Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
I started this off as just a usual comment piece on Britney Spears running over the foot of some photographer, but as I got further into writing it, I realised the real point I was making wasn’t about her but about him or more precisely hack journalism and paparazzi in general.
It seems there’s a video of La Spears driving out of a parking garage after a visit to a doctor. In the video she is coming out of a parking garage and the car is practically at a stand still. The press are blocking her way and stopping her from being able to move so she’s just edging forward very slowly when the man’s foot is run over.
According to our photographer, pedestrians in America have the right of way no matter what and if he wanted to stand in the middle of the road anywhere in the States it would be his right to do so. Therefore, La Spears is totally to blame.
Not having ever memorised the American highway code I can’t tell you if he’s right or not but it does seem a little strange that a person can jump in front of a moving car and the driver is the one to blame.
It seems to me that anyone who deliberately blocks your way does so with the knowledge that they might get hurt. And photographers in La La land know this more than most. If they have nothing better to do with their day then wait for hours to take a picture of someone coming out of the doctor’s and then practically place their foot under the wheel of a moving car they have to know they’re going to get run over.
Why should she have to sit idle in her own car, in a public place waiting indefinitely to drive off just because some guy with a camera isn’t good enough to be hired for a real photography job and has to resort to stalking famous people instead?
There’s no doubt that Britney’s been catching a lot of bad press at the moment and I’m as guilty as the next person of propagating the rumours. I hear something in the news or read about it in the paper and then take a cursory look online to see if there’s any substance to it before forcing my opinion into your homes via this column, but I never usually take the time out to look at the video.
This time I did though and for the first time properly realised how very skewed the view is. Many more millions will read the news without actually watching the video and come to the conclusion that Britney has totally lost control in her downward spiral to the superstar rubbish tip and her running over a photographer’s foot is just another sure sign that she’s completely lost the plot. A disgraced out-of-control superstar using her car as a weapon sells a lot more papers than a photographer shoving himself in the way of a car. But who’s more to blame and which came first?
The reporters writing about what he knows will sell papers or the people who need their daily kicking-celebrities-when-they’re-down fix and buy the papers for its vapid contents?
Being a celebrity means that you have to put up with a certain amount of attention (and even intrusion) from the press but nowhere in their contract does it say they have to be hounded mercilessly.
This particular incident in itself is a minor one as far as celebrity gossip goes and many would say that she’s so out of it she deserves all the bad press she can get but hack journalism and irresponsible reporting have been responsible for the ruin of many a career, life or family of people wrongly accused and we as consumers only add fuel to the fire by always wanting to hear more about the fall from grace of the rich and famous, rather than concentrating on truly news-worthy stories.
After all who wants to read about 15 million children dying of starvation every year in Africa over their morning poached egg with béarnaise sauce on rye toast?
Doubtlessly next week I’ll be back to my own particular brand of opinionated star-bashing but if this made you and I stop and think for just a couple of minutes, then maybe there’s hope for humanity yet. It doesn’t seem very likely, but here’s lookin’ at you kid!
