by Brian Cathcart
What lies behind the Daily Mail’s assault on Hugh Grant? Could it be conventional piety? Hardly: have you looked at Mail Online lately? It is an artful mix of soft porn and celebrity gossip of the kind which, just a few years ago, the Mail itself would have dismissed as morally corrosive.
Is the paper living in a dream world of Downton Abbey values? Maybe, but look at this. Delightfully illustrated and just a week old, it shows a Daily Mail that, far from being judgemental, is aware, cheeky and relaxed, even in the face of evidence of mass adultery.
Or could it be that Amanda Platell has some personal objection to Hugh Grant? She would not need one, for her article carries all the hallmarks of Glenda Slagg morality. Imagine that her instructions had been to whip up hatred against the mother in this case rather than the father. She could have done so with exactly the same passion and apparent conviction, simply substituting arentyasickofher for arentyasickofhim.
The Mail’s great broadside against Grant has nothing to do with morality and nothing to do with the perils of fatherhood outside wedlock. It is simply an act of intimidation.
The actor has been a prominent critic of privacy intrusion by the press and the Mail has chosen to make an example of him. It is saying to any prominent person who challenges the press: if you speak out, this is what we will do to you.
One of the most vivid insights into the culture of the old News of the World was a conversation from 2002 that happily was recorded for posterity. “That is what we do,” a news editor told a reporter, “we go out and destroy other people’s lives.”
The Mail plays the same game, and its technique in this case is wilful distortion. Take three facts and from those facts derive a dozen assumptions, all of which fit your agenda. From those assumptions weave a narrative as demeaning as can be contrived, and then pile the outrage on top. Never mind that the same three facts could provide the foundation of five entirely different narratives, leading to entirely different perspectives on those involved.
Platell doesn’t know the truth about Hugh Grant’s relationships and the Mail doesn’t either, but that does not matter: they have constructed a story that serves their purpose.
Just at this moment, with the Leveson inquiry set to start taking evidence and the joint parliamentary committee on privacy in full flow, the Mail is desperate to blunt the message that the unregulated mass-circulation press — the press that gave us hacking, the McCann case, the Christopher Jefferies case and so many others — is a threat to the health of our society.
Hugh Grant is a Leveson witness, so it makes him a target. And at the same time the treatment doled out to him serves notice, not only on anyone else with opinions the Mail does not like but also on everyone involved in both of those inquiries, that they can be dealt with the same way.
In their high-minded moments, papers like the Mail present themselves as champions of free expression, yet this is how they deal with those who disagree with them. And they have the nerve to call other people hypocrites.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London and is a founder of Hacked Off. He tweets at @BrianCathcart.
“And they have the nerve to call other people hypocrites.” – Oh Mr Cathcart, the irony is overwhelming. Hugh Grant has never courted publicity?
No, he just got caught in a car with a hooker.
Why does it still bother you that Hugh Grant got a b_ _ _ job from a hooker? He’s not the first public person to get caught in a situation like that and he won’t be the last. What about all of the MARRIED men who get caught with hookers, girlfriends, etc.? Ashton Kutcher, Eddie Murphy, Bill Clinton, etc. What about the MARRIED women who cheat on their husbands? Hugh Grant wasn’t even married at the time. Whatever his relationship was with Liz Hurley and however she handled it, was their business and no one elses.
Daily Mail journalists and much of the tabloid press these days have more in common with the old East German Stasi than Woodward and Bernstein. Their behaviour undermines civil society and it’s about time we fought back against these animals. I can’t give my real name because I’m scared of them as well.
Brian, great piece, but you linked to the wrong story. The Daily Mail stories are always outrageous, regardless the topic, but their constant attacks on Hugh Grant are obnoxious, at best. That they call themselves “journalists” is an insult to real journalists who report “real facts,” write in a fair and balanced manner, get both sides of a story, and leave their biases, if any, “at the door.” I have never seen anything resembling this at the Daily Mail. While I mourn the continued demise of newspapers the world over and the resulting loss of jobs for journalists, I can honestly say that I look forward to the day when the Daily Mail prints its last issue and closes its doors forever.
The red-tops are past masters at influencing public opinion using the basest instincts of their readers, xenophobia and racism, among them. If you are well known and attack their privileged position they see you as fair game for character assassination: they will do the same just to sell papers. More important than even this is the way they twist almost all stories to support the political views of their owners some of them simply being made up. This infantilises their readers and makes rational politics impossible. Policies on many important issues such as drugs, the EU and others, have been poisoned by their ignorant bigoted approach. We pay a heavy price for the paucity of good journalism in the UK and the BBC sadly does little to make up for the bias in the printed medias.
I quite agree with all of your points here. Still, what surprised me is what a clumsy attempt at a smear this is – the timing and the viciousness of it leave few people in doubt of what is behind it.
