You are here: Home / Guest blog / Guestblog: The pursuit of profit – The productising of people

Guestblog: The pursuit of profit – The productising of people

Posted by Sarah Arrow on March 11, 2010 · View Comments 

Today’s guest blog is from Paul Walsh, who wanted to know where ‘Blokes on the Blog’ is – it’s coming soon Paul, it’s coming soon. Over to you.

When Susan Boyle blew everybody away on BGT, the media were all over her, plundering her present, her past, her friends, family, career, for any and every drop of – well – anything, because once the media have you in their machinery, they own your every smile and frown. Susan Boyle’s life became a media commodity from her first appearance on BGT.

Susan Boyle in pastels - Because of ongoing di...
Image via Wikipedia

When she stepped off the stage after her first appearance, they praised her to the world, fought to get a few words from her, endlessly chasing the next snippet of grist to toss into the mill of the ‘news’. And if she gives no snippets out, why, mob her a bit harder, because the newly-famous always react to being mobbed every waking moment.
When she needed a bit of respite from this eruption into the public eye, they vilified her. They vilified BGT, the BGT judges, the whole idea of such talent shows. When she got back on her feet and got on with being suddenly famous, they praised her again – not because they liked her, or admired her, but because she was once more profitable.
Susan Boyle’s life can now be tracked on Google with an ‘as it happens’ mail-feed, or on various RSS feeds, along with share prices, NASA and the foibles of other human products.
The productising of Susan Boyle was plain and brutal and the casual-ness of it tends to disguise the ugliness of it.

Michael Jackson was productised as a child, and dealt with the attentions of fans and media with apparent élan in the early years, which was OK by the media machine, because your nice, average pop-star is still a reliable earner. Then, he began to isolate himself, experiment with sensory isolation, have cosmetic surgery, and suddenly, we have a much more profitable commodity. Never mind that he is patently a really unhappy person, that he’s … sorry, I forgot, he’s not actually a person any longer, is he? ‘He’ is simply another product to keep the bottom line sweet.

So he’s losing it? So? More grist for the mill, then, innit?
Michael Jackson, of course, is an evergreen commodity, because as a media product, he has everything: fame, infamy, dead, and dead under suspicious circumstances. And he is now a cheap commodity, both to re-package and sell again or as a filler connected with another product.

With the productising of James Bulger, Robert Thompson, Jon Venables and their families, the sheer versatility of the process is highlighted.
When the murder was first reported, every nuance of emotionalism, every flicker of pain was wrung out of the murder and the trial, and every effort was made to drag it out as long as possible. If any of the families involved expected closure, the cameras and tape recorders of the press would ensure this was available for the delectation of their audience.

Seventeen years later, they can do the same all over again, but now can ring the changes on the Government and the prison service, and then feed it into the Social Internet. The bigots and the bandwagoneers of Bebo and FaceBook and Twitter will pump it up and then the mainstream media can capitalise on the Social Internet’s reaction. Money for old rope. And baby James? Well, to be honest, he’s not very interesting, is he? I mean, he was only a little kid and anyway, he’s dead. Not much of interest there. Venables is good, though, because all kinds of muck can be raked over again with Venables, and when the pace dies off a bit, you can get a bit of conflation in there, say, Venables and Sutcliffe or Venables and Chapman, spice it with a dash of loathing, or disgust, and pump it back into the system again.

With a bit of luck, some politico will say something juicy or we can always buy in an ‘expert’ to add a pint of fuel to the fire. And any closure the families may have had will need to be sealed down very tight, or the cameras will be in.

There are no laws to protect a person’s ‘public’ life from being owned, packaged, sold, re-packaged and resold time and again. ‘Public’ in this sense means anything within range of a 1200mm telephoto lens. There is little done to challenge ‘The public have a right to know‘ claim by mainstream media

There is no protection for the families of media targets
Perhaps there should be something in law which differentiates between ‘public interest’ from ‘public titillation’

Paul Walsh

paul walsh Paul is a modern man, house husband and the first bloke on the blog.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Related Posts with Thumbnails

Filed under Guest blog, Latest:, Popular Posts:, Ramblings · Tagged with , , , ,

  • Morag
    What's interesting is how different this all is in France, where they not only have much stricter privacy laws, but also the public does not have the same interest in the dirt. So politicians have mistresses? Eh bien, everyone does it. It's not reported and mistresses have almost the same rights and respect as wives (Mitterand's mistress openly attended his funeral).

