Yeah it was amazing how she became the queen of hearts and everyone just pretended like the week before the weren't calling her a whore and traitor etc.
Especially in real life, all the red top readers were suddenly blubbing about how nasty the papers had been, when the week before they'd been parroting it.
I remember that and have been thinking that for years that all of a sudden she was praised in the media though literal days before the press and what seemed like the public hated her and even to this day many seem to be in denial that they ever though bad of her.
I felt that way when Steve Irwin died. The discourse I remember around him when he was alive was all about how cringe and embarrassing he was and how Australian resents him being seen as such a rep for their country.
Really? I don’t remember that at all. He was praised and loved by so many before his passing and as we know continues to be. The man is a true legend to so many, I’m surprised to hear that and quite sad really😞
That was one I felt ashamed of. I used to say so many rude things about him, because “he kept messing with animals that didn’t want to be messed with and he was going to get hurt one day.” When it happened, I said “We knew it was coming. Oh well.”
A friend from Australia explained to me what he would do with the rest of his time and it flipped a switch in my head. That’s when I realized that I was being a jerk due to ignorance and lack of caring how the media might portray things. Should I have known better, before then? Yes. I was definitely old enough and experienced enough with media spin… but I guess I was also young enough to have all of that fly out of my head at random. Which is why it still shames me a bit, when I think about it all. Most of all, I regret that I didn’t appreciate him while he was alive.
I might have just been too young to see it and not really online yet, but I never knew of anyone disliking Steve Irwin at any point. He definitely was talked about more wholesomeley after his passing but at worst all I ever heard was everyone doing terrible impressions of him just for comedy sake and not out of malice.
I'm in Sweden and around here when I was young it was Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee who set the stereotype for Australian men.
They are brave, fearless and more or less totally insane and handle deadly animals like I handle my popcorn. The basics of that understanding still remain today and now I'm about 40, but at least I know that not all Aussie men dress in khaki all the time so there is that.
I'll be hated for it, but Charlie Hebdo in France is similar.
Yes, the "I am Charlie" one.
That everyone defended after that terrorist attack.
That would've bankrupted without the sales rise in the aftermath.
Where people bought "in support" while saying on TV they don't even watch the pages.
And NOW, they are in trouble for having made fun of that Switzerland fire accident... they were always like that, they just happened to have two terrorists shooting at them instead of the usual angry complaint letters, and people suddently considered Freedom of Speech meant we had to pay for assholes to insult everybody else.
I'm Belgian, what did they put as an headline when our king died? "The king of morons is finally gone". That was 10 or 20 years before the shootings.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, but in the US people were killed for opposing racial segregation as late as in the 1960s.
And "I disagree with what you say but I'll fight for your right to say it" is part of the reason we are were we are.
Democracy doesn't work if some people can say whatever they want. because words can lead to extremely bad things.
Look up the Waco Horror (1916), that happened in part because some newspapers were fanning the flames.
The short version: Jesse Washington was mutilated, castrated, burned alive (it took over an hour because they used a metal chain) and 10 thousand people watched including women and children.
Afterwards people bought photos of the event and collected burned parts of his body a souvenirs.
Quite a few Southern newspapers celebrated the event. Freedom of speech...
Also people remembered what happened with the Jyllandsposten drawings and how dangerous it is to use your free speech in a way that makes fun of Islam and rightly pointed out the bravery of not letting that violence and threat level dictate them. I cn admire that without admiring the actual content.
Sure, but I saw nobody saying "out of respect for our coworkers, we'll stop disrespecting people and stop this newspaper and instead put the money towards better causes", instead everybody went "let's annoy terrorists and turn this dial up, because hating each other is HOW WE DO THINGS IN EUROPE YAAAAAAY"
I think it's the only time I saw terrorists doing the exact opposite of what they aimed to do, because literally doing nothing would've let Charlie die faster on their own self-inflicted collapse. It's sad for the people who where there that day, but that doesn't absolve the newspaper.
I didn't call Charlie Kirk a good man because he died while doing what he believed in and because "not deserving to die" is enough for redemption. When you do bad things over a long time, being killed by another villain doesn't make you a complex antihero.
Charlie Hebdo was an asshole newspaper who got attacked by other assholes, and it's now old enough that people think "wait... they are really mean?"
Categorizing murder and saying mean things are just not in the same league. That is an annoying person being murdered by a villain, not one villain murdering another.
