What do the likes of Samantha Brick, Liz Jones and Katie Hopkins have in common?
What do the likes of Samantha Brick, Liz Jones and Katie Hopkins have in common? They’ve all shared their controversial views on a national media platform and created a bit of a stir in the process.
Liz Jones hit the news recently by aggressively calling Rihanna a bad role model—Rihanna responded by calling her ‘a sloppy, menopausal mess.’
Samantha Brick published an article called ‘Why women hate me for being beautiful’—that says it all really.
Katie Hopkins had a heated discussion on This Morning about judging children on their names which led to her being dramatically and hilariously cut off.
The big mouths we love to hate
Yet instead of writing yet another angry article blasting their extreme opinions and discrediting them completely, let’s look at the potential reasoning behind all this and why this unfortunate trend in journalism might be happening in the first place.
These so-called ‘confessional journalists,’ Hopkins is more ‘TV Personality’ but I’m sure she’ll have her own column soon enough, make headlines from headlines in a way that is becoming all too common among the middle-aged, female band of writers.
The fact that they are women has everything to do it because it dictates their subject-matter—often bitchy comments about certain demographics of society or attacking or defending women.
The face of feminism- coming from men
They might think they’re the voice of the everyday woman, the feminist movement and social change but really, they too are bowing down to the orders of their, probably masculine, superiors that request polemic pieces to increase readership and website traffic.
Is this the way the industry is going at the moment where editors feel the need to resort to prompting opinionated columnists to make headlines?
They all think they’re doing us a favour by helping us see the ‘errors of our ways.’ To some extent what they say does have some merit but their views are heavily exaggerated and expressed in a way that is shocking and purposefully anger-inducing.
Hated and friendless- a new job role
‘The paper want me to be the person who says the uncomfortable thing,’ Jones whined in a recent interview. She clearly doesn’t mind being hated and friendless. She even acts as a human experiment for the Daily Mail, having had facelifts and tattoos for her features, all in the name of journalism.
Her outlook is full of contradictions—does she want to celebrate women or is she more focused on highlighting their flaws? She’s a worn-out soul: too complex to try and work out.
Maybe the reason they do it is because they are fame-hungry and want something like a reality show to catapult them into the brighter lights of showbizness? Samantha Brick has already had a taste of this ‘fame’ with her stint in Celebrity Big Brother last summer. She appeared on a show where viewers decided her fate, the same viewers who were angered by her arrogance and quasi-misogynistic views. No surprises then that she was out in week four. Katie Hopkins found her ‘fame’ by reaching an Apprentice final and still prides herself on being ‘the only candidate to say ‘no’ to Sir Alan’ according to her Twitter profile.
As for Liz Jones, she can’t wait for the humiliating world of reality TV—the Daily Mail asked her not to do I’m a Celebrity… and Celebrity Big Brother as they feared she would have sex on TV, even though she had signed the contracts to do both!
Reflecting the views of society
Media hate figures are on the rise, but what does this say about us as society? In our increasingly busy lives, are we becoming too rash in our decision-making and judgemental towards people and their opinions? That sure does seem the case.
We live in an age where you don’t have to write an entire article to make your voice heard. A simple 140-character tweet will suffice and you can easily and safely help the views of an over-opinionated few blow up to the point where it’s worthy of a tabloid’s front-page.
How can we move forward from this? It’s easy to become an angry online troll and target people whose views don’t align with our own, no matter how extreme they are, but intelligent discussion is lacking in society these days. Perhaps we need more forums like the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ on which to debate matters. Or, maybe like any recurring problem, like a rash, or Katie Price, the best thing to do is ignore it and it will go away.
We’ve played into the hands of the media owners for too long and it’s an issue that will probably get worse before it gets better.
What do you think of these media figures? Have your say in the comments section below, on Facebook or on Twitter.
