What the media commentators are saying

Stephen Glover in the Independent comments on the payout for Robert Murat last week and warns that

Murat's victory should serve as a warning to the entire British press

and saying that

Many will note that all the newspapers involved, which also paid damages to two associates of Mr Murat, were tabloids.

But adds Glover

it would be wrong, I think, to exclude the Portuguese police and our so-called quality newspapers from general censure.

adding

I do not deny the tabloids sometimes went further, with the Daily Express probably being the most egregious in its suggestions of a paedophile ring. No doubt tabloid headlines were also bigger and more dramatic. But it is surely undeniable that, albeit in a more circumspect way, the quality papers also implicated Mr Murat, relying mostly on police evidence, but sometimes adding touches of their own. Incidentally, I am sure that some television news programmes also displayed tabloid excesses

In the Guardian Peter Wilby thinks that the media's behaviour was a risk worth taking

The 2007 marketing budget for the Sun was estimated at £16m, that for the News of the World at £5m - and the figures are likely to be higher this year. The budget for the Daily Mail may be close to £20m. When you look at those figures, £72,727 seems like small change. But that is the figure you reach if you divide the collective damages of £800,000 paid to Robert Murat and two others falsely linked to the Madeleine McCann abduction, between the 11 offending newspapers, including the Sun, News of the World and the Mail. Legal fees will probably boost the cost to each paper well beyond £100,000 - but, if you regard smear stories as a circulation booster, you might reasonably treat the overall costs as a minor charge on the marketing budget.

Big Brother comes under a fair deal of scrutiny.Ben Dowell in media Guardian asks

Has the world finally fallen out of love with the show

Almost certainly not in the UK -where This year's series has been averaging only 3.3 million so far - but this looks likely to increase as the contest hots up. In any case, Channel 4 has signed up to the show until 2010 at least and it remains, according to Tim Hincks, chief executive of Endemol UK, a "banker" for the channel ,"just like Wimbledon or EastEnders is to the BBC".

Whilst Conor Dignam in the Indy tells us why,Why Channel 4's next celebrity eviction must be 'Big Brother' itself

Spend just a few minutes watching this year's Big Brother on Channel 4 and it's easy to understand why the show is losing its appeal. It is a format that built its reputation on the ability to surprise, but there are no more tricks in the box. The novelty of the first few series, of discovering characters, is now lost in the predictable casting and the overriding sense that the ambition of everyone in the house is some form of D-list celebrity.

Jeff Jarvis looks at the newspaper industry and thinks

Newspapers are in the wrong businesses.They should no longer be in manufacturing and distribution, which have become cost-heavy yokes. And they should no longer try to be in the technology business - because they're bad at it.

Boxing Day ramblings

Boxing day is always a little of a anti climax.We wait so long for Xmas,then at a blink of an eye.....it's over.In this gap between supplies of food some ramblings

First of all something on last night's Xmas telly.Really was quite bad,the Doctor Who was turgid,70 mins of drivel.Catherine Tate was appalling,you could play guess the punchlines and what about the use of the F-word.Even though it was well past the watershed,how many kids would have been watching at 10.30 on Christmas day?

The only decent thing I have watched,apart from the Dad's army repeats, was the ITV,Xmas at the Riveria(Sky plussed from Xmas eve).A good old fashioned comedy farce,the ashes being put in the turkey and being pecked at by geese was something else).

The papers this morning are predictable,reports on the various speeches of our religious leaders and royal leaders and various tales of shopping sales,online trading etc.Why bother publishing?Give journalists another day off.

Read Allison Martin's piece on Press Gazette on how to survive the graveyard shift

The seemingly never-ending evening will be punctuated by pointless phone calls from drunk people with “World Exclusive” stories about spacecraft in Filey or with a bee in their bonnet about the number of repeats on TV, all of which would fail to make page 83 of a weekly local freesheet. However, these people are to be endured in the spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men.

For a religious perspective at this time of year.check out Steve Borris writing on Xmas day who tells us

Modern Journalism has been typically skeptical, when not outright disdainful, of Christianity. In the movement’s founding work, Liberty and the News, Walter Lippmann declared journalism a new science for a new age when Man had finally come to his senses, no longer believing “that an omniscient and benevolent Providence taught [Man] what end to seek” and that it would now be “blazing arrogance to sacrifice hard-won standards of credibility” to such irrational beliefs

But we should be grateful because freedom of the press was first mooted in Genesis.That's the old testament,not the rock dinosaurs

which established that Man was created in God’s image, bestowing upon individuals a dignity that is not inevitably derived through use of reason alone.