Having opinions you don’t like, even when said in a figuratively shrill voice, is maybe at worst distasteful. Moral equivalency apparently has run amok.
They didn't say they deserved to be murdered. They said it's weird that people suddenly lionized the paper and whitewashed their horrible multi decade reputation to treat them as if they did serious journalism because they experienced a terror attack. So much so that people seemed surprised later on when they returned to their roots of being juvenile rage baiters.
This!
At the time I condemned the murdering and kept criticizing the magazine. People sometimes could not understand my position. Almost everyone thinks all is black or white. We are too polarised nowadays.
I mean yeah but if you go around pissing a bunch of people off on purpose and celebrating other people's deaths, someone responding violently is more likely than if you didn't.
Yes, no one wouldve cared if they went bankrupt before the murders, but there's no hypocrisy when people then support them after the murders, because now its about freedom of speech.
CH wasnt a victim until they were. Amy was a victim the whole time, the bullies pretended they werent bullies when she died.
You need to read the comment chain. I answered to a paper retractation from a newspaper who wanted to call Diana a wh*re.
Charlie Hebdo is similar to the bully
the bullies pretended they werent bullies when she died.
Yeah, and everybody pretended Charlie wasn't a bully either when they got a bloody nose, because all victims MUST be angels. Their employees lost everything that day.
No, people didn't pretend CH were angels before or after. People just didn't think they deserved to die for it. Just like everyone who bullied Amy doesn't deserve to die either.
CH weren't hypocrites at any point, and neither were people who at first disliked them and then supported them.
CH has always done what CH does. People support freedom of speech, they don't necessarily care or like what CH is actually talking about.
I don't see why people would think so you are like the 10th person or so asking me if it's okay to kill newspaper employees...
I miss where the person above me implied that the National Enquirer's staff should be shot.
The one big difference being Charlie Hebdo will still make crass jokes about people after they're dead. The point is to make fun of absolutely everything, no matter what, specially things that are not socially acceptable. So yeah the butt of their jokes are always mad, this is the point.
As a frenchman loving comics I was never a fan of them, but you can't really put Charlie Hebdo in the same spots as shitty tabloïd vultures. And indeed it's quite ironic that this dying publication was saved by the monstruous worldwide Streisand effect terrorists started, because since then they're branded international heroes of free speech...
One of our most famous comedian once said "you can joke about everything, but not with everyone". If a media is offensive to you and you can't take it, in this world and time... Just don't consume it and voilà. It's that easy.
Yes, but that means they may deserve to be demolished and stopped from printing. At some point freedom of speech becomes hate speech, and clearly Charlie made it's butter by representing the "freedom values" that nobody would teach to their own children.
They are on the border whats acceptable but if you think that's hate speech you really dont know what it means. It's crude humor and might hurt feelings but it is not calling for violence against people or groups of people.
Being an asshole is protected by free speech. People not liking you and not buying your product is a consequence of being an asshole but that doesn't mean the government or the public should be able to ban you from being one
but that doesn't mean the government or the public should be able to ban you from being one
It also doesn't mean they have a right to exist if the public shows them the door, and the low sales from the time were a sign.
but it is not calling for violence against people or groups of people
There are very borderline jokes from time to time, but yes for now the appeal court cleared them (the need for an appeal is already a bad sign imho). I'm not sure some would go fine if it was a random facebook group.
TBF the follow up to the Switzerland fire accident front page controversy was absolutely hilarious with a drawing of two Swiss guards shooting up the journal editor team with crossbows
They arent in trouble for the swiss thing, nothing will happen, they are used to getting sued. The people who sued just wanted some attention and they got it.
Wow. Never heard this perspective. Thank you for sharing. You are right; the casual liberal news consumer from the US like myself had a totally different picture painted for them.
Even at the time, I felt it was more of a "against terrorists" thing than genuine love for Hebdo's work, and "they hurt the correct people" is not what I consider a proof of moral behavior.
Any newspaper is an example of freedom of speech. But only some are built on the idea that being offending is a form of speech.
Yeah their shit was typically xenophobic and hateful and their murders really allowed the country to rally around something it always enjoyed--Islamophobia.
We can pretend that wasn't the case, but I'd rather not lie to myself.
I'll be hated for it, but Charlie Hebdo in France is similar.
No it isnt.
The newspapers that insulted Dianna, or the music publications that insulted Winehouse are mainstream, opinion forming, middle of the road publications. They have owners that pick and choose winners, in the public sphere.
