Evening Standard: Did You Hear The One About The Dirty-Mouthed *!%*ers At The Guardian?
It's a f***ing disgrace - the Church Times this week printed the f-word in full. But how much swearing is allowed on Fleet Street? David Rowan investigates
THE Guardian is full of shit - and the Mail, Mirror, Sun and Telegraph don't give a f***. This is not opinion, it is fact - the findings of an Evening Standard survey into newspapers' swearing habits over the past year.
Our investigation follows the shock news this week that The Church Times has, for the first time, used the f-word. The word appeared - fully spelled out, without coy asterisks - in a story about a cycling nun and a disgruntled pedestrian. It may sound like the beginning to a Bernard Manning joke, but it was, in fact, a report on the everyday hostility faced by nuns on the streets.
The results of our survey may shock the fainthearted - and a few of the papers' editors - but Britain's press, it seems, is getting ruder and more fixated with sex than ever.
We selected some of the ruder swear words - the f-word, the c-word and shit (all fully spelled out, unlike the shyness we are showing here) - to see just where the papers' boundaries lay. Then we added a few other key terms that help convey a paper's sense of priorities in the Noughties: 'sex', 'drugs', 'rock 'N' roll', and, to measure the reach of our celebrity culture, 'Geri Halliwell'. The results show the tabloids to be angels compared to those badmouthing broadsheets.
The Guardian is the most liberal in its use of language, with 264 Fs and 44 Cs, followed by The Independent, which manages 82 F-words and two C-words.
The C-word remains the papers' last taboo, although much of the credit for the current crop must go to reviews of The Vagina Monologues (and, in The Guardian's case, an interview with Shane MacGowan). The Times, usually so cautious about avoiding offence, was brought down dreadfully this year by a piece about John Diamond's emails to his editor, which quoted him using all sorts of expletives.
When the Telegraph swears, it's typically in the voice of the late Auberon Waugh, and never the ruder words; although the 46 shits this year mark a vast increase over 1989, when I conducted a similar survey, and the Telegraph let through only five (two of them in reference to Jeffrey Bernard). The Sun and Mail remain the most firmly opposed to the main swear words, although this year both have wavered: the Mail allowed 'shit' in a report on the feud between Frank Field and Harriet Harman, and The Sun let jockey Terry Biddlecombe talk about a horse 'knocking the shit' out of him.
As for the papers' wider priorities, The Mirror is the most obsessed with sex and drugs, and The Guardian with rock 'N' roll (we ought to discount the FT's score of 25 for rock 'N' roll, as a closer look reveals the paper to be less hip than it sounds: the term is used in pieces about Perry Como and, er, Tony Blair).
On their awareness of popular culture, no paper can escape the lure of Geri Halliwell. The Mirror and Sun mention her every day or so, the broadsheets a couple of times a week, and even the FT about once a month, presumably because of her growing macroeconomic significance.
You can understand the FT's priorities by comparing the number of references to God (542) and money (9,487). But if there's a business angle, even the FT will let through f-words and shits, especially in discussing French Connection's fcuk advertising campaign or Bob Geldof 'S latest challenge to intransigent corporations.
Compared with the 1989 survey, most of the press has become more relaxed about swearing, especially on the arts pages. Most papers still discourage the use of such terms unless required by the context of a report - so the Standard's two C-words are direct quotes from The Vagina Monologues and from a Liverpool supporter in a piece about yob Britain.
As for next year's survey, should the Standard come out rather higher in the league, blame this shitty piece for skewing the database. Maybe we can make amends by printing the words 'fiddlesticks', 'bother' and 'shoot' a few times ...
[TABLE]
They said what?
F-word / 'Shit' / C-word / 'Sex' / 'Drugs' / 'Rock 'n' roll' / 'Geri Halliwell'
The Guardian 264 316 44 2,669 3,390 272 91
The Daily Telegraph 0 46 0 1,585 2,430 110 93
The Times 3 37 0 2,574 3,198 256 107
The Independent 82 151 2 2,135 3,118 237 64
Financial Times 12 20 0 579 2,812 25 9
The Daily Mail 0 4 0 2,298 60 9 120
The Mirror 0 33 0 3,865 4,588 185 406
The Sun 0 1 0 3,155 2,359 86 257
Evening Standard 5 99 2 1,508 1,770 125 89
Figures refer to the year to 1 July 2001
(Evening Standard, July 25 2001)
THE Guardian is full of shit - and the Mail, Mirror, Sun and Telegraph don't give a f***. This is not opinion, it is fact - the findings of an Evening Standard survey into newspapers' swearing habits over the past year.
