For the first hour or so, this documentary about the damaging power of celebrity culture is a shambling mix of strained metaphor and truism in the service of a silly conspiracy theory: that somehow celebrity culture helps the media achieve their aim of "control".
Then, in the last half-hour, it comes up with something substantial: first, by selling a lot of made-up stories, Chris Atkins show how uninterested some journalists are in truthfulness, and how blithely the press ignores its own rules (while piously insisting on the efficacy of self-regulation); second, he examines the Live 8 concert of 2005, showing how the presence of celebrity suffocated attempts Make Poverty History campaign to make real political gains. But even here, he gets things arsey-versey – it's not the media who are benefiting here, it's the political and financial classes; the media are just the tools.
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- Bob Geldof
- Evelyn Waugh
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