Celebrity Deaths Thread 2020

[Neon Ignition]

This is why I've found the Johnny Depp story so fascinating of late, it's been a real showcase at how biased the media is in its portrayal of celebrity stories especially when it comes to cases where they've gone on a trial by media and then later developments would force a backtrack that they instead try to avoid (like deleting anti-Flack stories).

[Dogg Thang]

I'm not sure if it displays a bias exactly. More that they are almost always jumping the gun and it only takes one media outlet to do it and then all the others, and inevitably a stupid amount of randos on social media, jump on it. That news outlets were reporting Kobe Bryant's death before his family were informed, for example, is hideous. In that case it wasn't even that it was inaccurate. It just displays a total lack of decency. That the very same news outlets that piled on this woman (regardless of what she did) are now printing telescopic lens shots of her boyfriend/husband grieving is just awful. They have zero decency. Not even a shred.

[MartyG]

The tabloids have no scruples, but I'd rather have the status quo than allowing Johnson's government to regulate the press.

[Neon Ignition]

There definitely needs to be some heavier regulation though. Freedom of the press is too heavily exploited and it should be a base necessity that if the media reports something that there is a-some factual basis behind it and b-accountability for how that information is reported

Ultimately most of them are mouth pieces for the rich and serve those self-interests so the notion of them having freedom of press is made irrelevant from the get-go. That they're already so skewed in stance and opinion from the outset means they're really arguaing for freedom of slander and bias.

[MartyG]

Ultimately most of them are mouth pieces for the rich and serve those self-interests so the notion of them having freedom of press is made irrelevant from the get-go. That they're already so skewed in stance and opinion from the outset means they're really arguaing for freedom of slander and bias.

Who becomes the arbitar of truth and how do you regulate bias? Opinion and news are not the same thing, but people seems to struggle to determine the difference.

The press is not free to slander anyone it likes and in fact, defamation laws in England strongly favour in the interests of the plaintiff as it puts the burden of proving the truth on the defendant, which is why many cases of defamation are brought to the English Courts, rather than tried abroad.

These restrictions arguably prevented more scrutiny on what Jimmy Savile got up to on his friskier days.

[Neon Ignition]

It's a hard one to police for sure, god knows the steps it would take to implement some sort of relatively objective monitoring body (one led by people with no connections to MPs, rich figures etc). Certainly a first step should be that it's illegal for a publication to retract officially issued stories like The Sun is trying to do now with its historical stories about Flack

[prinnysquad]

The events are very much a grey area.

One story suggests that she did bray the bloke, but that all the blood was due to self-harming. There’s rozzer bodycam footage of her semi-naked, hysterical and with wounds. She couldn’t face the public humiliation of that being shown by the CPS in public and it pushed her over the edge. Or so the story goes.

Who knows? What is clear, though, is that the press are the creator of news, rather than the reporters of it. They are the kingmakers of careers, then the judge, jury and executioner. Yet they face next to no accountability or repercussions. The crocodile tears and deflections are proof that they’ll be onto the next prey soon enough.

[Asura]

This isn't how the law works, though, QC. The "press charges" thing to me is a US TV thing and I don't know enough about US law to know if it has any legal standing there either but a crime is a crime. Even if the victim doesn't want to make a fuss, if a crime has been committed it will generally be prosecuted unless there is a very good reason not to.

Yeah; to clarify, I believe in the UK that you have multiple levels of this stuff. Stuff can be illegal or merit a court order but not be "criminal" in the way, for example, a murder is.

So when you "press charges" against someone, i.e. you petition the law to intervene, you do one of two things.

You can sue them/take them to small claims and such, in which case it's a civil matter. If you decide to drop it, the matter's over. This might be if, for example, someone tried to defraud you, or something like that.

Or, you can petition the CPS, and insist that you believe a criminal act has been committed. The CPS then decides whether this goes ahead based on (1) whether the claim has merit, so if the act is in fact criminal in nature, (2) whether the case is in the public's interest and (3) whether the evidence makes it reasonably likely that a guilty verdict could be the outcome. This (3) is something which comes up a lot in the news, because the CPS won't pursue cases where the evidence is really, really weak, as they're able to just arbitrate if it's even worth the bother - given that the justice system isn't free, and they're spending public money.

If the CPS decide to prosecute, it doesn't matter if you walk away later. Like if your friend was murdered, and you petition the CPS to try the murderer, you can't just say "ah, well, I didn't like him all that much anyway"; the prosecution will still go ahead.

[MartyG]

It's a hard one to police for sure, god knows the steps it would take to implement some sort of relatively objective monitoring body (one led by people with no connections to MPs, rich figures etc). Certainly a first step should be that it's illegal for a publication to retract officially issued stories like The Sun is trying to do now with its historical stories about Flack

Press bias is is purely determine by which side of the line you sit on, the notion of unbias journalism is a nonsense because of our point of view and personal morality. Few would say that the Guardian has inaccurate reporting, but that has a definite left leaning bias politically - those with the opposite leaning might suggest The Guardian needs more regulation than The Times, and perhaps what some maybe overlooking is the fact regulation will apply to all media, not just the institutions you disagree with.

Bias and Truth are not mutually exclusive.

[monel]

The Guardian sold out years ago. The right wing press get away with targeting groups all the time, viewed from a certain perspective it's really quite disturbing. With all the influence Murdoch had in this country, was he ever a UK citizen?

[MartyG]

The Guardian sold out years ago.

See the first sentence in my post above.

The Guardian (and Observer) are owned by Scott Trust Limited - it's nothing to do with Murdoch and the editors have total editorial independence from the group.

[monel]

I didn't say Murdoch owns The Guardian. The Guardian attacked Corbyn on a regular basis, their senior staff printed Assange's main password in a book. Look into the background of most of their staff, and the paper as a whole is a part of the establishment pretending to be a lefty newspaper.

[MartyG]

The paper as a whole is a part of the establishment pretending to be a lefty newspaper.

That's your point of view, rather than it being established fact - hence the difficulty in there being any kind of arbiter of bias.

[charlesr]

Andy Weatherall, music producer

[monel]

That's your point of view, rather than it being established fact - hence the difficulty in there being any kind of arbiter of bias.

OK, you're right on views etc. But the Guardian's repeated focus on Labour and their antisemitism problem, the fact whenever people posted the Oxbridge background of 90% of their staff (always deleted in the comments), and other factors aren't opinion at all, they are actually facts. I've seen the workings of a couple of papers not on the level of huge papers, as long as you don't offend your advertisers you can get away with a lot. The Guardian in particular has a huge fund to draw from so are in a unique position. The media as a whole has gone to the dogs, so many articles quote random sources from Twitter or wherever. Anyway, I'm not looking to argue on any of this, it's all depressing.