The news yesterday of the closure of The News Of The World, Britain's most notorious tabloid newspaper (if one can call it that) is cause for huge celebration. It is also at least 40 years overdue. No-one who has ever worked for a British tabloid can be in the least surprised by the revelations about Rupert Murdoch's flagship muck-raking rag in a wide ranging phone hacking, bribery and corruption scandal. The arrest of the editor Andy Coulson who was recently the Conservative Prime Minister's Communications Director, leads to a small glimmer of hope that Murdoch's 'Fox News' and 'News Corporation' may finally be exposed for the dangerous political sledgehammer that it is.
Murdoch, who was once merely an Australian media baron will go down in history as one of the most influential and destructive public opinion makers of the late 20th century and early 21st. Hopefully, by the time this man dies, his empire will be so discredited, and his sons so incapable of making the secret payoffs that News Corp depends on to keep the lid on the slime and sleaze, that this murky ship will sink along with News Of The World. It is hard to describe just how filthy this tabloid was. But no self respecting Fish & Chip shop ever used their pages to wrap the steaming fish dinner, you never knew what you might catch.
Hacking into the voice mails of the rich and famous, or the royal family or political enemies of Fox News and Murdoch's other media outlets was just the newest form of invasive predator journalism that has been the hallmark of the British tabloid press for decades. Before hacking, there was scanning the analog airwaves and capturing Prince Charles declaring his quirky desire to be a tampon in Camilla's vagina, or Diana making plans for an assignation with a lover. And before that was the infamous long lens, attached to a Nikon resting on the windowsill overlooking the site of a secret meet between a politician and his favorite hooker, or the football player smoking crack with a wasted fashion model on the deck of a yacht at Cannes.
This is relevant to me personally because for a short time I worked for a British tabloid, The Daily Mirror, which in spite of its Labour Party affiliations was also decried by progressives as one of the front runners in smut and smear journalism. It was known as a Page 3 paper, a reference to the topless bimbo photo they ran every day on Page 3 which according to the editors I worked with, was an important part of the identification of the paper with its working class roots. Blue collar workers, the argument went, fancied a bit of crumpet with their PG Tips drunk out of a chipped mug, on their lunch break in the factories of northern England.
It is interesting to wonder whether Murdoch, who took junk journalism to undreamed of heights, would have been so successful had the owner of The Daily Mirror, Robert Maxwell, (not his real name) not fallen off his luxury yacht for no aparent reason in November 1991. Maxwell was a Czech Jew, a survivor, and a bare knuckle bruiser in the world of international media, espionage and business. Unlike Murdoch, he fostered a left of center editorial tone in his newspapers. Neither of them could be said to have a 'free press' at the forefront of their concerns, both saw the ability to control vast tracts of unformed and uninformed voters through easy to read banner headlines and enjoyed the sense of power that came with being able to punish celebrities, politicians and the rich for their private pratfalls. Like any great competition, Maxwell, operating in the same seamy sewers might have kept Murdoch's ambitions slightly in check. Or not.
Between the years 1979 and 1982 I thought I almost had a career in photo journalism. My postcards of feminist graffiti brought me attention from publications, journals and editors around the world, the National Enquirer came calling, and I was threatened with legal action by a male model in an ad which had been re-faced. That story landed me in the pages of the Evening Standard, New Musical Express and Advertising Age. Sounds newspaper used my image of Poison Girls lead singer Vi Subversa on their cover, Tom Robinson wrote a song about me called 'Right On Sister', and I got a call from a senior editor at The Daily Mirror inviting me to join a brand new publication called Picture Mirror which was to re-create the glory days of the photo news magazines like Picture Post and Life. I was giddy.
Lunch with Keith Waterhouse and other Mirror glitterati followed where rack of lamb and red wine seemed to emerge on an unending conveyer belt from the kitchen at a Fleet Street hangout. I bumped into Anne Robinson, then Features Editor at the Mirror who suggested I do a photo story for the Music section, and after lunch that first day, without any contract in place, I was told to go to the account window on an upper floor with a sheet of paper given me by an editor and pick up a wad of cash to help me on my way. Just bring interesting pictures, I was told. Lots of them. Oh and Jill, never mind the quality, our photo retouchers can take care of that.
For a few months I was in a dream. My lesbian feminist friends wondered if I had lost all sense of propriety, how could I work for Maxwell, the Mirror, the tabloids. Through it all, I insisted I had the beast under my thumb. And for a while, I did.
In the first issue of Picture Mirror in 1981 a huge two page spread of my political graffiti images ran. Under the title 'Scrawl Of The Wild'. The captions were a little corny, a little sexist, but I felt the impact of those pictures in a major nationwide publication more than offset my nagging doubts. Walking into the back entrance to the Daily Mirror and up to the Features Department for a meeting with my editor or to drop off dozens of rolls of Ilford HP5 for the photo lab to develop, I felt close to being a real journalist and for the first time I could see myself on a different side of the barricade. And heading up the the Accounts window for the wad of cash to cover expenses, well that was just - freakin' sexy.