I have blogged on declining standards at the Daily Mail myself http://mbradbrook.blogspot.com/2011/01/whats-wrong-at-daily-mail.html
The Daily Mail has no standards, as exemplified by its so-called “reporters.”
Absolutely agree, I typically enjoy the Mail and Amanda Platell has a cheeky humour to a lot of her pieces but this is quite vitriolic and unnecessary. Disappointed.
@savash98: On moral grounds I am inclined to agree with you (hence my shame). However, my blog refers more to the fact that they were once extremely good at what they did – you could rarely see the glue holding shaky arguments together.
The Amanda Platell diatribe was only one of FOUR separate articles in yesterday’s Mail Online, listed one under the other on the sidebar, about Hugh Grant and his ‘philandering ways and reprehensible morality’. If only Liz Jones had stolen his sperm he could have made the top five stories.
Who cares about Hugh Grant: the point is that the only intersting feature of this guy is his crapiness: what do you want journalists to talk about concerning him????????????????? I don’t know the interest people can have on him and his life!!!
The Daily Mail ought to be ashamed of themselves. I hope they go down just like “News of the World” did.
I wish we could live in a world where we were allowed to be individuals. We are not all joined together at the hip. We all have our own moral rights and as individuals should be allowed to decide how we behave. If we do not injure others mentally or physically then we should not be judged for our actions. If there is a God…. ‘Remember’ he or she, animal, vegetable or mineral gave us free will. I for one use that whenever I can, and to hell with the small minded opinions of bigots and narrow minded prudes. I suppose I have a skeleton in my closet, but it’s polished and varnished and dipped in shameless gold. I dare say many would throw sewer water over it, given half the chance.
Love the Daily Mail article and can’t stand the self righteous, pompous Hugh Grant.
The media want people to believe that this enquiry is about such things as Hugh Grant being caught with a h**ker. As he said in his statement today, he has no argument with the press over this. It is about the fact his privacy clearly was breached, whether it be from the phone hacking or publishing of medical records etc.
News International shut down the News of the World in the hope that the entire blame for scandal could be placed with the News of the World and thus swept under the carpet with it’s closure.
I think we need to focus on how organisations, such as News International, have so much power to distribute what they like when they like. Its understandable and also worrying that the government has such a close relationship with media organisations and clear that freedom of speech and freedom of information is nowhere near what people like to believe it is in the west. There is as much propaganda in the UK as many nations portrayed as unstable, undemocratic etc.
Let’s face it in the UK, infact I don’t know where not, the media is biased and heavily influenced by the government.
Of course if the government doesn’t want the media to publish something they can just say it’s not in the public interest to do so and ban them from doing it.
If they want something (anything) published they can ‘leak’ it out.
It’s funny that in the western world today people want to know about Hugh Grants relationships and things like that, that’s why the media provides it. People aren’t interested in anything that’s not superficial celeb-related.
Media coverage of the Middle East, Libya for example – what’s happening there? Is democracy being encouraged….or who has the west ‘put’ in power. A strategic ally no doubt. Probably former Chairman of BP….he’s out of a job I heard….
The Daily Mail. They spitefully slang people on their pages like a bunch of Victorian witches, then they come to court all spruced up and make pompous speeches. Is there a full Moon involved in the transformation?
I think Hugh Grant has been exemplary in this whole matter. His speculations are intuitive and accurate, he is extremely brave, and he is telling the truth. It is true that the tabloids have the Met police in their pockets, and that News Corp does in particular, and that the Associated Newspapers are vying for second place in the ‘appalling methods’ ratings. The Daily Mail always conspicuously follows News International with its stories. They are in ‘cahoots’.This was my exact experience of them.
Quote Hugh via the Daily Telegraph report: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/8905551/Leveson-Inquiry-Hugh-Grant-accuses-other-papers-of-taking-part-in-phone-hacking.html
Mr McMullan had also told him that “a third of the Metropolitan Police were on backhanders from the tabloid press”.
Grant insisted that his highly publicised arrest in Los Angeles in 1995 for lewd conduct in a public place with a prostitute was not the root cause of his enmity towards the tabloid press.
He had “no quarrel” with the way the story was covered, but disclosed that “at the zenith” of the story his fourth-floor flat in London was broken into, the only time it had been burgled in the 25 years he had owned it. “Nothing was stolen, which was weird,” he said. “The police came round to talk about it and the day after that a detailed account of what the interior of my flat looked like appeared in a British tabloid paper.
“I remember thinking ‘Who told them that? Was it the burglar or was it the police?’ ” He agreed that the burglar might have been “acting on the instructions of the press”.
Unquote.
The police do act on the instructions of the press this was my exact experience.
Well the image of this national treasure Hugh Grant is pretty unassailable, and as a media victim I am grateful to him and Jude Law and the others for using their positions to demonstrate courage and nobility and confront the abusive element of the media.
