Tuesday 21 July 2009

Not news

As if to prove that the tabloids will write about anything that happens to either Katie Price or Peter Andre, the Mail, Star and Sun all rushed to report that the latter had fallen off stage during a set at the T4 On the Beach concert.

Indeed, the Mail considered it so important it assigned two reporters - Donna Mcconnell and Tamara Hardingham-Gill - to the story.

Here's what happened - Andre was walking down some steps, mid-song, when he stumbled, lost his footing and then jumped off the stage. And that really is it. You can see the video on both the Mail and Star versions of the story. And you may wonder what the fuss is about.

But then in comes a fan called Carly Wells, who is quoted in every version of the story. She says:

'One minute he was bouncing around the stage having the time of his life. The next he was flat on his face in front of us. There was a loud gasp as he fell - the stage was quite high up and it looked quite nasty. But he just picked himself up, brushed his trousers down and got on with it'.
It's hard to know if this person exists, because if she does, she clearly can't have seen the same incident. Since the Mail must have seen the video in order to embed it on their site, they could see he did not fall 'flat on his face' or even come close to doing so.

But the Mail adds its own embellishments, claiming he was 'lucky to escape serious injury'.

It's as if the Mail is trying to make it sound more serious than it actually was in order to try and make it seem worth writing about - by two journalists.

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