You Couldn't Make It Up

The mawkish decision to adorn Tuesday's front page of The Sun with a photo of a bloodstained casualty of the 7/7 bombings in London, in order to legitimise Tony Blair's (now famously defeated) proposal to detain suspected terrorists for up to 90 days without charge, without any permission from the subject of the photograph, was asking to be described as tasteless in any case. (Banner headline: Tell Tony He's Right.)

There's a different word when the picture turns out to have been a professor of media studies like John Tulloch.

Tulloch is currently Research Professor of Sociology at Brunel University in south-west London. Since the 1980s, Tulloch's work has included researching Doctor Who and Star Trek audiences, analysing Shakespeare and Chekhov performances as theatrical events, and investigating perceptions of risk in contemporary society... including the fear of terrorism, which he'd discussed at a conference in Kent two months before the attacks.

In an interview in today's Guardian, Tulloch talks about the
and expresses his anger at the political manipulation of terror - which any Sun hack with a Google connection could already have discovered in Tulloch's August interview with Australian newspaper The Age.

Tulloch's next project will address the narratives of 'heroes, victims and survivors' which have crystallised since the bombings, and their use/misuse for political ends. The Gazette looks forward to his conclusions almost as avidly as it wonders what the next inappropriate Sun exclusive is going to be.

And you thought it couldn't get more surreal than the Sun's editrix being taken into custody for an alleged domestic with her 'hard man' 'soap star' boyfriend...