The Daily Mail is also attacking Jude Law too, and trying to make him look ridiculous, did you see this five days ago- they have decided that he has been wearing hats for six months to cover his bald patch and put him in the stocks and fling tomatoes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2089168/Jude-Law-removes-hat-reveal-hair-loss-Sherlock-Holmes-Game-Shadows-Paris-premiere.html
At the base of the article ( linked above) are about five hundred enraged and disgusted (mainly) English but also American and European women who state that he is a ‘dreamboat’ and they don’t care if he is going bald, though he probably isn’t, and that the Daily Mail are ‘idiots’.
In trying to pass Hugh off as a grumbling old sleaze and Jude off as an ugly balding old coot the Mail set themselves up for a fall, it would seem. After being told to ***** off and after having so many tomatoes flung at them by such a representative portion of the female population they retire and state they are no longer accepting comments on their article. Well funny.
Not sure if the comment I sent to this posting about the Daily Mail making fools of themselves attacking the more or less unassailable images of Hugh and Jude and a number of others went through. Also, not sure if the Daily Mail’s article attempting to intimidate Jude Law that I quoted was indeed a recent one, as I only checked out the matter of their expressley intimidating him and Hugh yesterday upon reading this article. Even so, the point is well made, isn’t it. The Daily Mail sling mud at all those who speak out. And having set themselves up for a fall by trying to make Hugh and Jude look ugly and absurd, it’s an inevitable source of amusement to see it backfire in their faces.
Hugh’s and the above writer’s comments on the matter of a) his possibly being hacked by the Daily Mail and b) the fact that they use intimidation are extremely interesting and relevant to many people and I hope he has not been discouraged and intimidated from being bold in them.
I find the defence that the Daily Mail raised to his allegations about hacking him, to be one that a criminal court would probably dismiss. They state that they couldn’t possibly have hacked his phone and that the ‘plummy voiced woman’ story was reported to them via a friend of Jemima’s, I think. Surely the chances of their version being true are very remote? Break it down, don’t be intimidated by their over confident lawyers. What, are they really making out that Jemima listened to a conversation on the phone between Hugh and another woman and then, without confronting her own lover, went sneaking to a press plant so that the D M could print an embarrassing lot of rubbish? If she had done, ( and it would seem very unlike what the public have seen of her character for her to do that) surely she wouldn’t have got her boyfriend wrong to such a significant extent, especially if she had heard the conversation between him and said ‘plummy voiced woman’?
hhhmm.
I think Hugh should persue an investigation into the Daily Mail’s possible hacking of his phone, if he has the means, as it is potential criminal evidence against them and would potentially see them in the dock. I have often heard people suggest that they are “stalking maniacs.”
I am concerned personally that Operation Weeting are neglecting certain areas. The IPCC have released Officer Yeates without persuing any allegation against him atall- quite what they mean by that after the Chief Commissioner resigned over the same business is anyone’s guess.
*Officer Yates. here is the link,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/14/john-yates-cleared-misconduct
why was this case against assisstant Commissioner Yates simply not investigated at all? It suggests to me that the Chief Commissioner himself probably resigned to prevent other issues coming to the fore- and that likewise, an investigation into Yates was neglected in order to achieve the same purpose. To prevent issues coming to the fore.
And why did operation Weeting and the Met dismiss the death of Sean Hoare as ‘having none of the tell tale signs of a corrupt organization trying to cover its tracks?
It starts to add up, doesn’t it.
An amusing except from an observer, below.
http://newsthump.com/2011/07/19/sean-hoares-death-very-very-suspicious-insists-everyone-except-the-police/
Why can’t this country look at itself in the mirror and admit it when corruption has gone on. It is way slower than the rest of Europe in this regard.
I hope very much that this inquiry will achieve a lot and not end up as just another Whitewash. Really, the execs of the NOTW should be in the dock by now? Any ordinary person would be. Why are they sitting in posh armchairs, pretending it’s a civil law matter, their behavior? How come they aren’t remanded into custody?
When police are concerned about defendants liasing they often split them up and remand them into custody in different prisons. But if you are executives of News International, you can go to fancy meetings and go home and have a drink and natter with each other on the phone about it all.
How can the public respect this level of discrimination?
What I find disturbing about all this is that once again successive governments have left private individuals to search for ways to protect themselves from crime instead of enacting the necessary laws to protect our basic human rights. A multimillion pound industry has sprung up because individuals are having to invest in CCTV, personal alarms, body guards etc… we have just had to invest in creating a secure system and application for our mobile phones just to protect voicemail messages… the world truly has gone mad. Corporate and White Collar crime statistics continue to rise and yet the police seem helpless to address it and the crown prosecution service hesitant to take action. Lets hope this inquiry will level the playing field…