Words Dept.: entry

The rest of the media has joined in an extended reporting-as-gloating session over the out-of-court settlement that Express Newspapers agreed with Kate and Gerry McCann today. It has been top of the running order on news bulletins all day, with pundits queuing up to decry the coverage of Richard Desmond’s papers.

Nobody does schadenfraude better than the British press. When someone from the opposition is forced into a climbdown they all point their fingers and have a bloody good laugh. Unfortunately for all journalists, the average media consumer doesn’t see this as an embarrassing catastrophe for the Express and Star in isolation. Instead, they just come to regard all journalists with even more contempt than they did already.

And anyway, while the Express’s “super-fictional” coverage was shockingly OTT, as has been previously noted, it’s not as though the broadcast media’s hysterical response was in any way less distasteful.

Five Live’s awful phone-in on Victoria Derbyshire’s programme, on September 10 last year, was one of the low points of the late summer, during the immediate period after which the McCanns were given arguido status and the Madeleine story burst back into life. And yet what was the topic of the phone-in on Derbyshire’s show this morning? Go on, you’ll never guess.

In fact, Derbyshire opened by asking

Will the British press change the way they report stories… Should the editor [of the Express] resign?

Helpfully, she also repeated one of the more outlandish allegations from the McCann case within five minutes of the start of the programme. And then did it again a couple of minutes later.

Meanwhile, is anyone able to determine whether the net circulation and profit gains experienced by Express stable since last summer have off-set the rumoured half-million pound payout?