Lily Allen invasive Photography

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/2499902/Lily-Allen-flashes-her-pants-in-a-see-through-dress-and-has-white-debris-up-her-nose.html

25th June 2009

Lily Allen seems like a nice human being to me. She has a lovely voice and writes great pop songs that make a lot of people happy. She has opinions and is not afraid to share them. I wonder if this is the reason that the Sun constantly gives her grief. When you’ve been on the receiving end of paparazzi harrassment and the same Paparazzi follow you around wherever you go, day after day after day looking to sell a photograph and write the negative stories that our newspapers thrive on. You begin to see the paparazzi more like the secret Police or the gestapo. They pick their target and then write abuse at all costs, making up crap if they have to by using confidential sources. Read any tabloid and you’ll see that it is filled with info from a close source. Journalists are allowed to keep sources confiential. Basically this has become a license to print what the hell they like.

Taking a photo up someone’s nostril’s does photography get any more invasive than that. I havn’t included it here but it’s on the sun website. Basically the sun have zoomed in on a photograph and have spotted something white in her nostril and feel that this is newsworthy. Perhaps it would be more responsible of them to not give the impression to all her young fans that she takes cocaine. Because then they may think that this is cool. But of course the media takes no responsibility whatsoever in what it promotes to the public. Lily Allen if she does take coke, and I really couldn’t care less if she does. How many great albums have been made under the influence of certain substances (true)

What is more important is that she does not promote it’s use. In my view this is exactly what the sun has done here by printing this photo of Lily Allen looking pretty blissfull in the company of a pap rat.

Ill tell you which is not cool, weirdo criminal paparazzi rats, following celebrities around in cars, driving dangerously, intercepting telephone calls etc…… Look what happened to Lady Diana.

Lily Allen you are making a positive contribution to our world. The Sun…..GO AWAY………….YOU ORWELLIAN LIE MACHINE

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Goodbye so soon: Rebekha Wade leaves the Sun to head News International

TABLOID LIES

24TH JUNE 2009

Good riddance then to Rebekah Wade (or, according to the Graun, Rebekah Brooks, as she is now apparently calling herself since her recent wedding), who will be moving “upstairs” in News International in a long mooted move and one that she herself has long been lobbying for.

This isn’t the place as yet for a long consideration of her time as editor of the biggest selling newspaper in the country, but it remains the case that for the most part Wade proved to be a less controversial editor than her time at the News of the World suggested she would be. The main bungles which did happen during her watch, which included her “BONKERS BRUNO LOCKED UP” front page splash, to say nothing of the time she was arrested after drunkenly slapping her former husband are not much to write home about when you consider the Sun’s history, especially while Kelvin MacKenzie was editor.

That’s not to say that Wade was a non-entity as editor, far from it. She kept up her campaign for “Sarah’s law”, legislation which children’s charities themselves oppose as either unproved or potentially putting them further at risk as paedophiles head even further underground. Other campaigns have included almost yearly rages against the Human Rights Act, which it has repeatedly lied about and slandered, repeated demands that the detention limit for “terrorist suspects” be extended, whether to 90 or 42 days, with the paper the first time round denouncing those who voted against as “traitors”, constant moaning that sentences are not long enough and that more prison places are essential, even when Labour has vastly lengthed and expanded both, and more recently, hysterical scaremongering, both about knife crime and Britain being “broken”, as well as a horrendous campaign “for” Baby P, which resulted in two of those involved in his case considering suicide. That isn’t to mention other quite wonderful journalistic successes, such as the claim back in January that “radical Muslims” were targeting Jews such as Alan Sugar, which led to legal action being taken, or last year’s “IVF twins were dumped because they’re girls”, which was untrue on almost every count.

All this said, the Sun has certainly become to an extent more liberal during Wade’s tenure. Whether this is down to her or because in general society is becoming more tolerant is unclear, but the paper which not so long back was leading campaigns against the possibility of Julian Clary becoming host of the Generation Game because of his sexuality, or which asked on its front page whether the country was being run by a “gay mafia” has moved on. During the Big Brother racism scandal it ran a front page, which although somewhat hypocritical, was the sort of thing it would have never done only a few years ago. It still loathes asylum seekers, failed or otherwise, but that’s hardly unique in the tabloid world. Both the Daily Mail and Express are far more reactionary than the Sun on almost all of these matters.

