Stories

The Great De-Pressing

We’ve never underestimated the power that celebrity and pop culture holds over us, but now that the delicate egos of the A-List are working their way into the actual corridors of power, the media is about to experience an unprecedented assault on its freedom – and from every possible direction.

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Part I: The Newsworthy Penis

Few expected Gawker to win its case against Hulk Hogan at the start of 2016 after they published clips from his sex tape, but nobody expected them to get obliterated. Gawker’s bankruptcy started a worrisome chain reaction for press freedom in the States – one which now goes right the way to the top…

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Part II: Return Of The Gag

The standout legal case in the British courts this year was PJS v News Group Newspapers. Olive oil sex parties were all that anyone could talk about back in April – but now that all the hubbub surrounding it has died down, the ruling in that case is casting a rather large shadow. One that is getting darker and darker…

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Part III: Battle Royal

The British Press and the Royal Family have enjoyed a rather fractious relationship over the years. While they seem to broadly respect the Queen and the heirs apparent, the rest of the Royal hangers-on seem to get a fairly rum deal. That could be about to change rather dramatically though…

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Pressing On

So where do we go from here? How do we escape from this corner that we have apparently painted ourselves into? There’s too much at stake for us all to finally cede defeat to the celebrities and fall in line with whatever they want. Isn’t there?

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Girlfriend In A Comma

Ever since pregnancy rumours were sparked, reportage of Cheryl Cole has been a blizzard of quote marks. After months of speculation with no official statement on the matter, Cheryl has now appeared in public looking very much pregnany – but subeditors don’t seem to know how to react…

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Crack Pots II: Further Cracks

As Savile-esque allegations start pouring in about Donald Trump, it may be tempting to write his campaign off as finally doomed. But as we’ve been saying from the start, if you really want to understand how Trump’s core support works, you need to look carefully at the career of the crack-smoking Mayor, Rob Ford.

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Finding The Value Of X

The X Factor often gets accused of being formulaic, but if that was really the case they wouldn’t need to waste so much of everybody’s time with auditions and bootcamps and the like. So we’ve tried to figure it out. We did some deep statistical analysis on the contest’s winners and now we’re ready to save Simon Cowell some serious man hours…

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