    Over there, the media is controlled by the law, and so has developed a different way. I have to say, I do admit to finding French newspapers as dull as ditchwater! But clearly the French like them, because they have learned to like them. And they are in fact NEWSpapers.

    Could we ever recreate that in Britain? I don't think so, not with our reporting tradition and the existence of the internet spreading anything the newspaper would not be allowed to.

    And on the subject of media targets, can I respectfully point you to the Jeremy Kyle show, which is little more than bear baiting in human form - these people CHOOSE to be disrespected and belittled in public because their desire for media exposure is greater than their self respect. When people are prepared to put themselves through that of their own free will, what hope is there for society? (PS I'm a terrible hypocrite - I love the JK Show, and hate the fact that I do!)
  • Paul Walsh
    Hello Morag,

    Yes, the Anglo-American predilection for gossip, especially anything to do with sex, has obviously been the seed and the soil for the kind of reportage. And you are right, in that we are stuck with it, in some form or other. But there is no reason why valid privacy laws cannot be written into our statute books, to at least curb the worst excesses of the media.

    I doubt that Jeremy Kyle is likely to invade my life, to be honest, as I've a low threshold of boredom for such stuff. I grant that this sort of thing has a kind of awful fascination, and I'm quite grateful for my low boredom threshold.

    With respect to my original rant, it seems to me that this kind of TV show, magazine article, have not come about because the media are reacting to a perceived need of the public, but because they have seen a market, and created the vehicles to exploit that market.
  • JK - I discovered him on maternity leave and thankfully lost interest when the little one was born so my fascination with him was just hormones - phew!
  • Can I play devil's advocate here?

    (Hears a virtual "Oh, alright, go ahead then" :-) so ta!)

    Person A

    This one seizes an opportunity, chooses a route, career, vocation which, if successful, will result in being in the public limelight.

    S/he may well have visualised the applause, the graceful acceptance speech, the lifestyle, hobnobbing with the rich and famous who are their peers and so on. S/he should also know that when that happens there will be 'news' hounds sniffing round for any dirty laundry, and have arranged to have it dry cleaned well in advance...

    Person B

    Something happens in this one's life that involuntarily thrusts him or her into the limelight. No chance to prepare emotionally or practically, just woomph!

    The devil's advocate question:

    Is there a difference between what is acceptable in the way 'the meedja' treats these two (to me, anyway) very different circumstances?
  • Paul Walsh
    One question, many possible answers. :)

    I suppose it depends on whether you feel that Person A has given over all rights to a private life, to be as 'human' as Person B. Does 'the public' REALLY have a 'right to know' every tiny detail of Person A's life, but not Person B's? Is there no threshold of exposure that shifts Person B to being like Person A? How is that threshold defined?

    I think it also depends on the context of 'acceptable'. From the 'meedja' perspective, there is no difference, one product is as much grist for the mill as another, they just vary over time with the value they hold, and anything they can get away with constitutes 'acceptable'.
    From the subject's perspective, voIuntary or otherwise, I suspect the answer is that there should be limits to intrusion into their personal life.

    Personally, I think that the entry into the machine is of less import than the 'journey' - I think the question is not how you attracted the attentions of 'the media' but what the media do to you once they have you in their cross-hairs.
  • Hi Paul (forget to say that earlier :-( - sorry...

    "One question, many possible answers." I know and agree - ' Course you can't just necessarily plonk people in categories in the way I suggested, tempting though it may be to try. It may sound simple yet that doesn't automatically make it easy - often far from, because there will be all kinds of nuances that come into play.

    And, once you have that media attention for whatever reason, is it really possible to, having had the lion into your den, to then say "Off you go" when it suits you and expect to be left in peace rather than pieces?
  • Paul Walsh
    :) I also forgot to say 'Hi' - so 'Hi' - I think that some elements of the Social Internet lend themselves to diving straight in.