The other purpose of the media in this time between xmas and New Year is to review the last 12 months.Jemima Kiss looks at what created the most traffic on Guardian Media and surprise,surprise it was reality Tv,no fewer than 10/20 entries,fuelled by the Shilpa Shetty episode back in January.

Anyway enough and back to eating and drinking

With every paper having Gordon Brown on its front pages this morning,hats off to the Daily Star which has decided that there is far more important news to report.Chantelle and Preston are splitting up,but who wants the Blair sick bag?

Real life imitating Art ?

Staying with the New Statesmen,Brian Cathcart writes of the amount of column inches that the press are currently devoting to TV.

Emily Parr,The Apprentice,Any Dream will do,Grease is the word,the Diana documentary and the Sopranos have all filled our papers in recent days.

According to Brian,perhaps this is a case of real life imitating art

"One reason, a crude but powerful one, is the belief
among editors that newspapers can't afford not to write about what their readers
are talking about. So it's a sort of tango with the reader into the realm of
stupidity. Another reason, which the columnists are more likely to advance, is
that this is a proxy for reality. What happens between Emily and Charley or
between Alan and Katie may not be real, but it is an acting-out of events that
do happen in the real world, and so it gives everyone a chance to dissect and
understand those events."

No Tolerence this time

So Big Brother is taking no chances over racism in this series at least.

This story has recently broken at Media Guardian



"Big Brother contestant Emily Parr was removed from the show early this morning after calling fellow housemate Charley Uchea a racially offensive name.
Parr was told to leave the Big Brother house at around 3.30am today.
The incident happened after she was dancing with Uchea and Nicky Maxwell in the living room at approximately 8.30pm last night.
The 19-year-old student was heard to say "Are you pushing it out, you nigger?" to Uchea."

After 4 days of BB......

As expected the coverage of BB in the papers has got off to its usual start.



With little of great interest comming out of the house,the papers have instead to look at the past lives of the contestants.



Posh Spice wannabee Chanelle has probably had the most coverage,this from the Sunday Mirror today:

BIG Brother's Chanelle Hayes was born in PRISON - and her prostitute mother was murdered when she was just six months old.
Nineteen-year-old Chanelle's mother Andrea Sinclair was a street hooker addicted to crack cocaine who died an appalling death at the hands of a deranged sex maniac.

First broken in the Sun

The pretty 19-year-old was only four years old when her mother was slaughtered.
She was put up for adoption by social workers — and was brought up by Christine and Harry Hayes in Wakefield, West Yorks.
Posh Spice lookalike Chanelle is understood to have been born in Manchester, in November 1987.


The sexual exploits of the twins are prominent in the News of the World

BIG BROTHER twins Sam and Amanda Marchant secretly swapped roles in a kinky sex game to see if their boyfriends could tell the difference in bed.
After a night of booze, the identical teenage blondes each went into the other's bedroom, slid between the sheets... then waited for the blokes to follow them upstairs and undress.
Lee Cowan, who thought he was running his hands and lips over girlfriend Amanda's nude body, told the News of the World: "It's every man's fantasy to be with a girl and her identical twin sister.


Emily also gets attention in that paper who

loves two-day sex marathons with her drummer boyfriend Alex Neal.

Whereas in the People she

gets her kicks from cocaine and kinky lesbian sessions, The People can reveal.
Pretty Emily, 19, looks every inch the middle-class graduate - but behind the well-spoken image she is a party girl spending up to £100 a night on cocaine.
Talking exclusively to The People, two of Emily's teenage friends reveal how they were all sucked into her wild partying nights revelling in drugs and girl-on-girl sessions.

And the Sun tells us

The 19-year-old — who has posted pictures of herself on a website looking “wasted” next to a toilet — left partygoers stunned as she stripped another girl.
Emily then fondled her boobs before disappearing into a bedroom with her for the night.
She also performed crude acts on lads at the bash and did a raunchy lapdance for one — next to his girlfriend. One partygoer said: “We were at this girl’s house outside Bristol last April and I saw Emily sniffing coke in the kitchen.

and it doesnt stop there

SEX-crazed Big Brother babe Charley Uchea was TWICE sacked from Stringfellows as a lap-dancer for being TOO racy with the punters.
Charley, 21, was axed after a furious row with bosses over club rules.
A source said: “She was sacked twice for dirty dancing. Charley stepped over the line.
“The first time she did it she apologised and was allowed back but she broke the rules once more.” reports the Sun