The Sun still matters most though because of its sale and its influence. While the Mail may be catching up, or even caught up, the Sun is still courted by politicians looking for the nod of approval from Rupert Murdoch. He is, after all, the real power behind the throne, and any editor of any of his papers is only following the rules put down by him. His recent comments about David Cameron, that he has to be a second Thatcher if he’s to gain his full approval, showed just how politicians have to portray and present themselves to get support. It should be remembered that this is a man who has no vote in this country, who has in the past made it his task to pay as little tax in this country as possible, and who is fundamentally unaccountable to anyone other than himself. Whoever becomes the next editor of the paper, and no one seems to have any idea who it’s likely to be, the real power will not lie with he or she.

Update: Stan in the comments at my place reminded me that I forgot about the Alfie Patten debacle, which indeed should be among Wade’s worst moments.

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Daily Star makes libel payout to David Beckham

23 June 2009

PRESS GAZZETTE

By PA Mediapoint

David Beckham has accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages from the Daily Star over a claim that he “chatted up” model Mariann Fogarasy.

The 34-year-old England football star was not at London’s high court for the settlement today of his case against Express Newspapers over an article which appeared in the Star in April.

His solicitor, Gerrard Tyrrell, told Mr Justice Eady that the serious and defamatory allegations were completely untrue.

The story was headed: “Becks and the blonde beauty” and: “Topless model claims she was chatted up by footie star” and was also published on the newspaper’s website.

It claimed that Beckham had “made a play” for Fogarasy after a recent AC Milan match in Hungary and that he had been emailing her with “private party” invitations since they “got close” after the match.

Tyrrell said the newspaper now accepted that Beckham did not behave in the manner described and unequivocally retracted the allegations.

Kate Wilson, counsel for Express Newspapers, which has agreed to pay Beckham substantial damages and his legal costs, apologised to him and his family for the distress, embarrassment and injury caused

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The Sun: Weddings and Iranian Funerals

MONDAY, 15 JUNE 2009

Source: Tabloid Lies

This tells you just how important the Sun remains, despite the arrival of the Twatter generation, in the estimation of politicians:

When Rebekah Wade, Sun newspaper editor and one of Britain’s most powerful women, married horse trainer Charlie Brooks this weekend, she didn’t so much invite a guest list to the reception as a power list.Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Wade’s boss Rupert Murdoch attended a Saturday afternoon reception at Brooks’ family estate near Chipping Norton.

Of course, they might have just turned up so they could chat to the actual boss, knowing he’d be in attendance, and while the Sun remains undecided about who it will support at the next election, despite it seeming more than likely that it will back the Tories, there is as they say everything to play for. Can you imagine both leaders of the main political parties being invited to say, the wedding of the Guardian editor, or the BBC director general, or even the Telegraph editor’s do?

Stephen Brook also provides us with some apparent information as to when Wade herself might be moved upstairs:

But Murdoch has extracted a promise from her that she will continue to edit the Sun until the general election, before handing over the reins.

Not that the editor makes much difference: it’s the master that sets the tone.

P.S. The Sun’s editorial today deliberately conflates two completely unrelated issues:

THE dodgy “election” of hardline fanatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to another term as Iran’s President is bad for his country - and terrible for the rest of the world.

With the backing of the ruling Ayatollahs he is likely to continue with Iran’s nuclear build-up and keep backing terror groups throughout the Middle East.

But just as important to us is the evidence that growing numbers of young British men are fighting with the terrorists in Afghanistan.

Our soldiers have already told of hearing Birmingham and Manchester accents among Taliban fighters.

And yesterday it was reported that a dead insurgent had an Aston Villa tattoo on his body.