I came up with an idea to cover the Womens Conferences of both major political parties, and headed to Brighton for the Labour Party conference where I felt at ease with the union members, social workers, and progressives who made up the body and soul of the party. The Conference was loud, raucous, good humoured, diverse, filled with passion and laughter. I found it hard to take any photo which might show these women in a bad light. The Tories made it easier for me. A sea of blue rinsed ladies with stern faces meeting at a large hall in Westminster where Margaret Thatcher came to give a rousing 'cut spending, get off your backsides, hang 'em high, stop immigration' speech, and photographing these women as caricature was simple. And after all, I worked for a rag which always endorsed Labour. Some of them, seeing my Press credentials, turned away in disgust.
For six months, I was ecstatic. I bought another Canon A1 (the luscious black painted brass bodied camera I have etched onto my upper right arm), Anne Robinson, the famed editor (and later TV hostess of The Weakest Link) asked me to come over to her office where she dropped a hint that she was looking for a new editor for their Music column and could I please come up with 10 good photo stories for the page. I managed a meagre two stories. I just didn't have what was necessary for tabloid journalism. 'Quantity, not quality Jill' she told me. 'Just turn 'em out', they said. Shoot fifty rolls of decent stuff, not two rolls of good stuff. 'Whatever needs to be done, our photo guys can take care of the problems'. My visits to the cash dispensing window became fewer as they saw that I didn't have the right stuff.
But one senior editor decided to give it one last try. He took me to lunch to talk about a story that was gaining attention in the midday newpapers, the Evening Standard and Evening News, and he had an idea that I would be perfect to give the Mirror an edge. Over the steak and scotch (him not me), he outlined what the paper needed from their foot soldier. There were an increasing number of lesbian women getting pregnant through AID - Artificial Insemination By Donor - and outrage was growing among the conservatives that this procedure might be getting taxpayer money through the National Health Service. Never mind that queers shouldn't be having kids at all. Hostility towards AID children reached the point where women felt for their safety and that of their kids. Would I, my colleague (and now pimp) was asking, use my connection to this sub-culture, to take genuine candid shots of the women and their babies for use in a story in the Mirror. Up to that point, the newspapers had depended upon long lens stealth attacks on these alternative families, ambushing them as they left home, or picking their child up from kindergarten. The stories were among the worst type of gutter journalism, women were having to conceal their identities, cover their faces and those of their children, run from the front door to a waiting car and here I was, being asked to wipe my own lesbianism in feces for the privelege of being able to cash in on the 9th floor of the Mirror Building. My heart and my hopes cracked. Really.
I retreated back to the safety of being broke. Years later, as feminists stormed the citadels of Fleet Street, as lesbians became editors across the industry and as our revolution became co-opted by the lure of the glass ceilings across all industries, I looked back on that moment as a defining one. The moment I really did see as my decision to stay firmly on the outside. Was it a real choice though? I still don't know.
My disillusion with radical feminism, my rejection by revolutionary feminists, my being on the sex positive side of the Sex Wars, my being a butch in a movement which rejected all conceivable forms of masculinity, my torment with gender issues, my innate distrust of money and those who wield it, my complete empathy with those who are victims, with those who have no voice, my growing up (half) Jewish in Germany, my lack of any grandparents (except for my adored Granny who died when I was 15), my sense that there had been sexual boundaries crossed in my family but without the memory to back it up, my fear that I had bullied and abused my little brother, my terror of being left behind, or of leaving someone precious behind, or the animals, when we left one home after another, and my fathers sense of disconnectedness to his own history as a Jew in Germany, and my mothers visceral dislike of Germany and her strange dependence on her abusive older brother - all these things, or none of them - are the elements of outsider thinking. To be asked to betray my community, to invade privacy, to trade loyalty for cash - these were just not part of my make-up.
So the story of the News of the World making use of new technology to pursue the powerful and to embarrass the famous, to stick it to the celebrity makes me think of my brush with scum. And as Andy Coulson isn't able at the moment to bribe the Scotland Yard detectives he once hung out with, he may have to consider giving up a few names of 'higher ups' at News Corp. Working for the tabloids is like stepping in dog shit every morning, as you go to work.
I once had an amazing rejection letter from Forbes Magazine to whom I had sent some portraits for consideration. The Photo Editor wrote back that she didn't feel I could be objective enough in my photography. That my portraits, though beautiful, showed far too much empathy for my subjects to be considered journalism. I'm fine with that.
Beautiful entry, Jill. Thank you.
Posted by: Molly | July 09, 2011 at 08:12 AM
A fascinating account of how the tabloids operate to pull good people in an then try to compromise them entirely. Power to the hold-outs everywhere.
Jill, could you please get in touch - I tried to go to your home site but it seems to be down. Thanks
Posted by: Susan Croft | July 27, 2011 at 06:11 AM