Paper Monitor
13:34 UK time, Monday, 14 December 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
A dozen words into Caitlin Moran's four-page feature in the Times, it's obvious she didn't get the interview with Simon Cowell.
OK, Paper Monitor doesn't know that for a fact, but has been around long enough to know that the words "...goes in search of..." seldom presage a piece in which there follows a face-to-face interview with the party being sought.
Further into Moran's feature on Cowell, and his influence on the music business, she drops the phrase "according to all available paperwork" - which is a slightly fancy way of referring to what in the trade is known as a "cuttings job", ie all the quotes in the article have appeared somewhere else before. In this case, a recent interview Cowell gave to GQ magazine seems to have been instrumental.
As cuttings jobs go, however, it's a thorough piece of work and it's all nicely topped off with a photomontage of Cowell portrayed as a king, with his various courtiers.
Elsewhere, one paper has taken it upon itself go further than perhaps it legally ought to about the injunction obtained by Tiger Woods preventing the media in the UK from publishing certain bits of information.
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's report on the injunction on Friday said only this:
"Lawyers for US golfer Tiger Woods have obtained a UK injunction preventing certain information purportedly about him being published.
"The order was granted by a judge at the High Court in London, and concerns alleged information which cannot be disclosed for legal reasons."
In short, we can't publish certain things about the appropriately named golfer, but more entertainingly we can't tell you what kind of thing we're not allowed to publish.
News organisations in the US have obviously reported on the circumstances of the injunction and British newspapers appear happy to ignore it too.
It would obviously be naughty of us to identify the mid-market tabloid that has tried it on over the injunction today. So we won't.
Added to the recent furore over Trafigura getting an injunction against reporting of a question being asked in Parliament, and it's easy to see why in journalistic circles people are starting to get a bit agitated about the whole "free speech" thing.
Expect lengthy discussions in media studies classrooms everywhere and a Roy Greenslade-style column or two.
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