Lost in showbizCelebrityThe disturbing story of the Lostprophets singer's conviction for child sex offences doesn't have to be accompanied by photos of Fearne Cotton and Alexa Chung to catch readers' attention in the newspapersPlease don protective clothing as we venture into the unspeakably grim story of Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins' conviction for a string of child sex crimes, including the attempted rape of a baby, and ask whether it represents a new low for the "celebrity angle".
On the fundamental principle that the most significant facts in any news report should be as near to the top of it as possible, what are we to make of the way in which the Watkins story – whose central character is already a celebrity – was so frequently presented to the public?
"Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins has pleaded guilty to the attempted rape of a baby," ran a fairly typical Mail intro. "The singer, a former boyfriend of BBC presenter Fearne Cotton in 2008, and model Alexa Chung in 2007, also admitted he used his Lostprophets fame to turn young girls into 'Superfans' willing to allow him to abuse their children …"
Oh well, never mind that. WENT OUT WITH FEARNE COTTON, YOU SAY?
"FEARNE EX: I TRIED TO RAPE BABY BOY," was the Sun's headline verdict above a picture of the pair together during their brief relationship five years ago, with the second sentence of the report reiterating the fact that Watkins was "an ex-boyfriend of Children in Need presenter Fearne Cotton".
Mmm. All you can do, really, is celebrate a culture whose priorities are so deliciously in order that a story about baby rape is judged insufficiently eye-catching without the pre-eminently placed qualifying detail that the baby rapist, many years ago and only in passing, went out with a couple of B-listers.
Such prominence was this fact given in so many of the reports on the Watkins horrors that its importance in the story appeared entirely indisputable – if entirely unfathomable to anyone with anything resembling a sense of perspective. It was placed higher up than the list of his offences, higher up than the fact his fame had apparently been sufficient to persuade mothers to abuse their own children, higher up than details of the police investigation into what one officer described as the "most shocking and harrowing child abuse" case he had ever encountered, and higher up than the IPCC probe into why it took South Wales police so long to apprehend Watkins despite their being passed information by four other forces. Still, perhaps megastar names such as, er, Fearne Cotton and Alexa Chung can do that to a story.
It's certainly not the only emetic case of a celebrity angle being deployed to assist readers in understanding the news. A few years ago, a colleague drew attention to some reporters' weirdo obsession with randomly shoehorning a celebrity angle into stories about violent crime and murder. The latest tale to have enchanted her concerned the discovery of a woman's body in Richmond. Or as the Sun's intro on it ran: "Career girl Kate Beagley was murdered just yards from model Jerry Hall's £10m mansion." Poor Jerry – do tell us more. "Pretty Kate, 32, was killed – and possibly raped – in a meadow near a Millionaires Row in Richmond, Surrey."
Though the report stopped just short of enticing a local estate agent to speculate on how the unfortunate incident might affect property prices in the area, I can't decide whether it was a totally sad tale for the victim, or whether that fleeting proximity to Hall's £10m mansion – if only in a decomposing state – was really the most notable achievement of a horribly curtailed life, even if it did come too late for the deceased to enjoy the sense of having truly "arrived".
Yet with so many persisting in taking the celebrity angle to places it should absolutely never go, I suppose we should salute those still deploying it in the sort of cheerfully witless way we can all enjoy. Take, for instance, the burgeoning genre: "Stars react to news of …" This is one of the foremost journalism-effect standbys to have been enabled by Twitter.
People keen to see it in action are directed to features such as Us Weekly magazine's "Stars react to Osama bin Laden's death", which reminded us that the most important question any of us should ask in the hours after the world's most wanted man has been killed in a spectacular but clearly questionable special ops mission is: "Now, what does Lindsay Lohan think about all this?" (For the record, Lindsay thought: "Go USA!") Plenty more where that came from, though, with no major news event considered fully analysed these days unless it has been filtered through the prism of Paris Hilton's Twitter account. Barely a week goes by without an example: "Celebrities react to the election of Pope Francis." "Celebrities react to US Government Shutdown." "Stars react to LAX shooting." "Stars react to Philippines disaster."
The problem, ultimately, for the celebrity publications that feel increasingly obliged to report actual news in this way is how they provide a frame of reference for readers whom they appear to deem narcotised by the rest of their content. How, for instance, were Us Weekly consumers supposed to get a handle on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il? Idiosyncratically, as it turned out. The publication's report on the despot's death described him thus: "Parodied on 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live and elsewhere, the self-obsessed, sociopathic icon was a well-known film buff with up to 20,000 DVDs in his personal collection, and ran his country's film industry since coming into power in the 90s. His most successful film was Pulgasari, a Godzilla-esque monster film."
Which is one way of remembering him, I suppose.
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