O/T Caroline Flack

[sidders]

True. Over the years the media have very successfully managed to blur the lines between 'what is in the public interest', and 'what the public is interested in'.

The media agenda will always lean towards the latter, because their primary goal is to sell newspapers, not to make the world a better place.

I agree with you on this, Jackal 2, (are you and Jackal 1 father and son?) but I would insist on the proviso that some newspapers were more responsible in this regard than others. As a rough guide, those who smother their pages in Royal News & Gossip do the most damage to people's lives.

[drillerpie]

I agree with you on this, Jackal 2, (are you and Jackal 1 father and son?) but I would insist on the proviso that some newspapers were more responsible in this regard than others. As a rough guide, those who smother their pages in Royal News & Gossip do the most damage to people's lives.

I was just about to make this point. I can't imagine the broadsheets going all-in on Love Island celebrity gossip, and certainly the one I read doesn't (I had to Google the lady in question to find out who she was)

[jackal2]

I agree with you on this, Jackal 2, (are you and Jackal 1 father and son?)

He's nothing to do with me, and I'll take a paternity test to prove it! I wanted to be 'Jackal' but it was already taken so I went for the next option, which led someone on here to ask me if I was ex-forces because apparently Jackal 2 is also the name of a tank!

I would insist on the proviso that some newspapers were more responsible in this regard than others.

Yes, I'd agree with this. We may disagree on the level of bias in the "quality" newspapers when it comes to political reporting, but the red top tabloids are definitely the big culprits when it comes to salacious gossip, character assassination and unjustified invasions of privacy.

They often have the temerity to feign moral outrage as their way of claiming a story is 'in the public interest', when actually their own methods of obtaining information, and the way they present such information shows no morality at all. But as BFP says above, they will keep doing it because people keep buying it.

[Notsohumblepie]

True. Over the years the media have very successfully managed to blur the lines between 'what is in the public interest', and 'what the public is interested in'.

The media agenda will always lean towards the latter, because their primary goal is to sell newspapers, not to make the world a better place.

The cult of celebrity always seems to think it can play the media like a violin, but "celebs" soon find to their cost, that they become the instrument, rather than the artist. Anyone dying like this is appalling. A vibrant, healthy woman ending her own life is a tragedy.

[the_anticlough]

The cult of celebrity always seems to think it can play the media like a violin, but "celebs" soon find to their cost, that they become the instrument, rather than the artist. Anyone dying like this is appalling. A vibrant, healthy woman ending her own life is a tragedy.

Well chosen words