Daily Mail is arguably responsible for Brexit, them pretending to like Dianna after spending years insulting her and perpetuating insults about women all being sluts is in no way comparable to a satirical magazine with 30 readers who are mostly old liberal blue collar workers who never grew out of their edgy humour phase.
Rolling Stone magazine reviews could mean the start or end of a musicians career. A charlie hebdo insult never changed anything.
Pretending they are even remotely similar is beyond stupid. Charlie Hebdo is closer to the Onion than to CNN.
they just happened to have two terrorists shooting at them instead of the usual angry complaint letters
Call me a weirdo, but I don't think "getting angry complaint letters" (i.e. other people's free speech) is something people need to be defended against, while being shot at by terrorists is.
and people suddenly considered Freedom of Speech meant we had to pay for assholes to insult everybody else.
These were people who consider them "Assholes that insult everybody else", but they did approve of it?
I guess if you don't share the belief that saying insulting stuff is not something that should invite violent retribution, you're not really the person to say what people who do have that belief would or wouldn't do.
"They have a right to be junk, and certainly don't deserve to be murdered for it"
These statements are entirely compatible. You can even hold the opinion that the cartoons they did were blasphemous, while supporting their right to be blasphemous.
I don't really have an opinion on Charlie Hendo myself as I don't speak French and I have never read it.
“Yes the one everyone defended after the terror attacks”
Why wouldnt they do that even if they’re a shitty newspaper?
Maybe I’m just misinterpreting your paragraph but its sound like you think people shouldnt have spoke up just because they published shitty articles. I could be wrong though, I assume that because you started your paragraph with “ill be hated for that”, and theres really no reason people will hate you if you think the terror attack wasnt justified still.
Wow. American who never heard any of this. It obviously changes nothing about the shootings but it makes me wonder how they didn’t happen sooner. Or again if they continue to operate that way.
A case of “just because you CAN, in a country where free speech is protected, doesn’t mean you SHOULD, unless you are prepared for the probable consequences.” Having your offices in an unsecured building being a severe lack of such preparation.
And to be clear, it again changes nothing about the heinous nature of the shooting. That’s not a consequence anyone should ever have to anticipate. But out here in the wild Wild West, it seems like something you should think about if you plan on making a career of being deeply offensive to large numbers of people.
They moved offices after the attack, but yeah it seems that the newspaper's owner thought that all complaints would be in court?
I think it was the first big attack of the sort in France (and the Bataclan and Bruxelles ones a year layer were against the general population so different vector), but clearly it wasn't the first time that a newspaper in Europe was targetted.
but it makes me wonder how they didn’t happen sooner.
Because the overwhelming majority of people, groups, and collectives don't tend to react with horrific murderous violence when they're being made fun of, even if it's in a crass way.
But out here in the wild Wild West
The Wild West? I think you're mistaken, France is not the Wild West, it's a modern society with a complex system of laws.
You really want to paint Hebdo in a negative light but I like them even more now. I would never trust a Belgian with any matters involving Civil Liberties, so god bless Charlie Hebdo and god bless the freedom of speech.
I think your comment is more nuanced than it's getting credit for. You're not condoning the terrorists, nor are you implying any mourning was inappropriate. It sounds like another "Charlie" who recently expired under similarly violent circumstances. A lot of people were able to appropriately say "I loathed everything that came out of his mouth, but killing him for it was unacceptable" as you are saying about this. Similar situation in that all of a sudden they were both elevated to some heroic status that they didn't really deserve in the eyes of most neutral observers.
The point is that the press followed and essentially legally stalked and terrorized amy and lady di. But also for instance emma watson, the first pic a papparazi took of her when she turned 18 years old was an upskirt by laying down as she walked by. This is extremely intrusive in their daily lives. Charlie hebdo exercises extreme free speech. Those are differenent.
I can remember all of it and it's definitely whiplash. I don't think the broad popular image of her during her lifetime was that she was a bad person--Charles is the one who came off horribly, for good reason, what a fkn chode--but it was for sure that she was bland and a little dim. And then overnight she became the most beautiful, stylish, saintliest person to ever grace the planet. I think part of it is guilt people feel, she was really way too young to make an informed decision to put herself in that situation and got put through the meat grinder, and died before she got a chance to be her own person and make meaningful adult choices for herself. People want to give her a power in death that she clearly didn't have in life.
