15 July 2011 Volume: 21 Issue: 13 North Korea's ... - Eureka Street

Volume 21 Issue: 1315 July 2011My News of the World shameMEDIAAlan GillAs a teenager in 1950s Britain I remember thinking that Catholic clergy must be a pure andundefiled lot, whereas our mob (Church of England) were hopelessly embroiled in scandalsabout runaway curates, loose canons (literally), and what my father impolitely summarised as‘shirt lifting vicars’.And the source of this information? That doughty journal, the News of the World, banned bymy boarding school headmaster, thus ensuring that a handful of copies sneaked from afriendly newsagent circulated like gold dust.Not that we knew whether or not those of the Roman obedience really were as good as theyseemed. We knew their priests were not allowed to marry and assumed the rest. The News ofthe World had very little to say about the still largely ghettoised Catholic Church and itsmembers, but a lot to say about the frailties of us Protestants.I was 15 when my father joined the demand for a ban on the newspaper. In his case becauseof an exposé involving a peer of the realm and soldiers in my father’s wartime Guardsregiment. A quip about ‘fairies at the bottom of our guardsmen’ was the last straw.For almost all its 168 years of existence the News of the World was an unrepentant scandalship, but — a point misses by some Australian commentators — changes have occurred, whichappear to reflect the manners and mores of the times.For instance, the 1950s, in which I grew up, and the years immediately prior to the RupertMurdoch takeover in 1968 show the paper in what I would call ‘British hypocritical mode’.A typical example might be: Staff reporter and photographer enter a high class (illegal)brothel and get snatch story and pix with the Madame and clients as they leave hurriedly.When the story is being prepared, subeditors take care to add a paragraph reading somethinglike: ‘An indecent offer was made to our reporter who said, “I am John Smith from the News ofthe World” and left.’In those days News of the World reporters spent a lot of time ‘leaving’.Stories like this make good copy with sex oozing from every paragraph. But there has to bean impression of community mindedness.Executives on the paper possibly believed their own rhetoric. When it appeared the paperwould be sold to Murdoch, the then editor, clearly sensing the danger to his own position,uttered the oft quoted phrase: ‘The News of the World is as English as roast beef and YorkshirePudding. It should not be sold to a foreigner.’©2011 EurekaStreet.com.au 9