Least Fave Characters

[rja.carnegie at excite.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 19612

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Belle_Starr_777 at y... wrote:
> Least-loved character?
> 
> Rita Skeeter. Unquestionably.
> 
> After spending 22 years, 10 months and 11 days in the newspaper 
> business, I've heard all kinds of disparating remarks about "the 
> press." Some remarks even from my own friends.
> 
> Let's just say that in dealing with the common, ordinary,
day-to-day 
> hometown newspaper, you generally won't find people like that. Yes, 
> there are exceptions. But for the most part, the reporters are
doing 
> their jobs for the love of the business, i.e. providing necessary 
> information to the public. Trust me, they're not in it for the 
> glamor, the glory, the pay or the working conditions. I could tell 
> you stories . . .   :-)
> 
> Anyway, I try not to take it all too seriously, but sometimes it 
> strikes close to home and I vent. Now that I've vented, it's back
to 
> my <i>willing suspension of disbelief." 

The British experience seems to differ.  The average citizen has
very little to do with the press, as a rule, but those who are
involved tend to regret it.  Our law on libel is effective only if
you're rich, I think.

On a personal note, I was slightly annoyed that a local paper once
misreported a school prize that I'd won; of coures it wouldn't have
mattered if they'd skipped it entirely - I don't remember the details
myself now - but it seemed it particularly didn't matter to the paper
whether they had the facts straight or not.

The husband of one of my sisters had a more serious problem once -
the press were interested in the place where he worked, they
interviewed and misquoted him, and he was obliged to defend himself
against a false charge of stirring up trouble by lying about the
organisation.

Another time, the same sister and her husband were acquainted with
someone who later got "stitched up", as we say, in the society
scandal columns.

Various British newspapers also published Hitler's diaries (later
revealed as forgeries), campaigned against the foolish idea that
a virus and not a liberal lifestyle caused AIDS, and announced
AIDS' total and universal cure (by extracting and gently heating
all of a patient's blood to remove the virus).  On reflection,
these sins were all in Sunday editions, which are particularly
bad here.

Also, our Daily Record apparently reported recently "Harry Potter
Author to Wed", but I only noticed this on their news-stand posters
which now seem to be changed once a week.

Clinging on-topic by fingernails, I mentioned that JKR claimed to
have invented Rita Skeeter before meeting her in person, but she
surely has now.

I'd also cite www.private-eye.co.uk but it looks as though they
keep the really hot stuff offline.

British people who complain about this sort of thing online are quite
likely to quote Humbert Wolfe:

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."

I found one vindictive Web page with this as "American journalist",
but that's cheating.

Robert Carnegie
Glasgow, Scotland

"I read them all when I was seven and I hated them" - unnamed American
office worker on the Harry Potter books (www.dilbert.com, List of
Stupid Things Overheard)