Barely had the proverbial ink on our New Year’s resolutions dried when we returned to work to find that, amid all the dizzying gluttony of the festive period, the world had turned mad in the interim.
It certainly hasn’t been a quiet January for media news. As we polished off the last of the Ferrero Rocher, it was the impenetrable Murdoch-Deng axis that was acting ambassador and ‘spoiling us’ with their treats. Following the arrival of @RupertMurdoch on Twitter at the turn of the year (surprising in itself as this was the media mogul who rubbished social media and sold MySpace) the Twitter universe was shocked and awed by the arrival of @Wend_Deng to Twitter, the impresario’s long-time partner. After some believable interaction and laudable social media etiquette, it turned out to be a fake –despite Twitter verifying the account as the real deal. Nice one, Twitter! Despite the false promise, it served as a nice little opportunity for the media to appreciate other Twitter fake accounts mimicking famous people, my fav being the pretend England football manager @Fabio_Capello (sample Tweet: My new years resolution is to give up masturbating and cigarettes. I used to be a 20 a day man, smoked fuck loads too.)
Just when we think we’ve got back to calling a spade a spade, Paul Dacre makes a rare vlog appearance to remind everyone, in view of the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry result, that the Daily Mail got it right back in 1993 when it went with the headline ‘Murderers’ – referring to its accusation that the five suspects in the Lawrence trail were, in fact, guilty. Nothing too unusual about reminding the world you called it correctly nearly twenty years ago perhaps, but what follows is a 12 minute rant defending the politics of the Daily Mail and recounting – minute by minute – how he mulled over the decision to go with THAT headline (called his wife FYI, she told him how it was). The episode is a bit ‘grandpa reading grandchild a bed-time story’ in the end – creepy in its own right.
Next up comes some tasty media news in that Colin Myler, the News of the World’s last editor, has been appointed editor at the Daily News newspaper in New York – pitting him against the New York Post which is, juicily, owned by none other than his previous employer – Rupert Murdoch. So kicks off a new turf warfare amongst the tabs in New York City – just as pantomime season closes in the UK.
Other crazy stuff to happen in the past seven days include Rebecca Brooks being ‘papped’ by the Daily Mail while on holiday in South Africa *(taste of her own medicine - and no, thank god, she is not topless) and Diane Abbott making perceived racists comments on Sky News and then being called, LIVE and mid-interview by Labour leader Ed Milliband, to be given a dressing down – sacre bleu! *this URL has now been taken down, interestingly!
Luckily TV-land kept its cool, with the BBC finally having the sense to kill off Eastender’s Pat Butcher (Daily Mail headline: ‘End of an Earring’) and Richard Desmond deciding that the declining statistics for watching Celebrity Big Brother must be wrong, as he rolled the tired format out once more to the nation (just who is Andrew Stone?)
And that was the week that was. Only the silliness it is not over yet. Next week sees the return of the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking, with it being ‘Editor’s Week’ – with the great and the good of the newspaper publishing industry being called forth to predictably claim they have no knowledge of the ‘dark arts’ at their respectable newspapers. The list reads like the line-up of a heavyweight fight-night: Monday is The Sun (including ex-editor Kelvin MacKenzie), Tuesday will be the Telegraph Media Group (including ex-editor Will Lewis), Wednesday will see Associated Newspapers take the stand (although Dacre won’t appear until Feb we hear) and Thursday will be Northern & Shell (yes Richard Desmond too!) Hullaballoo…
