ABSTRACT
Scandal has always been the staple ingredient of the mass media and few periods have escaped moral panics over alleged declining media standards. Journalists through the ages have tended to be asssociated with the ‘street of shame’. Since their emergence in the early seventeenth century in Europe’s cities, particularly London, the ‘news media’ (variously known as corantos, diurnals, gazettes, proceedings and mercuries) were associated with scandal, gossip and ‘low’ culture (see Keeble and Wheeler 2007: 3) As Samuel Johnson (1709-84) put it: ‘If an ambassador is said to be a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country, a newswriter is a man without virtue who writes lies for his own profit.’ And Hugh Stephenson stressed (1998: 19): ‘Sex, lies and the invasion of privacy of individuals have certainly been an important part of the staple diet of popular British newspapers since British newspapers have existed.’ According to Larry Gross (2003: 98), the rhetoric of authenticity that permeates the discourse of celebrity reflects the view that sexuality is that aspect of human experience closest to the truth of character and motivation:
In an age increasingly imbued with Freudian convictions about the importance of unconscious forces lurking out of sight, the truth about personality is to be discovered beneath the surface, behind the façade, and sexual secrets are assumed to be the most revealing.
