Obscene profits

A storm of criticism may still prevent the 15 British marines and sailors who were released by Iran of getting rich by selling their stories to the British tabloids. While they were being released, sporting brand new Iranian suits and presents offered by Iranian president Ahmadinejad, six of their colleagues were killed in Iraq. The living can still sell there stories, while the dead can't.

The Guardian (Anger over Iran hostages' media deals) noted that selling their stories might undermine “the reputation of Britain's armed forces”. In the eyes of the peoples of the world, their reputation has never been good anyway, first defending Britain's colonial empire and later acting as the running boys (and a gal or two) of U.S. imperialism. “The sailors and Marines held in Iran have been so compliant and have already said so much that they have caused excruciating embarrassment to many people in this country.” Oh dear! (The Times: Our Forces will pay with a worldwide loss of reputation)

But selling one's story for a 100,000 pounds is obscene indeed. “What can Faye Turney say that is worth a six-figure sum?”, asked The Times. We are not even talking about a book deal, but a mere newspaper story which can be told in an hour or so. That's 1.5 million yuan! Leading Sea-something Faye Turney was offered the money by The Sun and ITV. Her annual salary is less than 30,000 pounds. The result is not even worth reading (so I won't link to the story here), besides the fact that this lady uses the F*** word four times. It seems the British ladies have lost some class since the Victorian era.

It seems however, that some newspapers and TV-stations backtracked and canceled their offers of paying outrageous amounts of money. Anything worth telling could be told at a press conference – free of charge. It is unclear whether Faye was paid, Danny Masterton was paid a hundred pounds by the Sunday Mail and Chris Air offered his story free of charge to his local paper, the Manchester Evening News. (The Times: All at Sea)

And yes, “There is an inducement to say that things were as bad as possible.” (The Times) Moreover, the Ministry of Defense will try to put a spin on things. “The border between fact and fiction could be every bit as treacherous as that between Iraqi and Iranian waters” (The Independent: He who pays the piper calls a dubious tune) How can anything even remotely worth reading come out of this travesty of journalism?

In China, the press faces another problem. The newspapers don't pay their interviewees, it's the other way around. Some unscrupulous journalists or shady characters try to extort money, either not to publish unfavorable news, or to publish distorted positive news.

Either way, money should be banned from the journalism profession, except of course a decent remuneration paid by the media to the journalists researching and writing the stories... Or as Peter Preston wrote in The Guardian: “Loot is the foe of truth” (Loot is the foe of truth).