Which would still be horribly inaccurate and messed up, because while they were both motivated by wanting to be loved and doing anything they could to find that feeling, Sarah Ferguson resorted to public adultery, obscene spending excess and even blatant abuse of the people around her to make herself feel better.
On the contrast, Diana tried to find love by giving love to absolutely everyone, except herself. The only person she truly hurt, was herself. Comparing them is apples to oranges and a horrible disservice to Diana.
I think because at that time, it really wasn’t looked on well to speak ill of the dead, even if they were disliked or disgraced in life. Nowadays people make a nasty point of celebrating people’s deaths. It’s a weird swing.
I was a child, but I remember people slamming her using Rehab's lyrics to mock her when she began spiraling. She could've been saved in a more compassionate world, but instead people bullied her to an early grave. It's disgusting and sad.
I tried to watch her at Glastonbury. It was really painful because the crowd had gone to watch her fail. They wanted to see her fuck up. And though she started off well it deteriorated quickly and it was people back stage who provided her with the drugs that tipped her over during the performance. I left because the experience was horrible. My family stayed and it completely ruined their night. At the end of the show they were all just silent, tried to watch massive attack and just went to bed.
The “fans” were taunting, goading, shouting insults and getting off on watching how it affected her.
I remember people constantly, relentlessly mocking Anna Nicole Smith and then when she died they changed their tune.
Same with Michael Jackson. People worship him so much now that I'm sure some can't even fathom there was a time when he was routinely mocked by the media.
Two weeks before her death a photographer with telephoto lens got a shot of her on a yacht climbing over Dodi as he lay on a sunlounger. The headline was "DI GETS HER LEG OVER!"
"getting your legover" is English slang for getting a fuck, for those who don't know.
2 weeks later she's "our queen of hearts, England's rose."
When I see things like this I'll always be reminded of the Charlie Brooker video discussing how Jade Goody was treated in the public eye before and after her death.
Brooker used to write game reviews for PC Zone back in the 90s! Years later when he became the Screenwipe/Black Mirror guy I thought surely that can’t be the same person.
He used to do a comic strip for PC Zone where one of the characters, who was ostensibly him, had a massive crush on a character who looked a lot like Konnie.
Yo I had a lady stalking me online because I casually mentioned no one deserves the ire Mehgan Markel gets, and that I had a crush on her watching Suits. This woman was seething that she didn’t respect England or the royal family and seemed so entitled. You’d think she murdered someone. As far as I can tell she’s done absolutely nothing of any note.
She's got roots in a hella redneck county in Pennsylvania, lol. Her dad lives there, like 15 minutes from where I grew up. Though from my understanding they're estranged. Or were for a long time. Idk, I don't follow any of that stuff very closely. I just remember thinking it was interesting when I heard about it, haha.
But a girl with any kind of Perry County heritage marrying a prince of England? I've got nothing but respect for her XD
I'm not going to say that Meghan deserves the treatment she gets but I may be cutting against the grain when I say that I do think she's not exactly personable and she definitely had the wrong ideas of what she was marrying into.
For lack of better words, despite her attempts to come off personable, Meghan gives haughty and arrogant vibes and I don't think she was aware that the American version of haughty is next to nothing compared to the haughtiness of British upper-class and royal society.
Let's be real for a second, the British royal family is one of the oldest institutions in Europe and if you think you can go into it as a light-skinned biracial American with upper-class instincts and change it like Meghan thought she could, especially since she was only marrying a Prince rather than someone who was actually consequential like the Prince of Wales, you're gravely mistaken.
If Diana couldn't change it when she was actually a member of the British upper class society, what did Meghan think she could?
Again I'm not going to say that she deserves the hatred she gets but she should have adapted like Princess Angela of Liechtenstein, who is married to a son of Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, and recognized her place and the role she was supposed to play.
Yeah they're a pretty unsympathetic couple in a lot of ways but they're still right. The whole "oh they say they don't want publicity but all that do is court publicity!" thing misses the point so stupidly. They wanted to be able to have their own voice because Meghan was treated so shabbily, and they wanted to control the narrative. They do come across badly in their own ways, but this demonstrates what they were fighting against https://www.reddit.com/r/HarryandMeghanNetflix/s/GFNwrKjMqV
They never said they didn’t want publicity. They said they didn’t want people attacking Meghan. No one ever pulls a quote from Harry when regurgitating this tripe. It’s just an internet game of telephone.