You have to hand it to the writer of this leader column - that’s a good connection, and one specifically designed to make the reader believe that Iran and the “terrorists in Afghanistan” are either one and the same thing or being funded by them. Iran might well support and fund Hizbullah, and to a lesser extent Hamas, which is a Sunni Muslim group, but the idea that Iran is doing the same with the Taliban is ridiculous, and not just because Iran originally co-operated with the overthrow of the Talibs in 2001. Iran might well sponsor Sunni jihadism in the form of Hamas, but it does so only because that group has no world view, and is instead dedicated only to the liberation of Palestine. Getting into bed with the Taliban, even the sections of it which are more moderate than the al-Qaida supporters which it also contains and connives with is similar to communists working with fascists (and before someone says Molotov-Ribbentrop, that was cynicism on both sides, knowing that war was inevitable but had to be delayed); they want to destroy each other, not work together.

Equally, the idea that there are “growing” numbers of Brits fighting in Afghanistan is plausible, but not especially likely. The fact that one “insurgent” had an Aston Villa tattoo is neither here nor there; in case the Sun hasn’t noticed, the Premier League is global. In any case, I might be in the minority here, but that a tiny number of British Muslims might be fighting those they could have gone to school with, while a cause for concern, is not terribly terrible. Far better that they become insurgents and usually find themselves getting killed in the process than carry out attacks back here. The real problem, much more troubling than Brit Muslims fighting in Afghanistan is them coming back having been trained and graduated from the real “universities of terrorism” which are the camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan; security might be lax in some prisons, but they’re not going to learn how to make TATPin there.

If we don’t, we are simply playing into the hands of men like Ahmadinejad - who jabbers about democracy while locking up his opponents and supporting our enemies.

If the Sun wanted to do something useful rather than scaremongeringly bleat about terrorists, it would be supporting the young of Iran in what looks increasingly like a potential uprising against the Ayatollahs, but then you rather suspect that the Sun, like Israel and others in both Washington and London secretly wanted Ahmadinejad to stay in power so that the status quo ante, so important to all, stays unchanged.

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THE SUN: Prostitute Journalists doin it for money

Monday 8th June 2009

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2469362/Labour-MPs-to-decide-Gordon-Browns-fate-tonight.html

Rupert Murdoch’s horrible hypocritical rag The Sun has a frightening influence on the opinions of it’s readers. When were newspapers allowed to become opinion shapers and formers, rather than reporters of the news? It seems that Rupert Murdoch will be supporting the Tories from now on. So every political news article in the Sun is now angled to forward this agenda. Hence the Photo of Gordon Brown asleep used to push the anti Gordon Brown agenda in the linked ‘CRASH GORDON’ article.

I am not saying i’m a great fan of Gordon Brown or the Labour party. I like the most of the rest of the UK feel very very disenchanted by Politics in this country in general, but the media also has a massive part to play in the negative feelings about our current form of democracy in the UK. It is newspapers like the Sun with their will and ability to spin stories on their head and to personally attack anybody in sensationalist headlines that opposes their view point that helps to keep straight talking out of politics. People see through the spin and the lies of politicians and these media organisations but feel powerless to change things. Democracy is not working in this country, it is not just Politicians at fault, the tabloid media share a massive proportion of this blame as they do not report the news openly and honestly but instead attempt to shape and form opinions of their readership to suit the personal agendas of it’s owner.

Politicians are afraid to speak the truth openly I feel because of the media and how they will interpret what they say. Spinny journalism is a major problem in our democracy and our society will never improve until we get to the bottom of this issue.

The Sun is not an honest news organisation, we all know it, yet it is allowed to carry on, business as usual polluting our news and influencing the minds and opinions of it’s readership and far wider than that as the Sun’s reporting is often echoed in TV and accross the world’s media. I really can’t understand how Journalists feel ok about themselves promoting the ideals of Rupert Murdoch for money. News prostitutes I call them, they know exactly what is expected of them if they are to keep their jobs. What happened to the individual opinions of journalists within this news organisation. In newspapers like the Sun this is non existent, the views of the paper are absolutely predictable in every case. The most read newspaper in the UK is a legal stain on our democracy. When we get rid of Gordon is there any chance at all we can throw The Sun out too. What a truly happy day that would be for the UK, truly a liberating breath of fresh of air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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