    No, I don't think you can just say 'right, lads, it's been fun, but now I'm bored, so sod off'
    But I think that turning people's lives into objects in the way that modern businesses do has a decidedly negative value for all of the lives that are so treated. Objectifying people, productising lives can only be negative, no matter what the financial or political profits may be. I think there should be some mechanism whereby a media target can gain respite and a modicum of privacy.
  • Great post, Paul.

    Human beings have been voyeurs and curtain twitchers since way back, long past the "tricoteuses" of the French revolution or the gleeful audiences watching the Gladiators rip each other apart in in ancient Rome. The fact is most people like a bit of titilation and similarly most people won't admit it, preferring to scuttle back under the "public interest" umbrella and say they have a right to know.

    Journalists and publishers are faced with a dilemma; titilating news sells newspapers and TV viewings. Polite, respectful reporting doesn't. Journalists and publishers want to be honest and fair but they also have to eat.

    Of course, you get the celebrities who milk the whole titilation business until it, they and us are all blue in the face. Play the celeb publicity game well and you can make millions purely out of revealing your silicone t*ts and throwing up in taxis outside nightclubs. Then they get even more publicity when they claim the papparazzi have driven them to drink and drugs and they've had to check into the Priory to dry out for a couple of weeks. Round and round that hamster wheel they go.

    What is such a terrible tragedy is when some nice, uncomplicated and naturally talented invididual like Susan Boyle gets caught up in this horrible vortex and the media, along with her new "friends" and most of the public watch greedily as she yo-yos up and down between sheer joy and utter, desperate confusion.

    I'm not sure which is the cruellest form of blood sport, but productising people like SuBo and other innocent people must rank up with dog fighting and hare coursing as one of the top three. Shame the politicians don't seem so keen to bring in laws outlawing the former...but to outlaw most of the red-top tabloid "news" stories wouldn't be much of a vote-catcher, now would it?
  • Suz hit the nail on the head really when she said "Journalists and publishers want to be honest and fair but they also have to eat."

    Having been a journalist myself I can vouch for that. What people forget is that at the end of the day it's a job. A lot of the time, publishers will jump on the next big thing and because it's a highly competitive world, it's about getting the most sales - so there's no real thought or conspiracy (as far as journos go) in 'productising' people.

    Saying that, from the personal point of view, I was always aware that while I had to do the best job possible, I also wanted to be fair to the people involved but it's a tough thing to do. I once interviewed a high profile singer in the 90s who I knew was gay but hadn't come out yet. I chose not to run my story because I felt that was a personal decision and a life changing one. Our competitors got the story and ran it - they sold we didn't and I had to pay the price. It went against my appraisal but within myself, I knew I'd made the right decision.

    I also think that what we're forgetting here is that fame has a price but you can withstand it if you are comfortable with who you are - and already have a strong support network around you before you reached that point. Sadly, a lot of people don't have this and become victims.

    B
  • Paul Walsh
    Hello Bian,

    I think you highlight a number of salient issues here.
    I'm certain that the average journalist carries a level of integrity in their work, as most people do. It is not a given individual journalist that I have an issue with. Nor do I wittingly imply that there is any kind of conspiracy involved, at any level within the mainstream media. However, the sum of many individuals acting within a similar or identical framework or ideology will produce results that are likely to be very similar. This is not collusion, though, but the result of the constraints of the framework.
    So, whilst you may have resolved to not 'expose' the gay singer, the framework within which you were operating placed a higher value on sales than on individual privacy, hence publications other than the one you worked for ran the story. If, as you did, every other journalist had placed privacy above profit, or their publishers had, the story would not have been run, the singer would have had the privacy he or she obviously wanted, you would not had to pay a professional price for your integrity, and the public would not have known, or cared, about it. The public probably didn't care about it anyway.
    I agree that if a famous person has a personal support structure, and are comfortable about themselves, fame over a period of decades can be handled well, but the driver for many people who want to be famous is an inner discomfort, a psycho-spiritual need to be something more than they presently are. And here we are talking only of those who want fame, not Mrs. Bulger or Mrs. Venables. Such people are raw and extremely vulnerable when fame is thrust upon them. They pay the same price for their unwilling fame as Susan Boyle does for her desired fame.
    I'm saying that the 'price' that the media set on fame is too high.
  • Paul Walsh
    LOL! I don't have a problem with voyeurs and curtain twitchers - where I grew up, you could damn near tell what hour of the morning you were bawling random lines from a rugby song at, simply by closing one eye and counting the number of twitches. Not that you would remember, of course :)

