This week the country has mainly been getting it's knickers in a twist over what football player Imogen Thomas had been shagging. It was Ryan Giggs. Now let's be clear Ryan has been a prat for cheating on his wife. But that is basically him and his wife's business and none of mine or anybody elses really. He has been a colossal prat in the fact that he took out a super injunction. Which has blown a story that would have lasted a week into the stratosphere.
I'm sure with hindsight he realises this. My only hope is he does not sell out further and give his side of the story to the papers. My guess is he won't. he's never really sought the limelight. He didn't sell his wedding to the highest bidder for magazine money and his media profile has always been pretty low. If he does do this and just ignores the papers then it's a shoo in that this story will disappear pretty quickly as the press are like small children, easily distracted.
The truly delicious part of this whole story has been the mounting frustration of the tabloid media who had been prevented from naming Giggs as we all merrily discussed it on the Internet. This has what all their outrage has been about. This story has proved, once again, how totally irrelevant they are. With Twitter, Facebook and Google we don't need papers any longer. The fun could have lasted even longer were it not for rent a quote gobshite MP John Hemming cowardly revealing Giggs name in the house of commons where he was exempt from prosecution. Quite the man of principle.
I'd be interested to know what the age demographic on buying newspapers is. I suspect the average age of people who buy newspapers is going up year on year. I honestly cannot see how they are going to survive another twenty years. They are already trying to outdo each other now competing to be most vile and hysterically scaremongering. Is that going to continue ? One would hope there would come a point where the British public would say enough. Here's hoping it's not a slow death and they go quickly.
1 comment:
I'm not sure that newspapers are irrelevant: they have the cash to send people out to do reporting which will be passed on to a lot of people. However, and I think this was your point, services like Twitter have allowed ordinary people to play this role -- but they've not taken over just yet.
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