‘Bonkers Bruno Locked Up’ and ‘Under the Carapace of Glittering, Hedonistic Celebrity’: When the Tabloids Misread the Public Mood

Abstract

The tabloids depict themselves as the voice of the common (wo)man but they sometimes completely misread the public mood. This chapter investigates instances in which newspapers have caused offence with their outdated and insensitive treatment of two matters on which attitudes have changed radically since the 1970s and ’80s. The first dates back to 2003 when the Sun poked fun at a popular celebrity’s psychiatric crisis, apparently unaware that mental illness no longer carries the stigma it once had and is certainly not something to joke about. The second concerns a MailOnline columnist’s view that a young pop singer’s sudden death was in some way linked to his homosexuality, an ill-informed prejudice that in 2009 provoked outrage. A third issue, obesity, sees the tabloids shifting from a judgemental or mocking approach to greater sensitivity as the condition now affects millions of children and adults.