    It's that the media is not human that gets to me - that it is a machine of human parts that simply processes good and bad and awful with equal uncaringness.
    I don't want to outlaw the mainstream media, but I feel that their incursion into people's lives should be contained, which, at the moment, is is not
  • Morag
    You are so right, Paul. And if I'd been asked to write this post, Susan Boyle and Michael Jackson would have been the two individuals I'd have chosen to illustrate it as well.

    Susan Boyle is so obviously a fragile and somewhat disturbed person, and I feel Simon Cowell should be villified for allowing her into this arena. There is no way he cannot have known about her mental state. But all he does is coo a few words about how he asked her if she wanted to carry on, she said yes and so he's off the hook. Well, no, in my opinion, he should be firmly on the hook, the day she decides to end it all.

    Michael Jackson fared better, I think, but only because he was so off in his fairy-land that he could learn to look the other way.

    Another one I'd add to the list would be Diana Spencer. She gave as good as she got from the press, but I have to say her death at a young age was probably a blessing in disguise - having been touted as such a beautiful woman (which I don't think she was; just well dressed, well made up and photogenic), I don't think she'd have got past 40 without a suicide bid.

    And it is the press which drives it, and we people who drive the press. Nowadays, there is no real news in the papers, only celeb-news. :(
  • Paul Walsh
    I seriously considered Diane when I started to write this, but I think that Michael Jackson illustrates the point I'm trying to make equally well. There are some differences, of course, but overall, there is little structural difference between them. I chose Michael Jackson because he has that added 'value' of being both famous and infamous.

    I'm not so sure that Simon Cowell should be demonised for Susan Boyle's future behaviours. I think that whatever her eventual demise, she will have had something from life that relatively few of us have the opportunity or the courage to go for - the living of her dream. Also, I'm not so sure that she is so frail -- to walk onto that stage, in her best frock and sensible shoes and hear the derisive tones in Simon Cowell's voice, and then give him what he least expected - majesty in sensible shoes -- speaks more of her strength than of anything else.
    To be sure, she may find that the dream is too much, as many who have lived that dream have found, and overdose, but I think that Simon Cowell cannot be held culpable if she does decide to end it all. It will have been her dream, and she'll have lived it.
  • Paul Walsh
    Sorry, Morag, I hit the 'Submit' button before I'd actually finished.
    Yes, your last line is pretty much how I feel - the 'press' - the mainstream media, drive this machine, the perpetuators hiding behind 'The public have a right to know' and corporate immunity. It is the callousness that bugs me most - the unrelenting assault on the individual, the profiting from pain and despair, not as individuals themselves, but as components of a machine that knows only one value - profit.
  • One of the things that has struck me in the media explosion over Venables, is how little support there has been for Bulger's mother. I don't think at all that she shoud have any say in what happens here, but it was surely obvious that she would be deeply affected by this - not just emotionally, but by exploitation from the media.

    Many people seem to think they can manipulate the media and use it for their own ends, but it just doesn't work out like that does it - even savvy and middle class families like the McCanns discovered that it turns round and bite back, hard.

    At one level there is the issue of the right to know what is going on around us - justice needs to be open to scruiting whether it is about actions of individuals or the state - for instance the issue of whether or not our government was complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects.

    So how to decide where the line is, between the public interest and public titillation? I don't know, but it doesn't feel as if we have the balance quite right at the moment
  • Paul Walsh
    Yes, Ann, and there is no respite for the family of Jon Venables, either, and it's not just the victims family that needs closure.
    I think that only Sharon Osbourne has managed to thwart the mainstream media machine, by producing Ozzy herself. By taking over the process, she can control the levels of intrusion.

    I think the transparency issue is resolvable - but it needs political courage to both buck the media cartels and think through the issue properly - and this administration has proved itself unable to do either
blog comments powered by Disqus