New documentary highlights slippery ethics of London tabloids. In Great Britain, controversy is building around an upcoming documentary depicting the loose journalistic ethics of London tabloids. Entitled Starsuckers, the movie is the brainchild of Taking Liberties director Chris Atkins and a group of colleagues, whose goal was to prove, in a comical way, that modern tabloids cannot be trusted to print the truth. To do this, they decided to anonymously call tabloid tip lines with fabricated stories. Their first test involved ringing up the Daily Mirror claiming to have seen singer Avril Lavigne passed out in a nightclub. The story appeared in the Mirror the next day, embellished with a few taunts to the effect that the singer was a “lightweight.” In the next few weeks the Starsuckers team planted false stories in the Daily Express, the Daily Star, the Sun, and most of the other London tabloids, all using the same method—anonymous tips that were not in any way questioned. The planted stories often spread from one tabloid to the next with no evidence any attempts at corroboration had been made. One fabrication about Amy Winehouse’s hair catching fire spread to all the daily tabloids, a New York Post blog, and even to the Times of India. Starsuckers promises to show not only that Rupert Murdoch-style sell-first/ask-questions-later journalism has infected the entire tabloid industry, but that it has spread to mainstream media, and in turn made consumers vulnerable to social, economic and political manipulation. The London tabloids have thus far declined comment on the claims made by Starsuckers and Atkins. Later this month the public will have an opportunity to judge the truth of these matters for itself when the movie debuts at the London Film Festival.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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