Jonathon Ross, Russell Brand and the Daily Mail: Round 2
On the blogs this issue seems to be turning into a “we hate the Daily Mail” festival. Here’s the general narrative (one example). Liberal Conspiracy’s blog roundup yesterday :
So…Russell Brand prank calls an old guy, during a near recession, and it’s the PM and Leader of the Opposition’s job to wade in, sparking the BBC to suspend him, because of days of front page tabloid over-reaction. Hoax call a police force on the other hand and you get little more than slight coverage in the tabloids. I despair, as such here are my highly subjective links for the day…
I really think that a lot of people have got the right end of the wrong stick on this one.
(Note in passing on the despairing wails of “But why oh why oh why didn’t they report the Police Hoax Phone call in this way“: perhaps that’s because Brand apologised for the Police Hoax Call incident within 3 days - Sunday to Wednesday.
This is two weeks after the broadcast of the Sachs phone call, nine days since the question was raised originally, and nearly a week after the initial article, and the BBC are only just beginning to get their act together.
Personally I think prosecution would have been a good move in the Police Hoax Call case, since I’m doubting the sincerity of all these “apologies”. I question whether Brand “appreciates the seriousness” of anything, or perhaps even treats it all as part of his PR strategy).
And here is followup Anton Vowl and Aaron. To be fair, Anton is getting round to some conclusions after a walk-in-the-woods:
1. The Daily Mail are a stinking bunch of hypocritical bastards.
2. Ross and Brand did royally fuck up, that’s a given.
3. A lot of people don’t like the BBC.
4. Surely there are more important things in the world (death, genocide, war and misery, for example) than a couple of twats on a radio programme?
5. By hooking herself up to the Clifford machine, Sachs’s granddaughter hasn’t really done her family a world of favours.
I give that about four out of five (1, 2, 3 and 5).
Number four misses the main point entirely. Suggesting it is about “a couple of twats on a Radio programme” is an insult to Andrew Sachs.
I think that there have been tens of thousands of complaints mainly because once the complainants found out about the events, they can well imagine what the impact of this series of obscene phone calls broadcast nationally would have been on their own family members. Cue outrage - inevitably and appropriately.
Dismissing them all as Daily Mail reader brain-dead glove-puppet Zombies on a crusade is not going to help the BBC deal with the real questions that have been raised about this incident. A racist tirade would not be acceptable just because no one who was listening complained about it; neither is this series of obscene and abusive phone calls.
[Update. Jonathon Ross has now been suspended for 3 months and the Controller of Radio 2 Lesley Douglas has resigned. The BBC website has an aspirational headline "BBC draws a line under radio row", while at once announcing an enquiry.
For what it's worth, that looks to me to be an unnecessary resignation - unless Lelsey Douglas turns out to be directly responsible for the appoval of the incident - and a too lenient approach to Jonathon Ross.
Today the Mail is calling for the "removal of this filth from the airwaves" (paraphrased) and Littlejohn has vanished completely up his own bottom in making this an anti-BBC crusade. Rubbish. Ross/Brand humour can have a place where the victims have consented (a studio audience, for example): as I argued previously, this is about obscene phone calls, intrusion into Andrew Sachs' privacy and humiliating him on the air.]
Note: I commented more substantively previously.
[tags]daily mail, Jonathon Ross, Russell Brand[/tags]
Categories: All WW, Arts / Culture, Comment, Media, News - Current Affairs, Politics
and the BBC are only just beginning to get their act together.
That because the story has become an avalanche. How can they possibly determine the best possible course when morons like Littlejohn are stabbing away?
Personally I think prosecution would have been a good move…
That’s just daft. Sachs was happy to drop it after the apologies. The media are the ones who are fuelling the faux-outrage.
I’ve polled friends and family (hardly scientific, but I’ve found this a good bellwether of opinion in the past) - none of which are politically minded, and they can’t see what all the fuss is about.
Even my dad - who was offended by the act - thinks it’s a shitstorm over nothing.
The problem with this story is The Daily Fail. It stopped being about Sachs, Brand and Ross some time ago.
The right really do excel at wasting people’s time, don’t they?
Aaron Heath´s last blog post..Blood on the carpet
>That because the story has become an avalanche. How can they possibly determine the best possible course when morons like Littlejohn are stabbing away?
Disagree: they didn’t take the problem seriously until the Mail jumped on it.
Their own timeline shows that they had the problem flagged up officially by Sachs agent on Thu 23rd, and Brand only gave a jokey apology on his next show.
There was plenty of time to come up with an appropriate response.
>>Personally I think prosecution would have been a good move…
>That’s just daft. Sachs was happy to drop it after the apologies. >The media are the ones who are fuelling the faux-outrage.
It relates to the aside about the Hoax phone call to the police (it is inside the brackets).
>I’ve polled friends and family (hardly scientific, but I’ve found this a good bellwether of opinion in the past) - none of which are politically minded, and they can’t see what all the fuss is about.
>Even my dad - who was offended by the act - thinks it’s a shitstorm over nothing.
The media shitstorm is more than the incident deserves - but if it a) had been handled decently and b) if Ross and Brand weren’t so far up themselves would never have blown up anyway.
>The problem with this story is The Daily Fail.
The broader anyi-BBC stuff is nuts.
>It stopped being about Sachs, Brand and Ross some time ago.
But Sachs, Brand and Ross is the core of it no matter what noises off we get.
>The right really do excel at wasting people’s time, don’t they?
Hmm. The right (Thunderdragon) on my blog are arguing the side you are putting forward.
Boom Boom !
This is a story partially created and entirely fanned by the Daily Hatemail. They are just using this in order to create a latter-day Mary Whitehouse situation, where anything even the tiniest but rude is OMG ABSULOTLIE DISGUSTING!!1!
Aaron, it’s not the right who excel at wasting our time, but the authoritarians.
[...] of people who complained to the BBC about the Brand and Ross prank calls? Where these voices, some argue whipped up by the press, more valid than the 33,000 people who commented on the BBC’s Have Your Say [...]