No, this is what it is. Leave aside that we're all 'ethnics' of one mongrel sort or another; this makes it quite clear what's going on. There are whites and there are 'ethnics'. How much more explicit does it have to be before we start calling it what it is?
And what image does the Express use to illustrate its vile story online?
Of course. Women with their faces covered - veiled more discreetly than the racism on the Express front page, ironically enough. But it's clear what's going on: this is all about fear.
It's the same story we've seen countless times before: panic about the population, with an added dose of pressing whitey's worry buttons by saying 'black and Asian families' will move out of inner-city areas (hey, some of them even have dared to get out of their enclaves already!) and move into the suburbs and countryside.
And of course it's all about pressing to 'curb immigration' in Richard Desmond's world. Someone whose family was once immigrants, and maybe described as 'ethnic' themselves, now quite happy to peddle this kind of thing on his front page to try and go for the racist market. And don't worry, there's a quote from Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch. Phew! Just when you thought there'd be a story without a quote from him, no bother, there he is. (Sometimes I wonder if the Express just ring him up about every story to be on the safe side.)
There is no veil any more.
April Fool
Newspapers have always loved April Fool's Day, from back in the days when they were trusted and massively popular, all the way through to today, when they are neither. Now it seems like a bit of a hollow joke. They say: Hey look, here's something we made up that's completely not true! Hee haw! And your first reaction isn't: Wow, that's hilarious, you've really pulled the wool over my eyes this time you cheeky scamps, but Oh, you've made something up. Not really the first time you've done it this year, or month, or week, or even in this issue, is it?
I don't want to sound grumpy, or a killjoy, or a curmudgeon or anything like that; but fuck it, I am. Or rather, that's how I am when it comes to things like this. The only way an April Fool's joke can work is if someone whom you trust does it to you: that's the whole point of it. It has to be someone you believe, rather than imagine is a constant bullshitter.
The April 1st workplace gags from "I'm a alien!" people in Simpsons ties, the "I'm mad,me!" types in the office, don't ever work, because you know they're bound to try something zany on April Fool's Day, so you're always waiting for it. With newspapers it's different. You don't have an expectation they'll joke with you; you have an expectation they tell all sorts of porkies all the time. Oh, here comes another one. Oh, they've admitted this one isn't real. Yeah, ho ho. If a newspaper worked at your office, it wouldn't be the bloke in the bow tie and the comedy glasses - it'd be that guy stinking of booze that's always turning up late, telling you that his grandmother's just died, or that he trod on a plug and had to go to Casualty, or that he didn't realise you meant today when you said the deadline was today, and that he didn't mean it this time, he'll get it done properly next time... the kind of flaky, marginal character who always seems to avoid being sacked, despite being irretrievably unreliable.
The sad thing is - and I do think it's a genuinely sad thing - that we just don't trust our newspapers any more. Just as we don't trust our politicians, or our estate agents, or lawyers. We've been turned over too many times to keep popping our heads up like Whac-a-moles thinking we won't get bumped on the head with a big sponge hammer. We know what to expect. You might argue - with some justification - that newspapers have always been casually derided as 'tomorrow's chip paper', but I do think there was a time when millions of people would turn to them as a source of information. I don't think we do any more, or at least I don't think we do with such certainty. It's gone beyond the stage of trust having broken down; it's at the point where you just don't know what to believe, and what you read in the paper is just one of many potentially slippery competing sources with agendas that you have to try and unravel. Maybe it was always like that, but it was harder to see because you couldn't check for yourself via the web. Maybe in that sense, our fun has been spoiled.
When you see a front page like this, for example
the immediate reaction isn't: Wow, that must all be true, amazing! But it's also not: That's all such bollocks it must be April Fool jokes, they can't be serious! It's the more wearily pragmatic: Oh. Here we go again. And we do. Snow chaos, some rubbish about ageing, and the great-grandmother we met yesterday who was fined in Bonkers Britain for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal selling a goldfish to some 14-year-old kid who looked about 85, apparently.
The goldfish granny is a perfect modern newspaper tale: it's telling you what they think you want to hear - that Britain is bonkers and all kinds of things, like health and safety and political correctness have gone mad - while obscuring the details that reveal that perhaps Britain isn't as bonkers as you might fear. The animal cruelty charge gets buried, because it's not a story if it's about that. All the mitigation from the convicted person - who pleaded guilty to the charges, let's please remember - is repeated as if it's factual. I wonder if they'd do the same if it was some young kid who pleaded guilty to committing a crime of violence? I'm guessing not.
Animal cruelty is a serious enough business - more serious, you could argue, than selling booze or fags or mucky vids to teenagers, and therefore something that Trading Standards should be clamping down on. But no, apparently the fact that someone has admitted an offence, been fined, said they couldn't afford the fine and has therefore been electronically tagged, is something that 'shames Britain'. Is it all right to commit a crime, then, if you're an elderly lady? Shall we just not bother prosecuting anyone who likes a bit of bingo? Shall we just give up then, and let them do everything they want, because they're old?
And when the Express says FREE HER NOW, it's not joking. This is April 1, but it's deadly serious. If people admit animal cruelty, and they're from a certain 'good' demographic, they should be let off, it says. But I remember when a couple of Romanian immigrants admitted the offence of criminal damage the other week, and the same newspaper roared and roared that they should be deported and shouldn't be receiving benefits, then said they'd STOLEN A MAN'S HOME when they hadn't. I guess they're just the 'bad' demographic, who shouldn't have anything excused, who we don't mind a pack of lies being told about.
Some offences get hidden when it suits the papers; others get magnified and exaggerated. And it seems to depend what kind of background you have, whether you're an immigrant or not. Maybe I'm losing my sense of humour, but I don't find that funny at all. Who, then, are the April Fools? The newspapers, for publishing this kind of crap, or us for reading it, and sometimes believing it?
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Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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