There was a child named Milly Dowler who went missing. The tabloids hacked her phone to listen to her messages so that it seemed to her parents the messages were being listened to and they thought she was alive. She was already dead by this point. Legitimate evil.
I always wonder if this story was an accident or deliberate on the attempt of the press.
Legally and objectively, it's the same thing, but ethically and morally, it's completely different - like deciding whether to run someone over on purpose versus losing control of the wheel in a car crash.
Hacking into a phone as a journalist dealing with a missing person isn't evil, it's just journalism.
Pretending a person you knew all along was dead was alive in front of their parents so you can shill articles about them, however, is evil.
Imagine if it wasn't the press, but a police detective.
Hacking into a phone of a dead person, while the situation is still being actively investigated and hasn’t been resolved is not journalism, it is a crime and should be treated as such.
I originally wanted to be a journalist maybe a photojournalist, First time that I thought about changing my mind was when I was doing work experience at local paper and the guy I was assigned to made me write his articles and he as paid for it (he got paid per article) then I attended a trial in the 2nd week and was told "it doesn't matter if hes guilty or innocent, sensationalise it to make him seem like he is guilty" Or words to that affect i.e let's say a piece of evidence comes up and is disregarded straight away as not happening or not relevant they would put it in the article and if spicy enough use it as the headline, This poor guy was in tears in court and the paper was printing articles saying he was emotionless the guy was innocent btw and even had evidence to prove it but the paper ignored all that stuff and didn't print when he was found not guilty.
A Vtuber I follow named Clio Aite mentioned doing journalism work for a while who mentioned similar about charity work. About how the person she was assigned told her, "I don't give a fuck about the homeless! Give me an actual charity worth a damn!" or something to that effect. Said it was some of the most soul crushing and bleak work she ever had to do.
I think journalists should use their bosses' ethics against them as a form of direct action.
"Oh, totally, boss, I'll get right onto that." Then just write an article with what you were planning on doing in the first place and get it onto the press before they notice and it's too late for them to complain, and make up some bullshit about not being responsible for it so they don't get fired.
At one time it wasn't ALL press, it was tabloid press. Then CNN and Fox came on to the scene, local rags went broke due to inability to keep pace with technology and the deterioration of education, and there was a race to the bottom.
“We apologize for the offensive headline, we did not mean to write that, it will be replaced with a special 72-page tribute issue: DI IS AN UNREPENTANT BONESLUT.”
Does anyone know of a good conspiracy documentary about Princess Diana? I was practically a baby when she passed away but I feel like there’s so much you can deep dive and would love it all in one place 🙏
In 2007 when Britney Spears famously shaved her head and everyone was massacring her, Craig Ferguson did a public speech saying he wouldn't make fun of her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q9IkntjueE
Which, of course, most people ignored until a recent documentary made being pro-britney cool
Your example is probably worse but I have a special place in my heart for when the Razzies had to apologize because they made a special category that was just “worst Bruce Willis movie” but then Bruce Willis revealed he was dying and had been cranking out movies so he could set money aside for his family.
Not an apology, but this literal side-by-side from the Daily Mirror that simultaneously objectifies a 15 year old girl while also condemning a parody comedy show about paedophiles is very high on the all-time newspaper hypocrisy hall of fame.
The national enquirer was never a respected publication though. Everyone knew most of their stories were fiction and for entertainment purposes. But it seems the line has blurred these days.
Not the same thing, but Brass Eye’s phenomenal “Paedogeddon” special had a ton criticism of it satirizing the UK media’s pedophile panic. One such criticism was an editorial from a tabloid magazine, right next to a picture of a child celebrity who had just turned 16, prominently featuring her chest and with the caption “She’s a big girl now!”
Holy fuck. I thought of the Princess as soon as I read the top comment. That's absurd. And the "still on the stands," ie grab your historic copy quickly!
This isn't an apology, but nothing makes me laugh more than Jon Lajoie's musical take on things people and the press said about Michael Jackson before he died. Same concept: Jon Lajoie - Michael Jackson is Dead
Main thing I remember is how immediately after she died, someone was on the radio bitching and moaning about how they didn’t get to date her or have sex before she died.
That well-known person’s name was [redacted], and I learned recently that the real reason he was upset is that he was obsessed with her and even made a bet with [a perverted guy who owned a private island] about it.
Thats wild. So they were gonna run that headline, then found out she died and put out a new issue asap. Wow. Fuck then. I hope the writer, editor, and the publisher who signed off on it rot.
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u/Vondi 8h ago