I once went to a fancy dress party dressed as a pirate, granted it was the Queen's Silver Jubilee and I was five, but it was still a tasteless and poor choice of costume. I wish to apologise to the relatives and descendents of any Caribbean sailors brutally run through with a cutlass, their doubloons stolen, and left with the cost of clearing up peg leg scuffs and parrot shit.
The tabloid teacup storm over Prince Harry's naive choice of costume for a mate's 20th birthday is a fascinating one for many reasons. Chiefly, the red tops are concentrating on Harry's stupidity and the supposed outrage of Jewish groups but there are also secondary issues arising over what exactly is offensive and what isn't.
From a journalistic point of view, this is fantastic stuff. Prince Harry, the handsome playboy prince that we've already caught pissed up, stoned and scrapping outside nightclubs is snapped wearing a swaztika. Superb, stick it on the front, tell everyone to be horrified and get some Jews on the blower.
Trouble is, most people aren't horrified. Most people really can't be bothered and just say 'what an idiot, didn't think that through' and turn the page. Is this indicative of a lack of interest, genuine feelings that German uniforms aren't offensive, or more that the public is getting tired and bored of tabloids inventing controversy?
I hope it's the latter, newspapers are ultimately a commercial enterprise and will change content with the rises and falls in readership. For the last ten years newspaper sales have fallen dramatically, both for the tabloids and the broadsheets, and there is plenty of headscratching going on to discover why.
My own opinion is that it's a combination of many things. A big chunk of it is lifestyle. People are busier and so have less time to sit and read papers and with 24-hour tv news newspapers aren't the first with breaking stories anymore. People are already aware of the day's headlines before they leave the house in the morning and so don't need a paper to tell them what's going on.
This means that newspapers are stuck between two extremes. They can appeal to the TV watcher by filling the pages up with celebrities, pictures, gossip and fluff and go for the quick-flick-through coffee break market. This is the tabloid agenda and the success of magazines like Heat show that it's a viable market.
The other alternative is to go down an investigative route that gives a run-down of the headlines but then delves into background and analysis in a way that 24 hour tv cannot do. This is, nominally, the broadsheet view.
Trouble is, sales are still falling on both sides.
There's one simple reason for this in my opinion - and unfortunately it comes to down to bad journalism I'm ashamed to say. This Nazi Prince Harry episode and the lack of interest in it, despite the tabloids telling us we should be horrified, really exposes the current lack of trust and therefore interest in newspaper news. The general public is starting to see how much of this kind of journalism is faked, exaggerated and manufactured. The tabloid machine of PR and gossip has expanded to such a point that it has started to feed on itself. Max Clifford is now a celebrity in his own right, there are tv documentaries on how the paparazzi work and, most obviously, reality tv shows like Pop Idol and Big Brother have made themselves successful by showing the public the machinery of how celebrities are made and maintained.
Put simply, the public are now in on the joke and so the joke just isn't as funny anymore.
It isn't just celebrity either, the public perception of 'spin' is immense and so reading about politics and politicians is dismissed as unreliable, same for the proliferation of surveys and medical scare stories. Editors rely so much on the shock of the headline to tell a story that the details are unimportant. The furor over the MMR vaccine for example, or the omnipresence of paedophiles. These stories are clever in that they instantly appeal to our base fears and concerns, but if they're ultimately groundless or, even worse, readers feel slighty ashamed of being dragged along with it in reterospect (Princess Diana's death, for example) then they will stop getting that paper.
I believe there is a growing feeling that the public is beginning to really see they are being manipulated. Good, about time too and thank god - we are all aware, even Prince Harry, of the consequences that can happen when the population of a country blindly allows itself to be manipulated into prejudices and action.
