All the news that’s shit to print
More than half of the BBC’s Six O’clock News was last night given over to the public dissection of the life of a 37-year-old Tesco employee. The coverage had been cut back by the time of the same channel’s Nine O’clock News but still filled more than a third of the programme.
The man in question – as if you didn’t know – has been arrested by police investigating the murder of five women in and around the Suffolk town of Ipswich. He has, to date, been charged with (let alone convicted of) precisely nothing.
Supposedly serious journalists, BBC correspondents intoned that the arrested man “describes himself as ‘sad’, ‘lonely’ and says there is something about him that women don’t seem to like”. Speaking unto the nation, these highly trained newsgathering machines confirmed that they had read the man’s MySpace site and the interview he gave to the Sunday Mirror and listened to a not-for-broadcast interview he gave last week to BBC Radio (which the BBC promptly broadcast), repeating the claims he made therein as established fact.
Gavin Hewitt drove his car from the arrested man’s house to the site where the last victim’s body was discovered and breathlessly exclaimed that, even without driving quickly, the journey had taken him only five minutes. Fuck me – that’s conclusive: hang the vile deviant.
It was left to a single throwaway line at the denouement of the Nine O’clock News’ coverage of the story to confirm that the man is only one of six considered by Suffolk Constabulary to be significant suspects in this case (this information presumably gleamed by the BBC’s dazzling hacks by reading the first edition of this morning’s Times newspaper).
It was left to the BBC’s Deputy Director of News to appear on Newsnight to seek to defend the corporation’s unilateral decision – taken only after the man’s arrest – to broadcast that “background interview” and to devote so much coverage to the arrest. He laughably claimed that the corporation’s actions were in “the public interest”. Jeremy Paxman, at least, still seems to remember that brief section in journalism college that mentions the Contempt of Court Act prevents the broadcast or publication of information that might prejudice the administration of justice and commendably pointed out to his boss that there is a world of difference between “the public interest” and “what the public is interested in”.
This morning the Daily Mirror alleges in a massive front page splash that the arrested man “had a party at his house with all five victims – just weeks before the first girl went missing”. Clearly this anonymous allegation (doubtless made in return for cash) establishes the man’s guilt beyond question and he should be burnt at the stake forthwith. Jesus: to think that masthead used to stand for the very best in investigative journalism…
As I have been typing this post, it has emerged that Suffolk Constabulary has this morning arrested a second man in connection with this enquiry. Perhaps this is the “American man known as ‘Uncle’” that so many media outlets have been trailing for the past two or three days. Who knows? Either way I look forward to learning his inside leg measurement and about his passion for trainspotting on this evening’s “news” (sic) as an expensively hired helicopter pointlessly circles above some anonymous dwellings on an Ipswich housing estate to provide “colour” for the piece.
In ordinary circumstances, one would hope that the Attorney General would charge with contempt a couple of news editors and lock the bastards up for a couple of weeks just to remind the Fourth Estate of its obligations not to prejudice criminal proceedings. Of course, these are not ordinary circumstances: our Attorney General is “Lord” Peter Goldsmith.