Mirror plumb the depths of journalism – anyone shocked?

The appalling way that the three victims died in the case of the ex-Bulls flanker, Joseph Ntshongwana, and his axe murdering rampage in the KwaZulu-Natal townships this week (one was decapitated, another’s head was left hanging on by a nerve, there are no details of the third victim) is as terrible as anything real life or fiction could conceive. 

Yet the way this story has been reported is, in journalistic terms, as appalling. Here in South Africa, the story broke gradually, and to the SA media’s credit, nothing was taken for granted. One almost-victim who escaped reported that the axe-wielding Ntshongwana accused him of having raped his daughter, infecting her with HIV. SA sources were careful to stress that at this stage, there was no confirmation of this event having taken place, or even whether Ntshongwana had a daughter.

They were also careful not to name the suspect, for fear of how this may affect his daughter (if she existed).

The Daily Mirror, however, came out with a horrible piece of lazy, sensationalist ‘journalism’ – under the headline “Rugby ace held after rapists are murdered with axe”. At this time, the facts seemed to point more towards random killings, rather than systematic tracking down of a gang of rapists. No matter, the Mirror’s headline ran as above, slandering those who had died such awful deaths as rapists, and the killer as an avenging father.

The first paragraph read “A former rugby star allegedly butchered three thugs with an axe in a vigilante attack after they gang-raped his daughter.” Not “in the belief that they had gang-raped his daughter”. Maybe it’s less snappy. But it’s accurate. To be even more accurate, some mention should have been made of the fact that this gang rape may never have taken place, and at that stage it hadn’t been confirmed that the suspect even had a daughter.

Today, the SA police have confirmed that there is no evidence or suspicion of any rape having happened to any member of Ntshongwana’s family. The Mirror’s ‘journalist’, Adrian Shaw, had written a story without considering that the killer might just be a crazed killer, and the victims, one of whom was a security guard on his way home from work, carrying dinner for his family, innocent victims of tragically brutal violence.

Nice one, Mirror, you bunch of cretins. Particularly Mr Shaw, who seemingly checked no facts, and couldn’t care less what drivel he writes, confident in the knowledge that his readers are stupid and wouldn’t question it.

I followed this story really closely because I live in South Africa, and was interested in how all sources, both in SA and in the UK, were reporting it. The question is, how often is this happening in other stories, where no one is checking the minutiae of the story? How much of these kind of newspapers is total and utter irresponsible drivel?

Bottoms and breasts sag. MPs go on holiday.

This week, we were told that the bottom of the lads-mag market had fallen through (presumably a scantily-clad, pert and airbrushed bottom). Publications such as the popular 'Zoo' and 'Nuts', as well as their less famous sister publications "Tits!" and "Twat!", have seen their sales plummet and the once arrestingly buoyant cleavage that was their market share has become, alas, rather saggy.

There must, obviously, be reasons for this. One obvious candidate would be that as it is currently the Parliamentary summer recess, the grizzled old backbench MPs who I like to imagine religiously purchase such magazines in order to steal a cheap erection before a debate are temporarily out of the country. This would promise a swift upturn in the turgidity of the market once parliament reconvened; however sadly it can not be the cause. This downward trend has been too recent a discovery- Parliament has been gradually voting itself longer and longer holidays year on year, to the point where now by my calculations, the summer recess in fact lasts two thirds of the year ("But we work such long hours!", they cry. Well so would we all if our workplaces had as many bars as the Houses of Parliament do).

Elsewhere in the world, in much more trivial matters, a matter of several billion dollars (at current exchange rates, each billion dollars roughly equates to around eight pounds sterling) has been wiped off shares as markets crashed in the wake of a monumental crisis in the US mortgage sector. Greedy idiots lending money to poor idiots with bad credit ratings have been stung by the fact that, in the end, these folks couldn't pay the money back. Cue worldwide panic- every bank and lender is now in debt to every other one across the world, so they're all buggered. This, too, could be a cause for a slowdown in the market of lads-mags. But, let's be honest, even if Joe Pratt in his Transit van might be worried about a bit of a pinch on his mortgage, it shouldn't stop him shelling out his regular pound or so to buy Nuts or Tits.

No, the reason must be elsewhere and much more radical. Equivalent figures were unavailable for girls' magazines such as Heat and, err, the rest of them, but I have a hunch their sales will have climbed. The metrosexual influence of so many preening, prancing, ballet-dancing footballers getting 80% of the country's attractive women and roughly 95% of the nation's GDP has finally turned most of the men in this country functionally gay. If not fully, actively homosexual, men have, in their swathes, become desensitised to the sight of hundreds of different silicon-enhanced breasts spilling out of the page. Instead of now taking a sneaky look at their girlfriends' copy of whichever coffee-table magazine she may choose as her own favourite, I believe men are now buying their own copies. Just this morning I saw a lorry driver, unashamedly and almost indecently, purchasing a copy of Heat without claiming it to be for his other half. These impressionable men are buying partly to learn something about moisturising, effective shaving of the armpit and eyebrow-plucking. And also, I imagine, because they can look at some pictures of women with their clothes on.

This is no good to the MPs, of course. They will, I hope, provide a bit of extra buoyancy to the sinking ship of lads-mags. But, I fear, outside the corridors of power in the Houses of Parliament, that ship has sailed.