Our investigation follows the shock news this week that The Church Times has, for the first time, used the f-word. The word appeared - fully spelled out, without coy asterisks - in a story about a cycling nun and a disgruntled pedestrian. It may sound like the beginning to a Bernard Manning joke, but it was, in fact, a report on the everyday hostility faced by nuns on the streets.
The results of our survey may shock the fainthearted - and a few of the papers' editors - but Britain's press, it seems, is getting ruder and more fixated with sex than ever.
We selected some of the ruder swear words - the f-word, the c-word and shit (all fully spelled out, unlike the shyness we are showing here) - to see just where the papers' boundaries lay. Then we added a few other key terms that help convey a paper's sense of priorities in the Noughties: 'sex', 'drugs', 'rock 'N' roll', and, to measure the reach of our celebrity culture, 'Geri Halliwell'. The results show the tabloids to be angels compared to those badmouthing broadsheets.
The Guardian is the most liberal in its use of language, with 264 Fs and 44 Cs, followed by The Independent, which manages 82 F-words and two C-words.
The C-word remains the papers' last taboo, although much of the credit for the current crop must go to reviews of The Vagina Monologues (and, in The Guardian's case, an interview with Shane MacGowan). The Times, usually so cautious about avoiding offence, was brought down dreadfully this year by a piece about John Diamond's emails to his editor, which quoted him using all sorts of expletives.
When the Telegraph swears, it's typically in the voice of the late Auberon Waugh, and never the ruder words; although the 46 shits this year mark a vast increase over 1989, when I conducted a similar survey, and the Telegraph let through only five (two of them in reference to Jeffrey Bernard). The Sun and Mail remain the most firmly opposed to the main swear words, although this year both have wavered: the Mail allowed 'shit' in a report on the feud between Frank Field and Harriet Harman, and The Sun let jockey Terry Biddlecombe talk about a horse 'knocking the shit' out of him.
As for the papers' wider priorities, The Mirror is the most obsessed with sex and drugs, and The Guardian with rock 'N' roll (we ought to discount the FT's score of 25 for rock 'N' roll, as a closer look reveals the paper to be less hip than it sounds: the term is used in pieces about Perry Como and, er, Tony Blair).
On their awareness of popular culture, no paper can escape the lure of Geri Halliwell. The Mirror and Sun mention her every day or so, the broadsheets a couple of times a week, and even the FT about once a month, presumably because of her growing macroeconomic significance.
You can understand the FT's priorities by comparing the number of references to God (542) and money (9,487). But if there's a business angle, even the FT will let through f-words and shits, especially in discussing French Connection's fcuk advertising campaign or Bob Geldof 'S latest challenge to intransigent corporations.
Compared with the 1989 survey, most of the press has become more relaxed about swearing, especially on the arts pages. Most papers still discourage the use of such terms unless required by the context of a report - so the Standard's two C-words are direct quotes from The Vagina Monologues and from a Liverpool supporter in a piece about yob Britain.
As for next year's survey, should the Standard come out rather higher in the league, blame this shitty piece for skewing the database. Maybe we can make amends by printing the words 'fiddlesticks', 'bother' and 'shoot' a few times ...
[TABLE]
They said what?
F-word / 'Shit' / C-word / 'Sex' / 'Drugs' / 'Rock 'n' roll' / 'Geri Halliwell'
The Guardian 264 316 44 2,669 3,390 272 91
The Daily Telegraph 0 46 0 1,585 2,430 110 93
The Times 3 37 0 2,574 3,198 256 107
The Independent 82 151 2 2,135 3,118 237 64
Financial Times 12 20 0 579 2,812 25 9
The Daily Mail 0 4 0 2,298 60 9 120
The Mirror 0 33 0 3,865 4,588 185 406
The Sun 0 1 0 3,155 2,359 86 257
Evening Standard 5 99 2 1,508 1,770 125 89
Figures refer to the year to 1 July 2001
(Evening Standard, July 25 2001)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, July 25, 2001
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