The boy king probably will now let Coulson go in due course.

Though he is a cheeky monkey.

I liked his reply to Tom Watson – along the lines of: I was as unaware of what my reporter was up to as you were of what Damien McBride was up to.

Genius.

And I would rather have our tabloid culture than most other countries’ newspaper cultures anyday.

So you’d rather have swine flu hysteria and weeks of nonsense about Michael Jackson than proper reporting on politics and well-funded investigative journalism? Fair enough.

So you’d rather have swine flu hysteria and weeks of nonsense about Michael Jackson than proper reporting on politics and well-funded investigative journalism?

I don’t think that was the choice was it? Exactly how investigative is continental journalism? Mitterand’s Vichy past (and love child) were known by everyone in the French media but never covered… And have you tried reading the Italian press? The US press is almost unbelievably tedious – and its political coverage is generally dire. Where is this paragon of journalism to be found?

US political coverage at the LA T, NYT, WashPo etc is still better than ours. Why do you call it tedious? How that is worse than Daily Mail’s hysteria?

Straight news, especially at the NYT, is mind-numbing. It’s not called the Grey Lady for nothing. And in any event, the true comparisons to the NYT, WaPo, WSJ etc are the Times, Guardian, FT, or Telegraph. Comparing them to the Daily Mail is apples and oranges.

So really it’s a comparison between the Mail and the likes of the National Enquirer – and are you really going to put those US papers in a different league?

The only thing our press excels at, with the exception of the investigative journalism which does still happen, mainly in the broads, is comment, which probably is some of the widest and sharpest in the world. It wasn’t so long ago that everyone was complaining about how every journo in Westminster knew about what was going on with MPs expenses, but nothing was said until the Torygraph bought its exclusive. You can criticise aspects of all variations of national media the world has to offer, such as the lack of criticism of the Bush administration post 9/11 in the US which then changed into constant criticism, but very few in the free world have all the downsides which ours has, such as the incessant sensationalism, lack of honesty and hardly any grounds for recourse unless you’re fabulously wealthy, all of which are inherent in our current system.

Tim J: it’s not a apposite comparison because I don’t believe that politicians in the US have to or need to prostitute themselves to the likes of the National Enquirer. Fox News maybe, their equivalent tabloids no.

very few in the free world have all the downsides which ours has, such as the incessant sensationalism, lack of honesty and hardly any grounds for recourse unless you’re fabulously wealthy.

I’m not going to defend any of these things as good, but I honestly think that you’d struggle to find any nation with a developed press that does not have a tabloid end that displays all of these ‘qualities’. Bild in Germany, the Italian tabloids, the Spanish – all of them are as bad as the British tabloids.

You run the risk, like Sunny above, of comparing other nations’ serious papers with our gutter tabloids. ‘The WSJ is a more serious investigative newspaper than the NoTW’ is surely not news to anyone.

Quick comment tennis: septicisle, the US politicos don’t need to prostitute themselves to any print media, because it simply doesn’t have the political relevance in the US that it does here. Which is why in the UK the politicians suck up to the press and in the US the press suck up to the politicians.

But as I pointed out, very few of those organs, perhaps with the exception of Bild, have the influence and power which ours do. Italy might well be worse, due to Berlusconi’s stranglehold on the media, but even there he’s finally being done over, even if it’s about sex rather than the constant allegations of corruption.

But that’s a slightly different point isn’t it? Your first point was that the British press was uniquely bad (or at least worse than its obvious rivals) because of its “swine flu hysteria and weeks of nonsense about Michael Jackson” and its “incessant sensationalism, lack of honesty and hardly any grounds for recourse unless you’re fabulously wealthy”.

This I don’t think is a fair criticism, not because these things are good, but because they are endemic to low-rent tabloid journalism the world over.

You subsequent point seems to be that the real problem is the influence that the British press has over politicians. And this is something that I’d broadly agree with, noting only that this is more the fault of the politicians than the press.

‘very few in the free world have all the downsides which ours has, such as the incessant sensationalism, lack of honesty and hardly any grounds for recourse unless you’re fabulously wealthy.’

Rather balanced out by out ludicrously restrictive libel laws.

Except the problems are interconnected because of their influence. The other tabloids focus themselves almost solely on celebrity and “real life stories”; they hardly bother with politics and the real world, if you will. Their status and power, not to mention their mass sales, exacerbate and magnify their intrusions and deceptions, especially when they can lobby politicians to water down the laws barring the use of private detectives, as the Mail, News International and Telegraph did. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/04/pressandpublishing.freedomofinformation

Paul Dacre then boasted about it in a speech, while also condemning Nick Davies’ book without even deigning to mention it. He also mentioned that also attending the dinner with Brown where they protested, was Les Hinton, another of the NI executives who of course knew nothing, Manuel style. http://www.septicisle.info/2008/11/daily-mail-in-flesh.html

Shatterface: True, but I get the feeling that we’re not going to get reform of those without something being done about all those things mentioned, which is never going to happen, hence we’ll be evermore stuck with the status quo.

@ Tim J

It is fair because what he said was actually reported in the Telegraph, the Times and The Guardian constantly, again, again and again.

Yes I’m not sure why we’re comparing tabloids and broadsheets but if we are, the American press win again.

You may hate the National Enquire but it broke Jacko’s weird drug issues and the fact he was going to die at least 6 months ago…

TMZ broke OJ Simpson AND Britney AND Jacko…

WTF have we done??

We’re no good.

The writting?? Lack of wit? The desperation?? The obsession with mediocre celebs and TV presenters??

Again, the US do it better. You may hate Paris Hilton but she’s a hell of a lot more of something then Jordan.

We were never this bad, in fact we used to be the best but this dumbing down…means that we can’t even DO tabloid very well!

Coulson was CRAP as NOTW.

There’s a fair place for high and low brow culture to appeal and entertain all BUT god damn I wish we could do both well!

Heh @ rantersparadise.

Tim J #11 – I think that’s a fair comment. But I still prefer the Ny Times even over our broadsheet press.

The NYT is dull and claiming to prefer it reall is a bit *cough* pretentious.

Anyway you have to get *some* UK news too….?