Friday, September 25, 2009

Porno-fascism

Have 'Express Newspapers' decided to be the official mouthpiece for the far-right?

First on Wednesday the Daily Express reproduced a tried and tested BNP slogan as a massive front page headline (see Tabloid Watch for details).

Now its sister paper the Daily Star (aka 'the Tits Gazette') is engaging in PR work for the English Defence League.

One thing is to interview EDL members to find out more about their motives and perhaps challenge their views. In the past two weeks both the BBC and the Guardian did something similar.

Yesterday, however, a whole article in the Daily Star was offered as a platform for the EDL to parade its press statements to the wider public.

The piece, signed by Ross Kaniuk, opens like this: "The English Defence League last night claimed it had been swamped with messages of support from all races" and is a textbook collection of pro-EDL PR soundbites without a single statement, question, or remark, to challenge their inflammatory views or balaclava-laced photo ops. Nothing, for instance, like a simple question about this EDL demonstrator (see photo below) as spotted on their Birmingham rally three weeks ago .

Even the rickety UAF statement they pasted at the bottom is worded so that it turns out to be yet another positive: "The EDL is looking for an excuse, which they say is silencing extremists and stopping terrorists".

As if that wasn't enough, on their home page, the EDL are now parading this: "the Daily Star had a poll asking readers if the EDL had got it right. The results? 99% YES, 1% NO!" without, of course, the slightest hint of irony in quoting a porn rag -whose polls normally consist of "Are curvy babes sexier than skinny beauties?"- as their showpiece advocates.

What is clear, however, is that pornographer, multi-millionaire and king-of-lost-libel-cases Richard Desmond is playing with fire. Some suspect that, with over £1,570,000 (a national record) paid in damages in 2008 alone, Dirty Des (as he's known by Private Eye) is thinking that satiating the masturbating contingent may not be enough and that becoming the country's far-right mouthpiece is the way to boost core readership.

In which case, expect journalistic gems like BB Noirin Kelly topless or Amanda Whipping Her Kit Off to frequently sit next to BNP or EDL-borrowed headlines. Porno-fascism has gone mainstream.

8 comments:

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Tedious paper spreading tedious myths and foul stuff, that Jorand cover with all that 'forget about my rape'...

*vomit*

Anonymous said...

Even at 20p the Daily Star is unfit to do duty as cat litter tray lining. With the Star's new-found support of the EDL's i'mnotaracistbuttery (indeed there are a lot of names common to both the EDL and the batshit English Democrats), the moment can't come too soon when Dirty Des has to close down his newspapers due to their haemorrhaging of both money and circulation.

Chris Baldwin said...

I tend to think that if the tabloids concentrated entirely on sex and ditched the politics they'd become a lot less unpleasant.

thepatriot said...

Left-wing snobbery at its best, I see.

The article sucks. Period.
Daniel Hyphenated-Gill *vomits*.
burkeswork blabbers abt cat litter.
Baldwin wants'em to be abt sex only but then when they do he probbos says they suck anyway.

Enjoy your champagne socialism

claude said...

Patriot. Piss off.
Get your hands off that cum-stained keyboard of yours and stop looking at the Daily Star.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

What do you expect Claude, the cunt supports Aston Villa.

HA HA HA!

Chris Baldwin said...

It's not snobbery to say something's shit when it quite clearly is.

Helen Highwater said...

I like the way it says "not in service" directly above that goon's head.